Mods/Hacks: Who's done what?

[Generale]

Hi again.

Just thought I'd ask this question:

Who out there has done a hard hack or mod to their Amiga?

What was the mod and how successful was it?

Even horror tales of failed attempts would be great.


I'll start off.
Apart from disassembly and corrosion repairs, all I've done on an Amiga was the a500ide project. Worked well. Will work better after my next planned projects.

Ordered the parts today to make a flashkicker and PC keyboard adaptor. After they are made, I'll be putting my a500 in a minitower I have.
After that..who knows  :-D

[coldfish]

Nothing as adventurous as the A500IDE project.  

-Ive populated the empty RAM pads on a rev6 A500.  Bloody cheap way to get 1Mb without buying/scrounging for a RAM board.  (I used chips from an old 286 and about $1 worth of caps).

edit: 4-5x A500 rom switchers with 1.3 & 2.x ROMS

-Hacked a 1084s to output RGB.  Very lumpy Composite --> RGB converter!  (dunno why I did that? just found the schematics and started tinkering)

[Doppie1200]

Haha, nice one! Did that to my A500 too. Got the Rams from an old VGA card. Strangly the caps where already on the board. I added sockets and inserted the ramchips.  

I did a scandoubler mod. The photo's and explainations are on this site.

This is the finished mod: http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=795

I'm now thinking how to get my SCSI out. The hole in the case that was supposed to be used for that is now taken by my scandoubler. I dont like the idea of grinding a hole in the casing. But I'm getting offtopic.

[Generale]

excellent!

hmm.. vga ramchips. Are they SRAM?

Very lumpy video converter indeed. I have to know, why did you do it?

Heh. I remembered a very rough hack I did ages ago which worked for some unknown reason. It was actually on a c64 tape drive. I discovered that shorting one of the drive resistors during read sped up the motor (obviously) but it still read error free. My own fastloader lol! Oh yeah, i also added a d25 to the userport of a c64 to make it easier to plug in my own homebrew evils.

Are the scandoublers the proper 15 - 30khz converters, or is it the one that you have to do the horizontal scrolly thing?
Sorry about the dumb question. Baby girl that doesn't want to sleep means very tired father...

I'm always impressed by someone that has an idea and goes ahead with it.

[Doppie1200]

@Generale
What do you mean by lumpy video converter?

I find the scandoubler/flickerfixer the most usefull item I ever bought for my Amiga. Now I can use a VGA monitor.
Thats the main reason for doing it ofcourse. The fun of the hack was to keep both externals and internal neat.
No flatcables dangling outside or badly cut holes. Even the tinware is kept.

It is a proper video converter. Not a DIY cut half the screen away converter. It even acts as a scandoubler alowing me to use a nice 640x512 screen without flicker.

[Generale]

I'll have to look into that. I'd love to use a standard svga. I like the 1084s, but it can be a shade hard on the eyes, especially when interlaced. Also, I could really cheat and use a KVM switch then too (not for the mouse though) to cut down on desk space.

The lumpy converter I was referring to was coldfish's modded monitor.

[lorddef]

1 - overclocked a blizzard 030/50 to 60

2 - made a rgb-vga converter

3 - killed an a600 by tinkering too much

[coldfish]

I did it in an attempt to get a RGB only LCD to accept a Composite input, just to see if it would work.  It did, but was completely impractical.  Eventually, I made a converter circuit for the LCD.

Ive got a link somewhere?

edit:  http://home.iprimus.com.au/kumsijo/

My C64; made a reset button, a 1541 reset dongle, a tape drive piezo/speaker (so I could hear all those harsh squalks and squeals) and made a 1541 to PC interface cable.

[Noster]

Hi,

- added an additonal case-fan (80mm x 80mm) in my A3000T just below the power supply beneth the mouse-ports, that blows the hot air out of the case (temperature controled)
- added another fan (60mm x 60mm) below the drive bridge of the A3000T, that blows cool air into the case to the accelerator card. The case has already holes here to let cool air flow into the case.
- I cut a hole in the front-plate and added a fence in front of the holes that allow cool air to flow to the accelerator board, to improve air-flow.
- Made airflow-cables out of the floppy and the SCSI-cables
- added a manual monitor switch in the front panel, that allows me to switch between the flicker-fixer output of the A3000T and another VGA-signal source (usualy my old PC).
- made the INT2-patch for the A3000T

- I also added the additional 512 KB memory to the motherboard of an A500 Rev.6 (also got the Chips from an old VGA card).
- moved the power-switch of an A2000 from the back-side to the front right of the drive-bays.
- modified two Microsoft serial mice to work at a native Amiga mouse port :-)

- killed an A2000 motherboard during the try to build into a tower, tried to desolder all port-connectors from the board and attach them via cable so the could be placed in the nowmal holes of a standard PC-tower case, made a short-cut...

- placed a Pentium-III 933MHz, 256MB Ram + 3 1/2" hardisk + standard size CDRW + 1.44 floppy + power supply in an old A1000 case :-)

Noster

EDIT: Forgot the interface box to connect standard Amiga mice to a PC PS/2 mouse port.

[McTrinsic]

Well,

I actually did not do any hacks by myself. But I asked people who know how to solder and how to "hack" to do a few things. if you are interested, I can forward any messages to the appropiate person.

On my list is:

- Overclocking a CSA Derringer 030 @ 25 to 50 MHz failed, but OCing to 33MHz worked.
- enabling a pseudo-DMA-hack on the Phoenixboard (i till hve to look for the documentation, no info available for the time being).
- enhaning the Phoenixboard-Front-slot to take a full Zorro-II-Card
- making flexible adaptors for the videoslot and Z-II-slot to relocate corresponding cards within the case

Have fun,
McTrinsic

[Brian]

http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=777

Successfull all the way... A SCSIKitIV is in now also. Still no CDrom in it though but it will come eventually, aswell as the Melody1200Pro and Silversurfer hardware... need to figure out a way to modify for the extra hardware output to look nice though (don't want to have the melody sounddongle outside the machine).

[Doppie1200]

The lumpy converter I was referring to was coldfish's modded monitor.

I thought you found a scandoubler lumpy I can really recommend it.

[PhilMoore]

I took my working A1000, and tried to hardwire a kickstart 1.3 ROM to the CPU (following instructions I found on Aminet).

That A1000 does not work after that...   I had to buy another one off Ebay.  I won't be trying that again!

On my 2000HD, which is woefully inadequate for harddisk mounting space, I cardboard and ductaped a harddisk and drilled and wired in a LED next to the others for blinkies.

[mendark]

Let's see...

Working 8-)
* Modded my Audiomaster Sampler with 2 more inputs so I could plug in 2,5 & 3,5 audiojacks.

* Amplifier (from CU amiga) to mix the cdrom input with the Amiga input.

* The PSX2CD32 joypad converter. That was great, in a way since i only got 2 buttons working. BUT it was really neat because I trashed a broken PSX and putted the joystick ports into a 5'25 of my powertower

* A lot of reset switches (on those testports)

* A lot of custom joysticks since my dad was reseller of Suzo, which developed the famous Arcade joysticks. They where actually also used in Arcade machines as well. That gave huge joysticks with big buttons :-o

* Various audiohacks (LP filter always off, stereo to mono, paula enhancer)

* Ofcourse connected an LCD(isplay) 16x2 to my Amiga

* VU meters in an 5"25 bay


Not succesfull :pissed:
* Twice the homemade sampler project. Cost me €50 since those chips (ADsomethingsomething) costed a fortune back then.

* PSX memory card reader. A pain in the *ss since that voltage regulator was really tight. Never got it to work. BUT it was in a 5'25 bay (on top of the joystick port;-))

* Various PC floppy to Amiga conversions. I always found out to late that they only supported 720kb disks. Ofcourse there was a 1'44mb version. Screwed that one up too.

* A lot of attempts to fix the PCMCIA port for 90gr angleconverter since i had to plug in and out the NIC everytime i booted my Amiga. Could'nt make the resetfix since my Powerflyer was on top of that. Ofcourse only later there was that beautiful software fix!!

* Lot's of more misc stuff I screwed up....

Keep it up guys!!

[LP]

hmm.. let's see I can't do anything with wires nor electric circuts without breaking something.. but I did manage to build a tower for my 1200...

I had a medium sized PC tower lying around, so I started to cut the alu on the back out, cutted a wooden board for stabilization of the motherboard, cutted a stick and screw some screws in it to hold up my mediator, my soundcard and my ethernet.. a bit dodgey but works quite well