First A1200 project

As I've just obtained a spare 6GB 2.5" HD I thought I would start using my second spare A1200 a bit more.

At the moment this A1200 is vanilla with nothing but a 4MB fast ram expansion in the trapdoor. It still only has Kickstart 3.0 roms too. I have decided I am going to start upgrading it and playing around with it.

The first upgrades I will add to this are:
  • 6GB HD
  • Kickstart 3.1 roms
  • OS 3.9
  • Blizzard 68030 with 32-128MB ram.
I might be able to get the ram SIMMS free from an old PC.

Once this stage is complete I will then start on the next part:
  • buffered IDE interface
  • Laptop DVD-RW
  • case mod
The case mod is the key element here as I will be cutting the case and fitting the laptop drive inside the A1200 on the left-hand side, and connecting it to the Amiga via the buffered IDE interface.

Finally the last part is going to be a scan doubler so that the Amiga can be used with an LCD monitor instead of a bulky Amiga monitor. You can now get some nice small inline scan doublers for use with the A1200 for this.

Second A1200 PPC project.

Then once OS4 is out I may look at upgrading the other A1200 I have into a tower case with a PCI breakout board and a PPC shark accelerator.

Other project ideas.

There are some other Amiga ideas I have in mind.
  • A1200 PC
Rip the guts out of a dead A1200 and install a mini-itx motherboard inside. Add an interface to use the original Amiga ksyboard with the motherboard, add a catweasel controller for floppy drive access and amiga mouse and joystick support and mount a slimline laptop drive in the left of the case (as mentioned for the A1200 project above.
  • PPC OS4 system
The other idea is again to rip the guts out of a dead A1200, but this time to fit a PPC motherboard inside and set it up in a similar way the A1200 PC idea. This would give me a full PPC OS4 Amiga inside an A1200 case.

But I need to wait until OS4 is out so I have a list of compatible PPC motherboards, and hardware before I can even start building that.