A500: A590 SCSI controller mods

Hey peepz.

Since I haven't done anything important (except softwarewise) on my lovely Amigas I though about testing for fun an A590 that I have (which might be the host of my future FPGA Arcade or not).

As I didn't have an external PSU to test it, I thought of performing the Selfpowered mod as the well known website clearly explains:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~davem2/overclock/a500hd.html

This is how the mod looks on my A590

As I don't have a SCSI HD and because I had a spare PCD-50B SCSI Multicard Reader so I thought about attaching this instead :)
Ofc in order for all LUNS to be fully recognized (and not only the first LUN that is the PCMCIA port) you need to switch the Pin 4 of the Dip switch to ON!
Manual as long as BBOAH say that it's reserved but Mechware after fiddling around he realized that Pin 4 enabled parity!

Anyway, I put some spacers by cutting some hotglue material (lol) and glued them in place. It doesn't look bad :)

After upgrading my Version 6.6 EPROMS to 7.0 (regards to my Willem) we were down to business.
Success, Power led opened and also my custom ClassicWB 68k booted just fine! :)

Time to remove the humongous thick Fan and put a silent Scythe/Kaze 40x40x10mm fan instead.

And voila. Mod is ready and A590 works like a charm :)

Here are some screenshots from the ClassicWB 68k running on my A590.

Dunno if I'm gonna keep that in the future, but at least I know it's working properly.

Only annoying part is that A590 blinks 30 times before CF boots but I guess that's something to do with searching through the other SCSI ID and LUNS which I haven't tinkered on how to disable (if possible).

Also I haven't put any passive termination which might be the cause as well (sorry I didn't have 25pin terminator handy).

That's all for now :)

A600: Mounting HxC & Floppy Internally (Part 4)

Hey my friends...

After my last article about my dual floppy internal mod I had two more mods in order to finalize this project.

The first was to do something about the slim floppy's eject button that was really small and didn't give enough room to press it. Also it needed some alteration to the case in order to be able to push it :)

So... I took the eject button and attached it to a spare beige floppy button from a PC drive that I had lying around. With some instant glue and hotglue for the rest... it was easy.

The result was really nice as you can see. This is how it looks when there is no floppy inside...

...and this is how it looks when the floppy is inside. You can see that the eject button is inline with the original eject button that now hosts the MicroSD card as you saw on my previous article.

The hard part now as always is to cut the upper case, in order for the eject button to be usable :)

Hard it was due to the fact that you can't use a dremel as the area is really tight and because there is the plastic from the floppys hole's lower part that gets in the way.

Lots of cautious cutting and sanding and this is how it went.

Not bad at all. After attaching the upper to the lower case this is how it looks when no floppy is inserted...

...and this is how it looks a floppy disk inserted.

From the side this is the whole picture of the mods. Both eject buttons one of which is the MicroSD slot and the lock switch :)

The first mod was done and the only mod in order for the project to be finalized was the LCD screen mounting.

I left this task for the end because I wanted to think about it a lot as cutting the upper case was always the worst thing as it's something that is always viewable. Something ugly or not properly mounted would cause me grief (LOL).

So... after measuring exactly where to put the LCD horizontal-wise (not to interfere with the lower side and the HxC-Floppy combo, I needed to find the best vertical alignment for best visual feeling.

My measuring showed that the cut I needed to do, had the same height as the A600 logo alas I thought about putting it EXACTLY at the same orientation verticaly! That was it :)

I made the necessary markings with a pencil...

...and then I begin cutting with a blade as dremeling was kind risky for melting the plastic as it's a 3mm height.

After a lot of effort... the cut was done. You can see the initial cut without any sanding.

Some may have noticed it, some may not... but as everyone makes mistakes... I cut by mistake a small area next to the upper right of the cut... You can see it by flash but still is annoying. I tried to cover it as much I could but still is noticeable with a flash or bright light. Not something too important but annoying nontheless. I might give it some try with a dremel and some soft brush but for now I'll leave as it is (Grrrr).

Anyway... in the meantime, I ordered a Plexi Glass from a nearby store as I wanted a laser cut of exactly 3.9x1.3mm (and 3mm thickness) as I wanted to fill the hole of the cut. The plexi glass was ready the next day so I sanded the cut as much as it required for the plexi glass to fit nicely! What a pain in the butt that was!!!
This was the final cut ready for the plexi glass to be mounted.

After applying some careful drops of instant glue I attached the plexi glass on the case and it fitted like a glove!

Because the LCD screen has a black frame by default, I didn't like how it would look underneath the plexi glass so I thought about spraying it with a light beige color. I had a spray ready from my A4000 custom bezel and this is how the frame turned out after 2 coats of spray. Of course I dismantled the whole LCD in parts (I didn't think it would play after this but I had a spare one so I had to try).

After everything was ready and the spray was dry, I hotglued carefully the LCD in place.

And VOILA! This is how the LCD looks now :)

I wanted to try it as soon as possible so AT LAST I wanted to close the case! The keyboard ribbon was put in place and then the custom LCD connector was attached to the LCD screen.

Case closed and I fired up the miggy!!! W00h00!

Everything worked like a charm and I was a happy man! Mission accomplished after a month of work :)
You can see now how it looks completed

Even the plastic protector had room for the Slim floppy's eject button (this was by pure luck as I was thinking to also mod the case). Awesome stuff!

This concludes this custom mod for fitting internally both an HxC SD floppy emulator and a slim floppy drive.

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

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.