How to turn a Macrosystem/Draco Casablanca into an Amiga?

[orb85750]

Yes, this is a rather crazy question, and it may have been asked by someone in the past -- not sure.  The Macrosystem Casablanca is the successor of the Draco, which was essentially an Amiga compatible.  Both have a 68060 and run OS 3.1, but the Casablanca OS is somehow patched and it also uses a different file system, so that Amiga floppies are not compatible with it.  Furthermore, I do not know if there is any easy way to get past the "friendly" user interface, which is designed solely for non-linear video production and nothing else.  Does anyone have a feel if/how this system could be hacked into and modified somehow to be an Amiga-compatible like the Draco?  It does accept a serial PC keyboard (for titling and shortcuts) and serial PC mouse.  Given that the Casablanca is often available on eBay for under $200, it seems that it could make quite the inexpensive high-level Amiga machine if it could be done.  I certainly don't have the expertise.

[stefcep2]

You probably know this but even if you could past the Casablanca's UI, it would still only ever run RTG-friendly software.  Unless you somehow ran the AmigaOS version of UAE..

[Gulliver]

@orb85750
You need to first to establish a link between lets say a WinUAE setup and the Casablanca. basically you need to conect your Casablanca HDD to a pc and see if a WinUAE with proper AmigaOS setup will recognize the Casablanca HDD OS partition and be able to copy/move/delete files. If it is possible, then I can give you a DraCo boot cdrom, and you can try installing it.

Just let me know

[Iggy]

So, if you can get a Draco or Casablanca to run RTG 3.1 apps you've got about as much compatibility as a MorphOS system (w/o the additional capabilities of a PPC system).
Don't get me wrong, its a neat idea and I really like the idea of a cheap '060 system.
But without chipset compatibilty with other Amigas, we already have better systems that can do what this would, faster, and at a lower price.

[orb85750]

Hmmm... I found this rather discouraging 6-page thread on Amibay about this very topic:

http://amibay.com/showthread.php?t=5917

Seems rather daunting on more than one level, and I assume these guys simply gave up.

[orb85750]

So, if you can get a Draco or Casablanca to run RTG 3.1 apps you've got about as much compatibility as a MorphOS system (w/o the additional capabilities of a PPC system).
Don't get me wrong, its a neat idea and I really like the idea of a cheap '060 system.
But without chipset compatibilty with other Amigas, we already have better systems that can do what this would, faster, and at a lower price.

Well $150 is pretty cheap for an 060 running OS 3.1.  I don't think you're going to get any cheaper than that, given that MOS alone costs close to that amount.  But the idea of an Amiga Casablanca is looking rather unlikely anyway.

[nicholas]

Well $150 is pretty cheap for an 060 running OS 3.1.  I don't think you're going to get any cheaper than that, given that MOS alone costs close to that amount.  But the idea of an Amiga Casablanca is looking rather unlikely anyway.

Do these machines have actual Kickstart ROMs on their boards besides the DraCo custom ROM?

I'm wondering if it would be possible to swap these with proper Kickstart 3.1 chips to make "Amigafication" a bit easier?

[orb85750]

Do these machines have actual Kickstart ROMs on their boards besides the DraCo custom ROM?

I'm wondering if it would be possible to swap these with proper Kickstart 3.1 chips to make "Amigafication" a bit easier?

IIRC, there is both the Amiga rom and another rom.  I'll have to dismantle the machine to find out for sure.

[Iggy]

IIRC, there is both the Amiga rom and another rom.  I'll have to dismantle the machine to find out for sure.

Interesting, I would have thought it would just contain a modified 3.1 ROM. Any idea if the first ROM  is a standard Amiga ROM?
The second ROM could be there to patch code in the standard 3.1 ROM on initialization.

Oh, and don't mistake my comparison to a MorphOS based system as a negative comment. It's just interesting that while purists will insist that they know exactly what an Amiga is, that an Amiga with an RTG graphics board, the Draco/Casablanca, and a MOS system all have about the same level of compatibility with 68K Amiga RTG compatible software.

[BooBoo1200]

I hope you persevere with this, im sure it would be possible but like others have said might take a little bit of work - Removing HD make backup etc

Please keep posted

If its normal kickstart you would think it could boot FFS,SFS.............

Can you mount PC0: ?