Amiga 2000 arrived yesterday!

[banzai]

Chipset OCS (?) - 8370 Agnus

That's the 512K version. You'll want to replace that with the 8372A 1M Agnus or DKB MegaChip (8375) 2M. Aminet has many files on how to do this, but one thing always worth mentioning: NEVER pop out the Agnus unless you have the right tool! A PLCC extractor is a minor investment.

1. The B/W composite signal isn't a huge deal - but I'm curious about it.

Only the A600 and A1200 had composite color out. The others had monochrome, with the A1000 having a weird DIN socket, similar to that on the C64, and the A4000 had none.

2. Upgrading to 3.1 rom - I have the rom, but do I need to go up to ECS? and given that I can get the chips for ECS, is the revision of motherboard a factor?

I'm pretty sure it's not required to have any particular chipset, just that some modes won't work. Upgrading is easy, if you can get the chips, as they're all socketed.

3. I'm going to be replacing the HD controller with a GVP 030 combo board - the sims look (at first glance) the same size - interchangable? I know GVP used 64 pin sims on the 030 board.

The HC+8 uses 256K or 1Mx8 30-pin SIMMs, which are NOT even remotely like the 256K or 1Mx32 GVP SIMMs. For one thing, in order to have them 32-bits wide, there has to be 32 leads, which is two more than the 30-pin SIMMs have. In fact, the HC+8 uses the 30-pin SIMMs in banks of two to give you the 16-bit wide data bus (which is why they have to be added in pairs). The GVP-32 SIMMs can be added singly.

To further confound you (and everyone else on the planet), GVP uses the "by 32" and "by 8" interchangably. This works like:

256x32 = 1Mx8 = 8Mbits
1Mx32 = 4Mx8 = 32Mbits

Since the Amiga is told to count using BYTES (8 bits), then popping in the 256Kx32 will show up as 1MB of memory.

And to really get your head spinning, the GVP Combo will map that 32-bit memory outside the "Autoconfig" space, so if you set the HC+8 card to disable the SCSI (unless you have 14 SCSI devices you need to connect), you can use the 8MB of memory on it in the autoconfig space (fast ram), whatever the Combo has as "really fast" ram (up to 16MB), and you'll have either 512K, 1M, or 2M of chip, depending on what Agnus you're using.

A2088XT Rev 3 Bridgeboard.

Yeech. About the only thing that's good for is any old DOS3 or CP/M programs you have lying around. It's also what's using that 5.25" floppy drive, so you can pull out the floppy to add a SCSI CD-ROM drive.

banzai

[banzai]

Boy, you guys are fast...

I replaced the 1.3 kickstart rom with a 3.1 - and it boots up just fine.

Told ya!

So with the 2 meg on the HD controller card, the motherboard must have 512 of each.

Yup.

If I'm reading this right Agnus decides how much chip mem it can handle... mine is 8370 Fat Agnus - so I'd need the 8375 (ntsc fatter 1mb).

You've got it right. At the moment, the mobo is using the 512K Agnus as chip, and the other 512K is mapped as "/EXRAM" (just like the A500). All you need to do is pop out the 8370 WITH A PLCC EXTRACTOR, and pop in an 8372A, taking care to note the orientation of the chip (pin 1 is in the middle of one of the sides, not a corner as on a DIP chip). You then remove or cut J500 (this tells the mobo to re-map that /EXRAM as CHIP RAM), and set J101 to the other position ("Special" on the schematics, or 2-3 closed). This connects the address pin for the upper 512K to map it all as 1M chip. If you go for the 2M "MegaChip" boards, then it will have different instructions - and they have another 1M installed, so you'll also have to have the 1M chip available, as mentioned above.

Don't know if the 2mb version will work

It works just fine in mine. I've got the DKB MegaChip, which needs the on-board 1M chip RAM, and provides the other 1M and 8375 on the add-on board. There's also a small IC clip that runs over to GARY for the extra address line. Pretty simple, really. The hard part is finding one.

banzai

[banzai]

I've located the jumper and trace, for the trace I just have to cut the trace on the top side of the board with a thin point hobby knife right? or is there something on the bottom of the board too?

I may have been wrong about J500 - it's okay to try it first with it still closed, and open it if it doesn't see the extra 512K as chip. Yes, you only need to use a hobby razor (X-Acto) to cut the thin trace between the two halves, but be careful not to cut too deeply (multi-layer PCB). There's nothing below/underneath you have to mess with - mobo removal not required! If you need to reconnect it, just blob some solder between the two points, and you're good to go.

DF0 - a chinon drive has a real hard time recognising a disk inserted. I had to insert the one amiga formatted disk I have 3 times before it recognized it at all.

I had a similar problem with my internal A4K drive. I was able to clean it out, and paid particular attention to the small switches used to detect /diskchange and /write protect . Dust or corrosion makes the switch a bit flaky. A cotton swab and some isopropyl alcohol got it going. Just "swamp" the switch with the alcohol and press the switch a few dozen times to work out the gunk. While you're in there, use the swab to clean the heads. If that doesn't fix things, then it may be a matter of drive alignment (Google it).
You may also want to make sure you've got the right floppy cable in there, and that J301 is closed (DF1: internal). The cable should have DF0 on the untwisted connector, set as drive 0, and DF1 should have the twist at pins 4-6, and be set to drive 1.

Win XP won't format a floppy under 1.44

You need to open up a command prompt and use:
FORMAT A: /F:720 /U /S
where "/F" = format as, "/U" = to hell with the undelete crap, and "/S" = copy system files to make it boot (if needed). If you're trying to format an HD as a DD, then you'll have to cover the HD hole on the disk (opposite the write protect).

I'm even thinking of using 'type SER: to RAM:filename'

NEVER use the TYPE command to transfer files - it converts things to ASCII for display on the console device (or whatever you redirect it to). This means the high bit gets stripped, or it interprets some of the characters as "End of File" before the whole thing is transmitted. Use COPY instead:
COPY filename >SER: (or PAR:, PRT:, SAY:, RAM:, NIL:, etc.).

Amiga Explorer still doesn't like running (but I'm very sure it's a null modem cable issue now)

Make sure you're using a LapLink style (7, 8, or 9-pin wired) cable. This will connect things up so that you're using RTS/CTS (hardware) handshaking. It uses lower overhead and less garbage on the RxD/TxD lines for faster transfers (I can easily use a 56K modem on my A4K). You may also have to setup your prefs for proper operation, as I don't know if AmiEx overrides the settings (like JRComm does).

Do you have a CD-ROM in there? You could just burn out all your ADF files on the PC to a CD, then read them on the A2K.

banzai