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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Nlandas on May 03, 2008, 04:41:52 AM
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Ok, I finally got my hands on the first Amiga I ever owned again. I just got done cleaning up battery leakage on her. It doesn't look good but I did my best and we'll see in the morning when she's dry.
However, I forgot that the A2000s floppy power connectors aren't keyed. It has been a long time after all. Which way do they connect to the floppy? Color codes or a photo would be greatly appreciated.
Sorry for the basic question. Google found too many results to go through and I know that someone here will know right off the top of their head.
I hope she boots up in the morning.
A2000, Trumpcard w/ SCSI HD, 4MB fastmem card, Supra 68K Accelerator @28MHz, 2 880K floppies and boxes and boxes of software, books and magazines for $30USD. Cross your fingers for me because the 68K socket was badly corroded.
Cany anyone help? :-?
-Nyle
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Anyone know how to orientate the 3.5" power connectors on the A2000? I'd like to try and boot her up this morning. I'm hoping I got to her soon enough.
-Nyle
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Hi,
the flat side is down.
And please be patient ;-)
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CLS2086 wrote:
Hi,
the flat side is down.
And please be patient ;-)
Thanks. I'm sure you know how hard that is to do when you've gotten a new Amiga toy. :-D
Here's hoping. Thanks again.
-Nyle
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Hey she's alive - boots to kickstart screen. Now to reattach the hard drive - replace the Power supply fan and see what else this old girl can do.
Does anyone know if the serial number corresponds to age at all? The serial number on this unit is 000689.
-Nyle
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For the serial number, I think this is a very earlier model. Look directly on the motherboard, where you'll find the board revision. But I bet this is an 4.xx model (hard to upgrade, BTW).
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Glad you got one.
The A2000 was my first Amiga (and the A1500 my second). I sold mine when I emigrated to the USA and then picked up another one a couple of years ago. I'm almost finished getting her where I want her:
68030 @ 40MHz & 8MB RAM
ECS Chipset with Agnus changed from NTSC to PAL for booting
Cybervision 643D
Zorro "Amber" SDFF
SCSI Hard Card (memory disabled)
1 x Floppy
80MB SCSI hard drive (backup)
2GB SCSI Orb Removable HD (primary)
SCSI CD ROM
Cloanto's Amiga Forever OS3.x OS installed
Video switcher box to change between native and RTG screens
Things to do:
More RAM for 68030 card
add another floppy drive or SD Card floppy emulator
Install WHDload and games.
Network Card
Things to change:
Replace SCSI card with IDE and replace Hard and CD drives
Have fun. :-D
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@Darrin:
Why in heaven do you want to use IDE in an Amiga?
IDE is crap compared to SCSI! Heavy CPU load when accessing/moving data, slowdowns, etc...
And SCSI opens a lot of possibilities: networking, "out-to-date" (read cheap or even free) hardware, speed, etc.
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rkauer wrote:
@Darrin:
Why in heaven do you want to use IDE in an Amiga?
IDE is crap compared to SCSI! Heavy CPU load when accessing/moving data, slowdowns, etc...
And SCSI opens a lot of possibilities: networking, "out-to-date" (read cheap or even free) hardware, speed, etc.
For one simple reason, I have some huge IDE drives sitting on shelves that I can use, and when we consider the amount of data we actually transfer, the speed of an IDE drive on a Buddha compared to some ancient SCSI card is not really noticable.
Oh, and it would add an A1200 clock port too! :-)
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It's harder to findmodern CD-R, DVD-R drives and the like in scsi format.
IDE uses cfcard as hard drives
The only really impressive SCSI I've found was the onboard Amiga 3000scsi, A4000T Scsi, and the CSPPC scsi, THAT was friggin fast.
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Crom00 wrote:
It's harder to findmodern CD-R, DVD-R drives and the like in scsi format.
IDE uses cfcard as hard drives
Exactly. When I get around to it I can replace the sad 2 or 4 speed SCSI CD ROM with a faster 32x IDE one and a nice big 40GB hard drive instead of the minute SCSI one and the 2GB Orb drive. I have a bunch of internal IDE ZIP100 drives on a shelf too, but I've only used one of them in an A1200 tower.
I sometimes wonder why "IDE" is such a naughty word in Amiga circles. :-)
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Darrin wrote:
Crom00 wrote:
It's harder to findmodern CD-R, DVD-R drives and the like in scsi format.
IDE uses cfcard as hard drives
I sometimes wonder why "IDE" is such a naughty word in Amiga circles. :-)
I hear you but it comes from the same area as Motorola vs. Intel x86 days. Now SATA is finally good enough to make SCSI for the desktop not necessary. IF you have access to SCSI devices they are superior to the old IDE implementations but otherwise, I understand using IDE in an Amiga. To each their own.
I am excited though to have a working A2000 again.
It's got a 28MHz accelerator and 4MB fast mem card. (Shows 2.8 ROM on boot screen but that's a 2.04 right? There is a broken wire between two pins on the ROM chip - I remember a patch from the old days but I don't remember what for. Should I fix the broken wire?
(Refresh my memory is fastmem automatically added to the OS or does it require a command? It has been a long time. The discs I've booted so far have only shown the chipram.
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Nlandas wrote:
It's got a 28MHz accelerator and 4MB fast mem card. (Shows 2.8 ROM on boot screen but that's a 2.04 right? There is a broken wire between two pins on the ROM chip - I remember a patch from the old days but I don't remember what for. Should I fix the broken wire?
Don't remember ever putting any wires near my ROMS. My A1500 had a ROM switcher installed which allowed me to fit a 1.3 and 2.0 ROM into the socket and it ran a wire to a pin on another chip to detect a keyboard reset and then toggle the active ROM.
(Refresh my memory is fastmem automatically added to the OS or does it require a command? It has been a long time. The discs I've booted so far have only shown the chipram.
It should be automatic, but didn't early Workbenches just display 1 total RAM amount rather than individual Chip and Fast? Fast RAM could be turned off with the NOFASTMEM program in one of the draws (which was needed in a few rare cases for some really old games).
Try and get hold of the untility SYSINFO to find out exactly how your memory is configured and what chips you have.
IIRC, my original A2000 had a 0.5MB Agnus (Chip RAM) with 512KB installed on the motherboard and 512KB on an additional ZORRO card.
When it died and I replaced it with an A1500 it had an ECS chipset with a 1MB Agnus (1MB Chip RAM) with all the memory on the motherboard (However I had a 8MB SCSI card fitted and used the 512KB card from the A2000 to give me a total of 9.5MB - 1MB Chip and 8.5MB Fast).
The A2000 I have now is also ECS and has a NTSC 1MB Agnus fitted. I cut a couple of tracks on the mobo to make the Agnus PAL by default just to make it more compatible with my UK bought games which have quite a few PAL titles.
I have another A2000 RAM card on a shelf which was populated with 8MB and it's probably the same one you have. There's a couple of jumpers on it where you can toggle how much Fast RAM you want to use or switch it all off. It's easy to run a few wires from these to switches mounted on the outside of the case.
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I can't remember when and why the jumper was used on some rom chips. There is a thread about it here somewhere that spells it out. IIRC, some roms shipped with the wire installed and the instructions detailed reasons (MB revisions, some models, etc) to cut it. Yours was probably cut by the previous owner as instructed. Powering up should not hurt anything either way.
One of my A2000s is configured similar to yours. Mine has SupraTurbo 28Mhz, an A2091 with 2 Megs of fast, 1 Meg of chip and OS 2.1. It's one of my favorites, it still "feels" unmodified but is much faster than stock.
Something between the Supraturbo and the A2091 makes it take a liitle over a minute to boot. I've tried all the jumpers on both boards to fix this, no success. Other than this minor inconvenience, it's a very fun machine. It is surprisingly fast.
You got a great deal! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
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If you're going to expand it, adding a CD-rom should be easy. Converting to 1 Meg of chip ram should be reletively easy if you have the 1 Meg Agnus.
The Zorro II 16-bit sky is the limit. That's a lot of territory, grin.
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Great to hear you've got your A2000 up and running :-)
Nlandas wrote:
It's got a 28MHz accelerator and 4MB fast mem card. (Shows 2.8 ROM on boot screen but that's a 2.04 right? There is a broken wire between two pins on the ROM chip - I remember a patch from the old days but I don't remember what for. Should I fix the broken wire?
I've never heard of 2.8 ROMS, but you can check the Kickstart ROM. It'll probably have something like version 37175 on it. The broken wire you're talking about is probably between pins 1 and 31, correct? If so, you should only fix it if you're motherboard is rev 3. Rev 4 and older shouldn't have those 2 pins connected.
(Refresh my memory is fastmem automatically added to the OS or does it require a command? It has been a long time. The discs I've booted so far have only shown the chipram.
Depends on the memory expansion. If it's autoconfig it will be added automatically, if not, you'll need to use addmem or a similar vendor provisioned tool to add the memory during startup. Your best bet would be to identify the memorycard and then search for its details on http://amiga.resource.cx/ (http://amiga.resource.cx/) or http://www.amiga-hardware.com/ (http://www.amiga-hardware.com/).
Have fun with your A2000 !
:-)