Glen's archived blog 2009/07

	RS232 port closed.....
January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 February 2010 March 2010 The "New" Lounge PET VIC TED LAB STORE My Collection ABOUT ME coming soon 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!	Friday, July 31, 2009 China Syndrome Not really much has been going on Physically this week on my on-going Amiga projects, Other than replacing a floppy cable and a mount on my spare A600. I am one step closer in getting the A1000 collection from a local guy, who may turn out to be a distant cousin on my Mom's side of the family (small world). What I am really excited about though is there is a SMALL (but never the less) possibility I might be getting SOME CDTV SCSI -TV cards in for the CDTV. For those that don't know what that is: SCSI-TV, a SCSI controller for the Commodore CDTV and A570 CD-ROM drive for the Amiga 500. This versatile interface allows the CDTV to connect to virtually any SCSI device. IF I can swing it, these will be NOS and be for sale in my on-line store. I will find out more tomorrow on it. I have been ordering small little odds and ends from China. If these pan out and do what I want, I will get a bunch more in for the store, as they are very inexpensive. First, I ordered in more (and different CF adapters). The ones with NO second power cable needed.That way you are not hunting for a Y-cable, and it keeps everything free from a rat's nest inside your Amiga, and you can CLOSE the case. The second thing I ordered was 2 of these Converters: These will allow you to take a thin laptop CD-Rom (or DVD) drive and convert it to an IDE connection. This is perfect, if you have a dead or old laptop, and want to use the drive in a A1200 or (gasp) A600. I am looking also into the following drive for my A4000. It's called a DOM or Disk on modal. It's a 40 pin connector for 3.5 drives, but with its female end, I can eliminate cables, or have an external mount cable connector. Right now, I have a (physically) huge 1 gig IDE drive and 4 Gigs should be just fine for the A4000 for now. I am also debating to put an SD card reader or CD reader into the second floppy drive bay of the A4000. With the prices of Compact flash compared with SD, it really makes sense. They have drive bay Kits: Although they do have the mount kits for the bay slots for the back of the computer, I want mine up front, as I hate reaching around the back for anything. If I could get away with it, even the CD rom would pop out the front of the A1200, but sadly that can't happen unless I make the base of the shell bigger. The point of this though, is if you open your mind to the possibilities of Flash drives on your miggy, there is an endless amount of options. Flash drives will quite you machine (we all had those noisy hard drives), they run with virtually no heat, and you can clean up the cable mess, with some options. The only thing I truly recommend, if you are thinking of going with a flash drive is getting an IDE "4 device" Fast IDE card. Amigakit sells these, but I am looking for a specific one for the A4000, not one that takes up a Zorro Slot, but uses the original IDE port on the 4000. They have one, but it's not buffered. Tuesday, July 28, 2009 AmigaKit wins! Last week, I mentioned it was a horse race to see which package got here faster, one from Amigakit and the package from China. Well, as expected, Amigakit won. When you first unpack this box, you might see just a bunch of random parts, but they all have a specific purpose.Heck, Even the guys atAmigaKit, must be scratching their heads at my orders. This order had 2 -1CM laptop IDE cables, 1 - A600 floppy drive cable, a "Gayle" chip adapter and an A4000 ATX converter cable. Again, I must mention the packaging was top notch, but the Gayle Chip adapter is missing any instructions on the right way to mount it. I will hunt them down later. The Gayle chip is for my A1200, for when I get it "On-line". The IDE and floppy cables will go into the A600's, as the only floppy cable I have, is meant of an A2000 and it is 10 times to long. The A4000 ATX cable is for an "up coming" project, as I intend to mount an ATX power supply in the 4000 soon. The biggest surprise was they sent me an A600 floppy drive bracket. The CORRECT one. I had asked about one in my "order Comments" section, but they didn't reply. I had assumed that they didn't see it, but again, they have proven me wrong! Thanks guys! AmigaKit was first to the door. The shipment from China did come in also later and a "replacement" shipment from my Ebay seller. The problem is he sent me the EXACT same floppy drive mounts (the A1200 kind) as before. I guess I have to ship these back to him also. Also, today (like I didn't need MORE) I had received word on a possible A1000 collection, that if I can swing it, I can get. I have to wait until the 15 th of August for the cash for it though. Looks like a boxed A1000 and Monitor, and a bunch of extra goodies. If this turns out good, I will finally have a WORKING A1000, and not just a bunch of parts. And I just keep chuging along. Someday soon, this will be all complete. Sunday, July 26, 2009 More Work, Less Amiga for now Due to a fellow co-worker ending up in the hospital, I was switched stores, and now I am working More hours and I am down to one day off a week. This week , nothing came in yet. Not from China, Nor AmigaKit, so nothing physical was done this week on anything. But, I did manage to pay my AMICUE dues and I am now a full fledged member of AMICUE. I already have a "Thing" where I demo the latest hardware to the group from Amigakit and such. The first real meeting will be in September, so I have lots of time to come up with "the hardware" I am going to demo. I probably will do a bunch of small stuff, like the CF -IDE adapters, and the ADF transfer, but that is not set in stone yet. I probably will take over the newsletter as it hasn't been updated since 2002. It's time to kick some new life into the Amiga group here in Edmonton. I have been showing some of the Amigakit stuff at our Saturday coffee meetings. Speaking of Amigakit, they must be reading my mind (or my blogs) as the (very) small IDE cables have shown up (.6 cm) and the 90 degree IDE adapter I was looking for showed up on the site. I hunt the site every day, and it does infact change all the time, so take a look. I was expecting my last package to show up Thursday, but it looks like customs has held it up, hopefully it will be here tomorrow. Thursday, July 16, 2009 Putzin Around day So today is just a random day off, and I am playing with more toys from Amigakit. I loaded up the EasyADF PCMCIA Compact Flash Transfer Kit on the A1200 and made an ADF for Burt today. The fist install gave me an error, so I tried again and it went through . I was worried about my unformated new 2 gig card, but it seemed to see it and the transfer to my PC wen fine. It compressed it into a ZIP file or a GZIP file, not an .ADF which surprised me, but that's OK. I came up with a easy solution for my A600 hard drives, as AmigaKit could not give me a resonable or viable solution on my Ticket. So, I ordered 2 - 1CM hard drive cables. If I could find a FEMALE to FEMALE plug with no cable in between, that would even be better. Even a 90 degree "card" would do, but I don't think 1 exists. I was searching E-bay for something, when I came across these babies. These have a female end on the bottom, That means the sit parallel to the motherboard (flat) with NO cable needed at all. These beauties were less then $5 Canadian and INCLUDED shipping! I bought 2 and now I am going to put these in the other 2 A600's. -1 goes in mine, the one from AmigaKit will go in Mike's and one in the spare. The reason for the Amigakit's in Mike's is simple, it's connector is straight out the back (not the bottom), so with the IDE Kit, It fit's perfectly with NO cable and rests on the hard drive cradle. Obviously these come with no CF cards. Now if AmigaKIT would JUST sell the CF cards with their great installation software, everything would be perfect. As my shipment left AmigaKit today, it's a Horse Race to see which shipment gets here first -the one from China or the UK. We are taking bets.. Yesterday, I got in my A600 keyboard for the spare unit. I was at work last night and took it apart to clean it for it was not bad, but, after 20 years, any keyboard needs cleaning. Also, this unit will be for sale on my online store, so I don not want to sell a filthy keyboard. The basic teardown is almost the same as any other Amiga keyboard, but this one is smaller. Also, to my surprise, this unit had real metal springs instead of the rubber ones in the A2000 keyboard. The top row of keys were a bit yellowed, but not too bad. Once all the keys are off, you can see the grime on the board. I did not bother to take it all apart, since the circuit sheet doesn't usually need cleaning and I had no micro screwdriver. Now its all back together and looks good. Tuesday, July 14, 2009 Another Minor setback So AmigaKit's Package showed up today. If I haven't said this before, I am saying it now. The shipper's at Amigakit must take great pride in packaging your order. They make sure that each piece is sealed and wrapped perfectly. So, when you receive a package from them, make sure you have a sharp knife and carefully cut everything open. I got the CF Drive kit in, and installed it. The OS 3.1 install went flawlessly this time, but, like I thought, the cabling was an issue. I was going to order one off of ebay, they are going for dirt cheap, but I wanted one that was know to work with the Amiga. The ones off of ebay just had a female IDE connection on the bottom and it sat 90 degrees to the motherboard with no need for a power cable. As you can see, this kit came with a very long cable, presumably so you could modd the case and have the drive sticking out of the back or side of the Amiga. Consequently, with all this cable, you cant have the drive sitting on the hard drive cradle and actually close the Amiga up. This is not a huge issue, but kind of irritating as I try to hunt down something that will actually do what I want it to. I put in a ticket with AmigaKit to see if they have anything that will fit the bill. I also got in the 4xIDE Buffered Interface (with Allegro CDFS). I had purchased this for Mike's A600, so I could get the 80 gig drive going on it. As you can see, it stands Vertically from the motherboard and Mike may decide to throw a CD rom drive on it later (If I can get it to work with this hard drive) . As you can see, I can't blot down the hard drive, as the cable will push the IDE fix. I am not sure if I can do anything about that. IF I can't get the drive formatted, I will buy a CF drive from Ebay and toss it in there that is under 2 gigs. I have had enough of throwing money at these A600's, Just to find out the parts were actually made for an A1200, and they are not "universal" like stated when I bought them. The rest of the stuff I got in will have to be set up on Thursday (my Day off). I feel like I am going in Circles with these Bloody A600's. Sunday, July 12, 2009 ROMS, Brackets, Motherboards and Floppy cables So the A600 parts have been slowly trickling in. I am still waiting for a Keyboard, and my shipment from AmigaKit, which should be here any day now. This week I received my floppy drive for my one Amiga 600. The Auction specifically stated an A600 floppy. I was hoping it was another Panasonic drive- But NO. The above photo is what I received, a Chinon drive. Notice the brass "Tab" and Bracket (actually there is 2 brackets in the photo, one is attached to the side of the drive). This is actually a drive and bracket (and cable) from an A1200. I had emailed the seller (who deals in a ton of Amiga parts) and he wrote back that they were universal and fit both the A1200 and A600. You know, for a guy who strips down Amiga's and sells the parts, he is not very knowledgeable. The A600 and A1200 Floppy drive brackets and cables DO NOT interchange. The cable is about half the length on an A1200 as an A600, as the plug is in completely different locations. The same goes for the mounting bracket. Above is a photo (fom Mike's Amiga) of the floppy drive mounted in an A600. You will notice the bracket is quite long and the motherboard mount is half way in between the screw holes. Here is a closer look. And here is the A1200's I am not sure where people get the idea that the bracket is the same, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. I also found this ROM installed in one. Notice it is V2.05 37.229. Now if you go to any of the Amiga Hardware sites, they list the FIRST A600 ROM as V2.05 37.299. This is indded a interesting development, because this ROM predates it. I had asked on the forms and nobody seems to have a clue, but at least one other person had one and the Amiga Hardware guide shows a photo of one. I had also talked about it to some of the guys from AMICUE and they suggested it was either a PAL ROM or go to Dave H's Archives and see if anything is there. I also was trying to hunt down the differences between motherboard revisions, but it looks like that information is lost for the ages. The real sad thing is that Amiga has tons of reference sites with lots of pictures of hardware, but no real information except the basic facts. It would be nice to See a site with in depth info, reviews and comments about the hardware from actual owners. Like the old saying "where is the meat and potatoes?" Mike's (my webmaster) A600 is just waiting for a drive, the spare needs the bracket and a keyboard. I might have to make a bracket for it, I have tin snips and sheet metal around here. Wednesday, July 8, 2009 Cleaning the latest A600 Today brought more rain, but I did walk out to the post office and pick up another parcel. The Mail Carrier did not want to "Get it Wet" bringing it to me, so I had to walk six blocks in the rain to pick it up and walk back. My package today was 2 ATX "converter" cables for the Amiga 1200,600,500. Say goodbye to 20 year old power supplies, Just use a regular ATX. I need at least 3 more. What more can I say about Jim, and Red's Retro Computing? I ordered it on Tuesday of last week, It was shipped Wednesday (because I missed the Tuesday mail delivery), so a week turnaround from Florida, Including 2 holidays. Great service as always. Now I do believe these cables were made by Nathan from Amigamaniac.com. It's good to see Red's has imported them. I had ordered a Rom switcher from Nathan a while ago, but I messed it up putting a longer cable on it. Nathan has some good stuff, check him out. This afternoon was spent cleaning the A600, I won't bore you with pictures, its all pretty dry stuff. I start with a "Mr. Clean" magic eraser, scrub it down then spray it with "fantastic". the hardest part is the vent slots on the top shell. I soak it with fantastic, then take a screwdriver and a papertowel and slide it through. Again, the best way is a dishwasher.Before that, I cleaned the motherboard with canned air and a brush, carefully removed it. The good thing is the A600 only has 1 scew holding in the motherboard. Ther is a second screw that also holds the mount for the floppy drive, but thats it. I am going to wimp out on the keyboard. I will just pop the keys off and scrub each key, rather than dissect the whole thing. As it is, I spend at least 6 hours cleaning these things, I hate to do the keyboard also. It's enough to drive you to drink. Tuesday, July 7, 2009 Another A600 in It's Raining today (we needed it, its been so dry), and my Amiga Auctions and purchases from the last few weeks are starting to arrive in. First, It was a package for DHL. I had heard that DHL had pulled out of Canada last year, but I guess that is not the case. It was my complete (so I thought) A600. This Auction was a real dog. The original auction was for a A600 with box , a Commodore MPS 1270 Printer and Disks. The auction stated 30 Pounds shipping to Canada, and I won. I had e-mailed the seller to forget the printer, disks, and power supply, and he had agreed, After all, I just wanted the box , A600, and workbench Disks. After the auction was over, without asking me, he refunded my money. Then he e-mailed back that shipping would be 70 pounds, and he had felt that was too much. I asked him again (and paid for it again) to just ship with A600, and box and disks (He could not under stand why I didn't need the power supply) this time, he came back with a 20 pound shipping rate. So, I paid it. A few days later, he e-mailed back and again was going to refund my money, because it was "Still too much money" for him to ship. At this point, I got angry. After a few nasty e-mails, he finally decided to ship it DHL for another 10 Pounds. I split the difference and sent him 5. Well, It showed up this morning-no Original box. DHL did not ask for any COD (pretend "Boarder Fees/extortion Fees) they just wanted a signature. I unpacked it, and other than 2 keys "Popped" off-not broken (thank God), and the case slightly "out of joint", it arrived in good shape. The case was not broken. Dirty, but not broken. I opened it up, to see what we had and the inside is filthy. The biggest surprise was no top RF shield and a TEAC 235f floppy drive. Normally, I would expect to see a Panasonic JU-253-043P floppy drive, but the UK may have had different drives or Commodore UK Refurbished this A600 (as it has, what appears to be, Original Commodore Barcodes. It also has a Revision 1.5 Motherboard. The unit has no Hard drive, but a hard drive cage, I am suspecting that the hard drive Cage was standard even if the unit shipped with no drive. It also has a 2.05 ROM. The inside is dirty, so tomorrow, I will tear it all apart and clean it all up. Hopefully the floppy drive is ok. I also got in a 3.1 ROM for it, but I am not sure if it is going into this unit or the other unit I am building. I am getting alot more traffic from all over the world lately. Please, If you enjoy this blog, the click on the "Donate" Button on the right had side. If everyone donated a buck or 2. I could devote a lot more time in making this a full website. Also, I am looking into "thank You" gifts for all that donate, possibly a free Amiga Application or DVD on the Amiga. Be assured that all that have already donated will receive it once I get it sorted out. Sunday, July 5, 2009 Last Day Of Vacation. Pt1 (maybe) Well it's noon on my last day off, I just finished making pancakes for brunch, and have to clean the kitchen before I can get to any Amiga projects. I got an e-mail at 4 am my time from AmigaKit. WOW, they work Sundays also (I believe they are 7 hours ahead of us, so that would probably have been noon his time). I believe it was Matthew, e-mailed me back and apologized for the delay. First they are updating the Easy ADF software this weekend, and they also updated my 3.3 Mini drive to a 4 gig Compact flash drive. I am not sure if they ran out of mindrives or if they had issues with them, but they disappeared from the website around Thursday. Either way, I was thinking of trying a full CF drive in one of my Amiga 600's, so this is just fine with me. Last week, one of my LG 17 inch TFT's blowed up. Nothing spectacular, just a small puff of blue smoke and no picture. As luck would have it, a local guy here wanted a 1804S monitor for a Video game cabinet and wanted to trade a regular CRT. Well it turned out to be a LG Flatron 777FN plus. These are the goofy looking ones with the big speaker that look like jets (or mickey mouse ears ) These are the only pictures I could find on the net. I guess nobody that bought them were brave enough to post pictures of the ugly monstrosity. Mine is more of an eggshell blue color. Looks goofy hooked up to my A1200, as I am using the other TFT on the A4000. The only good thing is that with a RCA Y-stereo plug adapter, I have speakers for the A1200. It has built in microphone and USB, but that is useless right now. Another "What was LG thinking?" moment. Saturday, July 4, 2009 Vacation Day 6 Day 6 of my Stay-cation is quickly coming to an end, only one more day left, then back to the grind. I have been busy with client's computers mostly elbow-deep in VISTA. I have come to a conclusion.- I am no longer supporting ANY Vista box. NONE. PERIOD. The only way I will work on a VISTA machine is 2 ways: 1) I will be charging $200 to $300 per hour (minimum 2 Hours), cash up front. 2) Only VISTA to XP downgrades. I am too old to putz around with such shitty software anymore and I have tools to diagnose and fix XP. I can not put into words, the amount I despise VISTA.My Windows 7 Beta ran out, so I had to install XP back on my Voodoo. I am not sure why, but the burners won't "Burn" DVD's anymore. The read DVD's, but nero just gets an "power distribution"error. I have the ISO to instal Window 7 RC 1, but I don't know when I want to do that. I may just stick with the tried and true XP. Not much more on the Amiga front, but today, I went for coffee and hung out with AMICUE, The Edmonton Amiga User Group. It was a fun afternoon, they just don't talk about Amiga's, but everything tech in general. I got to see the world's smallest (for now) video camera. It the size of a USB stick. I also saw a new High tech pen that not only reads back what you wrote (dictation) but also translates your writing to other languages and such. Even though I work nights, I am going to make an effort to go to these "Coffee" meetings each Saturday. Funny thing is, alot of these guys have their Amiga's packed away for years. But they probably have forgotten more than I will ever know. Even though I called AmigaKit Monday, and ordered Monday, they must be way behind. One of the 2 ordered is qued "Awaiting Dispatch" but the other order has not been touch yet. I am not sure if they even realise I broke the order into 2, and hopefully they will ship it all together in one package. I put my order in with Red's Retro site also on Monday and Red Shipped my order from him on Tuesday, so it should be here this Tuesday. I know I am looking at a week shipping from Amigakit though regular Royal Post, but the frustrating part is just waiting for them to get to and process my order. Tomorow, I have to look at my A4000, but I might just wait unit all my stuff is in for it. I might just tackle the power supply on the CDTV instead. I might just do nothing.	SPONSORS OF THE LOUNGE ADVERTISE Your Company Here: E-mail the lounge for more information

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

AmigaKit wins!

Last week, I mentioned it was a horse race to see which package got here faster, one from Amigakit and the package from China. Well, as expected, Amigakit won.
When you first unpack this box, you might see just a bunch of random parts, but they all have a specific purpose.Heck, Even the guys atAmigaKit, must be scratching their heads at my orders.
This order had 2 -1CM laptop IDE cables, 1 - A600 floppy drive cable, a "Gayle" chip adapter and an A4000 ATX converter cable.
Again, I must mention the packaging was top notch, but the Gayle Chip adapter is missing any instructions on the right way to mount it. I will hunt them down later. The Gayle chip is for my A1200, for when I get it "On-line".
The IDE and floppy cables will go into the A600's, as the only floppy cable I have, is meant of an A2000 and it is 10 times to long.
The A4000 ATX cable is for an "up coming" project, as I intend to mount an ATX power supply in the 4000 soon.
The biggest surprise was they sent me an A600 floppy drive bracket. The CORRECT one. I had asked about one in my "order Comments" section, but they didn't reply. I had assumed that they didn't see it, but again, they have proven me wrong! Thanks guys!
AmigaKit was first to the door. The shipment from China did come in also later and a "replacement" shipment from my Ebay seller. The problem is he sent me the EXACT same floppy drive mounts (the A1200 kind) as before. I guess I have to ship these back to him also.

Also, today (like I didn't need MORE) I had received word on a possible A1000 collection, that if I can swing it, I can get. I have to wait until the 15 th of August for the cash for it though. Looks like a boxed A1000 and Monitor, and a bunch of extra goodies. If this turns out good, I will finally have a WORKING A1000, and not just a bunch of parts.
And I just keep chuging along. Someday soon, this will be all complete.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

More Work, Less Amiga for now

Due to a fellow co-worker ending up in the hospital, I was switched stores, and now I am working More hours and I am down to one day off a week. This week , nothing came in yet. Not from China, Nor AmigaKit, so nothing physical was done this week on anything.
But, I did manage to pay my AMICUE dues and I am now a full fledged member of AMICUE. I already have a "Thing" where I demo the latest hardware to the group from Amigakit and such. The first real meeting will be in September, so I have lots of time to come up with "the hardware" I am going to demo. I probably will do a bunch of small stuff, like the CF -IDE adapters, and the ADF transfer, but that is not set in stone yet. I probably will take over the newsletter as it hasn't been updated since 2002. It's time to kick some new life into the Amiga group here in Edmonton. I have been showing some of the Amigakit stuff at our Saturday coffee meetings.
Speaking of Amigakit, they must be reading my mind (or my blogs) as the (very) small IDE cables have shown up (.6 cm) and the 90 degree IDE adapter I was looking for showed up on the site. I hunt the site every day, and it does infact change all the time, so take a look. I was expecting my last package to show up Thursday, but it looks like customs has held it up, hopefully it will be here tomorrow.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Putzin Around day

So today is just a random day off, and I am playing with more toys from Amigakit.
I loaded up the EasyADF PCMCIA Compact Flash Transfer Kit on the A1200 and made an ADF for Burt today. The fist install gave me an error, so I tried again and it went through . I was worried about my unformated new 2 gig card, but it seemed to see it and the transfer to my PC wen fine. It compressed it into a ZIP file or a GZIP file, not an .ADF which surprised me, but that's OK.
I came up with a easy solution for my A600 hard drives, as AmigaKit could not give me a resonable or viable solution on my Ticket. So, I ordered 2 - 1CM hard drive cables. If I could find a FEMALE to FEMALE plug with no cable in between, that would even be better. Even a 90 degree "card" would do, but I don't think 1 exists.
I was searching E-bay for something, when I came across these babies.

These have a female end on the bottom, That means the sit parallel to the motherboard (flat) with NO cable needed at all. These beauties were less then $5 Canadian and INCLUDED shipping! I bought 2 and now I am going to put these in the other 2 A600's. -1 goes in mine, the one from AmigaKit will go in Mike's and one in the spare. The reason for the Amigakit's in Mike's is simple, it's connector is straight out the back (not the bottom), so with the IDE Kit, It fit's perfectly with NO cable and rests on the hard drive cradle.
Obviously these come with no CF cards. Now if AmigaKIT would JUST sell the CF cards with their great installation software, everything would be perfect.
As my shipment left AmigaKit today, it's a Horse Race to see which shipment gets here first -the one from China or the UK. We are taking bets..

Yesterday, I got in my A600 keyboard for the spare unit. I was at work last night and took it apart to clean it for it was not bad, but, after 20 years, any keyboard needs cleaning. Also, this unit will be for sale on my online store, so I don not want to sell a filthy keyboard.
The basic teardown is almost the same as any other Amiga keyboard, but this one is smaller. Also, to my surprise, this unit had real metal springs instead of the rubber ones in the A2000 keyboard.

The top row of keys were a bit yellowed, but not too bad.

Once all the keys are off, you can see the grime on the board.

I did not bother to take it all apart, since the circuit sheet doesn't usually need cleaning and I had no micro screwdriver.

Now its all back together and looks good.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Another Minor setback

So AmigaKit's Package showed up today. If I haven't said this before, I am saying it now. The shipper's at Amigakit must take great pride in packaging your order. They make sure that each piece is sealed and wrapped perfectly. So, when you receive a package from them, make sure you have a sharp knife and carefully cut everything open.

I got the CF Drive kit in, and installed it. The OS 3.1 install went flawlessly this time, but, like I thought, the cabling was an issue. I was going to order one off of ebay, they are going for dirt cheap, but I wanted one that was know to work with the Amiga. The ones off of ebay just had a female IDE connection on the bottom and it sat 90 degrees to the motherboard with no need for a power cable.

As you can see, this kit came with a very long cable, presumably so you could modd the case and have the drive sticking out of the back or side of the Amiga. Consequently, with all this cable, you cant have the drive sitting on the hard drive cradle and actually close the Amiga up. This is not a huge issue, but kind of irritating as I try to hunt down something that will actually do what I want it to. I put in a ticket with AmigaKit to see if they have anything that will fit the bill.
I also got in the 4xIDE Buffered Interface (with Allegro CDFS). I had purchased this for Mike's A600, so I could get the 80 gig drive going on it.

As you can see, it stands Vertically from the motherboard and Mike may decide to throw a CD rom drive on it later (If I can get it to work with this hard drive) . As you can see, I can't blot down the hard drive, as the cable will push the IDE fix. I am not sure if I can do anything about that. IF I can't get the drive formatted, I will buy a CF drive from Ebay and toss it in there that is under 2 gigs. I have had enough of throwing money at these A600's, Just to find out the parts were actually made for an A1200, and they are not "universal" like stated when I bought them.
The rest of the stuff I got in will have to be set up on Thursday (my Day off).

I feel like I am going in Circles with these Bloody A600's.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

ROMS, Brackets, Motherboards and Floppy cables

So the A600 parts have been slowly trickling in. I am still waiting for a Keyboard, and my shipment from AmigaKit, which should be here any day now.
This week I received my floppy drive for my one Amiga 600. The Auction specifically stated an A600 floppy. I was hoping it was another Panasonic drive- But NO.

The above photo is what I received, a Chinon drive. Notice the brass "Tab" and Bracket (actually there is 2 brackets in the photo, one is attached to the side of the drive). This is actually a drive and bracket (and cable) from an A1200. I had emailed the seller (who deals in a ton of Amiga parts) and he wrote back that they were universal and fit both the A1200 and A600.
You know, for a guy who strips down Amiga's and sells the parts, he is not very knowledgeable.

The A600 and A1200 Floppy drive brackets and cables DO NOT interchange. The cable is about half the length on an A1200 as an A600, as the plug is in completely different locations. The same goes for the mounting bracket.

Above is a photo (fom Mike's Amiga) of the floppy drive mounted in an A600. You will notice the bracket is quite long and the motherboard mount is half way in between the screw holes.

Here is a closer look.

And here is the A1200's
I am not sure where people get the idea that the bracket is the same, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this one out.

I also found this ROM installed in one. Notice it is V2.05 37.229. Now if you go to any of the Amiga Hardware sites, they list the FIRST A600 ROM as V2.05 37.299. This is indded a interesting development, because this ROM predates it. I had asked on the forms and nobody seems to have a clue, but at least one other person had one and the Amiga Hardware guide shows a photo of one.
I had also talked about it to some of the guys from AMICUE and they suggested it was either a PAL ROM or go to Dave H's Archives and see if anything is there.
I also was trying to hunt down the differences between motherboard revisions, but it looks like that information is lost for the ages. The real sad thing is that Amiga has tons of reference sites with lots of pictures of hardware, but no real information except the basic facts. It would be nice to See a site with in depth info, reviews and comments about the hardware from actual owners. Like the old saying "where is the meat and potatoes?"
Mike's (my webmaster) A600 is just waiting for a drive, the spare needs the bracket and a keyboard. I might have to make a bracket for it, I have tin snips and sheet metal around here.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Cleaning the latest A600

Today brought more rain, but I did walk out to the post office and pick up another parcel. The Mail Carrier did not want to "Get it Wet" bringing it to me, so I had to walk six blocks in the rain to pick it up and walk back.
My package today was 2 ATX "converter" cables for the Amiga 1200,600,500. Say goodbye to 20 year old power supplies, Just use a regular ATX. I need at least 3 more. What more can I say about Jim, and Red's Retro Computing? I ordered it on Tuesday of last week, It was shipped Wednesday (because I missed the Tuesday mail delivery), so a week turnaround from Florida, Including 2 holidays. Great service as always. Now I do believe these cables were made by Nathan from Amigamaniac.com.

It's good to see Red's has imported them. I had ordered a Rom switcher from Nathan a while ago, but I messed it up putting a longer cable on it. Nathan has some good stuff, check him out.

This afternoon was spent cleaning the A600, I won't bore you with pictures, its all pretty dry stuff. I start with a "Mr. Clean" magic eraser, scrub it down then spray it with "fantastic". the hardest part is the vent slots on the top shell. I soak it with fantastic, then take a screwdriver and a papertowel and slide it through. Again, the best way is a dishwasher.Before that, I cleaned the motherboard with canned air and a brush, carefully removed it. The good thing is the A600 only has 1 scew holding in the motherboard. Ther is a second screw that also holds the mount for the floppy drive, but thats it.
I am going to wimp out on the keyboard. I will just pop the keys off and scrub each key, rather than dissect the whole thing. As it is, I spend at least 6 hours cleaning these things, I hate to do the keyboard also. It's enough to drive you to drink.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Another A600 in

It's Raining today (we needed it, its been so dry), and my Amiga Auctions and purchases from the last few weeks are starting to arrive in.
First, It was a package for DHL. I had heard that DHL had pulled out of Canada last year, but I guess that is not the case.
It was my complete (so I thought) A600. This Auction was a real dog. The original auction was for a A600 with box , a Commodore MPS 1270 Printer and Disks. The auction stated 30 Pounds shipping to Canada, and I won. I had e-mailed the seller to forget the printer, disks, and power supply, and he had agreed, After all, I just wanted the box , A600, and workbench Disks.
After the auction was over, without asking me, he refunded my money. Then he e-mailed back that shipping would be 70 pounds, and he had felt that was too much. I asked him again (and paid for it again) to just ship with A600, and box and disks (He could not under stand why I didn't need the power supply) this time, he came back with a 20 pound shipping rate. So, I paid it. A few days later, he e-mailed back and again was going to refund my money, because it was "Still too much money" for him to ship.
At this point, I got angry. After a few nasty e-mails, he finally decided to ship it DHL for another 10 Pounds. I split the difference and sent him 5.
Well, It showed up this morning-no Original box. DHL did not ask for any COD (pretend "Boarder Fees/extortion Fees) they just wanted a signature. I unpacked it, and other than 2 keys "Popped" off-not broken (thank God), and the case slightly "out of joint", it arrived in good shape. The case was not broken. Dirty, but not broken. I opened it up, to see what we had and the inside is filthy. The biggest surprise was no top RF shield and a TEAC 235f floppy drive. Normally, I would expect to see a Panasonic JU-253-043P floppy drive, but the UK may have had different drives or Commodore UK Refurbished this A600 (as it has, what appears to be, Original Commodore Barcodes. It also has a Revision 1.5 Motherboard. The unit has no Hard drive, but a hard drive cage, I am suspecting that the hard drive Cage was standard even if the unit shipped with no drive. It also has a 2.05 ROM. The inside is dirty, so tomorrow, I will tear it all apart and clean it all up. Hopefully the floppy drive is ok.
I also got in a 3.1 ROM for it, but I am not sure if it is going into this unit or the other unit I am building.

I am getting alot more traffic from all over the world lately. Please, If you enjoy this blog, the click on the "Donate" Button on the right had side. If everyone donated a buck or 2. I could devote a lot more time in making this a full website. Also, I am looking into "thank You" gifts for all that donate, possibly a free Amiga Application or DVD on the Amiga. Be assured that all that have already donated will receive it once I get it sorted out.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Last Day Of Vacation. Pt1 (maybe)

Well it's noon on my last day off, I just finished making pancakes for brunch, and have to clean the kitchen before I can get to any Amiga projects.
I got an e-mail at 4 am my time from AmigaKit. WOW, they work Sundays also (I believe they are 7 hours ahead of us, so that would probably have been noon his time). I believe it was Matthew, e-mailed me back and apologized for the delay. First they are updating the Easy ADF software this weekend, and they also updated my 3.3 Mini drive to a 4 gig Compact flash drive. I am not sure if they ran out of mindrives or if they had issues with them, but they disappeared from the website around Thursday. Either way, I was thinking of trying a full CF drive in one of my Amiga 600's, so this is just fine with me.
Last week, one of my LG 17 inch TFT's blowed up. Nothing spectacular, just a small puff of blue smoke and no picture. As luck would have it, a local guy here wanted a 1804S monitor for a Video game cabinet and wanted to trade a regular CRT. Well it turned out to be a LG Flatron 777FN plus. These are the goofy looking ones with the big speaker that look like jets (or mickey mouse ears )

These are the only pictures I could find on the net. I guess nobody that bought them were brave enough to post pictures of the ugly monstrosity. Mine is more of an eggshell blue color. Looks goofy hooked up to my A1200, as I am using the other TFT on the A4000. The only good thing is that with a RCA Y-stereo plug adapter, I have speakers for the A1200. It has built in microphone and USB, but that is useless right now. Another "What was LG thinking?" moment.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Vacation Day 6

Day 6 of my Stay-cation is quickly coming to an end, only one more day left, then back to the grind.
I have been busy with client's computers mostly elbow-deep in VISTA. I have come to a conclusion.- I am no longer supporting ANY Vista box. NONE. PERIOD. The only way I will work on a VISTA machine is 2 ways: 1) I will be charging $200 to $300 per hour (minimum 2 Hours), cash up front.
2) Only VISTA to XP downgrades.
I am too old to putz around with such shitty software anymore and I have tools to diagnose and fix XP. I can not put into words, the amount I despise VISTA.My Windows 7 Beta ran out, so I had to install XP back on my Voodoo. I am not sure why, but the burners won't "Burn" DVD's anymore. The read DVD's, but nero just gets an "power distribution"error. I have the ISO to instal Window 7 RC 1, but I don't know when I want to do that. I may just stick with the tried and true XP.
Not much more on the Amiga front, but today, I went for coffee and hung out with AMICUE,
The Edmonton Amiga User Group. It was a fun afternoon, they just don't talk about Amiga's, but everything tech in general. I got to see the world's smallest (for now) video camera. It the size of a USB stick. I also saw a new High tech pen that not only reads back what you wrote (dictation) but also translates your writing to other languages and such. Even though I work nights, I am going to make an effort to go to these "Coffee" meetings each Saturday. Funny thing is, alot of these guys have their Amiga's packed away for years. But they probably have forgotten more than I will ever know.
Even though I called AmigaKit Monday, and ordered Monday, they must be way behind. One of the 2 ordered is qued "Awaiting Dispatch" but the other order has not been touch yet. I am not sure if they even realise I broke the order into 2, and hopefully they will ship it all together in one package. I put my order in with Red's Retro site also on Monday and Red Shipped my order from him on Tuesday, so it should be here this Tuesday. I know I am looking at a week shipping from Amigakit though regular Royal Post, but the frustrating part is just waiting for them to get to and process my order.
Tomorow, I have to look at my A4000, but I might just wait unit all my stuff is in for it. I might just tackle the power supply on the CDTV instead. I might just do nothing.

Friday, July 31, 2009

China Syndrome