Commodore 128 tower project continued!

[adolescent]

No Datasette, but a DC2N would be cool!

[redrumloa]

adolescent wrote:
No Datasette, but a DC2N would be cool!

That does indeed look pretty cool if someone had a bunch of old cassette tapes!  :-) Certainly have been a bunch of hobby projects like this lately for the Commodore 8bit. To bad it hasn't happened with the Amiga for the most part, except Minimig.

[adolescent]

@red

:-?  You just need to look harder.  There are a hand full of great hobby projects like tnt32's floppy emulator, lordv's A600 RAM expansion, etc.  

[tokyoracer]

Scandoubler/flicker fixer? Do they exist for the C128?

[redrumloa]

tokyoracer wrote:
Scandoubler/flicker fixer? Do they exist for the C128?

Composite (40 column) to SVGA - very common, I bought this.

RGBi (80 column) to SVGA doesn't exist, one has to be modified. I bought this and modified it myself. The modification is quite simple. This is a scandoubler, but not a flicker fixer. The VDC does indeed have interlace modes, but almost no software supports it. I have not tested mine for interlace yet, but I suspect there will still be flicker.

[Jope]

redrumloa wrote:
Standard 3.5 DD floppy disks? Yes. Standard 3.5 PC drives? No. I will convert a 1581 to go internal.

The same tricks apply for the 1581 as the Amiga concerning the drive mechanisms. You can modify a PC drive to be Amiga/1581 compatible and it will mount neatly in the front panel.

Mine is done like that, I'm using a modified PC mechanism.

[redrumloa]

The same tricks apply for the 1581 as the Amiga concerning the drive mechanisms. You can modify a PC drive to be Amiga/1581 compatible and it will mount neatly in the front panel.

Mine is done like that, I'm using a modified PC mechanism.

In that sense, yes you are correct. I was thinking about getting an Amiga 2000 drive, but maybe a PC drive would be better. Did you reference anything for your project? An Aminet hack maybe?

[redrumloa]

One more pic:



Running Geos128.

[trekiej]

The internals look pretty clean and the back panel too.
Congratulations.

[Jope]

redrumloa wrote:
Did you reference anything for your project? An Aminet hack maybe?

Just the knowledge about PC drive modifications you can gather from amiga.org and eab.

Get DC to pin 2 and RDY to pin 34 and make the drive answer to DS0. ;-) The Brazilian dudes figured out a way to cheat the RDY signal by jumpering pin 30 to pin 34 on the drive, but I haven't tried that myself.

[redrumloa]

Get DC to pin 2 and RDY to pin 34 and make the drive answer to DS0. ;-) The Brazilian dudes figured out a way to cheat the RDY signal by jumpering pin 30 to pin 34 on the drive, but I haven't tried that myself.

Hmm.. I might be pestering you here soon for info  :-D

[Fester]

Yes, your project looks really good! Congratulations.

[redrumloa]

Fester wrote:
Yes, your project looks really good! Congratulations.

Thanks!!  :-D

I await delivery of orders from Mouser, Jameco and the composite-VGA adapter from China to continue to the next step. With any luck I will be going full steam into stage 2 this weekend. The expansion port extension cable will be a {bleep}...

[redrumloa]

I couldn't help thinking the power supply was only half done, so I spent the night tweaking it. The 9VAC would shut off if the ATX power supply switch turned off, but not if the case switch only was used. I decided a relay would be needed. Here is what I came up with.



A relay alone would have been easier, but I decided I wanted an indicator LED. Easier said than done when output is 9VAC. A bridged rectifier was needed. Below is the relay mounted to the power supply.



The relay coil is picked up from the ATX 5VDC from the connector shown in the picture. I will probably eventually wire that directly to the ATX board.

So far it passes testing and works great, even the LED lights!  :-o 9VAC turns off with the regular case power switch. That is more like it.

[B00tDisk]

Now does the ATX switch behave like it does in an ATX mobo system - eg one tap shuts down from the system or press and hold to "sleep" or what? :-)

[Hodgkinson]

Maybe it would work ok with just the LED and a resistor - Even on AC (The LED is a diode in itself)? OK, maybe the led would flash at 50Hz :crazy: , but this shouldn't be much of a problem.

Hey, maybe you could just use one of those LED's with a built in resistor?

Just a thought (Nicely done anyhow),
Hodgkinson.

EDIT: What's the relay switching? The 9VAC side or the mains side of the transformer? If im right in saying it’s a reed relay; they aren’t normally designed to switch much current. Maybe a 100mA or so at most, and not usually mains either.

EDIT2: Hey, what about having a high current relay, controlled from the ATX PSU, switching the mains side of the transformer? That way, you can save on the energy costs of having the transformer powered up all the time, and you can use a neon indicator (W. resistor of course) on the mains side rather than trying to use a LED.