My A1200 project Updated: 08/28

[som99]

Nice work! I must admit I was surprised to see that the aca-12xx cards mounted upside down like that as it's not ideal for Cooling and airflow at all.

Thanks, nice to not having it overheated anymore
I also would like it the other way around, if I had space I would have built a crossed flexible cable for it to turn it around, tho I can't due to it's shape
I am thinking of putting a low profile heatsink on the hole in the PCB on the ACA (A hole in the back to the CPU), ill see what ill do More work to be done tomorrow

[som99]

Nearly killed the Amiga today, pulling to many amps trough the 12v on the motherboard.
Some smoke, but seems it survived, have to put protective coating on the traces again and I guess all will be fine. But I was sweating blood I have to be more carefull but im a bit stressed out since my problems never end.

Adding the cooling to the Indivision seems to do the trick to some extent. But when I close the amiga it runs hot and gives errors/graphics corruption after a while (alot longer time then before, since before it happened withing 5-10 mins now mabe 30-60 mins) still, just resting a 80mm fan on the vent holes over the keyboard keeps it cool enough to have no issues, so mabe it's not only the Indivision, I guess I have to start a thread about this.

[som99]

Oh wow, you are a lucky boy!

Clear nail polish will do the the trick for those exposed traces.

Yeah im lucky, would have been not nice to buy a new board now :/
Im thinking either nail polish them or remove the traces and solder wires.
Any suggestions?

[som99]

HUH!!!

Wasting a good pair of dykes on a old Amiga 1200. It brought tears to my eyes. Next time use a circular saw, they will chew up anything. Nice mod though.

When I did my A1200, I just overlooked the brick completely, I used the cheapest thing I could find, which was an old PC power supply that I had laying around, I mounter it into an old gateway server and then made sheet metal mods to the server case so that I could fit my A1200 into it. It worked out pretty well. One of these days I will get off my lazy butt and send in some pics, but I don't want to make you all cry.
Right now I am trying to figure out how to hook up a graphics card to the Amiga, I purchased one of those VGA converters, then I have to figure out how to mount it and put it in the case.

Well nice job on your unit, but wasting a pair of good dykes, don't know if it was worth it.

Haha Thanks, I really liked that par of dykes, was my favorite one
Would love to see some pictures of your build some day

Whoa!!

You are trying to pull to many amps through the traces on your Amiga 1200, I would suggest getting a PC power supply and hooking up some of those power user additions to the extra plugs on a PC power supply. All my disk drives, CD drives and additional parts that require power go to the extra plugs on my PC power supply, this takes a lot of strain off the Amiga traces.

Sorry to hear that you broke a good set of dykes.

smerf

I just clean the traces and they are in good shape, so im in luck, im going to solder all connectors on the PSU plug this time to avoid future disaster

PCB traces clean:

[som99]

Well, since I have heat issues I did some work today. First I repaired the damaged traces on both sides of the motherboard (4 traces in total), then I started working on the cooling, I am currently running a test and I hope it works this time! (cross my fingers).

This time I wont make any mistakes again SO not im pulling power for the fans directly from the PSU plug, I also use a nifty hole to pull the cables trough.


Then for some soldering to get the fans connected. Did not use 3-pin fan connectors since they take to much space so I cut them off.



Done:


Then I mounted the 40mm fans in the vent holes on the top part of the case, also I am pleased that the fans are quiet


Now I just have to stress the Amiga and just wait and see if it keeps cool now

[som99]

@som99

Really nice work but... indivision mk2 becomes hotter? i have indivision mk1 with 060 without any fan

Thanks, I am happy with it and glad the fans are quiet, can't hear them when using the Amiga so that's a big bonus for me.
Tho I am not sure why it gets so hot, without fans the Amiga would crash withing 20-30mins and start to get graphics corruption and Gurus within minutes when started.

Also an update: Amiga been running over 60 mins rendering in Pov-Ray stressing it to the max without any issues, seems ive solved my problems for now

[som99]

Today I decided to take my A1200 online, so I did Works great, quite good way to transfer files from my file server to the Amiga instead of jumping around with CF cards

I used an old Lucent Technologies Orinoco Silver 11Mb/s card I had lying around together with the prism2 driver.

The card:


MiamiDX


And last but not least, iBrowse

[som99]

Looks like I'm not the only one using moustache wax as flux... :^{o

Haha

[som99]

Haha

Hey a lill update, today I got my 40-pins PATA/IDE flash/drive for my miggy, it will be used instead of the adapter and Compact flash card to save space on my 4-way buffered IDE interaface




It's small and I got a 4-pin molex adapter for it also

Edit: It has a switch for master/slave if I use a female to male adapter and want to use more then one.
Transfer speeds measured to r/w 46/28MB/s on PC.

I have a PATA/IDE USB adapter for PC so transfering from my CF wont be hard

[som99]

Just noticed how small the ACA1231 accelerator is and how much room is left in the trap door area with the ACA1231 installed.

It would be great if Jens could make a new run of ACA1231 accelerators that had extended PCB's to fill the empty space, and that other half of currently unused space could contain a real 24bit graphics card.  Something like the equivalent to a PicassoII, or better a PicassoIV w/4mb VRAM to make it a combo accelerator & 24bit video card would be fantastic. Some of us A1200 owners prefer to keep the stock wedge A1200 case design, and don't want to put our A1200's into tower cases.

Probably not enough market for such a product and it might be difficult to reverse engineer the PicassoIV and shrink it down to such a small form factor, but it would be a very cool combination product for the stock A1200 case.

Agree 100%, I would wish to have a something to fill that space, I want my A1200 in the wedge!
I think it would not be so hard to make a small PCB for the PicassoIV but as said reverse engineer it would take some work, but would be a great thing to have!
I would buy it and in a instant buy a new ACA card with expansion port for it!

[som99]

i ordered a new (old) Amiga 1200 from ebay and then ACA 1232 128MB Accelerator, Indivision AGA 1200 MK2, 4xEIDE'99 Buffered Interface from Amigakit.. using the standard A1200 PSU.. i haven't had amiga classic in 13 years.. will i have heat problems also?

You probably won't have heat problems, I am not sure why I have heat problems (esp with lisa) ive seen a few more with same problems as me but have not figured out the cause yet.

Also congratulations! Lovely setup you got going, if you need anything or any help just drop me a line, startup-sequence, WHDLoad setups, my OS configs etc etc ill be glad to help

Absolutely no. With this kind of hardware add-ons your mggy won't run hot. At least mine is ok with a similar setup.

Mines not, not even runnable for 5 mins for me without the fans. I did a million things to figure out my artefact's and strange errors/gurus before I found that heat was causing it, and bam fans on = no errors what so ever.
One thing I can be sure of is that the problems starts as soon as I plug in the Indivision.
But smooth sailing for me now so I am happy anyways
FD fans = best silent fans ever So they do not annoy me

but i have too say that i'm very happy for your pictures on how you done things too make it work, it will save me alot of time when i'm building my new amiga a little more up to date.. thanks again:)

You are welcome, I love when I can help people We needed more A1200 pics here on a.org

[som99]

Thank you.. maybe i need some help when i get all the stuff..

And I will be glad to help