A600: Spare A600 mobo recapped, serviced and replacing current

Since many years I had a spare A600 mobo from my really old A600 that had some cap issues (sound etc) plus some old hacks I did when I couldn't hold a soldering iron correctly :)
Since I didn't have much time my really good friend Leo (keropi) offered to help a bit.

After getting a cap kit from AmigaKit, he changed the caps but there were channels missing in audio... He checked and changed the audio amp chip (from a spare dead A600 mobo) but still no fix.
Then he decided to salvage Paula from the dead mobo and finally that was the problem!
Now my mobo is working flawlessly so I received it and tested it with great joy.

Since it was working perfect with my Vampire I decided to replace my current mobo (that has some audio issues as well, along with some RGB to scart issues (caps desperately needing change).

So new mobo got the following hacks

Adding 2 signals for the dual floppy header. I decided to add the wires under the motherboard for cleaner mod. You can check the previous mod here where I added the wires on the top of the motherboard.

Next it was the 2nd floppy LED wires that would attach next to the LED header. Previous mod can be seen here. A lot cleaner in this go :)

Here you can see Ratte's switch in RF modulator space, the ribbons for Native/RTG fold carefully and hot-glued on top of kipper2k's angled adapter and then going under Vampire.

And here you can see the whole unit ready to rock with everything on.

You'll notice in the previous pic that the old switch that I used for switching between Kickstart 1.3 and Kickstart 3.1 was removed as nowadays the kick resides inside the Vampire. Instead, I thought of putting a bigger switch I had (ON/OFF/ON) for switching between Ratte's switch modes (Auto/Native/RTG). It took me a LOT of time trimming and filling the switch in order to be able to fit in my A600 but it fitted like a glove once I was ready.

 

Some things that are missing (if someone knows my setup) are the following:

1. MAS-Player plus the internal MAS/Paula mixer: Yep it was removed for 2 reasons. 1st because MAS-Player is definitely obsolete now since it can only play up to 192kbit MP3 files while Vampire can play up to 320kbit without a sweat and with only consuming 20-30% of the CPU power (impressive shiz I tell ya). Another reason was that mixer lowered considerably the volume of both MAS-Player and Paula so there was no reason to keep it.
2. NMI header: Yep, Vampire doesn't have an NMI header, although we managed with kipper2k to trigger the INT7 so I might add such a feature in the future
3. Ugly HDMI to VGA adapter handing in the air: I sympathize I tell ya, but most that know me, know that there was not a single way I would leave that hanging like that :) Tbh, I'm waiting an HDMI amplifier plus a short 10cm HDMI cable to try putting all these inside as comfortable as I can to have the best possible VGA signal coming through the HDMI plug.

Stay tuned :)

A600: Ratte's auto switch working on my A600 beast :O

Hi peepz.

After finishing my Gotek inside my A600, something that troubled me a long time came in front.
I love my Vampire and RTG modes, but I also want native modes which atm I can get either from Indivision SD/FF or from RGB to Scart. Ofc both of these solutions require either a dual input monitor (HDMI/VGA or HDMI/Scart, which I already have) or having 2 monitors.

Since I was always fond of auto switch between RTG and Native I though... what the heck, I have to try Ratte's switch like I had in the past.
Worst thing, is that I would use the parallel port signal if I couldn't find one inside...
After talking with highpuff (ikod.se) who was making a batch on Amibay, I decided to gief it a go after he told me that U8 that I knew on A1200 was also present on A600! Dafuq I never thought they were alike sharing the same signals :)

This is the new switch that I received along with plenty of cabling in PRO quality! (Thanks a lot Claes mate, you rock \m/)

Ok Natives were ok as I knew that Indivision would run ok with Ratte's switch as I tried in the past Indivision AGA, 4000, mk2 without issues.

What about RTG coming through HDMI though :S
First of all HDMI is only digital while Ratte's switch works only with Analog signals.
Only choice I had was to get an cheapo HDMI to VGA adapter from eBay like this...

After making all the necessary connections to a spare recapped A600 mobo of mine... this was the result (btw, I asked highpuff to make me a custom male RTG cable in order to feed it directly to the HDMI adapter).

Result was SUCCESSFUL! OMG I couldn't believe it! Even putting SwitchControl in Startup-Sequence right before IPrefs gave me AUTO switching like it should!!!
After that I thought about dismantling the adapter to see how big it would be inside... Turns out it's rather slim

I couldn't leave the thick HDMI connector as it was would I?

One more test again and it was indeed successful as well! You can see in the following picture the U8 CIA adapter (what a PRO PCB man)

Here's a quick video about the booting and switching phases of RTG/Native using Ratte's switch on my A600.

Stay tuned :)

A4000: Mounting Ratte's Auto switch & Buffing Grex

Hi my friends,

Today despite going out for presents and enjoying the day with friends, I decided since I stayed home @ night to tinker my lovely Amiga.
Having some more extra time tonight was really nice and it was time to permanently attach Ratte's Auto AGA/RTG switch and fill the extra PCI sockets of my Grex :D

Checking the space and ribbons, I decided to mount the Auto switch in the Expansion bracket position.
Well it was time to cut a VGA backplate exactly at Expansion bracket's dimensions

I positioned the VGA hole a bit to the right (just to be safe with ribbons from RTG/AGA) but mostly because I wanted the extra space IN CASE something comes up in the future :)

Well the following mod, took me quite some time, only because I tested the joints via a multimeter and continuity test many times to be sure! Don't wanna risk damaging something in my system :)
It was fun procedure though.

What on earth am I doing?.... Yep you understood correctly :)
Internal soldering of Ribbon that goes to Ratte's Auto switch. (Like BVisionPPC/CVisionPPC but now on Voodoo!)

Then it was time for stuffing and buffing my beloved Grex!
I already had the Voodoo3 and ESS-Solo-1 but now I also got...:

An RTL8029(AS) Ethernet NIC (Thanks Leo)

And an Terratec TerraTV/Radio card (Bt878 chipset) that I had for a really long time in one of my drawers LOL!

Stuffing it all was a really amusing moment since everything fitted like a glove without wires in the way :) Gotta love this Voodoo mod.

 

This is a photo with the wire installed that goes from DVD-ROM's audio signal to ESS-Solo-1's internal connector for CD. I already had it ready from my Delfina mod, so now it also works like a charm in this current mod.

And now some photos from the back of the A4000. Haven't showed a pic since I had the Delfina/USB NIC mod :)
You can clearly see... Ratte's Auto RTG/AGA swith on the Expansion bay, along with the PCI cards.
Amiga Paula's sound goes to ESS-Solo-1's "Line In" connector. I could have made it internal in ESS-Solo-1's AUX internal connector but I'd had to take apart the whole motherboard = NO FUN!

And finally a close up of Ratte's Switch mounted and sitting comfortably in the Expansion bay without interfering with the 80mm fan that blows some silent air into the CSPPC and Memory sockets :)

Just a quick photo from CSPPCs PCI menu...

...and we're ready to Rock & Roll :D
Everything works like a charm and I'm a happy Amigan. It's nice having such clean mods inside without too much wires cutting my airflow and vision to teh awesomenezz :D

I hope you like it as well.

A4000: Custom circuit for Auto AGA/RTG switch

Hey my friends,

It's not have been a long time since my previous post but trust me... I was waiting some things to arrive alas I couldn't write without having stuff in my hands :)

Anyway, since a long time I was wondering what I was gonna do with the manual switch that Ratte's Auto AGA/RTG switch had. Don't get me wrong I love my Auto switch but I really dislike the classic stick switches.
Sadly On/Off/On switches don't have a great variety and for a round one... the smallest I could find had a diameter of 21mm which is really big to mount.
Then it struck me... Why wouldn't I put an awesome momentary Push-On switch that has an embedded LED on it and mount it on the obsolete position if the keylock switch???

Well I ordered the switch and voila... IT REALLY fits like a glove...

In the previous photos I just supplied voltage to the LED to test it out.

So... I had the switch... so now I needed the circuit that would make my Push-On click... to transform to On/Off/On states (and loop back). I made a thread on Amibay about it but on the meantime I asked a good electronic friend of mine (Mike) to bring an idea about that.
After searching a bit he told me he has done something similar in the past with an CD4017 IC. After getting the PinOuts we designed a circuit that was simple enough.
The IC used was indeed an CD4017 that has 10 outputs. Since I only wanted 3 outputs (On/Off/On) we fed the 4th output into the RESET on IC so it loops back to the start once the 3 output switches :)

You can check it out in case you wanna try something like this in the future :)
So... after getting the parts that was needed, and after 2-3 hours of assembling the prototype board, there was it. You can see the sockets for the IC and the relays plus the headers.

I soldered a couple of LEDS to female headers to be able to try out the output LEDS on the PCB

...and the first TEST (after some troubleshooting) was successful!!!

• Left LED = ON
• No LED = OFF
• Right LED = ON

 

Since everything worked fine, I needed to cut the remaining unused veroboard and mount the PCB inside A4000's faceplate :)

I used some dual foamy sticky tape that insulated and hold the veroboard solid as a rock inside A4000's faceplate. Wires from Push-On button on header plus a custom Molex to Fan+12V power for my PCB was made :)

And that's about it!!!

Because I'm sure you're pretty weird how that thing works... how about a little video about it?
(I'm also testing Line-In of Delfina because some peepz requested it).

Enjoy :)


Edit:
You can check out also a really clever and nice implementation using Arduino by my Amiga friend Claes. Check out his solution on his blog here.

A1200: Re-modding everything from scratch!

Saturday at last... and after many shity days @ work... Time was up for tinkering teh Beast!

I don't remember mentioning that after so much time building that A1200... I never tried the Audio. Since I got a new 22" LCD/TV I thought of trying it.
For my horror I realised that ALL audio sounded like crap!!! Damn, caps apparently hitted my 1B mobo as well

Well after my first reaction... I thought... Oh well. Every obstacle is for the better so I thought of switching the mobo for my spare A1200 with 1D.4 mobo.
After checking the spare mobo for sound quality... Everything worked like a charm so it was time to take everything OFF!!!
I gotta admit. It was a shity procedure not to mention how weird it felt taking everything apart after all this effort!

Changing the mobo gave me lotsa thoughts of making my MOD even better since I wanted:
- To change the position of PicoPSU + Ian's ATX Adapter.
- To change the position of Ratte's Auto Swich
- To soldered Clockport Expander signal cables instead of extra Kickstart socket and
- To get an extra Audio Cable under mobo for future Audio Mixer and Delfina

LET'S START:

First as usual I had to remove the Composite connector, TV Modulator, Power Plug and move a capacitor that blocked the way of mine (lol).
Soldering Clockport's Expander signal cables, along with Power Cables was an easy task done many times. I also soldered the extra cable for audio.
I also thought of insulating the soldering with some duct tape just for safety




Yep, everything was just fine. I also insulated the place where the modulator+power plug for safety. Clockport Expander feels good now and you can also see the capacitor that was moved to give me some space





Now it was time to Dremel my a$$ off
First of all I used my friend Keropi's custom Power plug Inox Backplate, and Dremeled a VGA backplate to fit the place I wanted it.
I also Dremeled the lower metal Backplate of A1200 in the modulator position in order for the VGA backplate to fit.
Everything was glued into place and voila!




Now for the hard part... Dremeling A1200's case for VGA plug to fit! That was painful
I also decided to put a custom PS/2 keyboard connector into Composite's place since I always wanted to have it there for as long I modded my miggy and couldn't have the keyboard ribbon in. Everything fitted like a glove and felt really good for the effort.




Time to put the components back in place...
Ratte's Switch (including cabling to U8 for switch signal+Manua swich), EZkey PS/2 Adapter, Floppy terminator connector. You can also see the Extra Audio cable connector that is near the Audio RCAs.




And yes... time for the heavy machinery to be placed.
BPPC, BVision, Idefix Express, Indivision AGA, along with correct and easy to put cabling (not to mess with me later)



Now it was the most difficult part of the day, since I decided I wanted to mount PicoPSU+Ian's adapter where the end of the ex-Floppy ended.
Since in the past I have Dremeled Ian's Adapter+PicoPSU ATX connector... I decided I had to desolder BOTH connectors and mount PicoPSU directly to the adapter. That was really... really... irritating!
At least it worked and felt a lot better than before.




If you saw correctly... you must have noticed the NEW switch for Manual Switching Ratte's Auto Switch. Why anyone would wanna do that? Because Ratte's Switch only operates with a program under OS3.x
What about MorphOS, or AmigaOS4.x or DebianPPC?... That's why
I didn't like the classic little switch, so I bought a better one



OK... just for a quickie now, you can see the "End of the Day" full update on my A1200 with A LOT MORE TO COME in the following days.
You can clearly see the new layout, with almost everything mounted.
You can also notice that the CF adapter that was under DVD-RW (with OS4.x and Debian PPC) is now over PCMCIA (where case will be Dremeled for CF being able to be removed when needed)



Things missing so far are:

• Subway,
• Fan for PicoPSU,
• Delfina

Many things need to be done, but at least I was sooo glad I made such a progress in one day! Time for me to enjoy some wine

I hope you'll like it.

Soon more to come.