A1200 Expansion Questions

[pwn3d]

Hullo.  My old A1200 has been dusted off and brought out of the closet, and I'm curious about resuscitating it.  While the motherboard appears to be in good working order and it can boot from floppies just fine, both of my old hard drives are DOA, along with the Cobra accelerator/RAM expansion board *sigh*.  I was wondering if some helpful soul here could give me some advice.

1) Re: IDE hard drives -- what's the max capacity an A1200 can allow?  Looking at the forums, it seems there is a ceiling of 4GB or so.  Could I just get a 20GB drive and partition it into 4GB sections?  Also, will any "modern" 2.5" or 3.5" IDE/ATA drive work (I have an old DataFlyer case, too), or is there a particular type to look for?

2) Re: RAM -- according to the owner's manual, the most fast RAM an A1200 can take is 8MB, yet many posters here seem to have A1200s with much more than that.  What hoops do I need to jump through to go over the 8MB limit (besides moving to a tower box)?

3) Re: networking -- I have a LAN setup with a Power Mac G5 and a *gasp, shudder* wintel box connected to a cable modem, and was wondering if a PCMCIA-based ethernet card would allow me to network to these machines as well as access the 'net.  Will any current PCMCIA card work, and what software would I need for my A1200 to use it?

4) I followed some links to a couple of prominently mentioned Amiga parts dealers, and was floored by the asking prices for accelerators, RAM expansion boards, GPU upgrades, etc.  Why the bloody heck are hardware components that are so obsolete so incredibly expensive?  I can't believe anyone would pay more than US$50 for a '040 expansion board these days, and these vendors want as much as US$300!  I'm seriously expected to pay the same price for this stuff refurbished as I did more than a decade ago new?

*ahem* Um, anyway...


Thanks for any and all help,
Chris

[Matt_H]

1. Any IDE hard drive will work, but only 4GB can be supported "out of the box". Drives of any larger size need a patch to scsi.device (yes, even though it's an IDE controller) and a patch to the FastFileSystem. TD64 is a keyword to search for.

2. The A1200 can only take 8MB with the original 68EC020 CPU. Better chips in the 68K series can take more. Depending on the acclerator, up to 256MB can be added.

3. The PCMCIA card must be 16bit (not CardBus) and support 5V power. Make sure it's supported by cnet.device or 3c589.device (see Aminet.

4. Yeah, it's annoying isn't it? Back then, things were expensive because they were new, expensive technology. Now they're expensive because demand far exceeds supply.

[doctorq]

1. As mentioned, any harddrive will work. If you install IDEfix 97 found on Aminet, you will be able to use the whole harddrive, if you install a suitable filesystem, like SFS or PFS3. Can be tricky to set up though. I think the limit for drives on the build in IDE controller is 127 GB (it is on Amiga 4000, haven't tried on Amiga 1200).

As for partitioning; make sure to make a bootable partition that is in the borders of the drives first 4 GB, and with a partition size below 2 GB (don't know why anyone would a boot partition that big anyway, but it's the limits). At boot up the updated scsi.device needs to be installed first, before you can use the rest of the harddrives capacity.

2. No need to towerise the A1200, unless you want to use anything above a 030 CPU. A Blizzard 1230 for instance will give you a big speed improvement, and will allow you to install up to 128 MB of fast ram, and fits nicely in a desktop A1200.

3. As mentioned, modern cardbus cards won't work. If you want to use a cable ethernet card, I have used a 3com Etherlink III myself, but have gone wireless now with a Netgear MA401. As a note for the 3com card; they are not always working straight out of the box, so you might need to install it in a PC at first and edit some of the card settings, before you can use it with the A1200.

As for surfing the net; it will be possible, but the screen size of native Amiga modes sets the limit. Not very pleasant to surf the net with 256 colours at max, and in a screenmode of 400 x 640. It's good enough for downloading archives from Aminet etc though.

4. As with everything else, supply and demand sets the price.

[pwn3d]

Thanks for the info.  It's nice to know I will at least be able to get 3.1 reinstalled on a hard drive with very little trouble.  I should be able to track down an ethernet card, too, now that I know what to look for.  As far as RAM/CPU cards, sheesh, I'm gonna have to wait until I have a spare $150 lying around...

Some follow up questions:

1) Are there any recommendations as far as TCP/IP software (freeware especially)?

2)  I know I'm really pushing my luck asking, but does anybody still make multisync monitors anymore?  If not (as I assume), are there any old models I should keep a look out for other than Commodore's offering?


Thanks,
Chris

[patrik]

@pwn3d:

For free TCP/IP software, check this page out.

For PCMCIA nics, there exists three different drivers:
cnet.device (LAN)
3c589.device (LAN)
prism2.device (WLAN)

All of these requires CardPatch to be run before the TCP/IP stack, unless you fancy reinserting your card every time you power off/on your A1200 to reset it. This utility resets the card, which the A1200 should do for each boot/power on, but doesn't do because of a bug.


/Patrik

[motrucker]

Are you _sure_ the Cobra is dead? It's odd for these boards to die from just sitting. I had one stored for over five years and it still works fine.
Maybe the contacts of the motherboard and/or accelerator need serious cleaning? This be a big problem if you live close to salt water.
I use a 40Mhz '030 Cobra with a 32Mb SIMM in an A1200 I use. It's been a good setup.
Hope this idea helps...

[irishmike]

@pwn3d

I link my A1200 through the net with the real 3COM 3c589C PCMCIA card.  I bought both of mine for less than $5 USD each and the only real limitation is they are 10-Base-T only, but they work fine.  Software wise, just use 3c589.device and either Miami, AmiTCP 3.3, and/or programs like EasyNET (which is obtained through Amigakit and normally bundled with the NIC s they sell).

The Blizzard 1230 Mark IV (which I just sold mine) allowed for RAM expansion up to I believe 256M using older 32 PIN PC memory.  These accelerators fetch around $100 USD.  

I agree the prices are way outrageous on this hardware, but people obviously pay it or they would drop.

I agree with everyone that said demand way outweighs supply as the reason for this.

What can you say, Amigans are stubborn people when it comes to our platform :-)

However, the good news is, it is quite possible to do day to day work on your Amiga computer if you expand it out.

[pwn3d]

motrucker wrote:
Are you _sure_ the Cobra is dead? It's odd for these boards to die from just sitting. I had one stored for over five years and it still works fine.
Maybe the contacts of the motherboard and/or accelerator need serious cleaning? This be a big problem if you live close to salt water.
I use a 40Mhz '030 Cobra with a 32Mb SIMM in an A1200 I use. It's been a good setup.
Hope this idea helps...

Yeah, I'm sure (sadly).  

Basically, if the board's plugged in, Amy refuses to boot, but she cooperates if it's removed.  It was the '030/882 model, with a 4MB stick of RAM (IIRC; it's been about 9 years since I last used it, heh).  I tried it with and without the RAM (in case the RAM was bad), and checked the connectors on the board as well as the pins on the PCB.  Salt water wouldn't be an issue, since I'm in San Antonio, TX (i.e., very much inland).  Hopefully, the RAM's still good...

Thanks for the suggestion, though.


Chris

[CLS2086]

Hi,
it could be also a bad accumulator !
Check also your PSU, maybe it gets too old and can"t output enought (i had this problem on my 1230).
For your old HDD, i had a similar problem in February with a Quantum SCSI2. I put it on a hot surface (very hot towell, don't put it directly on a radiator !!), and plug it for 45min/1h, it should come back to life.

[Matt_H]

For your old HDD, i had a similar problem in February with a Quantum SCSI2. I put it on a hot surface (very hot towell, don't put it directly on a radiator !!), and plug it for 45min/1h, it should come back to life.

Add this to the list of Most Bizarre Hardware Fixes of All Time :-)

[pwn3d]

CLS2086 wrote:
Hi,
it could be also a bad accumulator !
Check also your PSU, maybe it gets too old and can"t output enought (i had this problem on my 1230).

Hmmm, I hadn't considered the power supply, actually.  Other than getting another A1200 power brick (slim chance, there), how can one run a diagnostic on one of these?


Chris

[Piru]

Other than getting another A1200 power brick (slim chance, there), how can one run a diagnostic on one of these?

In case you have some old A500 PSU around, try it (A500 and A1200 have identical power connector pinouts). Paradoxically A500 had more powerful PSU than A1200.