Hi from England

[sadmario]

Hi everyone!

I'm based in Sussex in the UK, and have been an avid Amiga user since 1989 when my sister and I received a Batman Pack A500 for Christmas that year. We loved that machine for games, DPaint, Imagine etc. etc. but it was eventually replaced circa 1993/4 with an A1200 (Desktop Dynamite pack) with a 209Mb HDD + a Philips CM8833-ii monitor.

The A1200 was unfortunately sold in 2014 due to lack of use and I quite quickly suffered from seller's remorse... By this point, prices had shot up of course. Although WinUAE works well to a point, playing my old favourites on a Windows PC didn't feel quite the same. No photos of either Amiga other than some eBay shots of the monitor Fortunately, I'd kept the 209Mb drive, and it still works, so I've been able to grab an image of it and see what I was working on back in the mid-nineties by looking at the 'recent' files.

Fast forward a few years, and being inspired by other projects, such as mattsofts A500 non-destructive case, I remembered I had a Raspberry Pi 3B+ in the drawer that could be used. As much as I have fond memories of the A500, I thought creating something similar for the A1200 - mainly due to (lack of) desk space reasons - could be a fun project. An empty A1200 case was found on eBay and I spent a lot of time learning and tinkering in CAD, the 3B+ replaced with a Pi 4, and I've finally got to a point where I'm happy I can stop tinkering for a bit. I'm really pleased with the result, and am currently using the excellent Pimiga 3. If anyone is interested in downloading the files, they are available here https://www.printables.com/model/419333 ... rack/files

Here's a picture of my finished project, running one of my favourite games:



Cheers!

[intric8]

This is absolutely sensational - thank you for sharing your work here!

I've forwarded your post to mattsoft so he could see what you've done, too.

[sadmario]

Thank you intric8, that's very kind. There are so many contributing to the Amiga community, so am more than happy to share this work to make my own small contribution.

Now it's time to start playing many of the old favourites - New Zealand Story, Nebulus, Speedball II etc.

[intric8]

@sadmario

I've received a few questions on the keyboard interface. Did you use a keyrah?

[Heywood]

My guess from the internal photos since I could read "Tynemouth" on the PCB

It might be this - https://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/detai ... ller-62113

However it appears to not be in stock at present

[sadmario]

@sadmario

I've received a few questions on the keyboard interface. Did you use a keyrah?

Heywood is right - I used the Tynemouth adapter, and it does look as though they've been out of stock since November '22 - hopefully they'll be available again soon. A Keyrah could be used as an alternative, but in its current arrangement the design doesn't accommodate the ports on the backplate but could be adapted. Or if there's room it could be mounted to the underside of the keyboard similarly to the Tynemouth adapter. Another option could be the Kipper2K keyboard, but that's not cheap.

Hopefully someone can chip in with some other options...

[McTrinsic]

Hi Sadmario,

quite a wonderful setup. I consider systems like this one a great bow towards the people behind the systems from back then. Keep the Shape, composure, design and make it more modern from within.

It seems like, for example, you use a wireless mouse. It’s all those details that can make your time better and help you focus on having fun. It may be a certain challenge to set up. But when it is, you can just switch on the Amiga and have some fun for a few moments and then switch it off again.

Looks gorgeous on the table .

Overall, does it work like expected?

[sadmario]

Hi McTrinsic,

Thanks for the comments - I think you've hit the nail on the head in terms of it being plug-and-play. Although I'd love to have original hardware, this sort of system has many of the advantages of the Amiga 500 Mini, but on a full-size platform. I am keenly awaiting my wireless tank mouse too from Lukas Remis's Kickstarter campaign, which I hope will further improve the touch points.

Pimiga 3 from Chris Edwards also helps as everything just works out of the box. I think I'll create some alternative configs at some point with a vanilla Worbench 1.3 and 3 for a more nostalgic approach though too.

I'm really pleased with how it works overall - it's probably ended up costing as much as a real A1200, but that was partly because there was a lot of trial and error with various parts and components + when I first starter this project, I didn't have a 3d printer, so v0.1 of the backplate was printed via a 3d printing hub, and needed some dremelling Getting the 3d printer made such a difference as I could keep re-printing elements very cheaply until I was happy with them.

Not in the picture, but I've got an external USB floppy drive that means I can write to/boot from floppy using Greaseweazle too which is very cool. An internal floppy drive would be even cooler, but I might save that for another day...

[sportingcp]

Hello, thanks a lot for sharing your work here and we would love to share everything we know with you!