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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Antiriad on January 10, 2005, 09:39:48 PM

Title: Amiga 500 Expansion port and Zorro II adapter/extender
Post by: Antiriad on January 10, 2005, 09:39:48 PM

Guys

Does anyone know where to get a Zorro II type Extender for the Amiga 500. As far as I know the side expansion connector on the Amiga 500 is a male type connector.

(http://amiga.resource.cx/photos/busconverter.jpg)

Any recommendations.

Thanks

Mike

Title: Re: Amiga 500 Expansion port and Zorro II adapter/extender
Post by: adolescent on January 11, 2005, 12:56:33 AM

Some of the A500 SCSI expansion boxes are just Zorro II adapters with A2000 SCSI cards.  For instance the Expansion Systems Dataflyer 500 (1 slot), and IVS Trumpcard (1 and 2 slots).  I see these on eBay from time to time.

Title: Re: Amiga 500 Expansion port and Zorro II adapter/extender
Post by: JimS on January 11, 2005, 01:29:34 AM

If you can wield a +4 soldering iron, there are plans for building a single slot Zorro II adapter for the 500/1000 on Aminet. I had a 2-slot commercial version on my 1000 back in the day...

-Jim

Title: Re: Amiga 500 Expansion port and Zorro II adapter/extender
Post by: Doobrey on January 11, 2005, 01:48:24 AM

Have a look on the AmigaHacks group on Yahoo!

Danielle Gratteri managed to hack one together, and added an A2000 CPU slot on it too.
 You do need to find an A2000 Buster chip though.

Title: Re: Amiga 500 Expansion port and Zorro II adapter/extender
Post by: Argus on January 12, 2005, 09:52:25 AM

Bus extenders for the A500 are pretty rare (other than the standard harddrive sidecars).  You could make yourself a simple single zorro slot with some isa connectors, some cable, a saw, crazy glue, and some short ribbon cable.  This approximates the same thing as you'd find in a Dataflyer500 (i.e. female 86-pin to female 100-pin adaptor).  Such a setup may not work with all cards without further modification (e.g. the reset function for A2091 cards would have to be hardwired).  If you need to make an 86-pin male connector for a passthrough, try sawing off the bottom gold connector of an isa card with all of the gold contacts in place, cut it to be 86 pin, glue the two pieces together and solder each of the ribbon cable wires to the corresponding gold pin.  This works great albeit a bit fragile and keep the ribbon cable short if you can.