User avatar
grshaw

Posted Mon Sep 02, 2019 9:11 am

@intric8 - thanks. It's been dispatched and is on it's way to me now. Hopefully it will look as good in real life. Good advice about the drive bays. TBH - I haven't decided how I will source the floppy disks or any other parts for this project as yet. I may end up buying components as needed. Another option would be to buy a non working donor Amiga 2000 and take the parts out of that. Depending on costs - that may end up being the cheaper option. However - even non working A1500 / A2000s seem to be expensive on ebay.co.uk at the moment. I guess I will see what I can find...

@obitus1990 - 3D printing the faceplate sounds like a good solution. I may well end up going down that route. Thanks.

Been thinking about what I will do with the A2000 when I finally complete it. I already have an A1200 with a 030 accelerator card and WHDLoad etc. So I think I would be looking to keep the A2000 old skool - i.e. running 1.3 roms. Much the same as my A1500 back in the day. Only thing modern I might consider putting in there would maybe be a SCSI2SD card adaptor or something like that. Playing games off floppy would seem to be the order of the day. :D

But I need to stop daydreaming. Many hours of hard work before that. :D

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Mon Sep 02, 2019 9:28 am

I keep my A2000 "old school" with OS 1.3 but I enjoy adding lots of things to it. That's what the 2000 was made to do!

So, mine is set up like this:
  • GeForce 030 @ 40 Mhz
  • 2MB Chip
  • 16 MB Fast
  • 40MB orig boot HDD
  • 4GB scsi2sd HDD (where I do most of my work)
  • Iomega 100mb Zip Drive (plugged into the back of the GeForce)
  • 44mb SyQuest Drive (mostly for looks, but it works)
Plus dual floppies, multiple keyboards (which I hope to show soon), and piles of peripherals. The 2000 is a fantastic machine that usually doesn't get much love due to its looks compared to her siblings. But out of all of my machines, she always just works.

I also have a 2nd A2000 that was DOA which I've used on a few occasions as a parts machine. Having that 2nd machine can bring peace of mind for sure.

User avatar
grshaw

Posted Mon Sep 02, 2019 11:03 am

That sure sounds like a great A2000.

Yeah - I take your point about expandability - that's definitely what the A2000 is all about. Come to think of it - an 030 accelerator would be pretty sweet. :D

I suppose the point I am making is that although WHDLoad is great. I kind of miss the experience of loading a game off floppies. Listening to the drive grinding away with it's characteristic noise. :D Many of the games I remember from BITD will not run on an A1200 without WHDLoad. 1.3 roms is def the way to go for maximum compatibility.

As for the donor machine - yeah - this would bring peace of mind. I actually bid on an A1500 today. But I was outbid. Plenty more fish in the sea I guess...

And looks wise - I think the A2000 is kind of beatiful - in it's own kind of way. :D

User avatar
McTrinsic

Posted Mon Sep 02, 2019 11:25 pm

You can start with WHDLoad and then still play special games from FDD.

Thats how I do it. Quite often, porbably, you will find yourself just firing up WHDLoad.

Its just SO convenient.

Granted, nothing beats loading your favorite game from FDD :D

User avatar
dankcomputing

Posted Sun Feb 26, 2023 6:30 pm

I'm building one of these right now and I don't think I'll ever do another one, barring a new version of the PCB that has some A500+ style quality of life improvements. Some examples of what I mean:

- Support for All Agnus variants (via jumpers) and a maximum of 2MB CHIP RAM on board (extra optionally populateable sockets for 2MB Agnus upgrades)
- CD & Bridgeboard Audio passthrough
- Conector for an internal KVM. It's possible to build an internal video switch using the video slot, but keyboard and mouse would still be an issue. The Amiga Bridgeboards of course pass the keyboard through (though not the mouse very well) via software, but ISA SBCs are better. Problem is that those need their own keyboards and mice. Just adding a series of jumpers on the keyboard/mouse lines that a future optional internal KVM could connect to would be enough.

As it is, it's a huge amount of soldering - weeks in fact, and (minus the customs/CPU/etc) the parts costs quickly spiral out of control even if you have a good local electronics store you can get half of them from. I'm currently completely held hostage by this part being backordered on every single website until May. It is not available anywhere else. There are no alternatives that I can find. And you can't even borrow the ones that are on a Rev. 4 2000 or Rev. 5 500 motherboard - they're different.

Financially you are way way better off trying to track down a Rev. 6 board on eBay and trying to get it going again, especially now that we have schematics for the Rev. 6. I suppose it might make more sense once those really dry up, but that hasn't happened yet.

User avatar
obitus1990
USA

Posted Mon Feb 27, 2023 10:33 am

dankcomputing wrote:
Sun Feb 26, 2023 6:30 pm
I'm currently completely held hostage by this part being backordered on every single website until May. It is not available anywhere else. There are no alternatives that I can find. And you can't even borrow the ones that are on a Rev. 4 2000 or Rev. 5 500 motherboard - they're different.

I'm no hardware engineer, but maybe someone is can chime in and correct me if I am wrong. Those are just EMI filters. There's one coil on each side, with ground in the middle. You can possibly substitute ferrite beads there, one on each side of the three holes that usually house those filters (the two outer holes), with them both sharing the ground terminal in the middle hole.


User avatar
dankcomputing

Posted Tue Feb 28, 2023 6:34 pm

I didn't know about that company! Thanks a lot, now I can get this project to the next stage.

User avatar
Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Wed Mar 01, 2023 1:00 pm

dankcomputing wrote:
Tue Feb 28, 2023 6:34 pm
I didn't know about that company! Thanks a lot, now I can get this project to the next stage.
Don't feel bad as this is a long project to assemble. I started mine a while ago and am about 70% done. I am thankful I bought all the components (and some extra) well before the shortage and insane price hikes. I kind of got tired of it and switched over to an ICS64S and completed that. I am going back to the Amiga as soon as it warms up a bit as my soldering and repair station is in my Garage and it is just too cold right now.

Let us know how it turns out.

User avatar
dankcomputing

Posted Wed Mar 08, 2023 9:24 pm

It booted on the very first try once I finally got that last part and finished it. I was legit shocked about that. That kinda makes up for all the problems.

Though again, it was a LOT of soldering. If I ever do another one of these it'll be for a 500 system. There's not too many 500+ motherboards around in the US.





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