HD in A2000: where?

[leofoe]

Today I obtained a GVP series II 030 accelerator board with SCSI-controlller and 16MB RAM. Works very nice! But I don't have space left for the HD. There are two floppy drives and a CD-ROM writer.

I used to have an A2091 with an option to mount the HD on the card itself an I don't have the optional mounting bracket for the GVP.

Any ideas where to put the {bleep}? Thanks!

[x56h34]

Take out a floppy drive and use the 3.5" bay to mount the hard drive, or take out the CD drive and use 5.25" to 3.5" converter brackets to mount the hard drive there.

IIRC, GVP released a HD mounting plate for the G-Force cards, in order to create the same effect as how the drive is mounted on A2091 controller, however nowadays these are kind of hard to find.

[gdanko]

I would remove one of the floppies for sure. I can't imagine needing more than one.

[banzai]

I had the same problem, and my solution was rather clever, if I do say so myself...

Grab some non-copperized Proto(R) board {Veroboard(R) for the UK crowd}, and make it big enough to mount a drive with about .5" (13mm) overlap.

Find a PC ISA card that has a removable bracket (modem, sound, etc.). Trace the card's outline onto the blank board, and cut out, filing it smooth afterwards. Now, measure out the mounting holes for the drive and bracket. When done, you should have a card that'll pop into an unused ISA slot in the A2000 with mounting holes for the drive (the bracket just anchors the top part of the card). DO NOT use a card with copper on it! We don't want anything shorting out the power rails!

Run a pigtail for the power, and slap the SCSI cable in. Have fun.

Oh, there's enough room in there for more than one drive, but don't get too carried away and overload your power supply

banzai

[Brian]

Sounds like a great idea. Taking this one step further, would it not be possible to make it a full length card and have 2 HD's one the same mounting card (perhaps it need some metal rail on the top for stability reason)?

And why stop there? Why not add a 25pin external plug and a 50pin internal connector for SCSI to the mounting card? Hmmm... perhaps I got a little carried away there? :-D

[Argus]

I happen to like having two floppy drives in an A2000 for the odd game or two that won't work with WHDLoad and have two disks or for your save game disk ....mighty handy to not have to swap disks constantly.

I'd personally take a look at someone's GVP combo card with the original mounting bracket and make my own.  It's just a piece of simply formed metal.  The way the A2000 m/b is laid out, the back of the combo card is the ideal spot for a harddrive without losing a zorro or isa slot for the future.  As for the 25-pin external scsi header, I believe all the combo boards have a 25-pin header right on the board, so just run a cable from there out to an external port.

[leofoe]

I'd personally take a look at someone's GVP combo card with the original mounting bracket and make my own.  It's just a piece of simply formed metal.  The way the A2000 m/b is laid out, the back of the combo card is the ideal spot for a harddrive without losing a zorro or isa slot for the future.

Does anybody have a picture or drawing of this mounting bracket?

[JimS]

   Back when I was an Amiga dealer, we solved this problem in a couple ways.  We got some flat aluminum bar stock from the hardware store - about 1/2" wide and maybe 1/8" thick.. Then we'd bend two pieces each the depth of the 2000 with about a 2" 90 degree bend on both ends. The back ends would get bolted to a blank card slot cover and attached to an empty ISA slot opening. The front ends would be bolted into the front of the case after removing the plastic card guide.
    Some of our customers made their own brackets using that channel stuff used for adjustable wall shelving... whatever works...

If they needed a lot of drive space, or if they needed more than one 5.25" bay, we'd sometimes make an external drive box out of an old pc case... nowadays, I'd look for a surplus mac external HD.. I've got two of those on my own Amiga.

One time we did something really unorthodox. There is actually enough room to mount a slimline (all of them now) hardrive on the outside of the 2000's frame in between the metal front panel and the outer case.

 

[leofoe]

I have made this. Although not a piece of fine machinery, it works. I think the aulminium is too thin (1mm) and bends too easy. So next time I will make a stronger one.

[melott]

I solved the problem with my GVP TechMagic card by
going to the local hardware store and buying a piece
of plexiglass long enough to cut a full lengh card out
of and cut it to mount in the last ISA slot. It will
mount 2 harddrives and does not block the Zorro slots.
I used the mounting bracket from an old junk PC card.
It works great.
Also any old ISA PC card (junk) thats big enough to
mount a drive will do if you just want one drive.
Just strip the contacts off the card where it slips
into the ISA card slot so its not making any citcuit
contact and that should work too.
Although I'm not sure if it would even matter if the
contacts were left on since the ISA slot shouldn't be
active unless a BridgeBoard was installed.    

[JimS]

melott wrote:
Although I'm not sure if it would even matter if the
contacts were left on since the ISA slot shouldn't be
active unless a BridgeBoard was installed.    

The ISA slots do have power on them even without a bridgeboard- that's how TBC cards for the toaster get powered.
just dremel them all off. :-)