A600: Mounting NMI and USB connector

Well, today I thought of proceeding more to the finalization of my A600 mod :)

I forgotten that I had to put the NMI reset button since I've included the HRTmon module inside the custom ROM that I'm kicking via ACATune utility.

That was one of the easiest mods since it just requires just a push switch wired to a female header.

Since I'm not going to press this button frequently and since I don't want it to be visible I thought of putting it close to my Kickstart 1.3/3.1 switch. So a hole has been drilled...

 ...and here it is mounted and connected to the NMI header of ACA630.

You can see how it looks underneath below. 

So this was the easy part...
The hard part that was twisting my mind was WHERE the heck I was going to mount the USB connector?
Every time that I was trying to think about that, I ended up telling myself that I'm gonna think about it another time.
You see... I don't want to make an ugly mod nor mount it in the top part of the case.

Ok after examining the case carefully I FOUND IT!
There is a small empty space under the Floppy Drive that you can see in the following pic.

Well... cutting the case for just a single USB (due to it's size) was one of the most annoying and boring things I have done for my A600. In the end, it became rather pretty :)

Next part was to create the custom USB connector and the female header that was going to be connected to the Subway.

And presto! USB connector mounted and hotglued in place :) It does look good and it doesn't even get in the way in kipper2k's PSX/PS2 adapter.

Here you can see  how the USB cable was mounted to Subway. 3 more headers are left for future usage.

I had in mind to put an USB-->Ethernet adapter inside which is rather easy, but sadly there is no space available to mount the RJ-45 connector (unless I salvage the top case which I don't want)  alas it won't be installed for now :)

A last panoramic photo of the beasty is presented bellow. I guess the miggy is coming close to completion! Thank God :)

A4000: Custom audio connector

Just before I install my repaired A4000 mobo by Cosmos, I thought...
"Why don't you put an internal Audio cable so you could insert it into ESS-Solo-1's input?"
 I thought that in the past, but there was no way I would dismantle the whole Amiga to do such a mod :)

Now I had the opportunity :D

So, I got some nice cable and soldered it underneath the mobo to the RCA connectors

I really like the small cut that existed by default on the mobo! It gave me the necessary space I needed for the audio cables to pass underneath.

After installing everything and putting Grex and the cards... I had to install the internal audio cables!

You can see the new audio cable coming from the back of the default RCA headers (on the bottom left) and going on one connector on ESS-Solo-1/
Also you can see the CD Audio cable that I had made in the past (you can see previous article about it) as well mounted in ESS-Solo-1.

One more panoramic photo bellow where you can see everything mounted .

So... ESS-Solo-1 has the following now:

• Backplate - Green = Line Out
• Backplate - Blue = Line In
• Backplate - Red = Mic In
• Internal - CD1 = Paula (Shows as "Aux" in Solo Mixer in Workbench)
• Internal - CD2 = CD (Show as "CD" in Solo Mixer in Workbench)

Everything works perfectly now!

Stay tuned \o/

A4000: Custom Delfina/USB Ethernet NIC mounting

OK this was an interesting Saturday so far!

After my previous thread of testing the Delfina I had to put it on permanent position along with the USB Ethernet adapter.
I was thinking about it the whole week so after I figured out how to do it... I had to find an old ISA Ethernet Card or an old ISA Soundcard...

My good friend Leo (Keropi) sent me yesterday an El'Crapo ISA Soundcard and an ISA ISDN Modem (lol) that I would salvage for my own modding needs :)

This is what the ISA ISDN Modem card looked like when I received it from Leo.



And that was what it looked like when I desoldered it's components and dremeled the whole area :)



Pretty spooky I know lol. Well I also cut the half of it (left part) cause I didn't need it and attached the Delfina via plastic spacers that I cut.



Btw, I forgot to tell ya that I drilled 3 new holes for my custom audio connector to back of the bracket and painted it to look better.



Some more detailed pics follow:





Ok it looked really nice. Time for the USB Ethernet NIC now... :)
First of all I had to drill a hole for the ethernet cable to be able to pass underneath the ISA card to reach the RJ-45 connector



...and then it was time to salvage/hack the D-Link USB Ethernet NIC.




...and after removing the Ethernet and USB connector... I attached the custom USB cable for the Deneb and the Ethernet mini cable that I attached from the adapter to the RJ-45 connector under the ISA card.




I really like it!!! I also putted some plastic spacers as well to keep the USB ethernet adapter in place so you can check out some more detailed pics bellow




Finally I had to mount it on the A4000 to give the combo a spin :)




Yep it works just fine... and what a better test than listening some good modules music from Eagleplayer (playing through Delfina's Line-IN) while surfing CSS content with Netsurf from my USB NIC :)



More stuff coming soon so stay tuned... \o/

A600: Power connectors + Subway/HxC mounting

Tonight I tried to make some boring but totally required mod that I also made in my Desktop A1200 PPC. Power connectors (via screw) to be able to mount whatever fan/power header for Apollo/blah blah is needed.



Next to it, I mounted the Subway USB (you can see one small mini PCB underneath that holds it better.



Last but not least I mounted firmly the HxC SD Floppy Emulator in such way, being able to insert/remove the SD card as a Floppy Disk.




Nice huh?

OK some panoramic photos as always:



Just before I close this update, 2 more pics from the HxC in use (along with my custom LCD (+future buttons) extension as I try some "Shadow of the Beast 2"




Waiting my Apollo to arrive from Sweden after the upgrade... then more photos will take place

A600: PicoPSU via Ian's ATX adapter mounting + more

Ok, one more update since I had a little time these days (after work ofc)

First of all I wanna thank Ian for the wonderful ATX adapters of his. I had some timing issues with my A1200's adapter so he made some modifications and also a prototype with an angled adapter so I got both and apart from working PERFECTLY in my A1200 now... the A600 prototype is very sexy for my needs! Cheers again man.



While waiting the adapters to arrive, my good friend Keropi offered to make me an Inox backplate for hosting PicoPSU's power plug (instead of the classic Amiga power connector).



After some desoldering of the origiinal power connector... the result was perfect



Time for mounting Ian's proto adapter... Well since I didn't want an internal CD, I figured the best position would be the one that most slim internal CD mods reside. Added some spacers underneath for holding the adapter+pico together and some straps to hold the cables intact






Of course I also made the cabling + header for the Power switch (that for now I haven't decided where to put it best).




I was so glad that everything worked like a charm upon booting Then again, I have made the same procedure in my beloved A1200 without issues and with a more hardware heavy environment.

One thing I haven't mentioned is that I have ordered an HxC SD Floppy Emulator device from Lotharek. It arrived some days ago and looks and works just fine (except some minor disk change incidents that I'm trying to settle).



The bad thing with this adapter (as it comes) is that it doesn't have a header for mounting the LCD Display + Buttons externaly. (In my case since I'm gonna install it inside A600 - in Floppy drive's position - I wanted the LCD+buttons somewhere else).
Of course the header place exists along with the signals so I just soldered the header myself.



Jeff's Manual clearly states the signals for making your own mods for external panel, but just for safety, I made a continuity test with my multimeter to the embedded LCD header plus buttons and I made my own extension




And yep... It works like a charm (sorry for not putting a pic - I forgot lol)
Button signals will be putted in the female header once I figure where I'm gonna put the panel + buttons in A600's case.


That's all for now... stay tuned for more soon