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.

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/

A4000: Custom audio cabling and Defina testing

Yesterday I thought of giving a shot once more on my Delfina after 3 years having her :)
Well... tbh I have tested her on my previous A4000 where I had some freezing issues so I pulled her out and thought of testing it in the future...
...well 3 years after, the time has come and testing it on my ClassicWB 3.9 custom setup, IT WORKED LIKE A CHARM!!!

It was really awesome not to have any issues and all the mp3's that I tested worked just fine without a single glitch.
Take not that except from the latest delfina.library I also used the delfinampeg.device to be able to use Delfina to decode the mp3's without having my CPU doing that lol (yeah I know that I could use the WOS plugin of AmigAMP to have the PPC decode instead).

Amplifier didn't have a single issue and mp3 was really playing nice (even 256kbit playing from USB via Deneb).

Sadly though... I didn't have any cable to test it's input/outputs so I thought of waiting one day (meaning TODAY) to make some cables myself :)


First of all I desoldered an triple audio connector that I had on a dead PC mobo and mounted 3 cables with 4pin header on every connector. It may seem easy... but trust me... it's a real pain in the butt stripping and soldering these mini connectors...



Next one was a custom length, CD Audio connector after measuring it out.



And last but not least, the default A4000's audio output that needed to connect internally. You may not believe it but I soldered the cable near the A4000 cause I wanted it to pass through the tiny holes that exist for air flow on the right of Amiga!!! (Yeah I'm mental I know)



Here you can see the inside part of the cable with the thermal tube and the header



I was so thirsty to test it out that I only put some carton for insulation and gave it a spin!




YEY!!!
- Audio OUT (Green connector) --> Works
- Line IN (Internal connector) = Amiga Output --> Works
- Aux1 IN (Internal connector) = CD Audio --> Works
- Aux2 IN (Blue connector) --> Works
- MIC IN (Pink connector) --> Haven't tested yet

At first nothing worked but I realized that all inputs had MUTE on LOL. After setting it correctly on Delfina mixer everything worked like a charm! I even put my SammichSID on Aux2 IN and it sounded awesome!


On the following picture you can see the programs I used to play simultaneously audio without a single problem.
- Amplifier (mp3)
- EaglePlayer (mod, via Amiga output to Line IN)
- PlayCD (CD audio, via CD audio out output to Aux1)



Not bad aye? Next step would be the permanent mounting on a custom bracket. That will require some time and effort but I'm in no hurry :)

Cheers