Vacation Day 2

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Day 2 of my Stay-cation started of a bit late. My Paypal Auctions and my "reverse" Payments to my CC finally cleared. For those that don't know, Ebay/Paypal has a new policy, that if you sell something over a hundred dollars, they will hold that payment for 21 days or until the buyer leaves feedback. My Buyer took forever to leave feedback and in fact had 1 day left until the 21 day hold period was over.
I had finished paying for my A600 (piece by piece) auctions and I got an A600 keyboard, floppy drive, OS 3.0 and a book of programs from the Ebay store the seller has. Then, I called up Matthew at AmigaKit. I wanted to actually talk to him and to let him know to ship my stuff Royal Post. It was late in the day for him, and only 11 AM here. I ended up having to break my shipment into 2 orders, because Paypal will not let you "Pay with both a Paypal balance and the rest on CC". They used to, but why they stopped that is anyone's guess.
I then went over to Red's Sight and ordered 2 ATX to 500 Cables. I could have ordered them from AmigaKit, but Red has them on for $15 compared to $53.90 from AmigaKit. I ended up buying 2. This is the only product that has such a big gap between the 2 dealers. Ussually they are within a buck or 2 of each other.
I then ordered another 3.1 ROM. Yea - I should get about 10 of them, as all my Amiga's have been upgraded to 3.1.
This afternoon, I went out and seen the new Tranformer's Movie. Robot Chicken summed it up best with "Micheal Bay- EXPLOSIONS, Explosions, Explosions". As a geek who grew up in the '80's, I had loved the Transformers and was expecting them to screw it up in a movie. I was surprised at the first one (But BumbleBee should have been a VW Bug). The second one was even better. It had all the favorite characters, even Ravage.
In my opinion, Ravage stole the show with no dialog. Arcee was there, but they split her into three robots with a "hive" mind, and glazed over the fact that she even existed. I thought for sure Megan Fox's character would have Arcee as a "guardian" at the end of the movie.
The biggest suprise was Jetfire. My younger brother had 2 of the "original" Jetfire toys. Low and behold, they were the same toys as a Robotech Veritech (Rick Hunter's).
An interesting "side note" is how Hasbro lost the Bandi Licencing and had to change the Jetfire toy. They also changed his name to Skyfire, in order to justify the whole mess.
In the movie Jetfire is an OLD Blackbird SR-71. He even has a cane/crutch. It was a pretty cool adaption, but I would have loved to see the Veritech in action. There is a nasty ruomer that Tobey McGuire is "spearheading" a secret "Robotech" Movie. We can only pray.
All and all Transformers 2 was good. I would have loved to see less of the parents and a bit less of Sam's Whining, but the Special effects make up for it.


Now for today's RANDOM Photo:

Stay-cation Day 1

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Today marks the official first day of my "Stay"cation. I have a whole week off and have nothing really planned. I have 3 Amiga "projects" to do - IF I get around to them. Building an A600, putting a new Power supply in the CDTV, and getting around to the A4000.
I also have to desperately clean my apartment, as the recent tough economic times, I have had to let go of my maid (Yeh! that's the excuse).

Today, I just vegged out, but I did manage to get all the parts together for the A600. This is the (almost) second complete unit.
I had found a Ebay dealer from the UK that sell parts for relatively cheap. I had got in a Case and motherboard in, and today I scrubbed down the case and mounted the motherboard. Today, I got the keyboard for it (won it on e-bay) so It will be another week for it and a floppy drive to come in. This week I had won ANOTHER A600 from the UK, so in a few weeks, I will have 3 units total. One will be going to my Web Host Mike, for he wants to learn to program on it and also play Lemmings. I just got in the floppy version of lemmings (i actually have 3 factory copies, but all 3 are borked or at least one of the disks are- I have tons of floppies like this -Bubble Bubble, Rampage, Shadow of the beast. I hate borked disks).
Being home is no joy though, It had not been noon, and a new client dropped off a computer to do a Format and Windows re-install. Looks like I will make more money staying at home this week that actually going into work.
I wanted to mention a few things did happen this week. Mike at Software hut refunded my money for the Typhoon card. I was tired of waiting for it. As always with my luck, Softhut DID actually get a batch of the non-Scsi cards in. When I seen the pictures of the cards, they had turned out to be old stock that was re-furbished, not "NEW" cards from GVP. Looking at the pictures of the Cards, something just wasn't right. Alarm bells were ringing. I am not sure why, but something seems off from the pictures. No Crystals, components are weird. I am glad now I did cancel my order. It seems the cover has to be off on the bottom to run these cards (or get a tower set up). My card seems perfectly happy inside the case.
I am not putting down Mike or Softhut, and probably will order from them in the future, but if I would have waited, I think I would have been disappointed by these cards. It was not what I expected them to be.

Now for today's RANDOM Photo:
Hotlinker's, be warned! I have taken some nasty measures to stop hotlinkng. I take no responsiblity if you get banned from your forum for putting a hotlink up.

Oh NO! Its Lemmings!

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So Yesterday was busy, With a bunch of personal stuff, blended in with the support tickets with AmigaKit, I received another couple of e-bay packages. The problem with the A600 hard drive, it turns out is that Amigakit formatted it with SFS, thinking or assuming it was going on an A1200. In my order "Comments" section, I did state it was going on a A600, but I am not sure if I wasn't clear enough or what on the matter. It looks like I am either going to have to order the 97"IDE Fix board for the A600 or get the new "Microdrives" from them. As it stands, I have at least 2 more A600's on the way, so likely, I will be ordering both.
In one of the Ebay Packages, I got a Lemmings CD for the CDTV/CD32. I had never played Lemmings back in the day, but everyone I knew had. This was a perfect test for my CD32 on my big screen TV. Other than it takes FOREVER (almost 4 minutes) to load, it works great. Also on the CD is a Jet plane simulator, I have not played it yet, nor is it labeled on the CD. (YES, It is a "Factory" Copy of the CD). Unlike my other Ebay Auction, I got a few Pirated CD's and have reported that to Ebay. If they would have stated that these Amiga CD's are Copied Software, I guess I would not care, but the fact they had tried to pawn them off as legit, well that just begs me to report them to Ebay. Not much more to say today, other than back to Lemmings....


Now for today's RANDOM Photo:

The A600 From Hell

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So, Installing a working hard drive in my A600 has been the chore from hell. Yesterday afternoon, I installed the new RAM, Hard drive and floppy Drive. I had reported that the floppy drive button "Broke" off in shipment, but upon further examination, the button was Sawed off. This is because the "New" floppy drives from Amiga don't quite fit exactly on the A600's and consequently the eject button doesn't line up. I also believe the new drives are a couple of millimeters bigger than the old drives and the case has difficulty closing properly. This is not that much of an issue, as I will send the old floppy to AmigaKit to get repaired, Because I would like 1 A600 that is working flawlessly to take to work with me.
After the physical mounting of parts, I booted it up and was hopping for the Amigakit software to come up and ask me for my install disks for OS 3.1. This was not the case. Instead, I was greeted with a software error: Software Failure: SHD3: Software Failure (error #80000003) Wait for disk Activity to Finnish, with a "Suspend or Reboot" option. If I hit "suspend" just a blank workbench screen would come up for a few seconds then it would "reboot" with a GURU error.
If I hit reboot, it would just do the same thing.
So I went in and held both Mouse buttons down and disabled every drive, but the HD0. After about 20 reboots, Lo and behold the Amigakit software came up. It asked me for my workbench disk, the my local disk. then things went wonky, it asked for my storage disk, but wouldn't let me put it in, it just proceed with the install like I had put it in, then it crashed.
After that, now I just get an IDE fix "NAG" screen.
I had emailed Matthew, (I believe I was talking with Matthew) on it, and he sent me some suggestions, But after 3 hours, I am just going to send in both my drives and have Amigakit load up a default 3.1 installation on both. That way I always have a back up drive.
Matthew suggested I put in a ticket, which I will, but I chalk this all up to inexperience.

I also Emailed Joe at Softhut on the status (IF ANY) of those Typhoon cards. I am going to ask for my money back if there is no news 2 months is long enough to wait.

Now for today's RANDOM Photo:
You all know how much I LOVE the Iphoney:

AmigaKit.com Shameless plug!

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Today's blog is a shameless plug to AmigaKit.com. I know in the past, I was a bit harsh on them for shipping, but they do make up for it. The picture below is of Matthew Leaman, the owner of AmigaKit (Sorry, I stole it of the net)
He has seen to it that all my orders are filled properly.
I finally got my package in from Fed Ex today. I had ordered a new floppy drive, a new hard drive and a new 602 Ram expansion for my A 600, and He had also thrown in 5 Battery holders. In the past I had complained that the grey battery holders were crap, and he (without even telling me) had thrown in 5 of the right ones. That's fantastic customer service. He had also sent me the replacement disk for "PinBall" That had come in with my A1200. That rocks. So this afternoon, I will be upgrading my A600. Hopefully now, I will have a hard drive that will install properly.The plastic eject button on the floppy had broken off, but a drop of glue will fix that right up. That of course is not AmigaKit's fault.
In the next few days, I will be ordering more (YES, MORE) stuff from AmigaKit. I will be getting an A4000 IDE terminator, A A4000 ATX power lead, An ADF Compact flash Transfer kit and finally an PCMCIA network card to get my A1200 online. This time, I will be very careful to make sure the package gets shipped though Royal Post, and not FED EX.

So, if you are looking for those parts for your amiga, do not hesitate to order from AmigaKit.com, even if you are half the world away. You will not be let down.

Now for today's RANDOM Photo:

FEES FEES and frigin MORE fees

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Yesterday, I spent the day Shipping out some products for the online store and also my A2000 HD spare unit. On Friday, AmigaKit shipped my order of A600 parts and I thought today I would be working happily on my A600, BUT NOOOOOO!!!!

First, I want to say AmigaKit ROCKS! They have the parts I need usually, and besides the occasional delay on getting to my order, they always have super fast shipping and top notch customer service. That being said, they use FED EX. Now in the past, I have ranted about UPS, But FED EX is starting to pull the same shit UPS does. Fricken FEES. FED EX came to my door this morning and wanted another $20 for shipping. The boarder fricken fee is a FLAT $5!!!!, if they get stopped. What the hell is the use of paying for shipping in advance, if the shipper is going to hose you again at your door and extort money from you!!! I told him to come back AFTER payday. WHO Carries cash these days? And has money half way between paydays?
This of course is not AmigaKit's fault, but another example of big corporations bending the little guy over and EXTORTING MORE MONEY from them! plain and simple. In fact, because this has happened twice now for Fed Ex, and ordering from AmigaKit, I am temped to give all my Business in the future to Red's Retro In the US. Jim uses USPS and what he quotes is what you pay. Period.
Sure, it may take a week, but you don't get it up the butt in extortion fees.
You would think that Fed Ex would give a Courtesy Call to inform you ahead of time that there are fees, so you don't start laying in to the driver when he demands COD payments- is that too much like common sense?, and they don't carry change! How fricken Convenient is that.

Sorry, but its about time we start standing up to these yahoo's and do something about all these imaginary Fee's that big Corporations are charging. The Govt takes a bind eye when the big companies do it(mostly because they are paid to look the other way), but if a little guy like me does it, I would be in jail faster than you can shake a stick at it.

Alright, enough ranting!
I am going to get back to the A4000 tomorrow. A week of leaving it alone is enough time. Since I can't get back on the 6 and all I can do is play with the 12, the 4 seems the next thing to get back into.

Now for today's RANDOM Photo:

PULLED Due to HOTLINKING ASSES

Goodbye...old...friend.....

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It was with a bit of sadness, that I packed up my A3000 this morning. I am trying to make room around here, and since the A3000 is the "odd man Out" I sold it yesterday, to a guy off of Amibay. He had gotten a stinker of a deal on Ebay, and really wanted another A3000. I was going to sell it without the hard drive, as my drive has lots of "Failed" installs and a failed install of Amiporn. To this day, I don't know what Amiporn is suppose to be, but when I opened up a picture on the hard drive, all I got was a less than attractive girl with an Amiga and I could barely see it because the screen resolution was so low. I warned the buyer of this, and to wipe the drive as soon as he got it.
But the old girl did not go away in vain, the money I made from the sale went straight to AmigaKit to order new parts for the A600. I actually lost money on this sale, as I sold it for about $100 cheaper than what I bought it for in January, but at least it went to a Amiga user.

I also found a "new" problem with the A600. I suspect one of the Circuits on the keyboard is faulty, as I have a "dead" row of keys. The "4", "F', and "V" keys are all dead. When I put my order in at AmigaKit, I did ask if they had a spare circuit board, as I am afraid I cant use an A2000 in this puppy.
I am now experimenting with mirroring this blog over at Amiga.org. The only difference is the "RANDOM" photo will not be published there. This is for 2 reasons: 1) someone may believe that a certain "RANDOM" photo is not safe for work, I really just post them because they make me smile.
2) If they want to see them, it will force them to come to the site :)

So today is back to work on my A600. I am going to try to install the IDE FIX for large drives today, but again they are in a different compression scheme and I know that it won't be a cakewalk.
A big shoutout "thank you" goes to Burt who gave me a good .ADF file program (TransADF) and actually gave me a "Good" instructions on how to use it to make real floppies. It worked flawlessly the first time.

I am still waiting for the "Typhoon" card from Softhut. I did e-mail Joe and he is still waiting from GVP. Its been over a month now (almost 2 since the advert went up). I don't need the card anymore since one "fell into my lap" and I am debating weather to hold on or get my money back at this point. One month is just way too long to keep saying "sometime tomorrow" or "I hope to ship next week". I know this is not Joe's fault, but I paid in full expecting a 2 week turn around tops, Not a month plus.

Now for today's "RANDOM" photo:

AmiDOS

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The last few days I have been playing with the A600, and the A1200. I tried to install the OS to the hard drive, But the 370 Meg drive refused to Format and as a result, I tossed it. I got up and took the bus out to the used Computer store this morning, to pick up another drive. Normally I have a stack of 1 to 5 gig Laptop drives, but they must have gotten left behind in my move last year.
I found an IBM Deathstar 10 gig drive. They only hosed me $20 for it. I got home about noon and installed it. I then ran Install. The OS 3.1 will only recognize 4 gigs until I install the patch, so now its "formatting". 4 Hours later and its only about 80% done. I am considering myself lucky so far, it did not give me the problems the other drive did.
While the days have been playing with hardware, I have a lot of free time at work. We have no 'Net access, nor can we watch TV, so I read. I have been studying the book, shown above. It's a slow and dry read, But I have read through it twice so far, and at least I have learned one small thing. In order to see the files in a window, you have to turn on "show all files" in each window, every time. While this is not a perfect solution, low and behold, I am not running blind all the time. Now to find a program that turns that feature on all the time, on every window.
The A1200 has been running great. But I am still fighting with the different file compression formats. I was installing the "Magic" software, that came with the 1200. I thought the "WizZ" disks were corrupted, but then I read the manual and see that I can't install WizZ, but have to boot right to the floppies, Its kind of a frustrating game unitll you get use to the "3D" view they have on it. I had a install issue with Pinball, I will try that again later.
I am not sure when I will get back to the 4000, but soon. Today, I will be loading up the 600, so I can take it to work. I hope the WHDload is not too advanced to load up. LOL.

And now for today's RANDOM Photo:

12 and 4

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Sorry everyone, there is not much pictures to post today.
Yesterday was a mixed day of sweat and frustration for my Amiga's. I had planed a simple day of getting the drivers that I downloaded burned on to a CD, transferred then in my A4000 to floppies for the A1200. I also wanted to re-install the "boing Bag" updates for the A4000.
Seems simple enough, but since my OS crash on the A4000, it has been very wonky to say the least.
Since the A4000 crash, my CD -rom drive has not worked. Yes, it was all installed from CD, but since the last re-boot, the OS refused to access the CD drive. It could see it in mounter, but that was it. So, after trying everything I could think of to get it running, I finally resorted to a clean install.
Since OS 3.5 and OS 3.9 are ON CD, I had to install OS 3.1 first. The conundrum is I HAVE 2 copies of OS 3.1 and on both copies, the "workbench" disk has read errors. But e-mailed me another copy, but I had no way of converting it into a usable disk.
So, after swapping disks back and forth for what seemed like forever, I had formatted the hard drive and installed OS 3.1.
Still no CD. I then swapped out the CD rom again, nothing. Then I added a new CD file system, Nothing.
At this time, I was getting frustrated and installed the GVP A4008 Scsi card back in. I was going to use the SCSI cd rom.
This time, the machine would not boot (just a "indivision" screen, then Black). So I put the scsi drive back in and pulled the boot jumper.
Nothing.
Switched slots on the A4000.
Nothing.
Pulled all of the ram and set the jumpers on the SCSI board.
Nothing.
Not even my floppy drive was working at this point, so I could not even boot to floppy.
At this point I threw in the towel on the A4000. I will get back to it later.
Then it was on to the 1200, It booted flawlessley , but only recognized 16 megs of ram. I set the screen up and luckily I had the HighGFX drive on floppy and set it up also. AmigaKit even put their logo into the boot rom, but there was no wall paper to be seen on my system. I though that AmigaKit would have thrown a few of their logos in a cool background, but no.
I then took a break to have a bite to eat, and think on the next step.
It hit me, use the "Amiga Explorer" transfer program, through the null modem I had set up on my 2000, along time ago. I had also made a back-up floppy of the settings. But that was made in OS 1.2, could it work in 3.9? After digging through stacks of floppies, I found it, and it did work.

Now, one of the "pet Peeves" I have about the Amiga (I had ranted about this before) is how BLIND the OS is at seeing files in Workbench (the gui). I am spoiled in Windows, I put files in a folder and open the folde on the desktop, and low and behold! there they are. NOT on the Amiga.
I first saw this in Workbench 1.2, and I thought they would have fixed this horendus bug in OS 3.9, but NOOOOOOO!

I transfered all my .lha, .dms and other files to my empty HD02 thinking they would be easy to find. I oppened up HD02 and absolutely nothing showed up. Nata. Zip. Then its over to the "finder" program, and there they are. WHAT THE HELL IS HAVING A GUI GOOD FOR IF YOU HAVE TO USE A CLI or other software TO SEE FILES ON YOUR HARD DRIVE???
Then you have to open "Unpacker" once they are unpacked, MAYBE you can see them in the Workbench.
Now this was frustrating, but guess what? "unpacker" has no clue what .DMS files are. Why post driver files up on the internet, that "Out of the box" an Amiga can't deal with? What kind of brain dead person thought that one up?
So, it was up to Aminet to find a DMS program. After downloading over a dozen, and none of them actually worked (some needed other programs installed, and if you haven't had the PLEASURE of finding stuff on Aminet, do yourself a faver and skip it, I would rather have my teeth pulled than trying to stort through that heap for a good working program).
I finally at 11 o'clock found on Amiga.org a thread showing a step by step guilde for a command line DMS program. I had started this at 9 in the morning, and worked until midnight.
You would think after all these years, SOMEONE would step up to the plate and make thes "little" programs that would be simple to use for the newbe. But hey, thats just me.

Now for Today's "RANDOM" photo"

Look, I understand if your sex doll line doesn't sell, but to re-package it for kids is just plain WRONG.

6 and 12

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Yesterday, Before work, I wanted to install the hard drive and load this Junior up. I knew I was going to have to start out with OS 2.1.
When you first open an A600, you have to be careful of the LED cable. it simply unplugs, but you can't access anything until it's out of the way.


Once unplugged, you can simply flip up the keyboard and top shell out of the way.
Not much to look at with the RF shield in the way, but for now, we don't have to touch it.
Note the copper "tape". Below this is the Kick ROM, So in the future, when we upgrade it to a 3.1 ROM, we will know where it is at.
Now, my hard drive was already mounted on a hard drive cradle. Also there were no jumpers that I could see on the old 370 Meg Drive, so I just plugged it in and put the hard drive sled in the slots. That's it. (so it would seem...).
Now for the life of me, the unit would not close with the drive sled in. I had first though that one of the top support brackets was bent a bit and I tried adjusting it. No go. in the end, I removed the sled and just taped (with black electrical tape) the drive to the RF shielding) closed up the unit and hooked it all up. I found out the floppy drive was toast, but luckily, I could boot from my external floppy drive. The Hard drive tool kit could not recognize the drive, so I shut it down and will futz with it later when my new parts come in for it. I will have to order a new floppy from AmigaKit.

Today's Task was to find some EDO ram and install the M1230 board in my 1200.
I grabbed the HP tower from the other day , hoping to swipe from there.
But, to my surprise, this tower had PC100 ram in it. so it was off to the store room to find my EDO stash. I found it, but, I discovered the largest stick was only 32 megs, so I will have to live with that for now. I also downloaded the manual for it.
I took this time to replace the battery. The old battery seemed to have a bit of corrosion on it, and it probably had died long ago.
Now, according to the instructions, all you had to do was open the access panel and put in the card. Yeah, Right..
As you can see the card is way bigger that the opening. I tried every which way to put this card in, but it seemed that MENSA puzzles were easier to do this early in the morning. So I broke out the screw driver and (GASP) broke the warranty seal from AmigaKit, and opened up the case.
Once all the crews were out (I didn't need to remove all of them, more on that later), I noticed that I am not the only one who like to use the hot glue gun.
Every cable (which is a very good idea- my A3000 is going to get it) is glued down. Even on the floppy drive.
Now, from the top, you could slide in the board very easily. The only "hard" thing was trying to figure out where to push on the board, to plug it into the A1200, because it did need a bit of force to slide on the connection.
Now it was just a matter of putting it all back together, but something didn't feel right. There was nothing to mount the hard drive to, that I could see anyway. I doubt if Amigakit shipped it just loose. I put the shell back together and the it hit me. There four screws under the top "Lip" . There is nothing in these left hand side ones, and the other side is the floppy drive, so that must be where they mounted it.
Sure enough, I was right. Those four screws did not have to be removed, and you can see that AmigaKit glued a small plastic shield down on the indivision, where the hard drive touches it (or might)
Now, everything fit back together perfectly. and nothing is loose or rattling. Tomorrow is my day off, so I have to make an emergency back up disk on the 4000 and hopefully fix the OS on the 1200 and get everything running fine.


Now for today's RANDOM Photo:

Another BIG BOX O' Stuff

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I was woken up by the Postal carrier today, another Big Box of Amiga Stuff.
Last week I had won some incredible auctions on Ebay. Turns out the seller was an Ex-Amiga Dealer and had some other stuff, and I jumped on it.
First, He had an NTSC A600, I offered him $100 "sight Unseen" as I have been looking FOREVER for an A600. Now we all know how possibly this could have come in, but I was pleasantly surprised when I unwrapped it.
It looks almost mint! Nice and white, A PRIME example of a A600. Even the little plastic coating/cover over the Commodore logo is still there. This is a HD unit. The seller inforemed me there was no HD inside and ws going to provide me with a HD kit.
I put the bic Pen there to show the small size. The unit is just over 2 bic pens in length. Perfect to slide into my BackPack for work.
I then fliped the unit over and checked for an expansion. I didn't ask about one, as I can pick up a new one from Red's or AmigaKit right away.
Just my luck, nothing in this June Bug!
I then put it aside for now, and pulled out the other "goodies". The first thing was the boxed A520 kit. I have tons of pictures of those, so I skipped it. It didn't have a switch box in it, but I have a few kicking around.
Next was the hard drive Kit and a game called Tank Attack. He threw in the game for nothing. It looks like a "risk" game as it has a whole bunch of tiny plastic tank pieces in it.
Next was the whole reason I found him and this. The Auction on e-bay stateted this:
A "New in box" Blizzard 1230 IV card, these had everything on them including SCSI. I won the auction for an unbelieveable $41 USD. These cards go for anywhere around $350 and up. This is where it became "too good to be true". Now before I go on, to be fair the seller did TRY to warn me. I was discussing with them how these had SCSI on them, and he sent me a link to the picture of the card on the BboaH. The like he sent me was NOT the Blizzard, but the Microbotics M1230 XA card. At the time, I though it was just a typo on the URL, but when I oppened up the box, it was indeed the M1230 XA card. I was a bit dissapointed, but then I remebered seen a disk for this in my Pile. I think my GURU Daryl (R.I.P- he pasted away last summer) had this same card in his A1200 that he had willed to me, but the estate couldn't find.
Also, thes card take regular 72 pin simms for Ram, and the hold up to 128 megs, so I have to hunt down some from my pile. I will have that A1200 smoking long before the Typhoon card gets here if it ever does.
Next, out of the box, was the KCS Power PC Board for the A500. This board was complete and gives the A500 a IBM PC capablity (only a 286 if we are lucky)
Last he sen me this big external drive bays. Thes can be used for the 1200 for external devices like CD-ROMS and such. It is huge!
I am off to disect the A600 now. More on that tomorrow.
Now for today's RANDOM Photo:

Sunday Projects Part 2

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My next Project for the day involved a bit of imagination. I DO NOT take any responsibility for broken hardware at this point. Do this at your own RISK.
I needed another CD- ROM for the A4000. I broke out the old HP Pavilion 6640C tower I had collecting dust. I WAS (more on that later) going to used the CD burner in this unit.

The design of this tiny machine will make it perfect for future projects (towered A600 Hummm)
I got the HP burner out now and proceeded to get the A4000. The retro look of this CD-Burner will look good in the A4000.
Now before we jump in and pull the DVD drive, I wanted to swap out the power supply fan. On the A3000, the Fan was just plugged in so a swap was easy. You will notice that this is a Skynet Power Supply Also.
Sorry about the flash, but you will notice that the fan is soldered to the board. Instead of pulling the supply apart and putting in an new fan, I will Replace this whole unit with a new ATX supply in the future. So I put it all back together.
Next on the list was cooling the Indivision card. I pulled the Video Toaster card for now, knowing I would not be using it here anytime soon.
I found a CPU fan that would be fine for now, as I didn't have anything smaller.
There are vent holes in the top of the card to cool the Lisa, but as all of us are finding out (on the fourms) that it may be not enough. There are soldering hacks to fix this, but I will not be attempting them, for it takes a very practiced hand to preform the hacks. Hopefully in a future revision of the card, there will be mounting holes for a small fan.
I put the fan down on the card and tried to figure out a safe way of mounting it without doing any damage. I didn't have zip ties long enough, so I opted to put a few drops of hot glue down.
I am not sure if this will do any good, because as the board heats, the glue might melt. its a long shot, but I had to try.
At this time I also installed a GVP 4008 card with no hard drive, just for the 8 extra megs of ram. I used the power plug to power the fan. I also too the auto boot jumper off. In the near future, I will be ordering an IDE terminator and using a SCSI solution, but for now I just wanted the RAM.
I then went to throw in the CD-Burner and found it way too long for the A4000. Matching it up to a regular CD -Rom, I found it was almost 2 inches longer. I then grabbed another HP drive (the black one) and it was only 1 inch two Long!
A quick trip to the store room and I pulled 2 more CD -roms from the stock pile. These are just 32X CD-drives and the fit fine.
Now I just taped the wires down on the 4008 board and neatened every thing up and then sealed it up.
I left the back slots above the fan open for some ventilation. Tomorrow I will test it all.
Now for another RANDOM Photo:

Sunday Projects Part 1

Please Click Here to Visit the On-Line Store


Today, I have two projects to do. The first one is the battery change in the A3000. I had been procrastinating on this for a while now because of the cramped way Commodore built this machine. I am debating putting in another SCSI controller for the simple fact, that every time you bump it, the SCSI cable comes out and it is in the most awkward location, you can't get at it without tearing everything apart.You begin by tearing everything out. I already did a blog on the teardown, so I won't go too much into detail.
Here is the battery location. This battery was removed when I got the machine. A Very small amout of damage has occured, but not enough to wory about.
When removing the Power supply sled, don't forget about the one scew thats hidden under the cables.
Now remove the motherboard from the Chassis. Don't worry, there is no RF shielding to futzz over.
Now just do the soldering. I removed as much solder out of the holes befor hand to make things easier.
Yes its a bit crooked, but I had burned my finger badly and didn't care too much at this point to straighten it up.
Now just put it all back together. I really have to do something about that mile long SCSI cable.
And now we are done. Next the A4000.
Now for today's RAMDOM Photo:

Sometimes you win, and then there are days like friday.....

Visit the online store

First, I want to say, I DID NOT win the 49 Million in the 6/49 Draw on Wednesday. Yes, it was won in Edmonton, But my life would be TOTALLY different right now if I had won.
Yesterday really kicked me back a notch. You will remember, I never claimed to be an expert on the Amiga, just a nube! Well I was feeling cocky and decided it was time to install the Video Toaster software and get my video editing groove on.
Now, I am really spoiled by Microsoft Windows, for normally, when you install things, you sit back, sip your coffee and let the installer do the work. 99% of the time (unless you are installing ANY Norton or Symantic product) you just expect it to work fine.
Such is NOT the case with any Amiga software that I have come across, You really have to follow the "read ME!" and follow every instruction to the letter. This usually involves manually copping files to Various places on the "C" drive.
I put in the Video Toaster CD and proceeded to read through the "Read ME". One very important line was missing from it - The information that said Video Toaster software WILL NOT WORK EVER ON OS 3.5 or .9!! I found this out the hard way and Burt later Confirmed it.
After the re-boot, Error messages were popping up:
"Cannot open "resource.library" V44 is the main one.
My dock would not open, nore my back drop (wall paper)
This is what I was left with. I could not even create new "drawers" on any drive.
when I went to WBPattern, I got the same error.
Incidentally, I was getting the same error on my A1200 right from AmigaKit. I had chalked it up to not enough RAM at the time, but now I see differently.
At This time, I was also noticing that the machine was getting very hot -especially in the CD rom drive. I know that the CD-Rom drive doesn't open all the time to, but I was warned about that.
It was at that time, I deiced to put the OS 3.9 CD and do a re-install, but it kept asking for me to install 3.1 ROMS and then quit back to workbench. I know I have 3.1 ROMS installed. It was at that time I had to go to work and ponder this over.
When I got home, I got an e-mail from Burt, He explained t0 NEVER install VT on 3.9, He also explained that the LISA chip heats up and because the indivision covers it, it might be overheating. To make maters worse, I have the VT card RIGHT in top over the Indivision, so cooling is not happening. So on Sunday, I will take the VT card out for now, replace the CD-ROM Drive and devise a sensible cooling solution, I have plenty of case fans left over form the computer store days.
This morning, I got the OS re-install working, and downloaded the Boing Bags (updates). Now, the CD -ROM is not working at all, so I can't update it yet.
The version still says 45.1, so I am Assuming that it always was 3.9 and they just left the 3.5 wall paper in (lazy gits).
I am now seeing some artifacts on the screen, I am not sure what this is, but I think it is because I switched from Video ram to other ram in the preferences, I pry its not the indivision card going this soon.
Well, I will just shut it down for the day, and tear it down tomorrow.
Now for today's RANDOM Photo:
Be nice to your cats people!

A4000 Victory Day

Not really much to report today. I took the day off, from uploading to the online store, to working on my A4000.
As you can see, I finally got the screen resolution looking great (with a flicker fixer). The problem is I wasn't "saving" the settings, as I could not see the "save" button on the screen. I then took a chance and use "Amiga"key and "S" and you can see the resolution is much better than they were.
I also found out that this is O.S 3.5, so soon I will attempt an OS 3.9 install on it.
After a bit more tweaking, I got the screen looking like this. Now, the A4000 runs a bit slower, similar to the A3000, but that's another blog for another day.

And Now for today's RANDOM photo:

CD32 Arrived today.

Well, I have spent the last few nights playing with my A4000. One thing I want to mention is how much faster is seems than the A3000. Booting, Everything works fast (it seems), In fact, If you put it side by side with a modern Windows PC, and booted them both at the same time, You would find that the Amiga runs way faster than the fastest Vista machine.
One thing I wanted to mention. So far the Indivision card has let me down. Maybe I was expecting a better graphics card, so far I can't even put a nice wall paper on , the resolution just isn't there, even in highGFX mode, the supplied wallpaper still looks like crap. I guess I will have to find a Picasso IV card for it or a Cybergraphics card. But as always, it is a work in progress.
I had an early start today. I was called into court as a witness, but as always, the guy pleaded guilty and we were not needed. When I got home, there was a tag in the mail box stating that there was a parcel for me. This, I knew either had to be my "Typhoon" card for my A1200 or my "NOS" CD32 from China. It was the CD32.
At first I was excited, thinking that they carefully wrapped the outer box like Amiga kit for the collectors. My Excitement, soon faded to bitter disappointment.
The outer box was a bit crushed shelf warn and actually DAMP! Boy did it stink! literally, it smelled like a Chinese vegetable warehouse. I am not trying to offend with that statement, but I literally had to open all the windows and spay air freshener around,
Once I opened it, it probably was never opened before, but the box had almost had it. I just prayed it worked and turned on.
I don't have any games yet to test it. I have heard that it is possible to download games and burn them to CD, but I will look at that later, for now its E-bay for good games.
I hooked it up to the 32 inch LCD and it works! Now to pack it all in the stereo cabinet above the CDTV.

Now for today's RANDOM Photo:
Geeks will immediately get the Half-life joke:

Long Weekend Projects Part 4.

The last project for this weekend is my spare A2000HD. Truth be told, I like this one better than My supped up A2000HD, for everything fits together tightly and none of the holes are stripped. But its also the Achilles Heel of my collection. If you go back threw my blogs, you will see that this is the unit that the motherboard screws were stripped. Without the proper tools, its impossible to get this unit a new battery.
The first thing I had to do was remove the IDE CD-ROM drive. I had installed it with my "Budda" card, but because I didn't like the Budda, I sold it. So before anything, I removed the outer shell and put the 5 1/4 drive bay cover back on.
Next, I removed the Hard Drive Sled. I like this sled, because the cables are actually a few inches longer and I can move a bit more with it. Once the Sled was gone, I pulled the CD off and put it back on the pile.
I then pulled the GVP 4008 card and put it aside in an Anti static bag.
I then tried to get to work again on the motherboard. I got the dremal out, and actually got one screw out. I tried another one, but the tight space, I was cutting into the RF shield, I then noticed I put a very small Nick in the Mobo.
Even though the photos are crap, you can see a small White line between the screw and the red sticker.This head was shaved off more.
At this point, I deiced to put A stop to it. I was not going to further risk damaging the board, for the sake of a battery holder on a spare A2000HD I was planning on selling anyway.
At this point, I switch gears and put the jumper on J301. I had missed this step before. The jumper lets the machine know about 2 Floppy drives.

Next was installing the A2620 Accelerator card.
It was now time to put the Power Supply Sled back in. and put it all back together..
And Now for another "RANDOM" Photo:

Long Weekend Projects Part 3.

A2000HD Video Toster Unit


For the next Phase of projects, I broke out my Video Toaster A2000HD. The project is simple. I have to change the ROMS for the GVP '030 and upgrade the Commodore 2.4 Rom to 3.1.
As you know I both love and hate the A2000 design. I love the vertical Zorro slots, But I HATE the power Supply Sled design.. I would put an external power Solutiom or made the chassis a bit bigger and mounted it on the side, like the A4000 design. I say this, because in order to get anything done on the Motherboard, you have to fight with the power supply sled, and the cables are so short, it is a real work out.
Once you get the Video Toaster card out, then the power supply, you now have access to the GVP '030 Card and the motherboard. I removed the GVP card and proceeded to swap out the ROM and put the latest 4.1 Rom in.
Once that was done, it's on to the motherboard. I like to put the ROM in an extra Socket to protect the pins, because no mater how hard I try to be careful, the pins always seem to end up being bent.
Thats it now I put it al back together and grabbed the spare A2000 HD unit. It has a lot of work on it. More on that later.
Now for todays "RANDOM" photo:

Long Weekend Projects Part 2.

Ok,
This is one of those projects I hate to do, Its very simple, but a long and tedious project.

A4000 Keyboard Cleanup
Part 1 Teardown and Clean up.

Now this keyboard was filthy. The smart people out there would simply tear it down and throw everything in the dishwasher, but I don't have one.So everything is done by hand. I would suggest a pair of rubber gloves for sanitary reasons. I picked up a package of 10 at the dollar store a few weeks ago in anticipation of the project.

First, let me start off that the A4000 keyboard is ,for all intensive purposes , almost exactly the same as the A2000 keyboard. The only differences are the shape of the outer shell and the plug. the plug on the A4000 is a PS/2 plug. The outer shell is held together by 6 screws on the bottom. There is only 6, so its a no brainer.
You can see here that at one time, spiders made their nest in here. It was probably in storrage for a few years,
Once the bottom shell is off, the teardown is the same as the A2000. Don't forget the grounding screw and un-plug the cable.
Now remove the 2 dozen or so micro screws.

The above plastic says "frame A2000" further proving that either the same parts were used or someone has already replaced this keyboard with A2000 internals.
Now comes the second long and tedious part, Slowly prying up the keys and removing them one by one. The "special" keys all have wires under them, so carefully pop the wires out. The "return" key is the real DOG.

While this was happening, I put the outer shell in the tub (yeh, its an old blue tub), and soaked it first in CLR solution, then wrinced it off and soaked it with "all purpose" cleaner.
You can see the All purpose cleaner caused the ink to run. I scubbed it down and dried it all off.
Now nest to each other you can see the A4000 shell (bottom) is a bit more yellow than the "new" Amiga technologys keyboard I got from my A3000.
Since the Commodore shell more closely matches the A3000, I think I will use it there.
After that break, I got back to removing the keys, needless to say, the base board was filthy.

I got the scrub brush out and went back to the tub, and tore at it, the results are quite good.
Now it's all clean and the next tedious part is cleaning each of the keys and putting them back on. This is going to take a while.It's Now 1:45 am and I am almost done. I am cleaning, scrubbing, drying, the replacing each key one at a time. I broke out another A2000 keyboard as a template of where the keys go. The return key was almost impossible to replace with both Wires, so I left one out. It will not effect the key in anyway. I also was careful about scrubbing the stickers. Before you ask, Yes, I did contact Donny at Newtek about ordering a new set, but no luck!As you can see, the keys cleaned up rather nicely and not much yellowing (if any) can be noticed on the keys themselves. I will Finnish up putting the keys back on and put them all together in the morning, as I am getting very tired.This is how my kitchen table looks at 2 am.
I slept in and got up around noon, Made coffee and got back to work.
This is what it looked like when I got up.
Flip the board over and put in the "Caps" led. Then place the circuit board on top., then the metal frame.
Now its just am matter of putting back the 2 dozen Micro screws, Hooking up the cable and grounding screw.
Now, just put the shell back on and you are done!.
I found out the the Amiga Tech shell has slightly different stand offs, and needs a bit of internal modification to make the board fit. I then opted to use the original shell for now, and everything when back smoothly.
As you can see this is an easy project that anyone can do, but it takes a long time. A dishwasher should significantly cut off a few hours .
Now, on to the A2000's.

Now another "Random" Image that made me smile,

Long Weekend Projects Part 1

The last 2 days have been quite exciting on the Amiga Front.
I have been Updating and tweaking the on-line store, with a lot of help from my Web-Host Mike, we have a simple, but functional store Up and Running, but it will be improved As we go along.
Some people just cant wrap their heads around the fact that shipping is INCLUDED with the prices, so the whine that the prices are too high. I just can't see a problem with this, but we are soon going to remove the shipping and add it later in the checkout. I know I can't win with this, because then they will bitch that shipping is too high, but we will be using the Canada Post shipping Calculator. I am just charging a flat rate now, if I have charged too low, I now eat the difference. Their loss, not mine.
Friday, I (shockingly) won a fantastic auction on Ebay. I was watching the Auction for a Phase 5 Blizzard Turbo board for the A1200. These boards continually fetch between $3 to $4 hundred dollars each. This was a 6 day auction and it was NOS. Nobody bid on it. In the last 6 hours, I threw in a "joke" bid of $50, thinking that sniper's would drive the price up in the last few minutes. I was stunned to find when I got home from work that I won it for only $41 US!.
I am not sure of the problem, the seller has a fantastic feedback rating. I wonder is the economy dropped that much? Did he only post on Ebay.ca? I can't tell, but, I did get into contact with him and it turns out he is an ex-Amiga Dealer with lots of stuff in storage. In our communication, I found out he also had an A600 that he wanted to sell. Well, I got it too. An NTSC A600 will be shipped out Tuesday. I now have (with the exception of the "tower" systems and an ultra rare A500+) at least one of All the Amiga's. That enough is cause for Dance and Drink! A year ago, I had 2 systems that I could not even use, and now, I am swimming in them!

Which leads me up to this weekend. It is a long weekend here in Canada (Victoria Day- as in Her Majesty Queen Victoria) and I have a Ton of projects to do and list here. My first simple and easy task was to swap an A500 Floppy drive.
My friend Burt, fixes floppys and wanted my "Non-working" ones to fix, so I had a bunch of other stuff for trade with him, so I had to get the Non-working floppy out of one of my A500's. The computer does work though, and will be featured again, when I get around to other A500 projects.

A500 Floppy Swap

Here we start with one of my grubby A500 that I have stacked in my closet. I know this unit works, but the floppy was dead. I also have another A500 in Pieces, that the case was suppose to be painted my a professional painter a year ago, but If that ever happens is any ones guess. He has my A500 case and my A1000 case, so the parts are piled up here.
The first thing you have to do is remove the 6 -#10 Torx screws on the bottom. You may have regular cross head screws, as the torx were often replaced.

Once the top shell is off, slide up the keyboard from the bottom clips and flip it over towards the back. Ther is a very small grounding cable connecting the keyboard to the floppy drive, simply unscrew it and put the screw aside for later.
Once the grounding screw is gone, simply unplug the keyboard, and put it aside.
Now all you see is RF shielding. To remove it, first remove four Torx screws located 2 at the front, and 2 on the left hand side on either side of the expansion slot. (you really can't miss them).
Next, flip up the tabs, and then you can remove the shield. Careful, the shield is thin and I got a papercut like slice on my hand, its not sharp, but be careful anyway.
Now, with the shield gone , you can almost see everything, but the floppy drive is still not loose. Flip the unit over again and remove the 2 remaining screws.

Sorry for the bad photo, but you can see this is also a Revision 5 Motherboard. So far, all my Motherboards are Revision 5.
flip the floppy drive up and away noting the cable placement. To simplify this, I just put the replacement side by side and swapped the 2 cables
Swap out the cables and your done!
Now you get to put it all back together!
This project should take less then 10 minutes for even the novice. Its a fast and easy way to get your A500 up and running again.
I plan to take a break now and do some shipping for Burt, but I will be back later today with the A4000 Keyboard cleaning and replacement.
I also have to tear down the A3000 and both A2000's again this weekend, so at least 3 more blogs in the next 2 days.
-JOY!

And now for today's RAMDOM Image:

A4000 Build up Part 1

Today, I had planned to wake up early and work all day on my Amigas, but, for some reason, I just couldn't focus too hard on it. This morning, I ended up putting more items up on my online store if you want a sneak peek, Click HERE Items are uploaded daily and we are still working out the shipping bugs. It will be up early next week and I will have proper buttons on this blog page.
I then was going to crack open the old Amiga 2000HD and put the battery in. By the time I cleaned off the bench, swapped the A2000HD's around and reconnected everything, I decided to take a nap. I then decided that there was enough parts coming for the old HD to warent just packing it up for now untill everything arrives, so I put it in the closet for now.
I then played my new XBOX 360 for a while and got a good start on the game MASS EFFECT, (my gamer tag is GLENVDB) so it wasn't till about 9 pm, I got around to my A4000.
Once the cover was off, it was just a matter of lining up the Indivision card and pushing it over the LISA chip.
once the card was on securly, it was just a mater of puting the ground wire to a motherboard screw.

Next, I had to find a bracket for the VGA plug, as one was not supplied. I doug through my pile and found an S3 Virge DX Card. I had kept 4 of these cards around for a simple reason, the Promethus PCI card has drivers for it. I would have to invest a few hundred dolars for a PCI card for my A3000 or A4000, just to have a crapy video card, the Indivision was a much beter choice.
To remove the bracket, just remove the 2 nuts on either side of the VGA plug.
Darn Flash
Now install it on the VGA cable:
Plug it in and mount the bracket and you are done.
I also took this time to put in the Video Toaster card. It was a tight fit, so I took the cage off to speed things up.
Oh Oh, big problems! Something is not right here,
It wasn't until I saw the above photos that it hit me, This was transfered from an A2000. The Video Toaster car is actually made up of four different pieces. It was made to "transform" and fit in any Amiga. So I got out the manual and took it apart.
I also asked of the fourms, but found the answer before anyone replied.
I also had to set the jumpers.
I put it all back together. Unfortunatly an L shaped cover was suppled for the A4000, that was tossed by the original owner.
I also wasn't too comfortable with the clearence of the Indivsion and the VT card, so I pulled the mylar sheet and put it on the reverse side, so nothing can short.

Now the card fits and the Jacks line up. I then put the cage back in.

I then out in the VGA slot and found covers to fill the slots. Unfortunatly the covers were a bit short, but better than nothing.
I then tried to takle the broken screw in the cornner, but because it was about midnight now, I decied to use the Dremel at another time, or else someone would have been compalining in the Apartment.

I then proceed to put the front bezel back on. In hind sight this probably should have been done first. The yellow LED is power, the Green is HD.
This was the tricky part, plugging the LED's back in. Because the card is in the way, things are TIGHT. I could not get my hands in there, so I got out a long pair of tweezers and put them in.

Put the cover back on and thats it. Tomorow after a trip to see MOM, I will clean the keyboard and maybe fire this pupply up.

Now for today's RANDOM Photo. Ok, it made me smile.

The Mail Is Here.

I was sick this week with a bug of some kind, but between the fever flashes and the trips to the bathroom, I was busy with The new ONLINE STORE.
Yes, as I had promised, the online store is now in beta and should be up real soon. It is plain and Simple, no active scripting or PHP, it just has to work. God knows how much I despise Active scripting and PHP!
Now before you all send me HATE mail over my pricing, be aware that I am being careful NOT to undercut Red's retro or AmigaKit, as they are my suppliers and why bite the hand that feeds me! So, if some of my prices seem insane, it's because of that and I don't really want to sell some stuff unless the right price comes along.

I just got the mail in and a package came (finally)! I was hoping for a package from Softhut, containing my Typhoon card, but I got one from Red! I had ordered the Indivision from Red for my A4000. Good, I know what I am doing tomorow!
Its always like Chrismas when I get a package in from Red.
Oh great! packing Peanuts. At least there is no chance of it being crushed.
If the above picture looks blurry, its because the box is so funky from IC, that the camera can't focus properly.
Inside just the card, VGA connector and Instruction sheet. I didn't realize how tiny this board actually is, I was expecting something the size of a DVD case.
The back of the card. Not much to see, but most people will never see the back as it will be hidden from view when installed.
More tomorrow,now, I must get back to the store inventory.

Opps, almost forgot a RANDOM Picture today:

Battery Day Part 2

The A2000HD (unit #1 Video Toaster)

2 down, 2 to go.
After my "break", I had to clean out my Van, but the Buyer did not show, call or anything, so I will get a tow truck tomorrow morning to get rid of it. The landlord is really on my case to get rid of it, I don't want to see it go, but it has to be gone by noon.

When I got back to my A2000HD, I had received an email from a reader wanting to get rid of more parts for the A2000. I now have another Ram/SCSI card and accelerator coming for my second unit.
I tore it down to the board. Because I just put in the drive sled before, and didn't mount anything, the teardown went quickly.

I have a real love/hate relationship with the design of the A2000. I love the vertical card mounting like a PC, but I hate the whole Power supply sled mounting, because it is hard to line up with one hand and it is pretty heavy. I also Hate taking all the nuts out and removing the RF shield.
You have seen plenty of pictures of the tear down before, so I won't bother you with more. Needless to say, the soldering part is the same as the A4000.
Here it is done:
Nothing touching and level!

I then proceeded to install all the cards, and the original Toaster 2000 Board, I got back from NewTek this week.

This was the last picture, as I was getting tired and just wanted it done.
Its all back together, I had a tough time with the tight cabling and making sure the floppy was installed properly, they can be tricky. Tomorrow, I will clear off the bench and fire her up.
Next week, the A3000 and the second A2000HD.

And now a RANDOM Photo:
These photos are NOT Hotlinked- PLEASE DON'T HOTLINK MY PHOTOS, just steal them.
Hotlinking kills my band widith.

Battery Day Part 1,

A4000 Teardown Part 2

So I slept in a bit today, even though I am swapped. Besides the battery projects, I have to ship out a package and hopefully sell the Van today. I don't really want to get rid of it but the landlord is on my case. I think he just wants the spot for another tenant, but with no insurance on it, I guess I will just have to get rid of it. Besides, Areostar Vans are cheap and plentiful.
I got up and went to the store to get a few cleaning supplies, as I will need them for the Keyboard cleaning.
Then I got straight to work on the A4000.
When I left it yesterday, it looked like this:
Now You need to remove 9 screws (marked in red Below), the area circled in blue is the location of the battery. Remember it was removed by the former owner.
Now you can't access all the screws without removing the Slot Cage, for one is directly under it.

To remove the cage, its just one screw on the right hand side, right in the middle.
Now you can get at it.
A small aside here, As you can see in the photo above, there are 2 audio headers. Directly behind the is 3 pins sticking up. These are the Male plug for an Audio CD cable. They are not directly labeled. I will go more into this in a later blog.

There is one last screw hiding in the corner beside the power Supply. I chose now to remove the power supply also.
I had to laugh at this label. If you can't spot it, then you haven't seen the Terminator movies, and it would take too long to explain.
Last, remove the 2 nuts on either side of the SERIAL port. These are the last things holding the motherboard in.

The Very First (and sweet) thing you will notice is NO RF Shield, no need to remove all the nuts. It just has a copper shield around the ports.
Flip the board over and locate the Battery holes:
Now, remove the solder if it is still plugging the holes.
I then flipped the board over, inserted the battery holder (it fits perfect) and taped it in place with black electrical tape to hold it from moving.
Way more tape than needed and it went around to the back side of the board. Flip the board, and start Soldering. Once done, remove the tape.
As you can see, it fits perfectly, I was worried it might hit the RAM slot, or short on the board, but with the spacers on the bottom, there is clearance for everything.

Then the last thing was to trim the wire feet with side cutters. You have a mylar shield between the chassis and the mother board to prevent shorts, but this insures a neat job.
I then put it all back together, but left the front bezel off, as I am going to be installing stuff really soon on it and I will have to take it all apart again.

I then did a (fast) clean of the front bezel, and then got the table ready for the A2000 next.
Now I am breaking for a bite to eat and this blog. Then right back at it.

Now for today's random photo:
I feel like this some days:

A4000 Tear Down Part 1

So, I wanted to get a head start today and go ahead with the teardown of the A4000D. Tomorrow will be a big day with installing batteries in at least 3 or 4 machines, so at least the 4000 will be somewhat ready. Also, I don't have all that much time before work today. Its Official, My apartment is starting to look again like a warehouse, so in the next few weeks, some of this Amiga stuff has to go. The sad thing is I know a A2000 has to go and right now, They aren't bringing in anything on Ebay. Hopefully some Amiga forum member may have use of it.

You can begin the teardown with removing the 2 screws on the back in the top corners, and slide the cover off. This will allow access to the whole unit.
The A4000 is a bit different from the previous Amigas, because the power supply is not mounted on a "Sled". Therefore, now there are 2 smaller sleds and thus easier to maneuver with.
You will have to take the front plastic bezel off. This procedure is very straight forward, compressing the 8 or so plastic Clips and popping off the bezel. You have 3 sets of 2 wires to the bezel, 2 for LED lights and one for the key lock .
Unfortunately, my unit has no keys.
because of the way the key lock is mounted, you will have to Unplug the wires from the keyboard. Carefully mark the wires with tape or such to remember where they go.
Now remove the wires and front, and set aside.
The hard drive sled is held down by four screws, 2 on either side. I found that one the hard drive sled was loose, I could the unplug the cabling to all the drives easily.
The floppy drive/ CD-ROM Sled is held in by 2 screws at the front (one one each side).

Once these 2 screws are removed, you can just sled the sled right out.
With the sleds gone , you have open access to everything. But the pesky daughter card is still in the middle.
Before getting to the daughter Board, remove the IDE Cable and floppy cable. Notice which side the red stripe is on. (its right next to the power supply plug, or top of photo)

Remove the 2 screws along the top bar (one on each end) and remove the bar. Now you will have access to remove the Daughter card.
With the Bar removed you can see a nice big notch on the top of the card. (HINT) This is there to run flat cables through and secure them with the bar. Yes, it seems like a no Brainer, but many people never remove the bar and do not now its there, running cables over the top of the bar, and interfering with the top shell.

Now you can fully see the CPU/ Accelerator card. Commodore made the motherboard with No CPU, so you could upgrade later. I think they had plans to keep making more powerful cards combos, but in reallity, they only made 2 cards (with a few revisions) Ether a 68030 processor or a 68040 Mine has the 68040.

You can't see it but the CPU is on a ZFI socket like modern CPU's, I CAN upgrade just the CPU, but then I would need a new clock crystal also. My has the built in MMU.
To remove the CPU card just lift up. Once the card is removed, you can see the Kick ROMS, Crystal, Fat Gary and Ramsey Chips. My Ramsey Chip is Soldered to the board, and is version 7 (the good ones). The Motherboard By the way, is revision "B".
On the other side of the board, you can see that the super-buster is version 11.
Unfortunately, I could not get a clear picture of it, but my "Alice" chip is in fact an early Commodore Chip.
If you recall or read some of my old blogs on www.iboughtavoodooolaptop.com, the later Versions came with HP branded Chips.

Well, that's it for now, I just have to remove the motherboard and shield and start soldering. Tomorrow will be a long day.

Now for today's RANDOM PHOTO:
This is an OLD geek Comic. If you don't understand it, read some history of Commodore and Atari.

Unboxxing an A4000 Desktop

This week has been quite busy on the Amiga front. I must say, I am starting to get very bogged own here and soon, some Amiga's have to go. I will be posting a A2000HD on The boards and Ebay very soon, but first, I have to install batteries, and get them running Up to snuff.
On the subject of batteries,
I got my Battery holders in from Germany this week. I know what you are saying: "GERMANY? IS HE NUTS?" Well, After the fiasco with AmigaKit's garbage holders, and the fact that the closest electronics store was out of battery holders, I decided to look elsewhere for something better. At first I was going to just break down and buy a few off of E-bay, but the seller Wants $10 a "kit" plus shipping. Now a proper battery replacement involves a safety "diode" to insure no over charging Occures. (I am guilty of skipping that step) and as a result, the battery does not sit flat on the motherboard and looks like crap. Here is the Ebay Photos:
Notice there are only 2 pins. Not a bad profit if you can sell a ton. My estimate is that without the battery, these kits cost $2 to make, if that.
Now a German Amiga forum Member Named Matthias custom makes hardware and has taken the time to make these not only right, but Asthicy pleasing also. He took the time to put 3 pins on it so no question can be raised when installing it, and he made a small circuit board with the resistor on it. I paid $6 each for these and that included shipping from Germany. I ordered half a dozen, My next batch will have more.

As you can see, well worth the time and wait for something that will not only work right, but will look great in any Amiga.


My A4000.

Now for the drum roll please.
I didn't think I would be getting this, but the chance came up and I jumped at it. The seller (God knows why) had pulled the Video Toaster card, and just sold it as "Bare Bones". As many of you may not know, New Tek just had a sticker package for the Video Toaster Amigas. It is just a regular A4000 with colorful Stickers.
After a battle with UPS (that I didn't Win....Fracking crooks), I got my A4000 finally in my hands last night before work. So this morning I unpacked it.
Surprisingly, UPS did not trash this system, the box looked rather in tact.
Oh Joy! Packing peanuts. Packing Peanuts are great for shipping, but a real pain to receive. The make a mess and for days, you are finding them stuck to everything. I got a garbage bag out, for I save them all for re-shipping. Packing peanuts or not all that cheap either.

After digging through the box, I found the keyboard in a logitec Box and the mouse in a foam Cube.
The mouse looks like a new black model - very cool.
The keyboard is, infact, an official A4000 keyboard, with the Video Toaster key stickers.
You can see, it looks exactly like an A3000 keyboard but has a smaller (PS/2) style plug.
Looking closer, the keyboard is filthy, so I will have to dissect and clean all of this crud off. Hopefully, I can save the stickers. I am sure if I contact NewTec, I can get more, but they will ship it UPS and it will cost me More money than the stickers are worth.
After all the packing Peanuts have been removed, I can now see the outer case has alot of crud on it also, looks like I will be cleaning alot on Sunday.
No we go to the kitchen table and look at the unit. Yup! filthy! Not much yellowing, just the second floppy bay cover.
Like I said, just bare boned. No cards in the system, but the back is clean. At first, I thought there was a bunch rust around the ports for I have seen units that have been stored in a moist environment.
Looking closer, you can see no rust, but a bronze or copper RF shield. Puzzling!
I decided to grab a screw driver and crack this baby open. It was only held in by one screw. I was fearing, that the inside was as dirty as the outside, but boy, I was shocked. It had no dust at all. Clean as a whistle!

It has a full 16 megs of Ram.
You cant really see it but this accelorator card is a Commodore A3640. I was a bit disappointed, because it is a revision 3.0. If it was a 3.1 I could have used it in my A3000 if I do break down and get a GVP 4060 card (more on that in a later blog). Not a big deal, but a minor disappointment.
Now, you know that the A4000 had IDE, not SCSI, so this unit has a DVD-R, but I may replace that with a CD-R. It also came with a 6 gig hard drive.
The previous owner took a moment to tape the drive bay cover to the DVD burner. This has no real logic, unless you want to remove it and you don't have to hunt one down. Kudos to the fore site.
Nice rounded cables, The previous owner also to care to remove the battery before any damage occurred. Now, on Sunday, a complete teardown and battery replacement can take place.
I order in an Indivision VGA card for this unit yesterday. That way I can hook it up to a modern monitor, and enjoy it for years to come. God knows just how long my Commodore CRT's will last.


Lastly, You know I have been postiung FAIL photos on the end of my blogs. I am getting down to the last I thought were funny, so I am replacing it with random WARPPED photos I found that I thought were too funny.
So here is today's Random Photo:

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:

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.


Here is today's "FAIL". I see this at the dollar store all the time. LOL Some people just need to be warned -I guess.

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.

Now for today's FAIL:

Waisted A1000 day!

Today, I thought would be a fun day on my A1000, but as my luck has been going with e-bay auctions lately, I have now a nice parts machine.
I got up early and hit the dollar store today, looking for a phone handset cable. I finally got my A1000 keyboard in, but I just needed a cable.
I got home and plugged it all in and the first thing is I got a good electrical shock from the unit. Not a very "good" sign, but the machine did boot into the "kickstart" screen. (although it took a bit). I have about 5 different kickstart disks, so I tried them all and the floppy drive just made funny noises and that's it.
Perfect, a dead floppy drive and a ground issue.
So, take it all apart. Now, the A1000 is a beast to dissemble. Commodore made it with a ton of RF shielding, so a nuke could go off and not be affected, but it is a pig to take apart. Again, I just had my Camera phone and though I would take a step by step pictures. I gues I know one thing I am buying with my Tax return.- a digital camera! Shoppers Drug Mart has one on for $70, but it PINK. That is why its so cheap, because nobody wants a PINK camera, otherwize it is a 8 megapixal. But I digress.
I have parts from my other A1000. As you may or may not know, I have sent my original A1000 in to a friend to get it professionaly painted, because it was so yellowed. Well, it looks like the next coming of Christ will happen sooner than me ever seeing it actually painted, so I grabbed the floppy from that one and put it in. I put it all back together and now it just goes to a white screen. No kickstart. Lesson learned.
The good thing is that A1000 pop up on E-bay from time to time and go for relatively cheap. I also want a few upgrades like a kickstart adapter, and more ram, so I can definatly wait a while on my A1000 projects. I can put this away in the store room for now and make room for the next Amiga on the bench. I know that my Toaster system will be here in the next few weeks. I am debating on an NOS A1200 right now for my tax return, but I know that will just be the tip of the iceberg, as all the "addons" I need for a 1200.
So, to sum up, its all back together, but nothing accomplished! What a waist of a day.

Now for today's FAIL:

An A2000 Keyboard is NOT an A3000 Keyboard!

Ok, so I have taken a few days to cool down and not just Rant about my next topic, but, it seems after all these years, people (and even reputable Amiga dealers) "forget" that there is a difference between the A2000's and A3000 keyboards.
Let's back up a bit here.
Anyone who knows me, knows that I am VERY picky with my hardware. Why else would I have bought a $7000 laptop, that took me over a year to pay off, when I live paycheck to paycheck.
So, it should come as no surprise, that when I get in Amiga hardware, I want it physical looking like new- Especially if I am going to put a museum together some day. It really came as no surprise then, when I got my A3000 in, and it was all damaged, that I would spend more money and time hunting down a new case for it. Like I had mentioned before, it came with an A2000 keyboard.
Inside, the keyboards are identical, meaning the ONLY difference is the case. The case is colored and matched to the exterior of the machine.
I guess, that over time, people ASSUME that when you ask for an A3000 keyboard, that an A2000 keyboard will work fine and try to pass one off as an A3000 keyboard.
This has happened 3 times now. I have put out a request for an A3000 keyboard, and paid a good chunk of money, only to get another A2000 keyboard! The sad thing is that the A2000 keyboards are a dime a dozen, not fetching over $10 on Ebay. So you can see, that when a reputable Amiga dealer says he has a white A3000 keyboard for $40, plus shipping and he sends me a brown A2000 keyboard, that I already have 5 of, I get a bit choked.
By hey, people make mistakes right?
Each time this has happened, I have e-mailed the seller back and questioned them about it, the only answer I get is something to the effect of "the A2000 keyboard works fine with an A3000. We assumed that you just want a keyboard that worked with your A3000, and not an original A3000 keyboard".

HOLY @#$%!!!!
When I ask for an A3000 keyboard, I am supposed to state an "Original white A3000 keyboard , commodore part #364447-01"? Get them to send photos to verify that I am getting the right keyboard?
If this just happened once, I can see a mistake, but 3 times?

Now, I don't know about you, but let us take a look at some pictures, and see for yourself. Do they look anything similar?

Now, the above photos are indeed an A2000 keyboard. Notice the darker color, the rounded corners, almost a "pillowy" look to it.
Now, THIS is an A3000 keyboard. Notice the white color, the fins or lines that match the A3000's case. The sharp, sleek angles. This is made for the A3000 (and 4000, but the 4000 has a smaller connector and cant possibly be confused.
Thus, THIS IS TODAY'S EPIC FAIL.- Ordering and Asking for an A3000 keyboard, paying 8 times the price of an A2000 and getting something you already had a ton of.

Death, Taxes, and some more CDTV

Today, we are suffering through (hopefully) one of the last snow storms here in Alberta. It has been a crazy winter to say the least. Normally at this time of year, the snow is gone, or the last of the snow is just melting, but this year, all bets are off and today looks like another 2-3 CM of snow.
Today, I am taking a break from the usual Sunday routine of an Amiga project- I had planned to re-visit the A2000 as I have some stuff still left on it, and I wish to put in the SCSI CD-rom drive, but that will have to wait unit next weekend. I am doing my taxes today folks. I have been lazy and had not done my taxes for 4 years. Due to me not getting some T4 slips and such. I do not owe anything, in fact, I am looking at quite a haul for returns, but now that I have gotten the Govnment to send me all my T4 slips, It is time for me to catch up.
CDTV
Yesterday, I received an e-mail from one of the CDTV co-designers Reichart Von Wolfsheild (hopefully that is the correct last name- please forgive me Reichart if not). Reighart and I are carring on a very cool e-mail conversation on the CDTV. Reichart also (before CBM) worked with and on Tandy computers. He also programed many of the software we have come to love on the Amiga, like the Disney Animation Studio, Fire power and literally dozens of other programs.

Quote:
"Of note, Tim Jenison ( of DigiView and Toaster fame), actually cut his teeth on the Coco. He wrote the CoCo paint program, and helped build something like the DigiView called a DS69 for it, which we can assume is where he got the idea for the Amiga.

Later, I specifically forced Disney to support Tandy, both with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and The Disney Animation Studio. Tandy would buy 10K units at a time of DAS (At $169 list) for the Radio Shack stores."


He has been correcting me on my knowledge of the CDTV. He hasn't gone into it at lenght, but the CDTV is much more than an A500 with a CD drive.
Reichart co- designed the CDVT with Carl Sassenrath, they still work together today.
You may have read that Nolan Bushnell was brought on board the CDTV. Reichart states that he was brought on more of a "Face" to the CDTV. He also has a pretty cool house (at the time).

Some Fun Facts about the unit:
Reichart still has the "test" unit mounted on plywood
Quote"
"The story of CDTV is pretty damned cool, including a giant secret meeting held in a hotel in the middle of no where. A select group of 12 were picked to meet, no one knew who else was coming. We were all flown in, signed the heavy contract, and the "goal" was presented to us. We were then to review each other, and figure out the best possible way to build the device, and in a VERY short time (60 days).

There is a long story of how Carl Sassenrath did due diligence on my team, and walked away blown away! This is why we got the job. In fact, he did not believe we could do what we claimed. But, we did.

It paid off VERY well. And our team ended up doing way more for Commodore then originally expected."

Any ways, I am always stoked, when I hear from the original designers. As I hear more from Reichart, I will do my best to bring it to you. I sure wish to thank him for taking the time to comment on the site. He was very good friends with Dave Needle, so you cant get much closer to the original CBM designers than this.
If Dave Haynie ever saw this site, I am sure he would have a lot of corrections also.

Now for today's FAIL:

Keyboard Kapers

Today's project was one of those little projects, that nobody seems ever to get around to do. I had 2 extra A2000 keyboards, that both had a key busted off. The key was actually broken, so a drop of glue was out of the question. one of the keyboards had very yellowed keys, but the actual shell was cleaner then the other, so I proceeded to strip them down. First locate the 6 screws on the bottom of the keyboard (marked with the red dots), and remove them.Now you can carefully take the outer shell off. Next, flip the inner keyboard over and unplug the cable. Note that on this particular board, you must flip the unit over and remove the grounding screw. What was surprising, is that on the Donor Keyboard, the grounding screw was on the bottom. Now with the cable removed, you can now proceed to take apart the inner unit. The inner unit consists of a steel outer frame, a circuit board, and the actual plastic keyboard. There are little rubber rings that provide the actual lift, not a steel spring as one would think. With the unit flipped over you can see that there are 26 micro screws (marked with the red dots) all these screws must be removed, and this is the tedious part of the job. I had to do this on both units. Once the metal frame and the circuit board are removed, you will see the plastic tray. Be careful at this point,because there is a small LED for the caps button and it is just loose. Now, you can slide the broken shaft out. On the donor board, carefully, pop the replacement key off the shift, being careful not to break the replacement key. Slide the new shaft in place and the rubber spring. Press the new key on the shift. now placing one finger underneath the shaft, press the key down, you should feel a slight "click" when it is place. Now to reverse the process and put everything back together. I suspect one keyboard had pop or something fall on it as one of the circuit board had signs of corrosion. because I had the choice, I went carefully over all the parts and chose the best. I also took this time to clean everything. You take this time to remove all the keys and really clean everything out. With the inter keyboard all back together, now you must put the cable back on. Don't forget that grounding screw! Now was the time to clean the outer shells. If you are lucky enough to have made some retr0brite, this would be the perfect time to use it. Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to locate some 15% Hydrogen Peroxide, so I first used CLR and then Fantastic. I let each chemical sit for 10 minutes then took a scrub brush to each shell. I then chose the shell with the "AMIGA 2000" sticker, the other one just says "AMIGA". The Amiga 2000 shell is a bit more yellowed that the other one, but I like the sticker better. I then washed under the tap, all the cleaner off and dried it with a paper towel. Now put the everything back together and replace the 6 screws, being careful of the cable, and your done. I put the donor board back together, but I did not replace the inner screws, LED, nor cable, but packaged it all up and taped it to the keyboard. I did this, so in the future, if I or someone else needs a key, it is quickly accessible.
Yes, my camera phone sucks donkey balls.
Now for today's FAIL:

A3000 Rebuild Pt.2

I left off the last Blog, with the hard drive sled just about to be put back on, But you have to put the Card slots in first, the the drive sled. I put the card slots back on. This model had 2 screws on the right hand slide, but the old one only had one. I am not sure why. So, now it's time to put the hard drive sled back on. Before you screw down the sled, a good idea is to plug in the power supply and snake the cables through the holes BEFORE screwing it down. In the above picture, I actually goofed, and put both cables through the back hole, you should put just the scsi cable through the back hold and the floppy through the front hole. Then mount the hard drive and screw it down. This may prove a bit difficult if you have big hands like me as space is tight . After the hard drive, I then mounted the floppy and screwed it into place, hooked up all the cables. One issue I have is the scsi cable is so long, It makes a rat's nest of a mess, I am looking into getting a Smaller one, as the length only needs to be less then 2 inches just to reach the hard drive. After all this is done, comes the hardest part, Inserting the Daughter board. The daughter board is really tight and there is not any room to really get a good grip on it. Also, I put the plastic "Z" spacer clips and laminated grounding shield back on. This is not really all that necessary, its just an added safety feature. The following pictures are of the clip spots. Now, because I have no expansion cards, so that is it, just put the top back on and now its all done. Now for today's FAIL:

Rebuilding the A3000 Part 1.

So, As many of you know, I was not too pleased with the condition my A3000 arrived in. The internal Zip drive was OK, but not the best Mod. What really bugged me was the back of the unit. It looked like the computer was dropped on the corner, causing the whole chassis to twist, and the top screw holes did not line up.

The picture Above shows where I believe the impact was, I apologize again for the poor pictures from my Camera phone.

This may not look like much damage, but nothing aligned properly, and the Drive sled didn't even bolt up properly.
I won't bother you with all the tear down details this time, I will feature that in an up coming blog.
Through the forums, I was able to hook up with a guy that was getting rid of a couple of non-working A3000's. I bought a chassis, and a floppy drive. It also came with a power supply, and just about everything to replace the damaged goods.

Because it was all shipped in one piece, I had to strip it all down.


The only "real" damage to the new Chassis, was it was missing one of the rubber feet.
I removed the remain 3 Feet and sprayed it down with some Fantastic and CLR to clean off any crap and glue residual off the bottom.

I covered the bottom with felt feet, I used more than four, as I know that over time, some of these will eventually fall off.

Both the old and the new chassis had a motherboard shield to prevent shorting, One was clear Mylar, and One was like a white wax paper or laminated paper. I reused the Clear one in the new Chassis.
Before I could transfer the motherboard over, I had a few chores to do. There was one hole in the new chassis that had a bit of the stand off in it, it must have broke off, so with a pair of pliers, I got it out.
Even though there are only 6 screws holding down the motherboard, and 4 for those are high stand offs, you still have to remove the hold down nuts on each side of the ports.
This is the part that I hate, as I do not have the right tool, and end up just using pliers, and that can make the fingertips numb.
Once all the nuts are removed, the motherboard comes out easily.
At this time it would be a good idea to replace the motherboard battery. The last order I got from AmigaKit.com, the sent me the WRONG ones. but they swore these would do the job also.

Needless too say, these are WAY too big and would require a lot of modification to make fit. For a buck part, its just not worth the Hassle, so I ended up skipping this all together. Make SURE, when you order the battery holders from AmigaKit, you make sure the send the BLACK ones, as these are just useless, and will be tossed in the bin. This is the ONLY time I have ever been displeased with the service of AmigaKit. They tried to convince me that these will work just as good, if not better, and they are just garbage. I would rather pay the $12 off of E-bay for the right part, then recommend putzing with this crap.
Now, you are ready, to just slide the Motherboard back in. Then replace the screws and nuts.
This is a good time to plug the LED panel back in.


Don't forget to replace the 2 screws on ether side of the joystick and keyboard port on the right hand side of the computer.
Now, you can go ahead and get the sled ready with the drives and such. That I will get to in tomorrow's blog.

Now for today's FAIL: