User avatar
Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Mon Aug 06, 2018 10:22 pm

Hi All, after a bit of a pause in retro activities I am trying to get some items checked off the old back log.

But first a bit of history. (You can skip down to Restoration Progress or Current Issues, if this sort of reminiscing bores you.)

Before I decided to move I was encouraged to downsize some of my computer collection. I have a couple of Amiga 2000's so these, a couple of Macs and an Apple IIgs setup are on the chopping block since I really have not used them much in the past year+ and they do take up considerable space.

The Story
I have 2 Amiga 2000's. One came from a neighbor of mine about 28 years ago or so, circa 1990. He was a year or so younger then me and had a really cool A2000 setup with Supra Hard Card and a Supra RAM card. I had an A500 at the time and he was a major source of getting the latest software. He was going to college and decided to get rid of it all. It went to my friends house until about 1994 when the PowerPC Macs came out. From there all of our Commodore stuff went into storage and the Amiga 2000 sat in his storage. Fast forward 20 years later and I unloaded our storage as all of it was going to be gone if I didn't. I got back All of my Commodore stuff and most of my Amiga stuff. Took two or three car loads but it was saved and I was happy to get my stuff back, well most of it anyways. Of course, ahem, some other people in the house were not too thrilled given the size of our house. (hence the moving).

Amiga 2000 Condition
Of course, as you can guess, 20 years of non-use and an original battery = a big green battery mess. Yep, battery leaked everywhere including the CPU socket. I managed to clean it and after removing the MegaChip and replacing it with an 8372a and removing the Supra turbo 28 It came to life. Well sort of. It kept crashing and eventually I got a Red screen. I picked up another 2000 and transferred all the hardware into that one and it fired up and booted from the 235MB quantum drive. I couldn't get the original to work so it sat in the garage.

Restoration Progress
Wanting to sell these units I decided to give the old original another look over. It was now going to a black screen. I decided to attempt to remove the CPU socket. 64 pins! Yikes. I thought it might be easier to cut the socket into sections and perhaps heat up and remove each pin. Now that was a mistake and just made a big mess. So I got out the desolder station and just went for it. I managed to get it all out and cleaned up. It looked good. I found a bit of corrosion that I missed as the leakage traveled to a pin on the ROM socket, nasty stuff. I replaced the two sockets, put it back together and thought to myself that I am not that lucky there is no way that it is going to work.

I powered it on with no floppies connected and got a white screen. Well I was closer. But after a few seconds it cycled and went to the 2.0 Kickstart screen. I was floored. I reconnected both internal drives, after performing some maint. on them and inserted a 2.04 install disk and it booted to the WorkBench. Unbelievable, it was working.

Current Issues
It has been 20 years since I have used this Amiga. I need to get an expansion card for it like an A2091 to at least get a SCSI or SCSI2SD going on it + 2MB RAM that it supports. The original cards are in my other Amiga now. Finding one will be a challenge since I haven't had the best of luck on eBay with Amiga stuff.

Question: When the system is booting up from the drive on the right, which is DF0: the DF1: drive LED lights up too. I don't remember it doing this before, but it was 20 years ago so is this right? Should both lights light up on when you are using one drive or the other?

How are the drives jumpers supposed to be configured? Both as the same drive number and then a twist in the cable to alter the drive number? My cable has a twist on the second connector. It is been too long. I guess I should pull out the manual I have around here someplace.

Any advice or suggestions, please feel free to enlighten me because I have forgotten a lot of this stuff.

After fixing it up I am not certain I want to sell it now. I think I am going to instead sell an Amiga 1200 and an A500. Thanks for listening to my long winded story and for any help you might have. :D <3

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Aug 07, 2018 10:44 am

Question: When the system is booting up from the drive on the right, which is DF0: the DF1: drive LED lights up too. I don't remember it doing this before, but it was 20 years ago so is this right? Should both lights light up on when you are using one drive or the other?
The DF1 drive LED does indeed light up when you boot. Sometimes when I put a disk in DF0, DF1 might "wake up" for a minute, too. The LED lights on dual-drive A2000s are unusual. I don't think the behavior you're seeing is bad or wrong. I can take a short video of the process if you'd like to compare. As for the jumpers, I can't remember. Heck, I can't even remember if my drives have jumpers. Hah!

User avatar
femuruy

Posted Tue Aug 07, 2018 4:03 pm

Hi, here you got the jumpers info, lmk if this is what you needed!
Screenshot 2018-08-07 20.01.19.png

User avatar
Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Tue Aug 07, 2018 4:38 pm

Ok, Cool. Thanks guys. Perhaps mine is normal. I just didn't remember. I did check the jumper on the Motherboard, J301 and indeed it is in place so that is correct.

If you look at the back of the drive you can see the jumpers. At least if you have Chinon drives, which is probably the brand i have seen the most in Amiga's. I have also seen Panasonic and Epson drives. But I think you are right it is probably just normal behavior. DF1: does indeed to light up when you put a disk in DF0: and the other way around too.

Thanks for the offer of a video, intric8, that is super nice. From what you describe it sounds like the same behavior so no need, but thank you all the same.

Like a dummy, it didn't occur to me to move DF1: to my other A2000 (It has a single drive and a 234MB HD and 8MB RAM, all of which was originally in this now fixed original Amiga) and see if I get the same behavior. Duh! :lol:

I think I am going to get rid of an A500 and an A1200 and keep my A2000's. I just like the expansion and all. I will have to make room up someplace else. (Goodbye IBM Personal Computer 300GL and Macintosh 8100/80AV)

User avatar
femuruy

Posted Tue Aug 07, 2018 5:26 pm

Zippy do me a favor if you don't mind ... post a pic of each backside of your FDDs (DF0 and 1)

User avatar
Dynamic_Computing

Posted Tue Aug 07, 2018 5:48 pm

Personally, the Amiga 1200 is worth keeping . It is small and super easy to expand with inexpensive accelerators, memory and using a CF card as a hard drive.
Having something that supports AGA us definitely worth it.

User avatar
A10001986
1986

Posted Tue Aug 07, 2018 11:34 pm

The drive LEDs usually are a cabling issue. Is this an original Amiga floppy cable (with 4-6 twisted in one of the connectors)?

----
Amiga 2/3/4000's Regarding Their Internal Floppy Drives
DF0: must be jumpered to DS0 on the drive and this must have the cable with the twist in it.. I believe you peel out 4,5,6 and turn them around and put them back in.

DF1: must be jumpered to DS1 on the drive and this must have the section of cable that is not twisted.

----

User avatar
Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Wed Aug 08, 2018 10:13 am

femuruy wrote:Zippy do me a favor if you don't mind ... post a pic of each backside of your FDDs (DF0 and 1)
Will do. Working at the moment but first chance I get I will post it here.
Dynamic_Computing wrote:Personally, the Amiga 1200 is worth keeping . It is small and super easy to expand with inexpensive accelerators, memory and using a CF card as a hard drive.
Having something that supports AGA us definitely worth it.
I agree but I have 2 of them a Commodore original that defaults to PAL (which I recently recapped and will sell) and an NTSC Amiga Technologies. They both have CF HDs and I also have the original seagate 80MB HD that came with the Original.
A10001986 wrote:The drive LEDs usually are a cabling issue. Is this an original Amiga floppy cable (with 4-6 twisted in one of the connectors)?
Yes, all original.
Amiga 2/3/4000's Regarding Their Internal Floppy Drives
DF0: must be jumpered to DS0 on the drive and this must have the cable with the twist in it.. I believe you peel out 4,5,6 and turn them around and put them back in.

DF1: must be jumpered to DS1 on the drive and this must have the section of cable that is not twisted.
The mystery deepens. I will check it when I get home. Perhaps I have the end with the twist connected to DF1:

Thank you for your input everyone! It is most helpful.

User avatar
Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Wed Aug 08, 2018 2:49 pm

Ok, as promised here is a picture of the backside of the drives. DF0: is on the left ending in serial 13. As you can see I think I plugged the cable in PC style, twist going back to DF1: which would confuse things. I guess.

Here is a picture that shows this and the jumper settings on each drive.
DrivesBack.jpg
DF0 is on the left in this picture of Chinon A2000 drives.




To add confusion here is specs for the cable Amigakit sells:
cable type: 34 wire ribbon straight (df0:), twisted (df1:)
They say the twist goes to DF1: I have tried connecting it the way suggested above and the light stays on to DF1 and it is seen as DF0:. The other drive that is supposed to be DF0: will not work this way. I wish I still had to original instruction sheet that showed all the correct jumpers and cable connections that came with the second drive back then. Arrrrg.

User avatar
femuruy

Posted Wed Aug 08, 2018 4:58 pm

Drive jumpers are OK, Leftmost set as Df0 and Rightmost as DF1 ...





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