Amiga Thread.


May as well shill this Kickstarter here. It's not only an Amiga case, but there is a PC mini-itx solution as well. I plan on shoving one of my A500s into this case, the one that has badly yellowed casing. There is also a Zorro bus riser card as well to allow normal Zorro II expansion cards to be used with the A500. Likely Move my Vampire to this setup as my A2000 is kind of flaky and it takes up a lot of room.

 
the Checkmate A1500 Plus case looks awesome!
love the keyboard garage from a1000, verry nicely done!
hope they make it! :)
 
Not sure I'm a fan of their keyboard case, I hope they do some redesign on it.
Does it support the Vampire v4 standalone? Seems like they could be a nice combo
 
Not sure I'm a fan of their keyboard case, I hope they do some redesign on it.
Does it support the Vampire v4 standalone? Seems like they could be a nice combo
He said in his campaign live stream on youtube he would support it. Likely would need to have one to see for sure. The Standalone isn't much bigger than a RPi so it's kind of like throwing a hotdog down a hallway so they say.

I can take or leave the keyboard case personally, I have a compact Mechanical USB keyboard that should slide under the case. I have this USB keyboard adapter that works with the A500 and has pretty good compatibility: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Connect-fa...oard-to-Amiga-500-500-and-other-/232364977565
 
The fact this case supports RPi seems something of an afterthought - it's included in the blurb/image at the top, but there's no explanation what back panel you'd want for it, or indeed any other mention that I can see. I also guess the V4 standalone is a very similar category of thing from an industrial design standpoint.
 
The fact this case supports RPi seems something of an afterthought - it's included in the blurb/image at the top, but there's no explanation what back panel you'd want for it, or indeed any other mention that I can see. I also guess the V4 standalone is a very similar category of thing from an industrial design standpoint.
For the RPi there is a specific plate in the back for it. it's supposed to co-exist with the main motherboard. It's a bit vague in his kickstarter page, but I've seen a half dozen of his videos and he's showed it off a few times.

The V4 standalone likely will have to be designed when he gets ones to try and fit it.
 
Nice idea if you have an Amiga that needs re-housing but I'm hoping the stand alone Vampire will have some funky cases like the Pi.

My desktop space is at a premium so anything big has to earn it's place.
 
Still haven't replaced the capacitors yet - got half way through and realised that some of the caps are 10uf instead of 100uf... hopefully I'll get replacements early next week.

In other news, just heard about Bifrost which looks like an awesome little LED replacement (there are buttons on the leds to fully customise each of the HDD, floppy and power lights):


Unfortunately it looks like it's sold out currently - at least on his official website.

I'm also thinking to gut the power supply and replace the internals with a Meanwell RT-50B, although I feel I want to check more sources on it before attempting that mod...
 
Finally replaced all of the capacitors. Good news it turns on with a green light, and there's no magic smoke. Bad news is that I'm getting no output, and I'm not sure it's going through the boot-up process - the floppy light turns on after about 3 seconds, stays lit for about 3 seconds and goes off again. Nothing aside from that.

I'll try a few more things later, like double-checking my connectors, etc. If anyone has had anything similar happen, or some advice about checking / diagnosing, I'd really appreciate it.
 
Many older computers used to flash the disc drive activation light to indicate an error code, once floppy discs became common and boot processes became complicated enough that they could ever partially succeed. That doesn't seem to be true of the amiga which instead flashes the screen different colours, so if your screen out is knackered you've got very little to go by.

However, the amiga kickstart on an amiga without a hard disc with workbench installed to it should just display a logo and try to boot a disc, be that the workbench disc or a game disc, so the light coming on then going off doesn't sound bad at all (you may also be able to hear the spindle motor whirring). So try a game or your workbench discs and see if it starts loading those. If you don't have them, you might be in a bit of a bind, but USB floppy disc drives are now cheap and blank floppies are still available, although decent brands are now stupidly expensive compared to olden days, and I don't know if you can write an amiga discs using those types of drives actually.
 
Thanks for the suggestions @levi :)

Btw I found a great guide to the boot sequence here:
https://amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=324

I tried plugging in my CF workbench and that didn't do anything. I have a Gotek that's plugged in although I haven't done much with it yet so I'll try plugging in the original floppy when I get chance.

However I did also try composite this morning (was using a scart adapter yesterday) and after the longest time (perhaps 10 seconds) of a light grey screen the most magical thing happened...

IMG_20180910_071807.jpg


Okay, so the video out and HDD appear not to be working as previously, but we have life :)
 
Another quick update. The compact flash is actually working (booted in to workbench!). I'd accidentally bent a couple of the pins removing the cable and hadn't put it back fully.

I can't actually remember, but I guess the HDD indicator may never have worked with the CF adapter(?)

So it's just the component output I need to diagnose. I'm guessing something affecting the sync or power pins, as there's no output...
 
So it's just the component output I need to diagnose. I'm guessing something affecting the sync or power pins, as there's no output...

Not sure if you're aware but Amiga RGB is a tad different than modern component (YPrPb) output. Even though I'm in North America, I found the easiest method of dealing with it is an Amiga RGB SCART cable, then run it to a SCART To HDMI adapter. There are some VGA adapter out there, but you may have to have a monitor that can handle 15Hz signals or get a scandoubler.
 
Not sure if you're aware but Amiga RGB is a tad different than modern component (YPrPb) output. Even though I'm in North America, I found the easiest method of dealing with it is an Amiga RGB SCART cable, then run it to a SCART To HDMI adapter. There are some VGA adapter out there, but you may have to have a monitor that can handle 15Hz signals or get a scandoubler.

Thanks, and yes, that may be a factor, however...

Actually I do have and use a SCART adapter, and there is one TV we have that I've tested it before and worked fine, directly with the scart socket. I also have a monitor adapter, but don't think that works with any of my monitors.

I'll need to check some schematics later, but wondering which of the capacitors might have affected it. My guess is on one of the caps by the keyboard connector: C324 and C334.
 
Those two were hard to reach, so I wasn't confident on the soldering.

Yeah those were tough on my A600 too, they're located in the same spot. I really had difficulties with those on my first A600 motherboard, second time around I desoldered the two audio connectors to get at them easier.
 
Yes! She's alive! :D I have no clue what the problem was, but I'll put the solution down to an appropriate application of alcohol.

I stripped it down to the board, cleaned again with alcohol and ear buds, and scanned the board with a magnifying glass. There were a couple of tiny (fraction of a mm) fragments of solder, but none of them were anywhere that could have caused an issue... anyway, I plugged in the compact flash card, TV and tried switching it on, and it just worked! Putting everything back in place again, and it still worked.

So relieved! Thanks everyone for all the words of advice - I'll leave this thread for more interesting news for now while I work out what next to do to my Amiga ;-)
 
Back
Top