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Deimoxx

Posted Tue Feb 20, 2018 5:35 pm

I know....Only a few years back I had 3. They just all died one after the other.

This stuffs getting old :). I just fired up my A1200 and it worked for about 5 minutes. Froze and now just a black screen. Looks like a job for tomorrow...I do love dragging all this stuff out every few years!

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Feb 20, 2018 8:31 pm

So with 1200's you're very likely dealing with bad caps. The 600/1200/4000 use caps that simply don't last. The 1000/500/2000 use a different type, and they are (thankfully) much safer.

I'm no expert, but I think the "bad caps" fare much worse if they are inactive for long periods time. For example, it's actually better to use them than put them away in storage. Something about using and heating those things makes them live longer lives than being put into stasis for a few years. Can't tell you how many stories I've heard about a CRT or old machine that was pulled out of storage to only last 5 minutes after powering it on. But the machines that get used regularly? Keep on truckin'.

Not easy to do when you have a stockpile of machines, though. I try and rotate mine. But yeah.

User avatar
Deimoxx

Posted Sun Feb 25, 2018 2:33 am

So I did a little more playing around with this Amiga 500. Found a loose wire on the second switch. Its purpose was to disable the extra 512K. So it turns out this Amiga has 10MB of ram.

User avatar
Bulletdust

Posted Sat Mar 03, 2018 2:40 pm

That's awesome! I love the A500 as it's the machine I ran as a kid.

What you want to do is see if there's any way to run 2MB chip ram, even if you can't run 2MB chip ram than set it to the max of 1MB chip ram.

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codevark
Sutton, MA USA

Posted Tue Apr 30, 2019 10:25 am

I also have a modded A500, And a fun story :)

"Miranda"
AmigaOS 3.1/ROMs
ICD AdSpeed @ 14Mhz
ICD BaseBOARD - but, I never completed the thing you have to do with that little wire, so I don't think all the RAM is contiguous (or whatever that's supposed to do..), and now I can't find the wire or the instructions..
Expansion Systems DataFlyer (500? Plus?) SCSI version, boots from 30+yr-old HD just fine.
(I may be confused about the make/model. But it works.)
IDEK Iiyama CRT !!
Replacement Madewell PSU - I started to hack the power connector myself, but got nervous. I took the whole system to a local UBreakIFix store (where they mostly repair phones and tablets), and asked if they could do the PSU hack, and they said there was an old guy :) who came in one day a week who might be able to do it. I left the system with them, figners crossed.. Eventually (about 2 months later), they called and said "my device" was ready to be picked up. When I got to the store, the first thing I noticed was that the PSU hack was ABSOLUTELY PERFECT - it looked like it had just popped out of a factory! I set the whole system up and powered it on. The HD, which hadn't been power cycled in almost 10 years, squealed loudly for a bit, and then quieted down. Other customers literally freaked out a bit, and then stood in awe as it booted to WB in a few seconds. After I was satisfied, I asked how much the repair was going to cost me. The kid at the counter looked over the repair slip and said, "Dan was originally going to charge you $100, but because it took so long, the bill is $50." Again, amazing. The reason it took so long: When the tech completed the PSU hack and plugged the system in for the first time, he had probes on the internal power connectors, and one pin was pulling too much. He quickly unplugged it, and went through THE ENTIRE MOTHERBOARD diagnosing every component until he found a shorted capacitor. He then found a replacement cap online, ordered it, replaced the bad one, and retested the entire motherboard again. Bravo, Dan! I was playing Ultima VI on it a couple of nights ago :)

I'm going to replace the HD asap, but in general, these old SCSI drives are like tanks - my main A3000D "Orion" has several HDDs from the '90s which all work fine (but I am going to replace them as well, at some point).

Next, I really want to get a Plipbox, and some kind of floppy emulator. Does anyone have any experience with PLR Electronics Floppy-to-USB devices? They are ridiculously (IMHO) expensive, but the guy I spoke with at PLR claimed that they are far better quality than any of the cheap ones like Gotek, et al. They even have one that comes with a USB wireless NIC.

codevark

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Apr 30, 2019 11:17 am

OMG codevark - that story is amazing! Thanks so much for sharing. I have so many questions!!
ICD AdSpeed @ 14Mhz
I have 2 of these devices. I got them for my Amiga 1000's. But I've only ever been able to get them to work via Software inside Workbench. They have a jumper on one end for a hardware switch - and I've hooked a switch up to both. This is supposed to let you turn the darn thing on (or off) manually. But Neither of mine permit this. They are always at 7Mhz unless you boot to WB and activate it first. And while this is nice, on the A1000 I will use a lot of games that are boot-only, so you never even get to WB. Thus, I can never accelerate any of those.

Does yours allow you to flip to 14Mhz on boot-up? Would love to see that in action.
I was playing Ultima VI on it a couple of nights ago
Dude! Can you pull an ADF of your INSTALL disk for me? I assume you have the NTSC version? Could you do that and shoot me the ADF? I would owe you big time.

I loved the story of your mystery repair tech who fixed your system. We gotta find that guy and put him to work 5 days a week! Hah!

User avatar
codevark
Sutton, MA USA

Posted Tue Apr 30, 2019 2:22 pm

AFAIK, there is some software involved, and I think I just auto-run it on boot, pre-WB. Hard to go back to 7Mhz after all that blinding speeeeed! ha But, maybe not - I've played A LOT* of Virus on this machine BitD, and I well remember how crazy that game was at double speed.. (yeah, try it on my accelerated A3K haha), so maybe I somehow locked it into 14Mhz? Will have to investigate furthur.

re: Ultima VI NTSC, I'll have to do some hunting for the disks, my office is a complete non-euclidean mess right now. But I can probably do that at some point.

re: tech. Yeah, "Dan" made my day! Never actually got to meet the guy in person; maybe I'll stop by this weekend and see if I can thank him.

*I once played for ~13.5 hrs straight, with minimal rest stops. No wonder my eyes are so bad now. :/

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Apr 30, 2019 2:49 pm

re: Ultima VI NTSC, I'll have to do some hunting for the disks, my office is a complete non-euclidean mess right now. But I can probably do that at some point.
I totally understand. If you can pull an ADF of just the Install, I'd really be in your debt. I'd send ya a little Thank Ye package of some sort for sure.





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