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 2)

Ok this time it didn't take long to progress (lol).

First of all, I realized that my Asus P8H77-I motherboard had an internal dual USB2.0 header and an internal dual USB3.0 header. Lets see... X500 case requires 3x USB 1.0/2.0 internal headers:

• 2x USB 2.0 for the Card Reader (1x for the USB connector, and 1x for the rest card slots)
• 1x USB 1.0/2.0 for the Cherry MX keyboard

So I was lacking 1x USB 2.0 header and not taking advantage over the internal USB 3.0. That meant that either:

• I had to put an internal USB 2.0 hub - Not OK
• I had to convert the internal dual USB 3.0 header to a dual USB 2.0 header - Semi OK
• I had to find a new USB 3.0 card reader, and use 1x header for Cherry MX keyboard, having one more spare for the future :D - Mucho OK

The default card reader is this one

...which once removed is that

After a bit of searching, I found out 2 legit USB 3.0 card readers that also come in white:

1. Akasa AK-ICR-14
2. Xigmatek Accessor Pro

Luckily the Akasa one was also delivered to a local Greek shop and it was also on stock so I took the opportunity and grabbed one. This is the one...

...and this is how it looks when it replaced the default. Surprisingly, it's white color matches a lot more the white DVD/RW fascia!

Here it's the new reader in place with it's thick and lengthy USB 3.0 cables tight in place (they were tight and hot-glued on the back side where they don't look ugly). Only the required length was left in place in order to just plug and not interfere with anything else.

Apart from the card reader, the Notcua heatsink+fan combo arrived as well! How thrilling :D

I already had experience with the top quality of Noctua products (after owning an Noctua NH-L12 for my i7 gaming cube) and the NH-L9i was no different! You don't believe me? Then see for yourselves...

Aye, awesomeness!
Time to install to the mobo and OMG! It fits like a glove and it's height is just EPIC!

I can't believe how firm this heatsink+fan combo fits in the X500 Evo. Like it was designed for it :)

Phew, it would be such a huge fail if it was even 0.2-0.3mm taller as the upper shell wouldn't close!

Ok time to wait for some more parts till the next article can take place...

Stay tuned.

Α600: Final overclock. ACA630@37.5MHz

Hey peepz.

As I said in previous articles, my ACA630 was unable to operate stable @ 40MHz alas I putted an oscillator of 72MHz to have a speed of 36MHz. I always wanted to try an 75MHz so I bought one from a fellow Amigan (altcomputing) which arrived yesterday :)

After replacing my former 72MHz oscillator and putting the new 75MHz one... Amiga booted just fine so I tried first some benchmarks via latest version of SysInfo...

Then I also checked the Disk speed which was rather nice!!! 2.6MB/s is not bad for native mode.

Last but not least... I had to enabled MMU in order to run WhichAmiga  which you can see bellow

I was really glad with the results but now I had to test if this was going to be stable as the 72MHz oscillator. After 3 hours of keeping the Amiga running Modules, MP3s, putting it online and Send/receiving emails from YAM, taking screenshots as PNG etc... SYSTEM is stable and running smoothly!
So... I didn't get the full 40MHz clockage but 37.5MHz is rather fine :D

Since I saw that the default heatsink of ACA was getting rather hot... I decided to re-attach the 40x40x10 ultrasilent FAN but with the minor alteration of raising it a bit for better airflow.
I used some small nuts that I glued with thermal gluing paste (like the ones that use on the Voodoo's Heatsink) and after that, I glued the nuts with thermal gluing paste on ACA as well :)

As always I take a full picture of the whole setup just for reference along with the old Eizo F35 CRT monitor that works awesomely well :)

Well that's it for now. Soon I'll make some more videos testing some neat Internet applications like VNC, FTP etc so stay tuned :)

A600: Recent updates and a new video

Hey peepz just thought of sharing my latest updates since lately I've been tinkering my A600 a lot softwarewise :)
It's going really stable all this time, and I'm enjoying it very much.

Listening to music while I chat, or making custom Kickstarts is so enjoyable, and I run it on daily basis without a single crash.

Latest updates were:

• Attaching a silent 40x40x10 Scythe/Kaze fan on ACA630 (just for safety)

• Upgrading an NetGear MA401 PCMCIA Wi-Fi NIC (firmware+station) in order to be able to support WPA2 encryption that my home network uses! No delay at all :) There is an awesome guide by a guy Hiddenevil (over A.org) on his blog here.
• Tinkering my OS as much as possible. Also with the help of PeterK (author of the newest Icon.library) I managed to be able displaying all possible icons under WB3.1 like GlowIcons, NewIcons, OS4 icons and even DualPNG Ken's Icons. Ofc colors aren't that great (since my WB only uses 8color palette) but still quite impressive. The thread concerning changes of some ClassicWB files can be found over EAB here.

I also made a quick video last night to see how my system is going on :)
I converted it to 480p (from FullHD) this time in case it looks a bit better so probably it's nicer than the previous ones (better use full screen, or change to the native YouTube page that has more options on resolutions).

I hope you like it :)

Stay tuned \o/

A4000: Mounting Ratte's Auto switch & Buffing Grex

Hi my friends,

Today despite going out for presents and enjoying the day with friends, I decided since I stayed home @ night to tinker my lovely Amiga.
Having some more extra time tonight was really nice and it was time to permanently attach Ratte's Auto AGA/RTG switch and fill the extra PCI sockets of my Grex :D

Checking the space and ribbons, I decided to mount the Auto switch in the Expansion bracket position.
Well it was time to cut a VGA backplate exactly at Expansion bracket's dimensions

I positioned the VGA hole a bit to the right (just to be safe with ribbons from RTG/AGA) but mostly because I wanted the extra space IN CASE something comes up in the future :)

Well the following mod, took me quite some time, only because I tested the joints via a multimeter and continuity test many times to be sure! Don't wanna risk damaging something in my system :)
It was fun procedure though.

What on earth am I doing?.... Yep you understood correctly :)
Internal soldering of Ribbon that goes to Ratte's Auto switch. (Like BVisionPPC/CVisionPPC but now on Voodoo!)

Then it was time for stuffing and buffing my beloved Grex!
I already had the Voodoo3 and ESS-Solo-1 but now I also got...:

An RTL8029(AS) Ethernet NIC (Thanks Leo)

And an Terratec TerraTV/Radio card (Bt878 chipset) that I had for a really long time in one of my drawers LOL!

Stuffing it all was a really amusing moment since everything fitted like a glove without wires in the way :) Gotta love this Voodoo mod.

 

This is a photo with the wire installed that goes from DVD-ROM's audio signal to ESS-Solo-1's internal connector for CD. I already had it ready from my Delfina mod, so now it also works like a charm in this current mod.

And now some photos from the back of the A4000. Haven't showed a pic since I had the Delfina/USB NIC mod :)
You can clearly see... Ratte's Auto RTG/AGA swith on the Expansion bay, along with the PCI cards.
Amiga Paula's sound goes to ESS-Solo-1's "Line In" connector. I could have made it internal in ESS-Solo-1's AUX internal connector but I'd had to take apart the whole motherboard = NO FUN!

And finally a close up of Ratte's Switch mounted and sitting comfortably in the Expansion bay without interfering with the 80mm fan that blows some silent air into the CSPPC and Memory sockets :)

Just a quick photo from CSPPCs PCI menu...

...and we're ready to Rock & Roll :D
Everything works like a charm and I'm a happy Amigan. It's nice having such clean mods inside without too much wires cutting my airflow and vision to teh awesomenezz :D

I hope you like it as well.

A4000: New fans and some minor audio mods

One more Saturday to work on my lovely A4000. Sorry for not updating sooner but last weekend I was hackintoshing my Dell Mini 9" (dual booting Snow Leopard with Windows 7) but that was not Amigish to share so... here we are once again :)

 Well first of all I thought of getting 2x new silent 80mm fans for my A4000. One will replace my PSU fan and the other will be mounted where the original Hard Drive bracket existed. After some searching around local stores I came up with a Noctua 80mm 17db - 53CFM. This fan has also 2xAdapters with resistors to lower the silence up to 10db or even 7db (ofc lowering the CFM as well). Since I tested them a bit... I thought that 17db was just fine for my taste.

 PSU replacement was easy enough... and you can barely see the difference with the previous one. Sound difference is a LOT though! Awesome \o/

Next step was to mount the second 80mm fan where I wanted. As a holding surface I thought of using one spare metal bracket that we use for the backplates of our ISA/PCI etc slots.

I straightened  it a bit using pliers and with a little hammer I gave the final look.

After that, I dremeled one side to match a bit with the other and sanded the whole bracket. It looks better right?

After the sanding... it was time for 2x coats of a gray spray paint which I used in the past for some components. Result was really neat.

Now I had to put some dual sticking foamy tape to the upper side of the fan...

...and then attach the painted metal bracket to the sticky tape! Last step before putting it in the Amiga was to put 2x tie wraps to hold the fan even better and more steady.

Here you can see it mounted in it's permanent place. It's very steady quiet and it's airflow it's just epic! Some mini heatsinks on the CyberVisionPPC and RAM SIMMS on the CyberstormPPC will be must better now :)

Since last time I didn't like the way that  I mounted the RCA cables to the internal spot of Delfina, I thought of doing something better and more good looking :)

That's why I decided the following:

• Changing the Mic input connector (Pink) to the Internal connector on the Delfina (after all Aux2 can be used for Line or Mic so I had one spare connector).
• Making tiny cute Mini Jack to RCA cable to be able to connect it from the Amiga RCA output to Delfina's Internal input (now Pink femal Jack)

You can see it clearly now :) Doesn't it look better? And I can anytime remove the cable and get the RCA from the Amiga (don't know why I'd do such a thing... but anywayz).

I had to include one last photo from the internal of the A4000 with the Delfina and custom cabling showing also the new fan mounting! Small update but definitely an important one.

Cheers for lookin'