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: Mounting HxC & Floppy Internally (Part 3)

Hello my friends.

Continuing my work for mounting internally my HxC and slim floppy drive, I had some minor stuff that needed to be fixed.
First of all, I needed to put some headers in HxC switches and on the slim floppy drive LED. Both of these wires were mounted directly from the adapter to the mobo and case, so if I needed to dismantled and remove the floppy it would have been messy.

Here you can see the 4pin female header coming from the HxC switches, and the 2pin female header coming from the mobo's upper case (LED) connector. Btw I also removed the molex power connector from the floppy power, putting a 4pin female header as well. It does a better connection to Nigel's adapter comparing to the original one.

 After this short but essential replacements, I had to thing WHERE I should mount the SD card from HxC :)
First of all as you can remember the SD card is on the middle. First idea was to simply cut a slim hole in the upper case in order for the SD card to be insertable.
I didn't like that approach much tbh.

Why shouldn't I use a MicroSD solution I thought! Hmmm
The most important obstacle is that MicroSD doesn't have a lock position. Despite not being so important for most uses, it's rather important for HxC cause you might want to have a disk locked at times (acting as a real protected floppy disk).
You can bypass this by putting a Cheapo SD to MicroSD card which has the lock position as normal.
Why on earth I should use that though, when I don't want to use the SD card slot in the first place?
Looking from HxC schematics I realized then that Lock position is just one pin that is always shorted with GND (if card is unlocked) and unshorted when is locked. Why can't I mount an MicroSD and put another switch for my lock/unlock mechanism them? That's what I'll do :)

Anyway... before I decide where to mount the MicroSD socket, I thought first of getting the signals :)

In this picture you can see the 9 signals needed for SD card (MicroSD requires the 8 of them as the one is VSS that isn't needed). Also I maked the signals for Lock, GND and Card Inserted.
And here it's insulated with tape :)

After that I was thinking where to put the MicroSD adapter and then suddenly it hit me!!!
I have an empty spot where the old EJECT floppy button existed! This is the perfect spot not to have an empty hole :)
I didn't want to mount just the MicroSD though in such a big hole... It would have been ugly I though!
Then I saw an eject button I kept from the dead floppy I salvaged for Part 1 and I thought... "why not use this original button in the eject place, mounting the MicroSD adapter inside?"

These were the first comparison tests...

Damn it fits like a glove!!!
After a LOT OF TIME with the drill, swiss nife and a LOT OF PATIENCE... this was the result... :)

MicroSD connector was instant glued in the upper place (to leave space on the bottom for HxC and cabling.
After some Googling around I found the following pic

So... I made the following wiring diagram just to be sure :)

Signal   SD  MicroSD

--------------------

DAT2     9   1

CD/DAT3  1   2

CMD      2   3

VSS1     3   

VDD      4   4

CLK      5   5

VSS2     6   6

DAT0     7   7

DAT1     8   8

After finding my connectors information...

...I was ready to proceed with the soldering :)

That was some tough soldering since the pitch for the pins was really small.

Ok everything's was set.

I forgot to tell ya that I also got from my electronics store some really small switches that I thought of using for the Lock/Unlock mechanism.

The best spot I managed to find without altering the case more was the perimeter of where the upper case meets the lower case on the floppy area! The good thing on that perimeter spot is that it has a really think plastic layer which was IDEAL for what I had in mind :)

This was the cut I performed after A LOT OF TIME AND PATIENCE.

And this is how the modded eject button with MicroSD connector AND the micro switch for lock/unlock mechanism was mounted!!! Awesome stuff aye?

This is how it looks when you eject the actual MicroSD card :)

And as always, a panoramic view of my Amiga's innards :)
(You can also see a custom label I made for my Dual kickstart - mfilos Edition LOL)

Only 2 things left to be done... but we'll talk about these things on the next part... soon enough :)

Enjoy.