Latest update:November 29 , 2010

More Amiga Stuff in means more projects to do.....

Well, I can't believe we have just 1 month left in 2010 and less than 22 days until Christmas. Seems like this year was a write off for most of my Amiga projects.

This weekend I got in another 1080 monitor, and I did get a chance to go through the 2 -A2000 machines I got in form Craig. On Saturday, I "helped" Craig resurrect his A 4000 system. We installed my Indivision card on it, but in teardown, we noticed that it had a Cybergraphics card in it, so the indivision was useless. It wouldn't boot at all at first, and we discovered it had the same problem that my old A4000 had- the CPU card was not seated properly. I am not sure how, but this might be a common problem. With temperature changes or such, the CPU card seems to lift a bit and become unseated, causing just a black screen at boot and nothing else. Any way, Craig got the CF card adaptor working and a San Disk 256 Meg CF drive going on it. The adaptor he had, utilized 2 CF cards, so he has both going with half a gig now. , and is ditching the old IDE hard drive.

Sunday, I pulled apart and cleaned up both A2000's. Both need a lot of work and attention. I have to get 3.1 ROMS, Battery replacements and Accelerators for both. Both need a some kind of Ram Card and Hard drive. I have 2 SCSI cards for them, but I really want to put these on IDE only, with CF cards and CD rom drives, but the SCSI to IDE adaptors (if I can get them) are about $175 apiece now. Not a very wise solution for an A2000. I think I am going to pull the 286 PC card out of the one unit (it would be fine if it was a 486) and possibly make that unit into an Amix machine, if I can get the Commodore Accelerator for it.

Lastly, I leave you with this Amiga 25 Anniversary video by Eric Schwartz. I like the very end, a good smack to the Apple...

 

 

 

 

November 19,2010

The Last Chapter of Voodoo PC has finally closed.....or HP has lost the Heart and Soul of something Great.

 

 

This week has really been a dog for me. I have been extremely busy doing a whole bunch of different things, and to top it of, Winter hit her on Wednesday, so we are under our first official snow fall (about 3 inches) and we have seen -20 degree Celsius weather.

Before I get to the Amiga stuff, I just wanted to mention Voodoo PC and HP computers. For those that don't know, I was a long time supporter of Voodoo PC and had the "Iboughtavoodoolaptop" website (I still own the domain name). I was the Voodoo Fanboy, and I knew that when HP bought them out, the Voodoo Brand name was doomed. I paid 7 Grand for my Envy laptop, which I believe was one of the last EVER made, and I still am proud to use it today.

Today, Voodoo PC is a memory (like Amiga) of a cool computer and company swallowed up by a heartless corporation. The only thing that remains is the name "ENVY" which, HP has assigned to a supposedly "High End" Pavilion laptop, but if you look at it, it offers really no choice at all for the consumer, it is FULL of HP Crapware, and offers ONLY a (pretty crappy) ATI graphic card. In fact it is pretty apparent that HP is fully committed to offer ONLY ATI in all of its laptops. Voodoo PC thrived on CHOICE for the consumers and no "Crapware" pre-loaded on its machines.

Rahul Sood (the ex-owner of Voodoo) was promoted to HP's Head of Global Gaming, When HP killed off the Blackbird, Rahul was then promoted to HP's CTO for the Consumer division. I had always felt that with Rahul there at HP, there would be always a little Heart and Soul of Voodoo, trying to at least attempt to "Buck the Corporate trend" and put SOMETHING, ANYTHING cool back out into the market place. Rahul has always stated in his blog "Just wait, you ain' t seen nothing yet" from HP, causing us to wait and wonder if anything cool would ever come out again.

Well, finally, all the Corporate BS and shit has gotten to Rahul, for he has announced on his blog, that as of December 1,2010- he is done and leaving HP.

I, personally, am not surprised at all by this, just kind of shocked that it took so bloody long. Rahul's passion is the same as mine, and the Corporate structure has no place for a maverick like him. ( The Calgary Herald named him and his brother Ravi, 2 of 30 New "mavericks" last Month)

I personally would like to congratulate him on the move, and wish him nothing but sweet success for him and his family. If he ever reads this blog, I would love to get together for Coffee again and brainstorm Ideas. All I know for sure is he will kick butt in what ever he dives into- possibly things like Brightsquid. I just hope he stays in Canada Eh! HP will never know what it has lost....

Ok, Back to Amiga stuff.

Over the weekend, I got 2 A2000's in from Craig. This weekend, HOPEFULLY, I will have time to give them a go over, but this is all I know So far on them. One unit has a GVP scsi card, and one unit has a PC bridge card. The PC unit also has a 5 1/4 inch floppy, and we removed a battery over at Craig's last week. So, you know what that means, More stuff needed from AmigaKit. They now have an ATX to A2000 adaptor, so I have to get those and 2 3.1 Roms. Its a very good Idea to ditch the old floppies and order 2 new ones also form AmigaKit. Darn, I could actually spend at least $5000 tomorrow there, without blinking an eye. that's sad.

I am waiting for the Video Camera from Corey, so I can start filming these "tear-downs" and Upgrades for you in the lab.

AmigaKit has the ACA 630/25 "Stealth" Accelerator available now for pre-order for the A600. It should arrive in the next few weeks.

For those that don't know, ANY A600 Accelerator made in the past has been both unreliable and extremely rare (god, I hate using that word). Jens had made us a working one, and the top of the heat sink is the cradle for a CF card drive.
The price of one of these bad boys is a bit out of my range though- but still an affordable $172 Canadian.

AmigaKit also is taking pre orders for the "High-end" ACA 1230/56 Accelerator.

No pictures of this unit yet, but street date is Tuesday December 7. The price is $221.86 Canadian.

Specs are:

ACA 1230/56 Accelerator

A brand new modern accelerator for the Amiga 1200 computer

Features:

   Full 68030 running at 56Mhz
   64MB of Fast Memory (SDRAM surface mounted)
   Fully compatible with expansions installed in the A1200 PCMCIA port
   Re-Kick option from software (supports up to 1MB Kickstart ROM images)
   Very efficient 3-1-1-1 burst design
   Low power requirements- no cooling fan required
   Compact design- user slots into trapdoor underneath Amiga 1200
   Efficient performance: approximately 12 MIPs (Millions Of Instructions Per Second)
   Optional Clock Kit available


The ACAtune tool will be available to download which lets you tweak some parameters and activate Maprom.

More on that later. I have to run to work now, so I need to start the Skidoo...

 

 

 

 

 

November 10, 2010

Another AMIGAKIT Shameless plug....

Ok, as you all have seen, the last few moths have been extremely tight money wise, and with me sinking every last penny I can into the RV Tour, and the fact that NOBODY has ever donated a buck or two to the lounge. I have not been able to get some stuff I need and complete some projects.

Last week, I sold a couple of joysticks in the online store, and immediately went to Amigakit in search of ROMS. I need 3.1 Roms for both the "Spare" Amiga 1200 that I have listed in the store and I need 3.1 Roms for the A3000 Tower.

Unfortunately, AmigaKit lacks A3000 "stuff" so I had to get them used on Ebay (The tower Roms), but I did order in the A1200 Roms.

Yesterday, the arrived proving once again, that it only takes 1 week to get them here to Canada, AND they were cheaper including postage than buying them USED off E-bay. I do not think the E-bay ones are used though, I rather suspect that they are copies and not "legit" versions, but, hey they work, Also, I went to an online store in Germany, another "official" Amiga retailer (Starts with a "V") and they wanted over $70 USD to ship them here to Canada. Holy Cow man, no wonder I will stick with the knock offs or AmigaKit.

As you can see, the package, once again, is superbly wrapped. This is what I want my store to portray someday when funds and a proper shop is acquired (instead of trying to run it out of my shoebox of an Apartment). It came in a small Zip-lock bag and the Roms in an anti static bag. It also came with a full instruction sheet. Packaging in so important, I think anyway's.

Also, get ready and excited. Jens Schoenfeld and Individual Computers is launching another "MUST have" product for the A1200 and A600 computers before Christmas. Now, in the past, I have bitched about the prices of Jen's Products, but to be fair, he makes one hell of a product.

The first thing he is launching, and it just appeared on AmigaKit's website this morning, is AN AFORDABLE, yes, I will repeat that statement, an AFORDABLE A1200 accelerator and Ram expansion!!! I suspect the prices on e-bay will plummet for a while and a lot of e-bay sellers will be pissed about this. The first is an ACA 1230/28 accelerator with 64 megs of RAM. Now a 1230 might not seem that fast, but with the prices of ANY accelerator, this is a STEAL. AmigaKit is taking pre-orders and the price is listed at ONLY $111.60 USD. Now, this is a BRAND new card, not some 20 year old used card that you would pay double on e-bay for.

The second card he is bringing out is an 030 card for the A600! In the past, any accelerator card for the A600 was almost impossible to find here in Canada, Now he is tapping a new market. The projected price for the 600's will be a bit steeper i suspect. Jens has already stated it will be 159.00 Euros, so just under $200. USD. I will report more on that later.

The only "BAD" thing is I can't find a simple e-mail address to AmigaKit saying "Thank You" I got the Roms in. Oh well.........