My ongoing adventures with my A2000.

[motrucker]

I'm a little surprised no one has mentions this (maybe it was in the missing messages?) but you really should add a real accelerator! I have an A2000 that I have used for years, with no troubles. I used a GVP G-Force 030 that was a great board because it would allow any game to play, yet added power to graphics prgs, animations, DTP, or what ever. They can still be picked up without taking out a second mortgage, and help with overall power AND adding extra RAM.
The Accelerator allows running 3.1/3.5/3.9 OS too.
I am just now upgrading to a G-Force 040, so I'll see first hand how compatibility suffers (or not?).
Good luck with your machine...
 

[AMC258]

What the heck are you loading on startup that it takes longer than 30 seconds???  Or, do you have an old Seacrate hard drive?

[r0jaws]

There are a few programs running on start up but I haven't delved too deeply there just yet as I just wanted to get her up and running reliably first.
TBH this is my first 2000, my 1200 boots almost instantly (but so it should) and I didn't really know what to expect with a 2000.
It's on my To Do list at the moment to get the start up routine as standard as possible to get a base line from which to test these bits of kit out.

@ motrucker an accelerator may be on the cards later, but at the moment I'm happy with her capabilities. I just want to see what these Boards that came with her can actually do. Old fashioned curiosity I guess.

[AMC258]

You should be able to boot an A2000 in well under 30 seconds, but, it depends what's all going on in the Startup-Sequence, and of course, the hard drive.  Oh, and the SCSI bus, if it's spending a lot of time polling for devices.

[motrucker]

r0jaws wrote:
@ motrucker an accelerator may be on the cards later, but at the moment I'm happy with her capabilities. I just want to see what these Boards that came with her can actually do. Old fashioned curiosity I guess.

I understand. I still use an old A1000 that is a bit expanded, but no accelerator. It is GREAT for old games, and a few old apps like Data Retrieve Pro. It does have a hard drive though.
I get a lot of use out of my A1000 and A2000. They're great machines!

[TjLaZer]

r0jaws,

Congrats!  It's nice getting an old miggy up and running.

Say can you email me that world backdrop pic?  I like it.

[r0jaws]

TjLaZer wrote:
r0jaws,

Congrats!  It's nice getting an old miggy up and running.

Say can you email me that world backdrop pic?  I like it.

Thanks, and no problem at all. :-) It might be a few days though (I'm kinda buried at work at the moment)

[Jiffy]

Nice. The A2000 scores very high on my 'Favorite Amiga-list'.     Very expandable and durable and I prefer the socketed chips compared to the A600/1200/4000 SMT-chips. Needless to say I have an A2000 (in the process of building up), although my current main Amiga is a heavily expanded A1200.

Depending on what you are planning to do with it, a nice 68030-card would do your A2000 some good. Otoh, if you are planning to mainly run games with it, I wouldn't go any further than put in a nice SCSI-harddrive and several MBs of fastram.

Treasure it!  :-)

[tokyoracer]

You have made someone VERY green with envy (i.e. me). :-D Well done. :-)

I'm not sure if there's any local computer/retro conventions but if there is the it would be great to see your machine there in the flesh. I will have to research it. I'd be tempted to bring my machines along too.

[r0jaws]

[Drumroll] Ladies & Gents, the moment you have been waiting for has arrived [/Drunroll]

I have the 2000 back to the state it was when I originally clapped eyes on it, but fully operational!  :-D

I replaced the Gary Socket adapter with the missing pins (for the 2 Meg Agnus board), and popped it back in this evening and she lives!



Cheeky little glass of Red to celebrate.  :-P





There's a mild increase in speed, according to the sysinfo, but bizzarely the workbench rendering seems to have slowed down dramatically! ie open a drawer and each icon is drawn, but much more slowly than before.
I shall have to investigate this board, maybe I haven't set something up for it correctly.




I still haven't removed the battery, should it just pop out, or do the mountings have to be snipped?
It had some white crystals forming around the contacts that weren't there last time I looked so that's the next job to yoink that out before it causes any trouble (I've cleaned it up for now pending further investigation).

I have managed to halve the start up time by merely removing 2 programs on startup (Pro Draw & Pro Page) so its down to a mere 15 secs!

All in all a good nights work, next job to get the battery out, investigate the Agnus setings, and bung the Omega Speed Up board in to test it's comparitive worth.
Oh, and I have 8x 1 Meg SIMMS racing their way to me to chuck in the GVP card, and I still haven't fully checked out that KCS PC Board yet.

Fun Fun Fun

 :-D  :-D  :-D

[sprocket]

There's a mild increase in speed, according to the sysinfo, but bizzarely the workbench rendering seems to have slowed down dramatically! ie open a drawer and each icon is drawn, but much more slowly than before.

do you have the jumper clip attached and to the right pin?

I still haven't removed the battery, should it just pop out, or do the mountings have to be snipped?

it won't "pop out".  Ideally it needs to be desoldered and that required removing the motherboard from my 4000 to do it properly.  You may be able to get it off with a Dremel with a cut off wheel but be careful.  

I have actually twisted the batter away from the metal contacts on each end but I wouldn't recommend that....too much torquing of things.

Batteries are attached at three points and these extend through holes in the motherboard and are soldered.  Holding a soldering iron to the top side (battery side) probably won't heat the solder enough to get it to flux and pull it off.

[sprocket]

on the battery....

one thing some do is after successfully and cleanly desoldering the old battery, solder wires into the connection points with enough length to mount a battery compartment off the mother board.  That way you can put a replaceable battery of appropriate voltage in the holder and change it out when needed.

[terminator4]

Black Screen?

First congrats on your gift.  If battery did not leak (you can tell its fairly obvious) then its likely alive & well.
1) if it has leaked or hasn't remove it that battery (just cut above the pcb (give yourself some left overs to which you may want to solder the new battery).
2) strip all the hardware cards.  then plug into the mono video connector at back to tv or via RGB port to your Amiga monitor (don't forget there's an rgb swich at front for 1084 etc monitors).
3) if still no luck, then contact me and i got a denise (graphics chip) for ya!
T4 :-D

[terminator4]

I hate to say it but your battery may have already leaked (looking at photos).
make sure you clean the area very well after you remove that thing.  try with flat screwdriver removing some of that stained green - if its coming off with "sand" like material then you know it did leak.  don't butcher it - no need to remove the rest - but then you know even more that you must clean it well. :idea:

[r0jaws]

@ T4, as soon as I get hold of some snips, that battery is coming out, just haven't got around to it yet.

My Main reason for posting though is to update y'all on my progress with the expansions.

I finally got round to fitting the Omega Projects 68000 Speed-Up Board. It promises a big speed boost from the standard 7 Mhz, all the way upto 14.28 Mhz! So I'm quite interested to see if it can live up to it's promise, and how that'll affect the 2000's set up (ie usability and stability).
Unfortunately I had to remove the 2 Meg Agnus board in order to fit this as there physically isn't the space to have both fitted!



It's a fairly easy fit (once I manage to persuade the Original 68000 to relinquish its grip on the socket! But there are problems (surprise surprise)

There isn't much info (that I can find) out there on this piece of kit, so I have only the original manufacturer's instruction sheet to go by. (1 sheet of A4)

Once I worked out the switch positions (the green, white and blue wires leading to the front of the cage) and set it to standard, she boots up fine and is rock solid stable.

Unfortunately when I switch to the 'Accelerated' position, that's where the problems start.
I get a red screen with;

System Expansion Board Check
Status       Manufacturer        Product
OK           2017                11
OK           767                 0
BAD          2092                8

This is not good. The other cards are all ok, and the system still boots and runs fine in 'Standard mode'.
The instructions mention installing a tiny 'Boot Block' Program via the provided floppy in some systems because of physical mechanical limitations.
I hadn't installed this program initially, because it was in  the Amiga 500 installation instructions (not the 1500/2000 installation instructions)
Booting from the disc (in standard mode) presents a limited 1.3 enviroment and the opportunity to install the boot block.
Great, but unfortunately it doesn't find the HDD (only the floppy) and consequently won't install the Boot Block!!!

So, I have a question out there, does anyone have any ideas as to how I may be able to either, force the installation floppy to search for and find the Hard Disc, or manually adjust the boot block myself?

I am assuming that I get the Red screen of Death is because of the absence of this modified boot block and not just that the card itself is a gonner, primarily because it still functions in standard mode.

Finally, once I chucked it back together (leaving the board in place) I had to let the kids have a crack at it! (they love Galaga & Missile Command)

[r0jaws]

Just a quick update (for those still interested) I have managed to get hold of 8x 1 Meg 30 Pin SIMMs for the GVP SCSI/ RAM board, Installed them, set the jumpers and POW 8 Megs of Fast RAM Power!


Sweet!  :-D

Runs a little faster now but also means I have a spare 2 Meg Memory Master Board which I'll put up on Amibay in due course.
There appears to be a conflict between the Memory Master and a populated GVP Board that precludes using them simultaneously, Oh Well, out she comes.



I'm still having trouble getting the 'accelerator' to run at 14Mhz, however the system does now boot to a CLI after the Red screen of death, so I am making progress (of a sort).
It'd be nice to be able to use this speed up board, however if it proves to be a dud, I still have the Agnus chip and I'll just put it out there to the community to see if anyone can have more luck with it that I can.