A600: Paula NMI Piggyback adapter

Hi my friends.

Recently I got a message from my friend highpuff that he created an NMI adapter for A1200 that piggybacks to Paula!
I was amazed since I didn't knew that the IPL0, IPL1 and IPL2 signals that were needed for NMI header were also available on Paula as well!

Yesterday I got a package on my mailbox out of the blue sky...

OMG, I was really happy that Highpuff sent me one kit for testing it on my beefy A600!
After all... Paula on A1200 and A600 are the same so why wouldn't it work?

Here's the adapter on it's full glory...

Really simple design but elegant and effective!
Time to remove my floppy dual drive combo, and plug the adapter to Paula.
Once it was ready, and switch was put in the adapter header it was time to give it a spin!

Hohohoho! After some custom kickstart fun, just pushing the button gives us HRTMon 2.36 (even from Early Startup Menu! Awesomeness!

For some people who will simple say... WTF is that, it's an Action Replay clone that can give some info and alter some address in RAM for hacking some stuff.

ACA630 had an NMI adapter by default that I showed in the past as well, but since Vampire doesn't have an NMI header the only solution to get the signals so far, was to get the signals from Vampire's Piggyback 68k socket (not something for the fainthearted doing).
Getting the header from another IC is a really awesome solution without affecting at all the rest of the setup. Good thing also is that the adapter is really low profile and doesn't mess with the height of the floppy drive (even my dual drive combo sat really well) and case closed just fine :)


Thanks a lot highpuff my friend... You rock!

FPGA Arcade: New LED signals on the core equals more LEDS to play with

Yesterday MikeJ released a new Amiga core for the FPGA Arcade which apart from scrollwheel support, OSD options for Mouse/Joysticks and some 2nd joystick button also added 3 headers on the AUX_IO spot for Power, Floppy and Hard Drive LEDS.

That was awesome cause I had no appetite to get these signals by soldering wires to the SD access SMD LED.
After I opened the case, I tried firstly with a spare LED to see if the signals were working ok. First I tried the power LED (although I wasn't going to use it as I have the signal from my custom circuit (before the core is running which I prefer it).

Second it was the floppy LED that I used by opening an "Workbench 3.1" image...

Last but not least was the hard drive access LED that I tested while system was booting (what a nice LOL picture of the ghost loading icons).

So after seeing everything was working as intended... I dismantled the board from the case once more, and attached 3 rows of pins to the AUX_IO spot to have for future use (you can see it in the top middle area of the board right from the RS232 connector) :)

Because the case has one bright Blue led for Power and one Orange one for the Hard disk access, I thought about changing the Blue cause I didn't like it, and replaced the Orange one with a dual LED (Orange for hard drive access, and Green for floppy access).
As you can see from the pictures bellow, I had to get the extra signal along with the other cables so I put an extra wire for it :)

As always, and because I want to keep always a tidy up space inside the case, instead of stretching the cables for my need, I made an extra custom extension cable for connecting all the necessary LEDS to the FPGA Arcade board.

Everything was ready and testing was successful :)

Also, because the power LED (now in red) was still VERY bright, I decided to put an extra 4.7KΩ resistor just to keep it dimmer. Ofc the resistor was placed inside an insulated extension for better looks (lol).

And a last panoramic view from the mods before closing the case.

Here you can see the Power red LED...

The Floppy green LED...

And the orange HD LED.

Last because a friend asked for it..., I present some photos of SysInfo, AIBB and WhichAmiga for fun.
Not bad for a system not using Cache :)

Anyone noticed the extra board attached? Minimig RTG Card... exciting times coming :)

X500 Evo: Stuffing da beast (Part 7)

Hey peepz,

Despite thinking that this project was finished, I always come up with something else (lol).
Following my previous article and checking why my upper shell wasn't closing as well as I expected, I decided to make a little butchering by giving a tiny bit of carving on the spot where the PicoPSU is touching the shell...

Well, it might look kinda big, but actually is okey and it's a LOT better now. Case closed without a single issue :D
I also cut the rubber fan mounters that exceeded the fan.

OK, time for more important mods hehe.
After running the X500 for quite some time now, I realized that the upper shell 50mm fans are kinda noisy for my taste, so I had to do something about it.
One solution was to replace them with more expensive ones or try and make a PWM controller.

I remembered that in the past I have seen the EPIC A1200D PPC mod of Phipscube where he also putted a custom PWM controller on his BVision.
In this post, Phipscube shared his source of inspiration which was this article on Overclockers forum.
I bought all the necessary part from my local electronics store and started building it on the veroboard.
Since I bought enough components, I thought of making 2x PWM controllers just in case it was needed :)
After some time, the circuit was ready to test...

After some troubleshooting (because I made 2 errors that I easily tracked and fixed) the units were a success :D

I tried a rather noisy fan from a Commodore A590 hard drive and then I changed the pot lower and then higher again with quite a difference.

You can listen to it as well as recorded it using my iPhone here.

After tests were successful I cut both controllers to it's final size.

Ofc you can never have a custom mod, without custom wires with connectors. Damn I hate all this stripping, soldering and tubing, but it's an essential step for clean mods.

Finally, I thought about putting some layers of a silicone dual sticky tape that I had, in order to give it more height (here you can see 3 layers of this tape).

PCB was mounted  next to the other custom PCB that I made to power the fans.

Last but not least, it was time to fine tune the pot to it's final position after checking the fans every once and a while to the desired level

Mission accomplished. Now fan noise is a LOT better without sacrificing previous CFMs :)


Btw don't forget to take a look at other people's X500's :)

• Kyle made an awesome job putting a SAM inside an X500 Evo! - Link here
• Peter is starting making his own PC inside an X500 Evo as well. Good luck mate and thanks for mentioning my blog on your Blog. \o/ -  Link here 

Stay tuned.

X500 Evo: Stuffing da beast (Part 5)

Hello peepz :)

Today's article will be among the last (X500's hardwarewise) but certainly the most important as it's about cable management in order for the upper shell's cables not interfering with the innards of the case.
Yeah I know I'm a bit OCD with the cables :)

As you might have seen already in my initial X500 Evo presentation article, the upper shell case has 2x 50mm Fans with it's cables, a cable for the Power switch, and 2x quite lengthy thick insulated LED cables for Power/HDD activity.

Someone that has an Evo will realize that upon closing the case these cables tend to be all over the place. Sorry I don't like that as you can imagine :)

So, first thing is to gather all cables in one side, in order to have all in one place. 

The most distant cable is the power switch cable which was hotglued in place as you can see...

Then the Fan cables and Led cables where hold together via straps and the 2x adhesive mounters that Loriano has supplied.

Also, since I had one more spare internal USB header (motheboard has a dual USB2.0 header which one is occupied by the Cherry MX keyboard) I thought of taking advantage and putting inside a cheap USB WiFi/Blutooth combo adapter which was hotglued in place as well. Ofc I wouldn't solder directly to it (if I wanted to remove it at a later time), so I attached a female USB adapters that I had in my stash.

Ok so far so good. Every cable is in one place, and nothing interferes with the internal space. What I wanted now was a 14-wire cable in order to use everything on the upper shell (2 wires for power switch, 4 wires for the LEDS, 4 wires for the Fans and 4 wires for the USB header).
An old VGA extension cable was used for my needs :)

Once I measured correctly the length I needed, I removed the extra 2 wires (that weren't needed) and started to make the pairs by twisting the wires together.

Then the irritating part of putting the headers for each pair on the mobo side after insulating them wire-by-wire with heatshrink tube. Yep, you see correctly the USB header being A LOT longer than the rest. You'll understand later on.

Here you can see the headers for each pair on the upper shell side soldered and insulated by heatshrink tube as well. As you can realize, I have different connectors for every pair. Other for the fans, other for the LEDS and power switch and other for the USB header.

This is the finished product (lol).

Time to put it on shall we?
I started with the small headers and continued with the USB header.

And after everything was in place, I secured them with 2 more straps. Cool it's rock solid and unmovable now but if anytime I need to change the fans or LEDS, I can easily remove the straps, replace and remount them :) That's the good thing with having headers on everything.

Here I temporarily mounted the upper shell on the lower shell in order for everyone to see how the cabling is done and how it fits once closing the case without interfering :)

For the first test I haven't put anything in place leaving the wires (especially on the motherboard) loose.

Here you can understand WHY the USB cable was a lot longer than the rest of the wires :)

Initial test and Windows7 booting was a HUGE SUCCESS as everything worked out of the box! I haven't even done any error in Positive-Negative mounts of the LEDS which is typical for me :)
After everything was ok, I permanently put the USB wire in it's mobo header.

As all the other wires in the designated positions on the motherboard.
The round cable was secured with a strap, using 2 holes on the chassis (nice one Loriano)

...and here you can see how it looks with the upper shell in my hands and everything connected. I deliberately left some length in the round cable, in order to be able to put the upper shell on the left side anytime I wanted to check out or mod my case :) No need to dismantle everything when you mod.
After all, the round cable goes UNDER the keyboard on the left side (on the empty compartment left from the Hard disk area) and doesn't interfere with anything :)

One tiny detail that prevented the upper shell to close firmly was the damn huge USB3.0 connector that was thick and tall as fok touching the upper part of the shell :)

I decided to be aggressive so I removed the extra height it had by it's base (after I attached a stripe to keep both cables secure). A LOT BETTER now :)

Case closed successfully and at last I was excited and happy about it :)

Not much left to do tbh from now on (hardwarewise) but some minor details that I will put in a next (and probable last article about X500 Evo).

Stay tuned and I hope you enjoyed it as well :)