My new Alphagen MagicBox

[amiman99]

My newest purchase, Alphagen MagicBox, a character generator based on A1200 with 68030 40MHz accelerator.
I made a YouTube video for all to see at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2Fpt47UqEo
enjoy

[XDelusion]

I had a chance to buy one of those a while back, but backed out of the deal at the very end...

...been wondering if I should regret that or not.

Looks cool! Let's see AROS on it, ha ha!

[ChaosLord]

How much did it cost u?

What software does it use for its CG?

[amiman99]

It was around $100 on Ebay sold as "power on test only" with busted CDROM drive.
As far as software, it looks like custom made, operated by FKeys. I didn't have time to fully explore it.

[XDelusion]

$100?!? I'm glad I didn't get the other, they were asking around $300 something plus shipping.

[Ral-Clan]

That was a good, thorough video.  I don't have any more space to set up another Amiga in my house, but since I do have a rack with effects modules beside my computer - I could see something like this fitting in nicely (I like the rack mount chassis).

PS: there is another video on YouTube demonstrating how to use the features of the MagicBox (I saw it automatically thumbnailed at the right side of the screen when watching your video).

[som99]

Nice find I would love one of those in my server rack!

[ChaosLord]

As far as software, it looks like custom made, operated by FKeys. I didn't have time to fully explore it.

My 1500 Mhz AMD CPU can't handle Adobe Flash so I did not watch the video for clues.

We used to sell an F-key character generator waaaay back ... I think it was called JDK Character Generator?  I can't remember exactly... its been soooo long... I am forgetting everything....  Anyway it was an awesome piece of software on OCS with a 7.15909Mhz 68000 CPU with 0 bytes L1 Cache.  It would be Amazing on AGA.  It came with a bunch of really nice fonts.  Having a hard drive would help out a lot.

I always loved Amiga Character Generators.  They were soooooooo beautiful and professional and awesome.

Anyway Good Score!  Saving a lost piece of Amiga Technology is wonderful.

[amiman99]

$100?!? I'm glad I didn't get the other, they were asking around $300 something plus shipping.

I would not pay more then $200 for it, the accelerator might be worth half that or more, but I have seen some people removing that and selling the Alphagen with out it, so be careful and look at the pictures.

There was another one for sale at the same time for less then that, but I didn't see it, since I already had one.

The Alphagens come up few time a year, some from liquidators and some from Amiga users who know what it is. The ones from liquidators are cheaper.

The only drawback from having the Alphagen is the blocked PCMCIA port, I may have to make a opening somehow sometime in the future and also I need to see if I could fix that floppy drive. I would love to use that HD floppy drive.

[Ral-Clan]

This is just a guess....but I think that circuit board on the back of a floppy drive simply converts a standard (PC) HD floppy drive to an Amiga DD drive.

It looks similar to a DIY circuit board that does the same thing I saw on the internet a few days ago.

http://www.ianstedman.co.uk/Amiga/designs/Floppy_Adaptor/floppy_adaptor.html

If the IC is a 74LS38 then you'll know for sure.

I have a Power Computing XL board that plugs into the back of a standard HD floppy and converts it to an Amiga HD floppy....and it has a lot more circuitry than the board you showed.

That's just a guess though.  Let us know how the repairs go.

[amiman99]

The board that plugs to the floppy drive is this one: http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=381

and the IC chip is a GAL16V8D.

I dug into it a bit more and here is a discussion about this http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=55462

I was curious and took apart the drive and found RED glue covering something underneath, so it's possible that I can't just replace the drive, but it's definitely Amiga HD Drive.

[mechy]

My newest purchase, Alphagen MagicBox, a character generator based on A1200 with 68030 40MHz accelerator.
I made a YouTube video for all to see at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2Fpt47UqEo
enjoy

here is another version...
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x934pp_amiga-cd-32-sx-1-alphagen-magicbox_shortfilms#.URY67PL6ZiQ

[Ral-Clan]

The board that plugs to the floppy drive is this one: http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=381

If it really is an HD drive for the Amiga then you've really found something great.  That circuit board has much less circuitry than my PowerXL board - I wonder how they get away with that!  Maybe there are physical modifications to the drive, like you said, that mean you can only use a specific drive with the board.

I think with the PowerXL board you can use any PC HD drive and it will convert it to an Amiga HD drive.

[DutchinUSA]

Couple of years ago one sold for over $300, really not all that crazy seeing as nowadays 1200's on Ebay go for well over $200 (without accelerator) and with the Alphagen you get an amiga 1200 with a cd-rom solution, 3,5" IDE solution, ability to use ps2 keyboard, floppy mod etc.

Some come with an Ioblix 1200P parallel interface, http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/ioblix1200p

Some have http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/search.pl?product=Typhoon+Mk2&company=  internal SCSI II

It might even have a Blizzard 1260 in it (not sure if that was a standard option).