Mods/Hacks: Who's done what?

[Generale]

Hi again.

Just thought I'd ask this question:

Who out there has done a hard hack or mod to their Amiga?

What was the mod and how successful was it?

Even horror tales of failed attempts would be great.


I'll start off.
Apart from disassembly and corrosion repairs, all I've done on an Amiga was the a500ide project. Worked well. Will work better after my next planned projects.

Ordered the parts today to make a flashkicker and PC keyboard adaptor. After they are made, I'll be putting my a500 in a minitower I have.
After that..who knows  :-D

[Generale]

excellent!

hmm.. vga ramchips. Are they SRAM?

Very lumpy video converter indeed. I have to know, why did you do it?

Heh. I remembered a very rough hack I did ages ago which worked for some unknown reason. It was actually on a c64 tape drive. I discovered that shorting one of the drive resistors during read sped up the motor (obviously) but it still read error free. My own fastloader lol! Oh yeah, i also added a d25 to the userport of a c64 to make it easier to plug in my own homebrew evils.

Are the scandoublers the proper 15 - 30khz converters, or is it the one that you have to do the horizontal scrolly thing?
Sorry about the dumb question. Baby girl that doesn't want to sleep means very tired father...

I'm always impressed by someone that has an idea and goes ahead with it.

[Generale]

I'll have to look into that. I'd love to use a standard svga. I like the 1084s, but it can be a shade hard on the eyes, especially when interlaced. Also, I could really cheat and use a KVM switch then too (not for the mouse though) to cut down on desk space.

The lumpy converter I was referring to was coldfish's modded monitor.

[Generale]

Wow. So many amazing things!!

Its interesting to see what has and hasn't been working for people. Looks like the floppy mod has the highest failure rate.

Oh yeah, I posted 2 more pics of my version of a500ide last night. here
and here

Keep them coming!

I think its good for the community as a whole knowing what has been done, and what peoples experiences are!

[Generale]

I wish I had some of the hardware described here. Lacking in funds, all I can do is mangle my a500. If only there was a hack I could do that involves a slab of 1541-IIs or ancient x86 hardware to make it do something cool. I have a nice collection of both.

Accelerators/expansions are cool. Especially homebrew ones. They can be so unique and scary.

...Yay! I won an ebay auction for $1!! A nice chunk of accessories for my palm m500. hehe. Not related but cool anyway (for me)

[Generale]

I was considering doing that to one of the a500s funnily enough. I have a great jamma cabinet in the loungeroom. Its a 2 player woodgrain jobbie. It was streetfighter 2 champion edition, but the board got cooked.

[Generale]

@ronmor:

I have a question about your NiCad to Li battery conversion...well sort of a statement ant a question.

Did you put in a power diode to protect against reverse current? That is, if the circuit sends a charging voltage through when the power is on.

About 6 years back I bought a secondhand notebook. Ex Telstra. I'd been using it, seeing what it could and couldn't do. Then I stepped away for a minute to use the toilet. Just after I got up from the table and made it to the next room, the computer exploded. I'm talking a proper explosion here.
The explosion had enough force to rip chips off the boards, tear through the layers of metal, propel the keyboard across the room, and the keys throughout 2 rooms, and took a chunk out of the table it was sitting on.

After the smoke cleared (an hour or so at least. That smoke was like concentrated evil), inspection revealed that some bright spark replaced the NiCad with a Lithium, and as near as I can tell, it was because the mainboard had tried to charge it.
Hope I haven't scared you.
If you don't mind resetting your clock, I suggest taking out the battery, starting up and _carefully_ check the connector/battery holder for a voltage.

I just don't want this happening to anyone else. Especially with nice bits of hardware  :-)

[Generale]

@dethknight:
Yellow, eh. The generic something error. Ouch.

@ronmor

Well, I've heard of a lot of people replacing NiCad batteries with Lithium, and I don't think I've heard of others having problems. But I have to admit, after what happened to me, I'd rather be safe than sorry. I guess those warnings on batteries about them exploding if they are recharged are more pertinent than I expected.
Anyhow, putting a power diode in, or possibly cutting a VCC trace to the battery circuit may do it. Personally I think the diode is simpler.

Heh. Naah, no gas. Mind you, the pee I was going to have had to be postponed somewhat.