Expanded A2000 using NO SLOTS!

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Awesome!  I'm building up my own A2000 right now going a more traditional route, but would love to see build pics of yours as you progress!  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

hmmm I was wondering if the Kipper2k board would work with an Amiga 2000.  I may pull it from my Amiga 500 and put it in my 2000...
( and move my super denise into the 2000 as well )
 
or just buy another one of each... :afro:  <-- i think that means cool...

I actually just emailed Kipper2K yesterday to ask if one could use his 8MB board underneath the processor + a card in the accelerator slot... wasn't sure if sticking something in the A2000 accelerator slot completely disables the 68000 socket or not?  Will let you know when I hear back!  

...or just buy another of each, that's cool too.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

@bbond007 and @waltermixxx:

I received this response from Kipper2K last night:

"This board will autoconfig fastmem at mem location 200000 – 9fffff. I know it will work in the A2000 with a few configurations but I am not sure what else you have, if it sits in the same mem location as my board then it will cause a conflict."

So it sounds like it will work on a regular A2000, the thing I'm trying to do is a little more unique - add 8MB into the 68000 socket in addition to the 16MB on my 040 card, guess I will have to check what the address space of that memory is, but I'm guessing it's mapped high 32-bit, so as long as the 68000 socket isn't completely disabled when adding something into the accelerator slot it should work and not cause conflict.  As long as the priority of the 32-bit ram is higher, that is, LOL.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Does the kipper board let you disable 4MB? I'm guessing, you'd run into trouble if you tried to add a ZII GFX board.

He makes both a 4MB and an 8MB model.  Thinking ahead, I suppose!  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

We all enjoy hearing about your trials with this hardware also.

Ditto this!  This thread is chock full of tips to help expand my own A2000 project!  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

What media card reader are you using? If it's one of the Mechware ones, I use them successfully in both my A500 (with external CD drive) and A2000 (with internal CD drive). You might want to check your termination jumper, otherwise you should have no problem running an internal CD. Using an external chassis to house the CD drive seems like a huge waste of space.
 
It shouldn't matter what your device ID is for booting, I boot from 0, or 1, or 5, or whatever. All that matters is that the devices are set to different ID's, terminated correctly, and show up as "bootable" when you open the Early Startup screen.
 
Also AFAIK most GVP accelerators map their memory into the 32-bit address space, so shouldn't conflict with the 16-bit address space limitations of the bridgeboard. Try running SysInfo, it should tell you if the memory is 32-bit or not.
 
Also, good luck with that Thylacine! It's a dog in my A2000, laggy and slow when it even detects a device at all (or doesn't freeze up), and this is with an '040. I've been meaning to try it with the original Thylacine software instead of Poseidon and see if that's any better, otherwise I'll be selling it on. Really seems to need A3000/A4000 ZIII bus.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I was going to suggest checking with Mechy! I was confused by mine at first, too (I have a pair of the 60 models) and he was able to set me straight.
 
If it helps you at all, on my A2000 system I've got the internal CD-R drive set as unit 0 (with no termination) and the card reader set as unit 1 (with termination jumper installed). It was just easier to route the cable this way, coming up from beneath the drive sled, hitting the CD and then the card reader. I use a few different cards but my default configuration is with a CF in the PCMCIA adapter (LUN 0) as my main OS3.9 system, a second CF in the CF slot as OS3.1 (backup), an SD card (LUN 3) installed and formatted as FAT95, and occasionally I've set up a partition on an xD card for backups, as well. The only slots I have yet to use are the SmartMedia and Memory Stick ones, LOL.
 
Trust me, it all works, but you may have to do a little bit of poking around or messing with Mountlists, especially if you want to do crazy things like have one of the drives set up running PFS and another running FAT95, and I can pretty much promise you there will be some cursing involved, but at the end of the day it all works pretty darn well. HDToolbox should detect the card reader as one device, and address all the slots as individual LUN's, just remember to check the "bootable" box and set your boot priority correct for whichever cards you install an OS on. :mickeymouse:

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

No matter whether the CD is terminated or not, in any position on the cable, any address; if the CD is in the chain, the SCM is not recognized.
 
Oh, did notice one other odd thing. With the CD in the SCSI chain, when I turn the computer on, I get 6 short flashes on the power light and a dark gray screen.
 
So, I'm really thinking about bowing to the invertible and taking the CD external.

As another thought, it really sounds like there's some issue with your CD drive.  It's a standard 50-pin SCSI, correct?  Have you considered just trying with another drive?  It really sounds like yours may have some defect.  The card reader works fine without the CD drive in the chain, correct?  I've bought 50-pin SCSI drives on ebay before for under $5 each, shouldn't break the bank.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Actually dude, it's really messing with my OCD-thing to think that someone with an A2000 would have to use an external drive. I've got this here drive that I bought with a bulk lot of other Amiga items recently. As you can see from the pics it's mounted in an external housing, but internally it's just a regular 50-pin SCSI drive. I'd be glad to sell you this one for $5 plus shipping from VA. You could remove it from it's external chassis and try to mount it internally (in the chain with the card reader), and if that still fails just throw it back in it's external housing. Interested?
 
Note - I haven't had a chance to test it yet, but everything else I bought from that lot has worked fine. You may need a Centronics-connector termination block for external use, or the termination jumper on the drive may be enough... let me know and I'll try to dig one of those out and throw in with it, too, if you need one.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Eep, sorry about the drive, it's always hit-or-miss with this old hardware, you can use that external case with a different drive, HD, or even your media card reader, anything that has a 50-pin SCSI interface.  I've done some weird hacks with my other one to get around copying files between multiple devices, etc.  Good to keep around!  

I forget - is your media card reader one of the Mechware ones?  If so, you won't be able to use a PCMCIA ethernet adapter.  Those slots only work for storage, it's not the same as the PCMCIA slot in an A600/1200.

Thylacine is a slug under Zorro II, I'm not happy with mine, planning on ditching it as soon as they do another run of X-Surf 100's and then just waiting for the USB to be finished on those.  But that's definitely the fastest way to add networking... from what I hear the X-Surf 100 pretty much smokes everything else... supposedly a new production run coming in February.  Fingers crossed!  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Looked up the X-Surf 100 and that sounds like the deal! Checked Vesalia and ETA is Feb of this year, so hopefully we'll both score!

Hi Curtis!

I just got an email from this company that they have X-Surf 100's in-stock:

http://amigastore.eu/en/204-x-surf-100.html

Funny, I'd never heard of them until I picked up a copy of Amiga Future and saw their ad.  :idea:  I'm going to order one this week, will let you know how it goes!

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Why do these deals always pop up when I am flat! I hope they will around in three weeks or so.... I am not up on this card - obviously zorro II, are fast enough for real use?

@Motrucker - try ordering one, the price actually went down after I added it to my cart and started filling out my order info.  Win!  Very slick website they've got, BTW.

There's another thread here on amiga.org where a bunch of users posted their speed test results with this card and Roadshow.  Of course most of them are on ZIII-equipped systems, will have to see what I get on ZII, but yes, the card is supposed to be able to switch speeds depending on the bus.  Not looking forward to trying to figure out Roadshow, might try it with Genesis or Miami first.

Another thing I'm not too keen on is the USB ports on the card aren't active yet (waiting on an update), but since I want this mainly for the Ethernet that's not too big a concern.

Will let y'all know how it works out, am sure I'll post some middle-of-the-night rant if I can't figure it out, LOL.