My ongoing adventures with my A2000.

[Protek]

Nice work! Makes me want to get a desktop Amiga alongside my computer-in-keyboard ones.

I take that the KCS has ISA slots. Would Windoze be faster if you got a i.e. Tseng ET-3000 VGA card for it?

[dbrads]

very interesting read r0jaws, keep posting updates.

I still believe the A2000 was (is) the best Amiga for hardware  "experimentation"  :lol:

Keep the faith!

[marcfrick2112]

r0jaws: "My own soldering iron is the b@stard love child of a chisel and a malfunctioning hotplate."

 :lol:  Too Funny! Sounds like my soldering iron!

Nice 2000 there, BTW...

[Kin-Hell]

Hi r0jaws

The 2620 & 2630 cards from C= are craply slow if you disable the onboard RAM or worse still, have none at all. Not sure why it should make the HC8 cards ram dissapear tho!? As a matter of interest, what version of ROM is on the HC8?

Unortunately, the ZIP chips on this card are rare to find. The real bummer is, they aint socketed & need soldering directly onto the mobo!

Also, do you have GVPDAT running in WB Startup folder? Surely, an addmem cmd in the Icon parameters would sort things out for you!?
Zeets might be able to help you on this one.

Btw, well done all round m8. That`s a nice 2000 you have there now!  :-)

bloodline wrote:
We don't get enough picture stories on A.org...

Completely agree!  :-)

[r0jaws]

@KinHell,

Thanks m8, I did notice the speed drop is significant when the  onboard Fast RAM is disabled!
I won't be doing that again in a hurry.
The GVP SCSI ROM is Version 4.0, I have no idea why the 2620 made the RAM disappear but I'm sticking by the theory that the 2620 hogs the first 4Mb of RAM space for itself, regardless of actual RAM fitted or jumper settings.
I did try populating the SCSI adapter with 6 Mb again and ensured the correct jumpers were properly fitted and she still refused to boot from the Hard Drive, infact the Hard Disc LED starts up strongly then flutters weakly as the boot process continues, leaving you with only the Insert floppy screen.
I know Zip RAM are like hens teeth to find, but Zetro is working on a project to address this as we speak (the man is a relentless hackery machine to say the least!  :-D )

I don't have GVPDAT installed and I couldn't find anything about it through Google, is it some sort of aditional software driver/ memory controller?

Anyhoo..

I had been hoping to do a little gentle hackery myself by knocking up a KVM switch of a kind for my 2 miggys.
The problem being that I actually have a 1200 and a 2000 but only one 1084 monitor.
There is no point them sharing a keyboard and mouse, but the monitor would save a lot of fannying around plugging cables in and out.
I thought about using a Serial switch box and serial cable, initially as a template for the  switch.



I had never seen the inside of a switch box and didn't know if it would be compatible with what I wanted for it, or if any work would need to be done to make it work.





I secretly hoped that it wouldn't work and that I would have to spend some time getting a usable little box of tricks going, turns out there was absolutely no need to do anything bar plug them all together and switch both miggys on.
Bah, Foiled!  :-P



It does work very nicely and combined with an audio cable splitter it means that I no longer have to dive about behind my desk just to switch between machines.



This means that I can now easily and instantly switch between my miggys and bask in the glow of the backdrop of my 2000 that I spent ages knocking up
(a small prize to the first person to guess what it is!  ;-) ).



Now, I'm just trying to work out why my 2000's screenmode High Res Pref is stuck at 16 colours in PAL.
Is that standard for an ECS machine? I noticed Los Res allows upto 32 colours, but I wouldn't mind a few more.
Any ideas anyone?

One of the visitors to Amibay also PM'd me his concerns about the coin battery soldered to the board. He voiced the  concern that

"there will still be a charge circuit trying to push power on your battery when it's on. I'm sure you have to Diode one side of the battery to avoid this. It's been rather a long while since I've undertaken this work so I could be wrong but I'm sure you do."

This thread on EAB HERE  has come to the consensus that these new lithium batteries should have no problems at all, however, I'm not 100% on this myself, is there anyone out there who can confirm or refute any possible risk to my beloved 2000?

[Corfiot]

Hi r0jaws

16 Colours is the ECS Max I'm afraid...
The switch box idea is superb, being fully passive & switched there was no doubt in my mind it would work, keeps getting better does it not.

BTW your screenbackdrop is a photo of your A2000 motherboard (Megachip clearly visible LOL)
Can I claim my small prize now.

All the Best
TC  :-D

[r0jaws]

TC

Spot on mate, have a smug feeling of satisfaction as your prize.  :-P

Just finished adding a 9Gb SCSI drive to the 2000, unfortunately it meant having to ditch the second floppy drive, but with the CD Rom this isn't so much of a problem (I actually prefer the single floppy look for some reason)



There were a few problems, namely getting the right jumper setting so that it didn't conflict with the CD-ROM, attempting (and failing) to get SFS installed to it (I'll work on this later) and the fact that my boot time has drastically increased.
I've split the drive into 3x 3Gb FFS Partitions, the boot sequence now takes about 25 secs!
This may also be due to the fact that I've installed ClassicWB ADVSP using a copy of the files from my 1200.
I realise that this installation is optimised for an accelerated 1200 (with AGA obviously) but I just wanted to check it worked.
The sharp eyed among you may notice that the installation is using 3 Mb of Fast Ram just to sit there!



When Bloodwych gets the packs back up again, I'll be chucking ClassicWB Lite on there.
She runs Ok but is a bit sluggish compared to a vanilla 3.1 installation.

[Protek]

@r0jaws: Having recently acquired an A2000 myself (unexpanded, 3.1 ROMS and CD-ROM), it's been very interesting to follow your ongoing adventures with yours.

I've a Buddha Flash coming in the mail to get a HD installed and the CD-ROM connected. At some point I hope to get some kind of accelerator, an RTG card and more RAM into it.

Before anything, I have to open it up and dismantle it to see the battery, etc. Is that replacement coin battery that you installed into yours, rechargeable?

[r0jaws]

Yes it is, and its been running with no problems so far.

It's a simple but absolutely essential mod that can literally save your 2000 from failure.

The one we all got hold of came from HERE

Hope this helps  :-)

[T3000]

Nice job there r0jaws. Good photos and comentary.

You can get that second floppy drive back inplace by fabricating a backplane out of heavy rigid plastic sheet and some aluminum rails to mount the harddrive on and place it just like the other harddrive. Take a look at the Supra Wordsync 2000 for reference.

Dug out my A2000 recently and started upgrading it.
What brand/version CDrom do you have installed?

Laterz.

[Protek]

r0jaws: What is you current fast mem setup? Is it 4 MB from A2620 and 2 MB (4?) from GVP? Looking at your pic of the A2620, it seems to have only half of the ZIPs populated, which would mean you'd have only 2 MB on the A2620.

[r0jaws]

Currently I have 2 MB on the 2620 (Zip RAM) and 4 MB on the GVP, totaling 6 MB.

I have been playing with the 2000 more and more recently, trying to iron out a few issues that I'm not happy about (namely boot time). Should have an update fairly shortly.

[r0jaws]

I'm really sad to say that in order to pay for some nice upgrades for my 1200, I've finally had to let this go.

I'm parting it out, and if you're interested the bits and pieces can be found on Amibay In the Hardware/ Amiga threads.

I have listed all the bits and pieces on Amibay and ask that any correspondance is entered into on there according to the site rules.

She was a great little machine, I shall miss her and hope she goes to a good home.  :cry:

[Tenacious]

This is a surprise considering all that you went thru to get here.  Everyone seems to have enjoyed the process.  

If you were in the States, I would consider the KCS.  How did it perform in Dos mode (not Windows)?  Were you able to use the parallel port with it?  I don't have a working Dos emulater.

Did you ever get the boot time problem solved?  My 2000 with SupraTurbo accelerator still takes a whole minute.

Good Luck!

[r0jaws]

It is a real shame, it's also a decision that I have been making over the last 2 months. That said, I'm really getting to grips with my 1200 and am really enjoying the hacks I have for that, and the plans in the future.
However, I always promised my wife that my Hobby would be self financing (mostly), so I really had to make a hard choice.

The long boot time was purely down to a Seagate drive, which seemed to take an absolute age to spin up (and sounded like a jet turbine once it got going).
I timed it and it took exactly 59 secs from power on to workbench.
Using an older 500Mb Quantum drive took around 20 secs, much better.

The KCS was an absolute treat TBH, it worked quite nicely with MS DOS, it had been a while since I have used a native DOS machine, but the usability was comparable (as far as I remember).
I never hooked up a printer to the Miggy, but the KCS does support printing via the miggy's parallel port. I suppose there would be no bar for it to be used for other things as long as you had the appropriate software and drivers.

I have really enjoyed working on this Miggy, and I will have fond memories of it, and I'm glad I started this thread as a record of it's ressurection.
I'm also really glad that it seemed to strike a chord with certain users and certainly enthused them enough to dig their old big berthas out and breathe new life into them.
It's a worthy machine, and as far as I'm concerned an unjustly overlooked system.

[gertsy]

Thanks for the post r0jaws.
I luv the classic Amigas as well, and u certainly put in a lot of effort getting your A2000 up and happening. In reality it is great to "have and hold" a classic Amiga in working condition, but the journey to get there is what it is all about.

Still if it were me I couldn't let her go..  Sob Sob..:boohoo:


Well done again and all the best with the A1200.

Gertsy.