A1200 projects

[Harrison]

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.

[Stephen Coates]

So it's going to be more or less identicle to the A1200 that I'm trying to build then.

The only difference being that I'll probably just use a CDRW drive and no scandoubler. I'd like a scan doubler, but they tend to be expensive, so as the VGA screenmodes work on VGA monitors and as I already have a 1438 adding a scandoubler seems pointless.

I may try and replace the 1230 with either a 1260 or a PPC but the 1230 is still fast so I'm not desperate to do that.

[J T]

FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!

We should have a build-off and judge which project is best, Harrison's or Steve's!





I like the sound of the A1200 PC by the way.

[Stephen Coates]

As they are having the same processors/memory, harrison's will bviously be better because of it's DVDRW drive, bigger hard drive and scandoubler. I just can't see much ue for those in mine so am not including them. Well, I may put a bigger hard drive in eventually. It is currently 1.5GB.

[Harrison]

Shows these must be the best upgraded to do to an A1200.

The main reasons for the builtin optical drive is that until now I've had an external SCSI drive hooked up via a Squirrel interface and it takes up a lot of extra space, not to mention all the wires. Getting the drive inside the system will make it much nicer and more portable.

And the scandoubler is really to get away from needing any bulky monitors or having to rely on Amiga monitors to display a good image. Using VGA modes with a normaly PC monitor is also a bit hit and miss as many older programs will switch to their own resolutions and you will then lose the picture on a VGA monitor completely. Also most newer PC monitors cannot sync down to the VGA modes the A1200 can output.

With the scan doubler I can do away with all Amiga monitors. Interested in a Mulitsync soon Steve? And just hook them up to any LCD flat panel monitor I like and be able to run Amiga games through it as well as Workbench modes.

I like the sound of the A1200 PC by the way.

This is actually the first of the projects I am tempted to tackle first. It would make a perfect, and very portable emulation system. There are quite a few parts I would need to build it though:

• A1200 case with working keyboard
• Keyrah interface (connects Amiga keyboard to USB)
• Mini-ITX motherboard (most components including graphics and audio built in)
• Ram for Motherboard (most use slimline or laptop ram)
• HD (2.5" maybe? 3.5" are quite small these days)
• Laptop DVD-RW slimline drive
• Catweasel Mk4 PCI card
• Floppy drive that fits the A1200 floppy drive location
• Mini-ITX PSU (will need to work out power consumption requirements for size).

I think that is everything.

[Stephen Coates]

As you can probably guess, I wil l not be using an LCD. I don;t have any LCDs as I'm quite happy with CRTs.

My Dell monitor will sync to the 31kHz of the amiga. As scandoublers are expensive, I would be more inclinded to continue to use PAL screenmodes on a Muctisync monitor and just buy a proper graphics card.

Also, there is currently a Blizzard PPC + SCSI + BVision on ebay france for about £133. I would bid but I have a feeling it will go up a bit higher.

On the VGA screenmode you can still fit alot of stuff in the screen so a graphics card isn't a big priority either.

Interested in a Mulitsync soon Steve?

You could have told me that at the begining of 2006 when I didn;t have one.

For my A1200, I shouldn;t be short of a CDROM drive either as I can take the one from my powerbook 1400. It is in an expansion bay module which contains a pin adaptor to connect it to teh powerbook, but the actual CDROM drive has a standard laptop IDE connector.

[Harrison]

But don't you need the CDRom drive for the powerbook?

[Stephen Coates]

I could always put a better one in it.

I probably won;t be using that powerbook quite as much any more as I have just purchased a PowerBook G3. (I will refrain from saying anything more about it until after I have got it).

[TiredOfLife]

Hmm not bad lads.
Let me give you something to aim for.
Here is what I have at the moment.
A1200 in a full tower. (Mirage, solid metal, no plastic crap.Backplate custom built to match a A1200 mobo).
3.1 Roms, with Workbench 3.9 installed.
Blizzard 1260 with 64 meg.
FastATA mk III ide interface.
Two maxtor hds, one 40 gig and one 80 gig.
One Liteon CDRW and one Aopen DVDRW.
Mediator 1200SX PCI Busboard.
Spider II USB card
Voodoo 4500 graphics card.
Hanns-g 19" TFT monitor
Fortmedia FM801 (Terratec 512i) sound card.
10/100 Fastethernet card.

Future plans.
TV card
Shark PPC accelerator.
OS4.0

[Harrison]

Cool setup.

I have been tempted in the past to do a tower conversion, but owning an A4000 too I have always put it off as not being required. I may still do an A1200 tower conversion at some point though, just cause I would like to tackle the project.

I may also be upgrading my A4000 a bit more once the new PPC board is released for it.

Currently my A4000/40 has the standard CPU, full standard system ram filled (2 chip + 16 fast), a 2GB HD, GVP SCSI Zorro card, SCSI CD-Rom, SCSI ZIP.

I really want to add a zorro ethernet card to the A4000 but they are way to expensive (about £80), and at some point I would love to stick a 24-bit graphics card in the system.