My ongoing adventures with my A2000.

[Damion]

abbub wrote:
What is that Agnus replacement.  Looks something like a Mini-megi, but different.  I assume it's the same sort of deal, a replacement Agnus that has an extra 1 MB of chip RAM attached to the board?

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/chip2mb

[Nlandas]

I'm envious. My first Amiga was an A2000 with 8088 bridgeboard that I used for my CIS classes. There was an A2000 in the recycle bin at amibay but Gordon the poster has been too busy to get the items together for shipping.

I keep hoping I can have an A2000 again to show my little son my first "real" computer.

-Nyle

[rkauer]

 BTW, for the problem on the 68000 "accelerator" software:

 There is a workaround: copy the whole contents of it to a drawer on one partition, boots the Amiga normally and them run the installation program.

 Problem solved!:banana:

[r0jaws]

Cheers for the idea rkauer.

Unfortunately, that little piece of kit is now in zetros sweaty paws.

I believe he is hammering it into a 500 as we speak, I shall certainly pass that idea onto him. His further intention was to see if he could reproduce it, or something similar for a 600.
Mind you he has so many projects on the go its hard to see how he has time for other stuff, like breathing and feeding himself.  :lol:

[tokyoracer]

You aught to get some sort of ROM switcher so that you can have the compatability of 1.3 with the latest 3.1 ROMs. Just an idea...

[r0jaws]

The thought had crossed my mind, but I haven't had any compatibility problems so far. Everything seems to run OK with the newly installed 3.1 ROMs and WB 3.1
The only obvious no-no is any AGA only games, but I have a 1200 for that.
If I come across any problems with 'must have' software then I'll certainly be investigating the possibility.

Right now I'm looking at tidying up the cosmetics (painting/ dyeing the CD ROM to match) and maybe installing Windows 3.1 to the DOS partition.

I have heard of someone doing this using the KCS board, so it has intrigued me.

[Corfiot]

Windows on A2000.

Yep that was me, Zetro did get excited when I told him and I have to get some piccys done this weekend.

It's actually Windows 3.0, I've installed alongside DOS6.2

Win 3.1 is not possible with an 8086 CPU which the KCS board has
Win 3.0 however does have 3 modes of execution.
Win /r being real or 8086 mode.

The display update is very slow, due to Bitplane to VGA conversion by KCS software but VGA 16 colour is presented using an amiga interlaced display mode.

It's not really useable but it's a great laugh, my old 386 couldn't emulate the Miggy, but my old A500 can run Windows
 :lol:

Anyway congrats on the 2000, I've recently aquired one and I'm in the process of beefing her up....

[abbub]

Right now I'm looking at tidying up the cosmetics (painting/ dyeing the CD ROM to match) ...

Hey, let me know how that works out for you.  My A2000 has a Plextor drive in it that's a much lighter shade of white than the rest of the A2000.  I'd be interested in making it look a bit more like it belongs.

[r0jaws]

@ Corflot

Aha!

I did wonder, I have had a cursory nose about to see what was out there about this and didn't find a lot.

Thanks for the heads up, I shall adjust my targets accordingly  :-D

If you get a moment, piccies would be great!
I'd love to see that on a 500!

@abbub

Its a work in progress but I shall keep this updated with some hardcore Hardware pron pics when complete.

[r0jaws]

Ok, Brace yourselves, significant update time!
I've managed to get hold of 2 improvements to my baby the first being a lovely clean Keyboard courtesy of G-H from Amibay (Cheers mate)



Secondly, and also from Amibay (courtesy of McVenco) I received an a2620.



Fitting it was a little tight but not difficult.



She booted up straight away and worked brilliantly!! (Or so I thought initially)



The speed boost is modest, but significant. Doubling her clock speed, and making her run at equivalent to a standard 1200 (or 2500  :-P )



However, there was a problem. The board came with RAM fitted, and only 2 Mb of Fast RAM was displayed.
My SCSI card has 8Mb on board, I had just lost 6 Megs of RAM without trying!  :-o
Time to dig out some manuals I think!!!



Firstly I thought to disable the 2620's on board RAM using the Jumpers.
On reboot, brilliant! It worked, 8 Megs of Fast Ram back. However, Sysinfo shows a different story.



Quite a significant drop in performance, What the F has happened?

An inspection of the card led me to believe that there was 4 Mb of Zip RAM attatched, however the jumper settings were for 2 Mb.
Well if I can't have my full 8 Mb, 4 Mb will have to do until I can figure out the correct configuration.
Swap a few jumpers around and BINGO 4 Mb's Fast RAM.



Great, I think. Time to fire up Deluxe Galaga and have a blast to celebrate! :-D



Oh Sh1t.

Not only that, sysinfo chucks up loads of recoverable errors whilst checking it out.
Another look at the Zip chips, revealed that I do only have 2 Mb of RAM. The serial numbers do have 256 on them (in my defence)

Ho Hum.

Another, think and a dig out of the SCSI manual reveals that I may just have to reduce the Fast RAM on board the SCSI drive.
Dropped it down to 6 Mb and changed the Jumpers, no Joy. (wouldn't even boot from the hard disc).
Dropped even further down to 4 Mb and BLAMO!
She Rides!!!



Now I know its not perfect, and my reasoning is a bit sloppy and slapdash. But it is late & I have had half a bottle of wine.  ;-)

However, that said, my 2000 is now running at double her original speed and I have 6 MB of Fast RAM and I still have my 2 MB of Chip RAM.

I've just had a blast on Deluxe Galaga and she is significantly more responsive than she used to be.

All in all, not a bad nights work. In the future I will sort out the RAM configuration issues and hopefully get her back upto the full 8MB that the 2000 supports.

But for now, she'll do.  :-D

[bloodline]

We don't get enough picture stories on A.org...

[TjLaZer]

That keyboard is the rare "Doomy Editon" first release.  Nice find!!!

The reason you were having memory issues with the A2620 and the GVP card is both occupy the 24-bit (8MB MAX) address space.  Yes the A26xx cards use the 24-bit address space and NOT 32-bit like other cards...

[r0jaws]

I have been really going to town on my 2000 lately, and have finally got a few things that I had planned to do completed.

First things first though, many thanks to Zetro of EAB & Amibay for helping me through my first 'proper' soldering job.
The thought of wielding a soldering iron anywhere near the motherboard had filled me with dread, but zetro allowed me to use his brand new air-station to solder on a new coin battery.
The difference decent kit makes is unbelievable! My own soldering iron is the b@stard love child of a chisel and a malfunctioning hotplate.

Needless to say, I was very pleased with the results.  :-)





Finally, I was able to reset my clock and the info stays put, no longer does the Amiga belive that Stayin' Alive is top of the charts and it is still 1978!



You may remember that I have a KCS Power PC board installed. This was running DOS 5.0, however, after having attempted to botch some drivers for the CD-ROM using an old Win 98 boot disc and having manually adjusted config.sys I was left with a lovely DOS system that would hang indefinitely on boot up and no emergency back up boot disc to rectify it!

Luckily, I managed to restore it back to it's original state after tracking down a suitable disc which was just as well.
I had been inspired by a thread on EAB some months ago that aluded to someone actually getting Windows up and running on their 2000 using a KCS.
It was something that, whilst possibly not terribly practical I had to give a go just to see if it worked!

It does.



Windows 3.0 running on a 2000.  :-o

Many, many thanks to The Corfiot who was the original weaver of this magic and was absolutley essential in me being able to pull off this little feat!

I had an enjoyable time playing the slowest game of solitaire ever at a fraction under one quarter speed.  :-P

Whilst it does works, the refresh rates are somewhat slow, but it does work.

I'd like to see an 18 year old PC run WB 3.0!!

@TJlazer

After having a bit of a chat with zetro, and although it doesn't seem to mention it in any docs I have read, the 2620 does seem to reserve the first 4 Mb of address space for its own RAM even if it doesn't have 4 Mb fitted and the jumpers are set to 2Mb.
This would account for me having to drop the GVP's Fast RAM down to 4 Mb in order to get the 2000 to boot.
It's not really a problem though as I'm now on a slow time search for another 2 Mb of zip RAM for the 2620.
I'm sure that when they do turn up they'll be tucked away under that Pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.   ;-)

[tokyoracer]

Windoze on Amiga, and the world hasnt exploded yet?

[Corfiot]

R0jaws

Absolute Pleasure Mate,,, You can update to DOS6 easily too.

TC  :-D

[Protek]

Nice work! Makes me want to get a desktop Amiga alongside my computer-in-keyboard ones.

I take that the KCS has ISA slots. Would Windoze be faster if you got a i.e. Tseng ET-3000 VGA card for it?