How far can a desktop A1200 be expanded?

[Marco]

Right, since my A1200 is working again I want to know exactly how much I can add to it without towering the system, what can reasonably be fitted into the original case and not cause serious headaches wondering if it's going to explode and die at any second?

Specifically things like:

accelerators - an 060@50Mhz should be fairly safe right? I read that the 040s are a concern in desktops because of the massive heat they generate, but the 060s don't have that problem. What about adding PPC? Aside from a new power supply what else is needed to run a PPC accelerator safely?

power supply - I dunno but I've read the standard Amiga ones are not all that good and a replacement is needed for an expanded system, but what is available, and how much should I expect to spend on a replacement?

usb - I've seen the 'subway' card on Amigakit, it says it connects to the clockport on the 1200, but will it fit inside the case? And again - any heat/reliability problems with it in a stock case?

sound and graphics - is there anything I can do about the Amigas', er 'quaint' sound capabilities? For graphics I've read about the bvision graphics card, but it seems like I'd need a PPC card to run that and I doubt adding more stuff on top of a BPPC could help heat/reliability issues.

I also want to run OS3.9 but don't have an external CD-ROM drive, will any old external drive from a PC work or is there some special connection needed to hook one up to the Amiga?

TYIA for any help you can offer, I am fairly clueless as this would be my first attempt at upgrading an Amiga, I realise it'll still be fairly crap compared to a modern PC, but it's a laugh to do IMO.

[adolescent]

My "mildly" outfitted A1200 has a Blizzard 1260 + SCSI, 20GB ATA4 HD, EIDE'99, HD floppy and DCE SD/FF all inside.  I still  have the clockport free for something like a sound card or Subway USB.  Also, I could add a laptop CD-R(W) inside if I needed.  Everything is powered by a Bigfoot PS, but you could easily do it with a modified PC power supply (which is what the Bigfoot is esentially...).

[Marco]

Cool, I'll need a little help with acronyms though, I know what IDE and SCSI are (obivously) but what's an ATA4 harddisk? and what's EIDE'99?

DCE SD/FF is just meaningless to me I'm afraid.

For the power supply, I'm not much of a DIY person, in any fashion whatsoever, so I'd probably feel better just getting a power supply already modified like the 'big foot' one you mention, are they still manufactured? Or if not does anyone still have them for sale? I checked Amigakit and they have lots of standard ATX for A1 and Pegasos and the plain old brick Amiga PSU, but that's it.

[Hyperspeed]

ATA4 is IDE, you can happily get SCSI into an A1200 desktop so (no offence to Power Flyer owners) I don't understand why anyone bothers with CPU eating IDE (they like using parallel port/USB1.0 scanners?).

DCE SD/FF is a scandoubler + flicker-fixer (it allows a flicker free Amiga display on a PC monitor) made by a German electronics company.

A lot of people use the Wizard Power Box or Goliath external power supplies. An uprated A500 power supply will still blow a fuse with a super-upgraded A1200. There are plans on Aminet to modify a PC AT/ATX power supply and use the case to hold drives.

A switch to solid state drives can reduce the juice your A1200 eats, a PPC + BVision combo in a desktop case would need careful planning with cooling in mind. Maybe removing the floppy drive and getting good ventilation is the answer.

There was a 2MB graphics card called the AteoBus Pixel-64 but not that impressive. It was basically an ISA card for the A1200.

A Blizzard 1260 + AGA can do marvellous things, that might be your safest bet until you can either consider modification or towering.

[Boot_WB]

The Ateobus, like the mediator, would require your amiga to be towered.  The bus itself is a 4-slot ISA bus into which cards (pixel64 graphics, scsi, high speed serial/parallel, ethernet) could be added.
Pretty good actually, aside from the drivers requiring keyfiles to run them.  PAin in the ar5e now that ateo concepts (the french company who made them) no longer exists.

[Hyperspeed]

I read somewhere on Amiga.org that the AteoBus's Pixel64 GFX card was just a 5 dollar bargain-bin card that could be found in most second hand PC shops!

Might be worth tracking one down since you'd have 2MB ChipMem AND 2MB of GFX-Card memory (the custom chips would have the ChipMem to themselves!)

I could have sworn I saw the Pixel64 in a desktop case at WOA'97/98, it kept crashing and noone was looking at it with the other goodies on display!

What happened to this PowerVixxen integrated PPC+GFX card?

[Boot_WB]

Maybe if the a1200 was installed into a PC desktop case, but not in a classic 1200 desktop case.
It's pretty much the same space requirement as the mediator, with the difference that the busboard is connected to the expansion port pass-through by a couple of ribbon cables.  The upside is it allows you a little extra flexibility in where to mount the busboard.  Quite handy if you're adapting a tower, rather than installing into a custom-built job.

I've got one of these, and iirc it does 1024x768x15 nicely and 800x600x24.  Can't remember exactly, as have installed a mediator SX since, and haven't played with the Ateo for a while.  Some graphics corruption in the menu bars, but I assume that was my inexperienced installation of Picasso96.

You're right, the Pixel 64 is basically a cheap ISA graphics card, but it does the job nicely.  Was probably quite an expensive card back in the day.

[Marco]

Right, thanks for all the help guys, I should stress I really don't want to tower the 1200, or put it into a fugly PC desktop case, no offense to those who like such things, just not my style; my style being the Commodore 'wedge', looks too cool to ditch that.

I should have realised SD/FF meant scandoubler/flicker-fixer, was thrown off by the company name in front, yes I'll definetly be getting an external one of those to hook it up to a nice monitor, I think for acceleration a 1260 will have to do, I don't want to start taking out the floppy drive and having hassle with air-flow and cooling, like I said in my first post, I want the thing to run reliably. What would I need to add for SCSI? I've seen a SCSI adaptor on Amigakit, a blizzard one, 1230-IV I think it was called.

Oh and one completely unrelated question: does anyone know if it might be possible to connect an A1200's internal keyboard, to standard PC? You see, Eventually I want to get one of those tiny mini-itx boards and put it inside a 1200 case, I've seen similar mods that put one inside a SNES, a C64, a Commodore PET, a C1541 external floppy drive and various other retro computers/consoles so it'd certainly fit inside a 1200 case, but if it's not possible to use the keyboard, it makes the whole idea kinda pointless. If it is possible then such a computer would be great for Linux with UAE and maybe also AROS.

[HellCoder]

Hi Marco,

Glad you like the original A1200 case above a towered A1200, I feel just the same. About upgrading, you can add a PPC/BVision/SCSI inside the original A1200 case. You can also add a wireless network card. The only thing that my computer is missing is a normal CDRom as I don't want to have any wires sticking out of the computer, but there are some guys who managed to get a normal CDROM player inside the desktop, but I'm not sure how all that will work with the PPC/BVision and heat stuff. It's also possible to add a soundcard on the clockport, but you'll need a small HD than.

Anyway, lots of options, but you'll need to add some tweaks and stuff perhaps.

[darksun9210]

I've gone for the Commodore Wedge too. Towering the machine just makes it too fugly - agreed. i like the fact its small and neat.

everything in my sig is in the desktop A1200 case. the FastATA3 is an IDE adapter that lets me use laptop drives, and gives me normal IDE ports for optical drives etc. without cluttering up the left side internal space where my laptop DVD drive goes. just have to cut a hole in the case for the disc tray or slot.

The Subway USB has to be without doubt one of the most usefull additions i have ever got. hard drives, CD drives, flash thumb drives, mp3 players, wireless mice, PDAs, card readers, printers, etc. etc. the device support is brilliant! just once again, you have to cut holes for the four(!) USB ports.

i was caught between the idea of a soundcard or a USB card for the clockport. i wish i could use both, but i've found USB to be infinitly more usefull, as for games, they use the onboard sound anyway, so no big loss there.

i've got scsi on both my Bliz1230IV and BlizPPC, as the hole at the back under the floppy drive is used.
so another hole for the GFX card output is required :lol:

all in all, its a bit of a mission :-D

note on the FastATA3 - if the updated drivers don't stop my machine crashing, i'm going to buy a couple of ide2scsi adapters and put my ide drives on the scsi controller.  :pissed:

[adolescent]

darksun9210 wrote:
i've got scsi on both my Bliz1230IV and BlizPPC, as the hole at the back under the floppy drive is used.
so another hole for the GFX card output is required :lol:

What I did was remove the useless RF modulator, slightly enlarge the hole, and put the VGA connector there (for my SD/FF, would work the same for BVision.)  

[Hyperspeed]

Hurray for the wedge!

;-)

Anyone know anything about heatpipes, what they look like and what the dimensions are?

The most redundant thing in my A1200 desktop is the double-density floppy drive. It would be nice to get it up to at least high-density...

As for scandoublers, you might be able to get away without one if you find a suitable LCD TV... you'll need a SCART cable though.