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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: blanning on October 03, 2008, 06:50:35 PM
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Can anyone suggest a case to convert my 2000 into a tower? I'm thinking something like the BOMAC tower... only less tank-like.
brian
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Try to find a MicroniK A2000 tower, I think that case is really good (and good looking).
If you are going for the DIY approach you are going to do quite a lot of cutting inside the case for the huge motherboard, and you will need a bigtower. IMHO most modern bigtowers are ugly and have too much cooling so they look out of place in an Amiga environment.
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How about somethink like this?
(http://www.envador.com/Photos/PVCII/OpenedUp1.JPG)
or this?
(http://www.rcfreas.com/files/lego.jpg)
Note: I did not build these...
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cv643d wrote:
Try to find a MicroniK A2000 tower, I think that case is really good (and good looking).
If you are going for the DIY approach you are going to do quite a lot of cutting inside the case for the huge motherboard, and you will need a bigtower. IMHO most modern bigtowers are ugly and have too much cooling so they look out of place in an Amiga environment.
The bomac tower worked by plugging the whole 2000 case (without the cover) into the larger bomac case. There was a large opening in the back the size of the original 2000 case. It had another power supply in it to augment the 2000 power supply. There's a picture of one here on a.org somewhere.
I like that idea since I don't have to anchor the motherboard and deal with the weird amiga port configuration. I thought I'd just cut the back out of an atx case and drop in the 2000 case. I'm worried about all sorts of things like the 2000 case being too tall for the atx case, or the back of the atx case just being too problematic to allow a big rectangular hole without falling apart or something.
I was hoping someone had done it already. :-)
If I were willing to hack my 2000 case, I'm sure I could fit a few more drives in there over the zorro slots. Maybe that's a better way to go.
brian
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is it a jet engine of some sort ?
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blanning wrote:
Can anyone suggest a case to convert my 2000 into a tower? I'm thinking something like the BOMAC tower... only less tank-like.
brian
Turn it on its side and call it done! The A2000 is as big as many towers already. :lol:
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amigadave wrote:
Turn it on its side and call it done! The A2000 is as big as many towers already. :lol:
Yeah, if only it had the drive capacity to match
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I have a BOMAC tower I'm willing to sell. Mine's the one pictured on the BBOAH (the exact one - I sent in the pictures). These things aren't exactly common so we'd have to discuss price. I must forewarn you though that these things are SUPER HEAVY and therefore postal costs (from Canada) are going to be a consideration.
On the positive side though, they are MASSIVE inside. The space inside makes the regular A2000 case seem like a Mac Mini. I think you can fit like seven or 8 drives, total!
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oops, double post.
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blanning wrote:
The bomac tower worked by plugging the whole 2000 case (without the cover) into the larger bomac case. There was a large opening in the back the size of the original 2000 case. It had another power supply in it to augment the 2000 power supply. There's a picture of one here on a.org somewhere.
I like that idea since I don't have to anchor the motherboard and deal with the weird amiga port configuration. I thought I'd just cut the back out of an atx case and drop in the 2000 case. I'm worried about all sorts of things like the 2000 case being too tall for the atx case, or the back of the atx case just being too problematic to allow a big rectangular hole without falling apart or something.
I was hoping someone had done it already. :-)
If I were willing to hack my 2000 case, I'm sure I could fit a few more drives in there over the zorro slots. Maybe that's a better way to go.
brian
The Bomac case is a monster.
IMHO it is an unelegant solution to have half of the original case in a tower but I can clearly see why because the A2000 PSU contains some special signals (that you can hack around or skip I think).
To do it right, hack an A2000 motherboard inside a bigtower is going to take skills, sweat and dedication. And a case you are ready to hack with a hacksaw.
I think a better idea is to mount the motherboard directly in the case and skip the bottom of the chassi. A2000 is a huge computer and you are not making it smaller by hacking half of the original case into a tower :-)
The problem areas of the A2000 is the video slot and the area under where the floppydrives are positioned in the original case, you risk loosing some 5.25"/3.5" slots from an ATX tower here because most PC-motherboards are not 42 cm tall ;-) . Other than that I think the A2000 is an excellent choice for a tower conversion, they are not rare so you are not doing anything criminal by hacking one and its got five Zorro slots ready for action that you can line up with the openings in a case.
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The few advantages in moving an A2000 into a tower is making more clearance for the CPU slot accelerators, so then you can put a very large heatsink + fan over the CPU itself (in case of a 030~040 unit (030 also heats a lot, but nothing compared to a 040).
Oh, and the access to the custom chips.:-)
Also you can have more hard disks inside to fulfil the SCSI chain.:-D
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rkauer wrote:
The few advantages in moving an A2000 into a tower is making more clearance for the CPU slot accelerators, so then you can put a very large heatsink + fan over the CPU itself (in case of a 030~040 unit (030 also heats a lot, but nothing compared to a 040).
Oh, and the access to the custom chips.:-)
Also you can have more hard disks inside to fulfil the SCSI chain.:-D
The main reason for doing this was more drive bays. I have sort of a long-term plan to build up a 1200 with a custom plexi case. I could do something similar with this one. Maybe I could find some right-angle bus extender type connectors for the zorro, cpu, and video slots. Then I could flatten the computer. :)
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Back in the days (1995 or so) I had my A2000 converted into a bog-standard AT-bigtower, by doing half the Bomac-trick. I simply cut of of the backside of another A2000-case i had lying around and screwd it where the sun should never shine :-D
Converting the AT-PSU was also rather easy (by using the cable from a dead A2000-PSU) and only required some soldering and changing the tick-jumper.
AFAIR the case had 5 5.25 and 2 3.5 drive-bays, and I blocked one of each with accel-card.
So my advice, stay away from ATX, rather go dumpster diving for anything AT big enough.