My 500+ Project

[psxphill]

I also soldered in 4 DIPP sockets so I have the option of taking chip ram to 1Mb but discovered the keyboard wont go all the way down with ram chips in it! I think if dremel the square edge off the top of the chips the keyboard should go down properly.

It's not worth the effort, if you populate it then you can't have a trapdoor expansion & that means no real time clock. Besides, you can use the trapdoor expansion for 1mb of chip ram.

[psxphill]

I have 1mb on my KCS Power PC trapdoor card and that makes 512k available as slow ram + an optional 512k battery-backed RAD disk.

You should be able to make the 512k slot into chip, by cutting/joining some traces. However I wouldn't bother, it's more compatible having it as slow ram anyway.

[psxphill]

make the FDD a proper Amiga FDD:
http://www.softpres.org/article:hard:modifying_the_pansonic_ju-257a605p_fdd

IIRC My A1200 turned out to have a different drive than most others, so the hack is different. It was easy to figure out the changes required, but it required disassembling the drive to get a soldering iron in the right place, which was a major PITA.
 
I think I started out using the drive from my a500 until I got round to doing it.