Amiga 1000 Rejuvenator Recreation Project: The Finale

[m0c]

On the solder side of these connectors, there's really no funnel shape to speak of - they are pretty small square holes?

Precisely. Look closely and you will see that the holes - as small as they may seem - are shaped like an inverted pyramid. And the holes in the PCB make joining the boards together even more easy. I did several practice fits and I found lining up the pins for the 3 copro sockets to be the most difficult. Not the Molex connectors.

I really don't want to solder all these buggers on and then enjoy the pain afterwards.

Soldering the Molex connectors upside down to the bottom of the PCB will definitely give you much more pain. Also, things won't look as nice. And besides, don't you think any Rejuvenator deserves to be built the Greg Tibbs way?

Speaking of which, has anyone ever used an 8375 agnus adapter board before, and if so where do you fetch the A20 line from?

Considering that a standard Rejuvenator can be used with either a 1MB or 2MB Agnus (selectable by jumper J103), my guess is that all the required signal lines are already present at the Agnus socket. The adapter shown elsewhere in this thread (the one for use with 2MB Agnus 390544-01) doesn't seem to be needing any extra wires either.

Going to start soldering this weekend. Daunting.

It sounds like you are lacking confidence, my friend... Anyone with average soldering skills should be fine. It's all ancient through hole technology anyway. Now that mine is working first time, I am feeling extra confident. I'm actually about to get started on a second one for a good friend of mine.

[luvwagn]

Just for completeness, but not sure if required - A20 is available from Pin 15 of U28 on the Rejuvenator. I wasn't sure if the 2MB jumper was for that or for other logic to the DRAM bank (since it goes from the 256k x 4 DIPs to the 1M x 4 DIPs or SOJs in every 2nd slot).

Well, it isn't confidence I lack - more like good eyesight and a steady hand

[m0c]

I will be turning 58 on Friday and I can't see sh*t anymore without reading glasses... I just think of my physical flaws as part of the challenge Over the past few years, I've built several GBA1000 boards, all with 68060 turbo card and GBAPII++ RTG graphics board. To me, the Rejuvenator is merely a little side project, in honour of the late Greg Tibbs and the entire team who made the re-release possible.

[brag]

[/brag]

[luvwagn]

Man, that is clean. Ever consider building again?

I should learn more about that solution, looks clean and sexay.

[m0c]

I did some serious testing with my 2MB Rejuvenator, thereby leaving it on overnight for nearly 15 hours. Rock solid

I am however slightly concerned about the Agnus chip fitting rather loosely in its PLCC socket, so I am thinking of replacing the socket. An improperly inserted Agnus can give you all kinds of erratic behaviour on power up, varying from black, white, grey, yellow or green screens to fading or garbled images and spontaneous lockups.

[A1-X1000]

@m0c

a good friend of mine that worked for ATI for a few decades told me the first thing he did on any board he worked on was to get rid of all the sockets & when I asked why he said because eventually they all cause problems.

[luvwagn]

I did some serious testing with my 2MB Rejuvenator, thereby leaving it on overnight for nearly 15 hours. Rock solid

I am however slightly concerned about the Agnus chip fitting rather loosely in its PLCC socket, so I am thinking of replacing the socket. An improperly inserted Agnus can give you all kinds of erratic behaviour on power up, varying from black, white, grey, yellow or green screens to fading or garbled images and spontaneous lockups.

Curious what the best long running stress test might be, beyond memory tests and other things in DiagROM perhaps. Spin up lightwave 3d or something that works without an FPU, and let it churn away overnight?

[m0c]

Going to start soldering this weekend.

Any news? We are all curious!

I will be testing my Parceiro II on the Rejuvenator soon. Does anyone know if physically removing the Kickstart ROM and the RTC is actually necessary? Shouldn't applying jumper J100 be enough?

[luvwagn]

Just email David, he's the boss

[m0c]

I enjoyed a near instant reply from David, within the hour!

On the Rejuvenator, the KS ROM must be removed, but jumper J100 should remain open, meaning "use the ROM". This tells the Rejuvenator to NOT attempt to load from floppy. The ROM to be used will be the Parceiro's ROM. The RTC chip can be removed without any issue.