RS232 port closed.....
The "New" Lounge 
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TED
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Disclaimer:
All the information presented here, was taken from the following sources:
Brain Bagnal's Book
On the Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore.
Available at Amazon.ca
The new edition had been delayed at Amazon until Feb.2010
Also, a lot of information has come from Video interviews with Bil Herd and Dave Haynie. Dave has a lot of videos on You-Tube. Search them out.. I wish I could post them here, but I don't have permission.
Lastly, more sites on the net have information. There are even a few dedicated sites to the C16. Do a Goggle search, because Bing is just a flash in the pan.:)
Please help keep the lounge alive and donate Today.Your donation helps keep an Computer from ending up in a Landfill, and keeping the history Alive for future generations!
Sunday, April 26, 2009
UPS Bends us Canadian's over again
So, I worked on the minor issues with my A1200 yesterday, cleaned up the work bench, and set it all up. Because of the lack of room, and the fact that my A1000 is waiting for parts, I decided to "Share" the space with the A1200. As you can see, it kind of looks cool, like the A1000 is a Chassis for the A1200. I have yet to get the Typhoon card, so I cant do much with OS 3.9 yet because my machine only has 2 megs of ram. SOON.
I also got a visit on Friday from UPS. I was not home at the time, but apparently they attempted to drop of my A4000 with their so called Fraudulent Brokerage fee. When will the government step in and do something about this? With so many class action law suites, bad media etc. When will someone step in and say "enough is enough".
UPS wants ANOTHER $80 to the $80 I already paid for shipping! They claim its a brokerage fee and a quick Google search shows that they are indeed RAPING the Canadian public over this charge. The Canadian Customs fee is ONLY A FLAT $5. (plus tax). Clearly UPS IS bending us Canadians over and screwing us way up the ASS for this. This IS NEVER charged to corporations or Business, but only to "Home" delivery. In fact, their (UPS's) own website charts on Custom fees don't even come close to this $80 charge. Many people have tried to fight it, but they hold your package for ransom if you don't pay. I don't know about you, but this is classic extortion to myself. I know I don't carry $80 around in my wallet "just in case" someone shows up with a fee.
Also, the shipper is never told of this (probably because UPS doesn't have a clue ahead of time what they guess the extortion fee will be). If they did, nobody would pay that when they know they can go to USPS and pay less AND the buyer will ONLY GET A FIVE dollar Canada Customs fee.
I Usually ONLY will do a deal if the shipper will use USPS, but this shipper said he was going to use USPS and only after he shipped it informed me that it was UPS.
I have no choice (except to maybe write a "Bum" cheque) but to pay this tomorrow to get my A4000, but I WILL be calling up UPS and fighting for my money back. If I have to pull the TV and Media into the fight, I have no problems doing so.
TODAYS EPIC FAIL is UPS and the people that ship UPS to Canada:
Thursday, April 23, 2009
The (new) A1200 is in
This past week has been a real treasure trove for the Amiga. I have a ton of stuff coming in and over the weekend I decided to pull the trigger and get me an A1200. I doubt if I will ever see the one that was will to me so I had decided a long time ago that I would order one from Amiga Kit.com.
Also, this month Softhut will be getting a shipment of new A1200 Accelerators. I ordered one with 32 megs of ram and the scsi upgrade.
I went to Amigkit and ordered a re-furbished A1200 with a 40 gig internal hard drive and OS 3.9 (knowing about the Accelerator). I also got an Indvision A1200 internal graphics card, so I can hook it all up to a modern VGA Monitor.
Ath this point, I thought I was just about set, but then a deal on an A4000 desktop poped up that I couldn't refuse. (Sigh).
AmigaKit is just way too good! They sent it Fed Ex and it arrived today.
Now, (I guess) because Amiga kit has been dealing with rabid collectors for years, they know how to ship an Amiga WITHOUT screwing up the box (unlike A LOT of other Amiga dealers). They carefully wrap the box in plastic wrap first, to avoid damage to the box and complants from the customers who wish to keep everything mint or as close to as possible.
Once I carefully removed the plastic wrap, we can see what the box looked like. This is not an "original" "Commodore" A1200, but a A1200 produced around 1996 by the German company That bought the rights- Amiga Technologies.
The box has a few dents and wear marks in it but hey after 15 years this is to be expected, and besides, this was not "NOS".
Now, Amiga Kit does not ship Power Supplies wit the units because they are North American models and Amiga kit is in UK, so once the cover was off you see the set-up instructions.
I broke out my A500 PS to hook it all up
You can see that this unit is perfectly white, almost new. I found out later, that the shell and shielding is brand new.
Here is the software that came with it. OS 3.9 was installed on the hard drive. I also found out later from Matthew at Amiga kit, that the 40 gig HD was upgraded for free to an 80 Gig. I gues it is hard to find 40 Gigs now.
The indivision card was installed at Amiga kit. One of the complaints on the boards was the lack of cover out the back from the manufacture. Amiga Kit did a nice job in making one.
I hooked it all up to my TV for now, as I have to clean off my bench in my room to make room for this. The indvision card is having issues right now, but I don't have a lot of time before work left. I will futz more with it tomorow. I can't really go anything until the accelorator arives anyway.
Also, this month Softhut will be getting a shipment of new A1200 Accelerators. I ordered one with 32 megs of ram and the scsi upgrade.
I went to Amigkit and ordered a re-furbished A1200 with a 40 gig internal hard drive and OS 3.9 (knowing about the Accelerator). I also got an Indvision A1200 internal graphics card, so I can hook it all up to a modern VGA Monitor.
Ath this point, I thought I was just about set, but then a deal on an A4000 desktop poped up that I couldn't refuse. (Sigh).
AmigaKit is just way too good! They sent it Fed Ex and it arrived today.
Now, (I guess) because Amiga kit has been dealing with rabid collectors for years, they know how to ship an Amiga WITHOUT screwing up the box (unlike A LOT of other Amiga dealers). They carefully wrap the box in plastic wrap first, to avoid damage to the box and complants from the customers who wish to keep everything mint or as close to as possible.
Once I carefully removed the plastic wrap, we can see what the box looked like. This is not an "original" "Commodore" A1200, but a A1200 produced around 1996 by the German company That bought the rights- Amiga Technologies.
The box has a few dents and wear marks in it but hey after 15 years this is to be expected, and besides, this was not "NOS".
Now, Amiga Kit does not ship Power Supplies wit the units because they are North American models and Amiga kit is in UK, so once the cover was off you see the set-up instructions.
I broke out my A500 PS to hook it all up
You can see that this unit is perfectly white, almost new. I found out later, that the shell and shielding is brand new.
Here is the software that came with it. OS 3.9 was installed on the hard drive. I also found out later from Matthew at Amiga kit, that the 40 gig HD was upgraded for free to an 80 Gig. I gues it is hard to find 40 Gigs now.
The indivision card was installed at Amiga kit. One of the complaints on the boards was the lack of cover out the back from the manufacture. Amiga Kit did a nice job in making one.
I hooked it all up to my TV for now, as I have to clean off my bench in my room to make room for this. The indvision card is having issues right now, but I don't have a lot of time before work left. I will futz more with it tomorow. I can't really go anything until the accelorator arives anyway.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
April Packages
Ok, so it has been like 2 weeks from my last post, but a lot has been happening. First, I borrowed a good camera for this post. I probably will end up buying it once my tax return comes it.
I have been hinting at it for a while now, but in December/ January, I was making a deal with a board member from Yuma, Arizona that wanted to get rid of all his Amiga gear. It turned out to be a Video Editing studio. Normally, the shipping alone to Edmonton would have made this prohibitive, But, My parents go to Yuma in the Winter, and they just brought it back. They arrived back on Monday
As you can see by the above pictures, I am busy organizing and cataloging everything, which leaves my living room a mess.
The System was an A2000HD. Now why I know what you are asking. "Why would I want ANOTHER A2000HD unit?"
The answer is simple. It came with the following card:
The above picture shows a GVP Comb 030 Accelerator card with 16 megs of ram. Now the previous owner did not want to break everything up, nor go inside his machine and pull cards.
I had been trying forever on Ebay to get an accelerator card, but they go for more than what I paid for the whole lot. So over the next few weeks, I will be parting this baby out and selling off bits and pieces to make my money back.
The System is a Video Toaster Unit. Now that may not mean much to some, But The Video toaster is still a great Editing Machine IF you have the room. Unfortunately I do not. As much as it pains me to sell off some of this hardware, I have to because of space.
The unit came with 2 Video Toaster cards. Inside the A2000 was a Video Toaster 4000 Card.
There is a mylar shield to prevent Grounding.
BUT, like I said, it also came with a 2000 card. Now, I was told the original 2000 card was Not working, but he included it anyway. I had heard through the grapevine that NewTec (the creators of the card) were not only still in business, STILL supported and fixed Amiga cards. A few e-mails and a phone call, not only registered everything, They sent me an RMA number and I sent off the 2000 card in the mail on Friday to them. I might just use the 2000 card when it gets back.
The unit also had a "Kitchen Sync" Time base corrector. I removed everything for now.
Now, when I first opened the machine on Monday, I was half asleep or something and saw the following card. Not knowing immediacy what it was, I assumed it to be inserted in the wrong slots and not functioning. You see NewTec also makes a card called "the Video Toaster Flyer card". Because this was a Video taster unit, I assumed that this card was a Ram expansion card for the Video Flyer.
I found out this morning that this is a Flyer Ram Expansion card. Nothing at all to do with the Video flyer and is a stand alone Ram Expansion Card with 4 Megs of ram. Altogether so far, this machine has more than 16 megs of ram. If I am doing all the math correctly and reading all the Ram correctly, it looks like this MAY be close to a whooping 23 megs of RAM. The previous owner said he thought it was 16.
Wednesday, I went to my electronics parts store to look for a battery holder. They were sold out, but the owner did introduce me to soldering tips. He gave me some braided copper tape to help clean up the solder.
Now today, I wanted to strip the machine down and clean up the dust on the motherboard and at least remove the battery. At first glance the battery looked fine, but I wanted to be sure.
Today's teardown when perfect with NO stripped screws. I got the motherboard out will out any problems.
The motherboard is a Revision 6, one of the best motherboards of the A2000's. Also On the board, installed is a MegAChip 2000 Ram expansion board. This brings the total Chip RAM up to 2 megabites.
Just this baby can cost $100 on ebay.
Now to remove the Battery.
The first step is to get the shielding off the bottom of the motherboard. This is the Pain step as it requires removing the Stand off nuts around the ports. I use a pair of pliers and my fingers, this can be rather painful on the fingertips.
Once all of them are removed (remember there are 4 on the front side of the board as well) you can twist off the shielding. I opped not to just "Pop" off the battery first with a screwdriver, but, instead, experiment with the copper braid. The results were fantastic (in My Opinion).
The holes are clear of solder and ready for the new battery holder. I then got out one of the retarded holders I got from Amiga KIT. As you can see its way to big.
So, now I whipped down the board to get the rest of the dust off. I am leaving it like this for now until a couple of things get here. This week I should have found a battery holder for it. I am getting a set of the latest ROMS for the GVP card so it can run OS 3.x Right now, this board has Version 2 Roms, so I need the 3.1 Rom. I can remove it from the other A2000, but I have bent those pins a few times, and it might not survive another pull.
So a quick Estimate of the machine if you were to buy it on E-bay.
An A2000HD (bare) about $80
MegAChip -Approx. $80
GVP 030 - $200 (jumps around)
VT 4000 (with software) $160
Kitchen Sync card $160)
Flyer RAM expansion card -I have never seen one, but I guess $50
I received a whole lot more, but just the A2000 = $730 if you were to buy all the pieces, Add $20 for the 3.1 Rom, $20 for a Rom Switcher and another $20 for the GVP rom, and $800 could be easily spent on this unit. So this was a fantastic deal.
Now to put it back together just enough to clean up.
I have been hinting at it for a while now, but in December/ January, I was making a deal with a board member from Yuma, Arizona that wanted to get rid of all his Amiga gear. It turned out to be a Video Editing studio. Normally, the shipping alone to Edmonton would have made this prohibitive, But, My parents go to Yuma in the Winter, and they just brought it back. They arrived back on Monday
As you can see by the above pictures, I am busy organizing and cataloging everything, which leaves my living room a mess.
The System was an A2000HD. Now why I know what you are asking. "Why would I want ANOTHER A2000HD unit?"
The answer is simple. It came with the following card:
The above picture shows a GVP Comb 030 Accelerator card with 16 megs of ram. Now the previous owner did not want to break everything up, nor go inside his machine and pull cards.
I had been trying forever on Ebay to get an accelerator card, but they go for more than what I paid for the whole lot. So over the next few weeks, I will be parting this baby out and selling off bits and pieces to make my money back.
The System is a Video Toaster Unit. Now that may not mean much to some, But The Video toaster is still a great Editing Machine IF you have the room. Unfortunately I do not. As much as it pains me to sell off some of this hardware, I have to because of space.
The unit came with 2 Video Toaster cards. Inside the A2000 was a Video Toaster 4000 Card.
There is a mylar shield to prevent Grounding.
BUT, like I said, it also came with a 2000 card. Now, I was told the original 2000 card was Not working, but he included it anyway. I had heard through the grapevine that NewTec (the creators of the card) were not only still in business, STILL supported and fixed Amiga cards. A few e-mails and a phone call, not only registered everything, They sent me an RMA number and I sent off the 2000 card in the mail on Friday to them. I might just use the 2000 card when it gets back.
The unit also had a "Kitchen Sync" Time base corrector. I removed everything for now.
Now, when I first opened the machine on Monday, I was half asleep or something and saw the following card. Not knowing immediacy what it was, I assumed it to be inserted in the wrong slots and not functioning. You see NewTec also makes a card called "the Video Toaster Flyer card". Because this was a Video taster unit, I assumed that this card was a Ram expansion card for the Video Flyer.
I found out this morning that this is a Flyer Ram Expansion card. Nothing at all to do with the Video flyer and is a stand alone Ram Expansion Card with 4 Megs of ram. Altogether so far, this machine has more than 16 megs of ram. If I am doing all the math correctly and reading all the Ram correctly, it looks like this MAY be close to a whooping 23 megs of RAM. The previous owner said he thought it was 16.
Wednesday, I went to my electronics parts store to look for a battery holder. They were sold out, but the owner did introduce me to soldering tips. He gave me some braided copper tape to help clean up the solder.
Now today, I wanted to strip the machine down and clean up the dust on the motherboard and at least remove the battery. At first glance the battery looked fine, but I wanted to be sure.
Today's teardown when perfect with NO stripped screws. I got the motherboard out will out any problems.
The motherboard is a Revision 6, one of the best motherboards of the A2000's. Also On the board, installed is a MegAChip 2000 Ram expansion board. This brings the total Chip RAM up to 2 megabites.
Just this baby can cost $100 on ebay.
Now to remove the Battery.
The first step is to get the shielding off the bottom of the motherboard. This is the Pain step as it requires removing the Stand off nuts around the ports. I use a pair of pliers and my fingers, this can be rather painful on the fingertips.
Once all of them are removed (remember there are 4 on the front side of the board as well) you can twist off the shielding. I opped not to just "Pop" off the battery first with a screwdriver, but, instead, experiment with the copper braid. The results were fantastic (in My Opinion).
The holes are clear of solder and ready for the new battery holder. I then got out one of the retarded holders I got from Amiga KIT. As you can see its way to big.
So, now I whipped down the board to get the rest of the dust off. I am leaving it like this for now until a couple of things get here. This week I should have found a battery holder for it. I am getting a set of the latest ROMS for the GVP card so it can run OS 3.x Right now, this board has Version 2 Roms, so I need the 3.1 Rom. I can remove it from the other A2000, but I have bent those pins a few times, and it might not survive another pull.
So a quick Estimate of the machine if you were to buy it on E-bay.
An A2000HD (bare) about $80
MegAChip -Approx. $80
GVP 030 - $200 (jumps around)
VT 4000 (with software) $160
Kitchen Sync card $160)
Flyer RAM expansion card -I have never seen one, but I guess $50
I received a whole lot more, but just the A2000 = $730 if you were to buy all the pieces, Add $20 for the 3.1 Rom, $20 for a Rom Switcher and another $20 for the GVP rom, and $800 could be easily spent on this unit. So this was a fantastic deal.
Now to put it back together just enough to clean up.
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