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jamesyoung

Posted Tue Jan 17, 2023 3:47 am

Good luck with the sale. The Phoenix is pretty much impossible to find. It is quite a nice system and anywhere you go, people will drool over it.

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McTrinsic

Posted Sun Apr 02, 2023 1:51 pm

So since you asked…

My „new“ Amiga is this one.

In order to get it up and running, I had to invest some time. Now I’m back to this Phoenix that will once again rise.

I must admit with all the jumpers and expansions and what have you and of course the internal floppy it feels a bit more ‚Amiga‘. The original case helps, of course.

Whenever I have a certain success during the build, it is extremely rewarding. Wonderful. I love it. Hear the floppy clicking gives me at times ASMR moments. Pure bliss.

But that’s when the the thing _works_ . Which, during the build, will not often be the case. And if not, I legitimately hate this thing. It’s unforgiving in the most brutal way. A screw was fixed with too much torque? Bad luck, the floppy stops working. I really had such a moment. If I hadn’t seen it running before, I probably would have given up. On other occasions, a fault is not based on the Phoenix but because we tried to do a different setup with it. Seems like the Phoenix is acting in maximum Diva style and is now … not amused. I had an issue with the display. Turns out, two Indivision ECSs had two different defects and a Denise also a third defect. So whenever I thought „ok I solved this“, there is something new. I was close to lose my composure. I am sure I was close to turn medically I’ll on this. I gained three pounds and lost lots of hair.

I bought a new Indivision for it and now the spirit seems to be pleased with the sacrifices of the other hardware. Works like a charm now in a basic setup with 2MB ChipRAM, the Kryoflux Graphics adapter, the HD floppy and said Indivision ECS v3.

Wonderful. It’s like the most beautiful computer on earth.

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McTrinsic

Posted Sun Apr 02, 2023 1:52 pm

FAD6D1DC-E8A5-465E-9FD0-5F645BC79E30.jpeg
Isn’t it wonderful? 😊

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luvwagn

Posted Wed Apr 05, 2023 10:46 pm

Ooooh, black. Did you paint it and have some tips?

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McTrinsic

Posted Thu Apr 06, 2023 12:17 am

My tip: ask someone who is used to do this 😆

So I didn’t do this by myself. If you want, I can ask the user who did this for contact information. He’s a guy from A1k.

What I did find is that a black case is much more prone to making dust visible.

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McTrinsic

Posted Sun Oct 15, 2023 2:50 pm

Ok time for an update as today I finished installing a few things.

The VarIO went as usual to the front slot. There I attached a Freeway clockport USB solution. There is a nice adapter for it that feeds the USB 5v power into the devices. Works like a charm with an Apple USB2Ethernet adapter and two USB-sticks that I’ve been throwing at them.

The DVD had to be replaced as the eject-button of the old one was broken.

The IDE-adaptor took me some time as I forgot to change the MaxTransfer to 0x1fe00. After that, copying files to and from an old 512MB-CF that I still had lying around worked seemingly without hiccups. It took me a moment to realize that the small LED next to the left power/SCSI-LED does actually work. It’s just a bit less bright so when copying files from SCSI to CF the power-led will just shine so bright you won’t necessarily see the CF work.

Looking good so far. The cable management is a mess, but works.

Next, potential final step is to install the 68k-CPU-clockport-adapter and the Melody Pro soundcard.

It looks like when using everything together, such as unpacking an lha from USB to CF the power supply through the board is a bit thin. But hey, it’s old tech, give it some credit.

SysInfo is at ca. 7500 and SCSI speed at ca 1 MB/s (SysInfo) 😊.

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McTrinsic

Posted Mon Oct 16, 2023 9:58 pm

Yesterday evening I checked the DVD. A CD-R from my PC with lots of stuff from Aminet read without any hiccups.

As it was the biggest archive I could quickly find, I extracted the MUI5 lha from CDR straight to the 512MB CF.

Works as good as expected and as remembered 😊.

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McTrinsic

Posted Sat Jan 27, 2024 4:31 am

Ok time for an update after some time.

The Phoenix boldly defended its claim as the biggest Diva in Amigaland. At least for me.

Various hiccups and strange things drove me nuts and made me cheer when it finally worked out. Stressful and rewarding.

However, things seem to come to an end. The machine is 99% (re-)assembled now. Some things needed to be resoldered or otherwise slightly changed.

Eventually, I dropped two switches. The switch to cut off any expansion was removed. I had the impression that a long wire through the whole case at the beginning of the autoconfig sequence had a stability impact. It runs fine now. Similar with the drive switch. Previously, I was able to set the external floppy drive as DF0: and the internal as DF1: It may have been the actual switch.

What’s left now mechanically is to fix the USB2Eth-Adapter to the case.

Issues are few but exist.
With my limited selection of CF-Cards, read: two ;), they exclude each other from access at the dual IDE-CF adapter. Both cards work individually and in both slots, just not together. I can live with that.

The thing is that at cold boot, sometimes the SCSI doesn’t seem to initialize. So I first have to switch to Kick1.3, boot a bit, switch off or reset after setting to Kick3.x and the try again. Works. Also, something I can live with.

Yesterday had a blast listening to a CD, then listening to an mp3.

On a MACHINE FROM 1991.

…, the expansions are from a few years later. But still 💕

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McTrinsic

Posted Mon Jan 29, 2024 2:07 pm

Today I can report out mechanical completion _except_ the upper case.

And I would say I have come to peace with the system.

Overall, I would change out relation status from „must go“ to „potentially available upon request“. If it goes, you need to apply for it. I want to make sure this thing goes to place where it is loved for what it is. A diva 😊





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