A1200 Project

[Harrison]

AmigaKit do a good basic ide controller here it's the one i have. Not the fastest in the world but very Ronseal.

Cheers for the recommendation. That is the one I was looking at on Amigakit last week and was considering.

How does it compare to the more expensive 4xEIDE'99 Buffered Interface (with Allegro CDFS) they also have?

I really only need it to run a single 40GB 2.5" HD and a laptop 24x CD-Rom drive.

[Harrison]

I've just thought of one issue. Is it possible with an internal laptop CD-Rom drive, connected to the A1200 via a buffered interface, to pass the CD audio out and somehow mix it with the Amiga's audio so that they are both sent to the speakers?

On the A4000 it actually has audio header pins on the motherboard, so I just needed to use a standard CD audio cable connected from the back of the drive, to the header. And in the past on the A1200, using an external SCSI drive, to mix the audio a audio phone splitter cable was provided so that the audio from both the CD and Amiga were passed to the speakers (although this did degrade the quality).

So any solution for this with an internal IDE CD drive in the A1200?

[Buleste]

There is a CD passthrough on Amigakit but with a bigbox backplate. I'd just cut it down or mod it in someway. I dont' know what the IDEexpress is like. I assume it's faster than the simple one plus you get a full version of IDEfix and Allegro CDFS. As i have both it doesn't matter.

[Harrison]

I also have both of those software packages too so I don't need them. I have decided to just order the same basic one as you have. It should do everything I need. In reality I only really will be using the CD drive to transfer software from the PC to the Amiga such as KGWHD updates.

[Zetr0]

@Harrison

Simple Internal Audio Mixer

I would suggest that changing the 10k resistor to 20k for the Optical Drive output.

A More Advanced 3 input version

Steve made a version of the Simple mixer for his very ellegant A1200 project.

Steve's A1200 Project

The above is deffinately a good read.

[Harrison]

Cheers. I will have a look at those when I get back later tonight.

I will also order the IDE interface tonight so that I can get to work on installing the CD drive later this week.

[Stephen Coates]

Good luck with your A1200 project Harrison.

What kind of laptop CD drive are you using? I tried to use one with a standard 44 pin IDE connector and couldn't get it to work. Not sure why. I gave up trying as I was planning to use a 5.25" CD drive, which I now do. Only problem I have with this is that when it is unplugged I get an error saying that atapi.device can't be found. I fixed this problem on OS3.9 by removing it from the startup sequence, but then when I want to use the CD drive I will need to add it again.

Does anyone know of a way to stop it from giving me an error when I use the computer with the CD unplugged without removing it from the startup sequence?

[Harrison]

I'm using a 24x laptop CD-Rom drive that I received from a member of AmiBay. It has a 50pin JAE connector, hence the need to use a JAE to IDE converter. I found one of those for £3 on ebay so that was OK. The converter provides IDE, power and audio connectors so should be just what I need.

[Zetr0]

Drat!!!

sorry H I have been soooOOooo busy with projects of late I was ment to message you,

last year I bought a job lot of JAE to IDE adapters from Hong Kong, (around 10 of them for £5 + £3 postage) I would of sent you one for your project... bugger... sorry m8.

[Harrison]

That is OK. Not to worry. Cheers for the thought anyway. Was only £3 including postage so not too expensive.

I may get stuck finding some other bits for the project though so you might be able to help then.