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: Replacing internal HxC SD with Gotek HxC on my beast

Hey my friends.

Some months ago (and haven't found the reason yet) my internal HxC SD stopped working (LCD screen wasn't working and no sound was coming from buzzer.
After removing everything, I made a continuity test on whole board (comparing it with another HxC SD that I have) but still couldn't find anything wrong. HxC SD gets voltage but something is shortcircuiting and gives issues but I didn't have enough appetite atm to troubleshoot it more.

After seeing about Gotek and HxC's firmware adaptation by Jeff, I decided to give it a go :)

I ordered 2x Goteks (one in black and one in grey) and after getting the HxC licence from Jeff, I flashed both replacing the Cortex firmware.

Now it was time to give a spin on attaching a test 16x2 LCD screen (normal size) and an extra button to see if firmware was working as intended and Presto! The extra cheap I2C controller I got from eBay works lovely :)

In order to give a try on a test mini LCD screen I had once more to wire carefully from the ribbon connector to the I2C module (irritating job but someone's gotta do it).
After some time of soldering carefully, experiment was successful!

Now it was time for some case and Gotek modding. First of all my dear friend Dremel was used to remove the front fascia from the Gotek case...

Then everything was removed and the mod of slimming down the Gotek in order to be slim enough for the slim floppy drive to attach above it... started :)

After some time, the 2x caps were placed on the side, the board headers were removed, and also the USB connector and buttons were removed as well.
Good thing is that it still was working so yey! You can see it's more slim now :)

I also made the buzzer mod and glued it in place along with all the other components.
Drive was also attached above the unit carefully after many tried of measuring and testing on the real Amiga. I also attached the extra dual drive adapter in the best position I could.

On this detail view you can see in the lower left corner of the Gotek case, a cut I made with the Dremel in order to put the buzzer as far back as I could (including the needed transistor lol). Buzzer was also Dremeled a little in order for the upper motor of slim floppy to be as back as it should.

Here's the front side with the USB plug re-positioned in order to match the cut on A600 upper shell (where the original eject button was).

Just for means of WTF you can see the lower side of the whole mod (the cable coming underneath is the HxC buttons (Next, Previous, Enter) that are position on the lower A600 shell so I wanted a connector in order to remove the drive whenever I wanted.
The back dual drive adapter is attached via strong glue and some solid plastics

This is a classic overall mod on the internal of the case showing everything.
You can also see now the replacing of my Subway with a RapidRoad USB. Yes, you saw correctly that I'm not using the default mini connector of A604n's clockport as it wasn't easy to fit with the drive combo and also was really close to the HDMI connector of Vampire V2.
custom clockport cable was stripped and made rounded, in order to position RapidRoad a bit more right to the case and everything's now works as it should leaving space to HDMI connector as well!!!

Case closed for now. Everything's is now working as plan once again!!! Phew \o/

Last but not least, a screenshot of my loved A600 running latest SILVER5 core on Vampire V2 using a resolution of 1360x768 on P96. Awesome stuff indeed!

Stay tuned for more tests in the following days/weeks :)

FPGA Arcade: Casing and some Workbench testing

I had many ideas in the past of what case to use for my FPGA Arcade.

One of which was an old A590 casing (which I already have) which I might use in the future, or a small mini-itx case.

My good friend Leo (keropi) kindly offered me a spare mini-itx case that he had which was rather nice for my taste as it had a small size.

The case is a "Morex Cubid 3833" which is the following (stock pictures)

Thanks bro! U rox once more :)

I really liked the fact that it had options for DB9/DB15 plug that would be handy to wire the RS232 console port which would be mounted inside.

My only concern was that the case (as ALL modern cases don't have a simple ON/OFF switch but a momentary push on switch that isn't suitable for the FPGA Arcade (without the power board which you need to buy extra and that I didn't know).

That is the moment when I realized that I already had that problem in the past, on my former A4000 when I wanted a push on button to act like an ON/OFF/ON switch for using it with Ratte's Monitor Switch.

This is what I done back then: "A4000: Custom circuit for Auto AGA/RTG switch"

I had this circuit already in my hands so I though, why not!

After some slight work into cabling this was the result! I also put a small copper heatsink on the FPGA as I realized it gets hot at times and also a spare Noctua fan that I had on my stash :)

As you can see I wired the console port using an ethernet cable (lol) and also used my A4000's homebrew circuit for ON/OFF/ON switch. Good thing I also had a LED header that I wired to the front case power LED!

This is the backplate side when you can see the extra DB9 port for debug purposes :)

And more internal shots.

What I would have loved is being able to wire the onboard SD access LED as the HD activity LED of the case and also the OSD button that sits on the back, as the Reset button on the case.

After emailing MikeJ about these, he answered that the OSD button header is already there (P19) although he haven't putted a header for an SD card access LED. He can do some alterations in the future in order to transfer this signal to some spare IO headers that exist but for now it's not a problem.

With that in mind, I also made a extension to the case's Reset button and now pushing reset on the front of the case... brings forth the OSD menu!

Since the circuit for the switch is ON/OFF/ON (while I only wanted an ON/OFF) I have one position that I don't use so I have to press the button twice in order to open it again.

To avoid that I will build a new circuit in the following days just to get rid of the extra push (yeah I know I'm kinda OCD LOL)

The circuit is the same as before, but without the extra output logic and you can see it here in case you need it in the future.

Last but not least, I present some better looking photos (rather crap but better than last time) from the system starting, selecting the hard images (you can put it auto ofc), and booting into workbench and some usage.

That's all for now... more in the following days so stay tuned :)

Raspberry Pi: Some accesories and mods for my Pi

Not something Amiga related by all means, but since I love my Pi I thought about sharing some mods I done some days ago.

Well my Pi isn't something special. It's a normal Rev.B from the first batch.

• It uses a tiny USB WiFi NIC for connecting to my home network.
• It's housed in a ModMyPi case.
• It also uses a 16GB MicroSD card for it's OS via an MicroSD card adaptor

Everything's fine so far :)

Some time ago I pledged for a nice and tiny ON/OFF switch adapter for the Raspberry Pi. You can see the Kickstarter page here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1312527055/micro-usb-on-off-power-switch-for-raspberry-pi

After the project being funded, sadly I haven't received anything, so I email Mausberry Circuits where they were very polite and send me another one, and also one more switch of their new line for free :) Lotsa kudos guys! Their switches was these...

I decided to use the second switch they sent me cause it was mounting directly to the Pi, and the same PSU (micro USB) plug was also needed to power the switch. Win-Win situation. After giving it a test on my Pi and everything was working... I desoldered the header for the GPIO pins, and soldered the wires directly to the mini PCB.

Also I soldered both it's wires to pins 23-24 of GPIO connector as I wouldn't use them at all (at least for now). I can desolder these anyway whenever I want as it's too damn easy :)

So this is how it looks with the power switch attached :)

Some time ago I got an Sony Vaio US UMPC which had 2xZIF HD's. One 32GB SSD and one 40GB HD. As I wanted to increase my storage, I got an 128GB SSD so I had both these ZIF storages sitting doing nothing. Ofc, because I always want to use spare stuff, I ordered some time ago the appropriate ZIF2IDE and also ZIF2USB adapters to be able to setup and use these ZIF HDs for other machines.

Time has come and I discovered that the 32GB SSD HD would be awesome as a external storage for my Pi. If only it could fit inside that tiny case!!! (Damn I shouldn't have said that...)

I saw that I could remove the innards of the SSD by simply removing 4x screws on the back of the metal case. That was it! The SSD was really thin and awesome! After putting the thin ribbon and positioning carefully the ZIF2USB adapter, everything was placed safely inside (ofc some insulation with tape was put for safety) :)

You must have seen the custom USB cable that was stripped from a USB to Mini USB cable that I had after cutting it, making a small hole to the case.

WHY DID HE MADE A HOLE ON THE CASE (you might wonder).

Well for three reasons actually...

1. First because there isn't a TINY bitsy space or hole in order to bring the cable

2. Because there isn't a TINY bitsy space or hole in the PCB in order to bring the cable on the bottom side of the PCB if I wanted to solder it directly to the USB connector.

3. Because bringing a cable outside, could give me the possibility to just disable it, and mount the USB connector to a PC/Amiga etc and use it as an external 32GB HD :)

So this is what the hole looks like and this is how the USB cable is connected simply in the original connector.

Whenever I want, I simply disconnect the USB cable (even with Pi powered off) and attach it to anywhere I want as a mass storage device :)

This is how it looks from the outside... It's tiny and powerful shiz LOL.

And this is my Pi working and seeing perfectly the 32GB NTFS partition...

I hope you like it (although non Amigish) :)