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 :)

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 :)

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 1)

Hey peepz.

As you seen on my previous article, I received the X500 Evo, but now the fun will begin for stuffing it with hardware and modding if required :)

First of all, I decided that this case due to it's awesomeness should get something beasty taking advantage as much as I could from the features it provides.

As I'm having a spare mini-itx mobo plus SSD and Hard Drive, I decided to use those in order to fulfill my needs.

A list of the hardware I have as we speak are:

• Motherboard: Asus P8H77-I
• CPU: Intel i3 3240 (3.4GHz @ 55W TDP)
• RAM: Kingston 2x 4GB (1600MHz)
• SSD: OCZ Vertex 3 120GB
• HDD: Seagate 500GB 5400rpm
• PSU: PicoPSU 160W (powered by an beefy 192W brick using 4pin adapter

So... I mounted the motherboard on X500 including PicoPSU and the drives in order to check it out.

Sadly the PicoPSU power extension cable has only 1x SATA connector and a molex which I didn't want.

No reason to keep it as-is :)
Molex connector was removed, and an extra SATA connector was attached to the wire. Ofc shrinking tubing was used to insulate the cables. After that both drives were mounted in place to check them out!
Awesome tight fit :)

As some might know I'm a bit OCD with the cabling so I used some straps to hold the SATA cables in place not to have a mess which I dislike.

OK. Data cables were ready. What about powering the extra bits of the case? Those parts are:

• DVD/RW's Molex connector (5V)
• 1x back side's 40mm fan (12V)
• 2x upper shell's 50mm fans (12V)

As you might saw, PicoPSU has two output connectors as you can see from the picture bellow...

...so the extra spare extension I bought in the past would come handy! After I removed the connectors it had (keeping only the one that attaches to PicoPSU) I thought about using a veroboard, to mount it along with 4x headers having 5V-GND / GND-12V.

As you can see from the lower part of the veroboard, it's really hand having each line shorted, giving me the ability to add as many headers I want in the future (not that it will be needed from what I can tell). I also putted some silicon base in 3 parts in order to be able to mount it properly :)

And here it is mounted and taking power from PicoPSU.

Here you can see it placed next to the motherboard and giving juice to the backside 40mm fan.

And here it's giving juice to the pin header of the DVD/RW (after I tossed the big and ugly Molex connector).

It's getting rather nice imho isn't it?
What I observed so far are the following:

• My i3's stock cooler has more height than the case can take, alas the upper shell doesn't close. The only valid coolers for that setup after searching a lot on Google were 2.
• Either the stock cooler of the lower consumption i3 3220T
• Or the awesome "Noctua NH-L9i" ultra low profile 37mm combo
• As you can imagine... I ordered the Noctua without a hesitation after contacting Loriano to get measuring of the innards of the case and the stock 3220T cooler height.
• All fans are mounted using silicon rubber mounts for better noise cancelation and ease of fitting. As these mounts are black, they don't look so nice with the rest of the white case. In order to make it look even better, I ordered a set of white silicone mounts to give them a spin.

So that's it for now...
More articles will come in the following days as I'm waiting some things to arrive :)

Stay tuned.

A600: Custom audio mixer & mounting MAS-Player inside!

Gotta love free time that weekends give :) Time to tinker my lovely Amigas.

First of all, I had to do the boring stuff of cutting the case above the PCMCIA port just to install the perfect CF2IDE adapter by kipper2k which I had for a really long time :)

OK it's done...

By the way, the last 2 days I was thinking of putting my beloved MAS-Player inside my A600 beast, clearly cause it would be really cool!

Well, easy into thinking, difficult into implementing it though. Such obstacles are the following:
- MAS-Player is mounted on Parallel port.
- MAS-Player requires a +5V wire that by default is drawn from the near Serial Port.
- MAS-Player gives an extra audio out. So in order to have both inputs (Amiga+MAS-Player) you need an external mixer or a dual input amplifier/speakers.

OK... after I figured out what to do, I got all the necessary components from my local electronic store.

My initial thought was using an IDC 25pin connector with a ribbon in order to bring the parallel port inside! Of course I don't want to loose the possibility in using the parallel port in case I need to mount anything else (like a MIDI or Sampler unit).

Yep, it fits really well and whenever you want, you just disconnect  the connector and you can mount everything else you like :)

If you checked clearly the above photos, you must have seen the lack of RCA audio connectors! :O
Where are they? lol

Putting the MAS-Player inside meant that I needed to make a simple dual mixer for audio output. I didn't want to be invasive to the case so I thought of using the default RCA connectors for the job, alas I desoldered them off :)

...and then soldered a cable in it's position.

After checking out Phipscube's Epic A1200D PPC custom mod, I thought of doing exactly the same mod of his Audio mixer that he used for his Delfina!
For whoever doesn't know what he did, he made a custom PCB audio mixer with some Pots per device and channel.
The only extra I putted on the custom PCB was a header for +5V/GND/+12V to be able to mount MAS-Player's juice and perhaps some fan in the future.

As you can see from the picture below, my custom PCB has the following:

• +5V/GND/12V connector on the left side,
• The Input angled Pin headers for MAS-Player and Amiga
• Pin headers for measuring the POTS! I tried without these and it was messy :)
• The default RCA connectors that are the mixed audio out
• ...And the POTS per device and channel

Here you can also see the custom power connector that I used. More pics on that later :)

This is what the connector looks like from the back... LOL it looks like robot eyes doesn't it?

And finally a picture from the lower part of the PCB with the cable mess :)

As I said before, I also needed some power that would be drained from the floppy connector, so I used a pico veroboard to mount 3 sets of cables in it and insulated it accordingly.

This is what the system looked like while I was doing the preliminary tests :)

After hot-gluing my custom PCB in place, I had to start dealing with the ribbon! Damn I so dislike ribbons inside the Amigas. They grab so much space and don't allow proper airflow. That's why I decided as always on my Amigas... to convert it to round cable. Easy stuff, just separate each wire one-by-one! :)

...and Presto! Wire rounded, and hot-glued in place for better visibility and airflow :) I also used a bit of hot-glue to secure safely the MAS-Player on kipper2k's CF2IDE adapter.

Looking good doesn't it?

Just before I close this article... one panoramic photo as always. Tidy, beasty and beautiful :)

Stay tuned \o/