A600: Mounting NMI and USB connector

Well, today I thought of proceeding more to the finalization of my A600 mod :)

I forgotten that I had to put the NMI reset button since I've included the HRTmon module inside the custom ROM that I'm kicking via ACATune utility.

That was one of the easiest mods since it just requires just a push switch wired to a female header.

Since I'm not going to press this button frequently and since I don't want it to be visible I thought of putting it close to my Kickstart 1.3/3.1 switch. So a hole has been drilled...

 ...and here it is mounted and connected to the NMI header of ACA630.

You can see how it looks underneath below. 

So this was the easy part...
The hard part that was twisting my mind was WHERE the heck I was going to mount the USB connector?
Every time that I was trying to think about that, I ended up telling myself that I'm gonna think about it another time.
You see... I don't want to make an ugly mod nor mount it in the top part of the case.

Ok after examining the case carefully I FOUND IT!
There is a small empty space under the Floppy Drive that you can see in the following pic.

Well... cutting the case for just a single USB (due to it's size) was one of the most annoying and boring things I have done for my A600. In the end, it became rather pretty :)

Next part was to create the custom USB connector and the female header that was going to be connected to the Subway.

And presto! USB connector mounted and hotglued in place :) It does look good and it doesn't even get in the way in kipper2k's PSX/PS2 adapter.

Here you can see  how the USB cable was mounted to Subway. 3 more headers are left for future usage.

I had in mind to put an USB-->Ethernet adapter inside which is rather easy, but sadly there is no space available to mount the RJ-45 connector (unless I salvage the top case which I don't want)  alas it won't be installed for now :)

A last panoramic photo of the beasty is presented bellow. I guess the miggy is coming close to completion! Thank God :)

A1200: Checking out my former lady :)

Hi peepz and I wish a good year to everyone :)

Last week was kinda painful cause I didn't have my A4000 to tinker, since I sent it's motherboard to Cosmos for general repairs (that will be covered in another thread though).
That's why I had time to check out the former lady that was sitting patiently in my office after I sold it's powerful heart (BPPC+BVision).

I thought about removing all components to clean them up and take some photos in case I decide to split and sell every part individually.

Those components are...

My modded Idefix Express

My loved Slim IDE DVD-RW with 44pin JAE to IDE adapter and 3way 44pin ribbon cable

My old and trusty Subway USB (Serial No. 13!)

...and one of the Clockport Expanders by DJBase and an EZkey PS/2 adapter

I was very sad to see these go so I decided for now to keep and re-install to my A1200.
The problem existed with Ian's ATX adapter and PicoPSU that for some reason, didn't work as intended. It worked but power button needed pushing A LOT of times which made me rethink about the whole idea of Push-On switch.

After fiddling around Ian's website and some schematics about ATX to Amiga Pinout... I removed Ian's ATX adapter (that took some time as I soldered PicoPSU directly to the adapter - you need to check some older posts to see it) and soldered the appropriate cables into it directly :)
After that, I only needed to wire Pin 13 and Pin 14 of PicoPSU into a simple On/Off switch and that was it.

That's one white nice switch I had on my stash for quite some time (which replaced my old switch that was mounted on Ratte's Auto AGA/RTG switch).

...and here is how I mounted PicoPSU now (without it's connector) into a plastic custom stand

Working really well I might add :)
Check the following 2 photos to get a better general look.

You can also check a quick video I grabbed showing how fast it boots ClassicWB 68k.

Not feeling bad about keeping the lot in the end (at least for now).
Only thing missing right now is an 030 I think... Oh well, ACA1231 is close :)

Stay tuned \o/

A600: A604 received! Case change and more

Yesterday I received the wonderful A604 Chip RAM Expansion from AmigaKit.
What an awesome designed product! It's so small comparing it with the A603 and offers a lot more things.

• 2x clockports (instead of 1)
• Custom clockport extender 2nd clockport for mounting Subway (special driver required)
• The second clockport reaches a 60% higher transfer speed than the first, which makes Subway a lot faster!
• Angled Indivision ECS socket that makes Indivision ECS co-exist along with the floppy!
• All the usual stuff like 1MB Chip RAM to max out A600's Chip RAM to 2MB total, and RTC.

Getting a new A604 also gave me appetite to re-case my A600 into a spare that I had which was more white (near mint) and didn't have any cut on the case. Keeping the floppy on the case was a nice thing to have.




My spare A600 is really awesome but required removing of the TV Modulator and a good mobo bath!!!
Modulator was an easy task to remove (done it 4-5 times in the past) and a good bath is always nice for my Amiga mobos :)

This time I decided NOT to remove the stock power connector since I got some time ago a nice PSU from MechWare.



Since I wanted to minize the cutting on the new case I decided that except from the replacement of the TV Modulator with the VGA connector for the Indivision ECS, I'd also make a small hole for the Kickstart switch (that simultaneously disables ACA on Kickstart 1.3).





You can check the internal mod of both the VGA connector and Kickstart switch that gets it's +5V from a nearby resistor and Ground from the nearby RGB's connector ground :)



As you may have seen I'm using Mika's angled CF2IDE adapter since for the time being I didn't want to make a hole above PCMCIA (waiting kipper2k's rev.2 CF2IDE adapter in the following days since I had issues with his rev.1 in my previous setup).

You can check some photos of the so far re-casing. I really loved the way that Indivision ECS's cable can go under Indivision and Subway making it look really clean:





Looking good doesn't it? The mods are looking a lot cleaner without the extra cabling that existed in my previous mod. Only need to see now where am I gonna put the USB headers, although I will use for sure the headers I used on my A1200 as well.

Just before I close this post, I thought it'd be nice to include 2 more photos of the A600 in use... Enjoy :)

A1200: Subway USB mounting

One more nightly upgrade

I thought of mounting at last my Subway to it's permanent location. After fiddling around for some time, testing it where I liked it better... I decided that the only place that suited my needs best was under the DVD-RW!






The space available is indeed minimal but I don't need much After all, under the DVD-RW the only thing that exists is the awesome Auto AGA/RTG Switch by Ratte.
Well you can take a look at it:



Ok the only thing left now was the extension cable that needed to be routed and joined with the original header that I put some time ago (on the lower part of the case).
So... I routed the cable under BVision and hotglued left from BPPC. Then I joined all 8 pins with the old cable and voila... It's mounted now on DJBase's Clockport expander and rock stable


I hope you like it

A600: Booting from USB

I wouldn't say that the following is exactly an update, but more of a successful test!

Dunno how many of you tried it in the past with success... but I present you Amiga 600 booting from USB stick

You only need to insert in a custom Kickstart the following files:

• subwayusb.device (or device that you have for USB)
• hub.class
• massstorage.class
• poseidon.library
• PSDStackLoader (this must be the one you're using now and works)

The tricky part is that it didn't fit in my Custom Kickstart Image since Poseidon.library was huge!
Thankfully I got some space, leaving Workbench.library outside the Kickstart, and putting it in LIBS: which worked a treat \o/

It's not for my everyday usage, but really cool I might add!

Enjoy

A600: Power connectors + Subway/HxC mounting

Tonight I tried to make some boring but totally required mod that I also made in my Desktop A1200 PPC. Power connectors (via screw) to be able to mount whatever fan/power header for Apollo/blah blah is needed.



Next to it, I mounted the Subway USB (you can see one small mini PCB underneath that holds it better.



Last but not least I mounted firmly the HxC SD Floppy Emulator in such way, being able to insert/remove the SD card as a Floppy Disk.




Nice huh?

OK some panoramic photos as always:



Just before I close this update, 2 more pics from the HxC in use (along with my custom LCD (+future buttons) extension as I try some "Shadow of the Beast 2"




Waiting my Apollo to arrive from Sweden after the upgrade... then more photos will take place