Amiga 500 Disk Drive on an Amiga 2000HD

[DoomMaster]

I would like to install an Amiga 500 disk drive into my Amiga 2000HD professional computer.  I am replacing the DF0 drive that is already in my Amiga 2000HD with the drive from the Amiga 500.  The drive in my Amiga 2000HD and the drive in my Amiga 500 toy computer are both Chinon FB-354.  The drive in my Amiga 2000HD has an LED, but the drive from my Amiga 500 toy computer does not.  I de-soldered the LED from the Amiga 2000 drive and soldered it to the exact same location on the Amiga 500 drive.  Then I installed this drive into my Amiga 2000HD, but the LED does not work!  Do I need to also solder on some sort of jumper or current limiting resister?  If so, what is the value of that resister and what is its location on the board?  Both the Amiga 2000 and 500 use the same Chinon disk drives.  The only difference is the top metal cover, the eject button colors, and the face plate on the Amiga 2000 drive.  So, I installed the top metal cover, eject button, and the front face plate from the Amiga 2000 drive to the Amiga 500 drive.  The drive works and looks great, but the LED will not light up.  Please help!   :-o

[amiga1260]

I think you have soldered the led wrong. You have to solder the other way.

[DoomMaster]

The LED has pre-formed leads and was soldered on correctly (it can only be soldered on one way).  So I do not think that is the problem.  I noticed on the original Amiga 2000 Chinon drive that there is a SMT jumper and 2 SMT resisters near the LED solder pads.  Those SMT parts are: J4 - Jumper, R5 - 681, and R6 - 181.  Since I do not have a Metcal soldering iron or the proper tools for soldering Surface Mount parts, I wonder if I can just cut a gap into the one leg of the LED near those SMT parts and just solder on a 1/8 watt 330 ohm resister?  

[DoomMaster]

Come on guys, HELP ME !!!!     :-o

[adz]

Enough with the "Professional" and "Toy" approach, the only differnce between a A500 and a A2000 is the expansion slots. Take a stock A500 and a stock A2000, say you wanted to add a hdd to each, for the A500, attach an A590, for the A2000 install a A2091 card, same outcome, just looks different. Same can be said for RAM, for the A500, add some RAM to the A590, for the 2000, add some RAM to the A2091, once again the same outcome, in the end, yes you can do more to an A2000, but if your spending that much money, buy yourself a A1200 with an 040 accelerator card and you will beat any expanded A2000 hands down. So much more I can say, but I am busy working, so get over it. My appologies if I sounded rude.

[DoomMaster]

To adz:

Why would I want to buy an Amiga 1200 when I already have two Amiga 2000HD professional computers?  The Amiga 1200 is to the Amiga 4000, what the Amiga 500 is to the Amiga 2000.  If I decide to buy an AGA Chip Set Amiga, it will be the Amiga 4000, NOT the toy Amiga 1200!     :-P

[darksun9210]

hey adz,
i hear ya bud. i've had to bite my tongue in a few discussions.

so thank god i'm not alone on this one!  :-D

[xeron]

The fact of the matter is that the A1200 is a 32 bit system, with faster busses, improved chipset, and MORE EXPANSION OPTIONS than the A2000.

Put a mediator 1200SX onto an A1200, and you can add a faster graphics card than ANY gfx card you can add to a 2000. You can add a Terratec 512i soundcard, which is a nice card, although here the A2000 is quite well supported with the Sunrize card, or a repulse. You can add a cheap TV card to the 1200. Also, you can add a PowerPC processor to the 1200, and you can't do that on the 2000. I mean, if you were a very rich (and lucky) guy, lets look at the best possible 1200 and 2000 setups:

(note: all from memory; please feel free to correct me. No overclocking taken into account. Also assuming A1200 is towered. I'm also assuming no RAM cards in ZII, since the slots are otherwise occupied...).


                 A2000         A1200
Processor(s)     68060/50Mhz   68060/50Mhz
                               PPC603e 240Mhz
RAM              2Mb chip      2Mb chip
                 128Mb fast    256Mb fast
Disk             Fast SCSI-II  Fast SCSI-II
Graphics         Picasso IV    Voodoo 5
Sound            Repulse       Terratec 512i
TV               Paloma        Bt848 or 878 PCI card
LAN              10Mbit ZII    10/100Mbit PCI
USB              ZII card      PCI or clockport
Other            VideoToaster  PowerFlyer fast IDE


There are more cards, but you've filled the 2000s zorro slots there.

An A1200 can be upgraded to a superior standard than an A2000 could ever be upgraded to, in every single category you can think of, with the possible exception of sound cards, or the fact that you can get a VideoToaster for the 2000. I really don't see how the 1200 is more of a toy than the 2000.

The fact is that the 2000, while it was an absolutely brilliant machine (i have no intention of selling mine), was superceded by the 1200, 3000, and 4000.

[Piru]

@DoomMaster

Come on guys, HELP ME !!!!

No-one is obliged to help you.
You are not paying for support.

Get over it.

[Jope]

Why would I want to buy an Amiga 1200 when I already have two Amiga 2000HD professional computers? The Amiga 1200 is to the Amiga 4000, what the Amiga 500 is to the Amiga 2000. If I decide to buy an AGA Chip Set Amiga, it will be the Amiga 4000, NOT the toy Amiga 1200!  

Hmm, the A2000 is a toy too.

Why?

1) No PPC available
2) No PCI available
3) No Zorro-III

Get a machine that can properly be fitted with a PCI bus and a PPC processor and then you have a "professional" Amiga. Those Zorro -> PCI adapters aren't properly fitting a PCI bus, so the A3000T and A4000T are out.

Your choices: A3000, A4000, A1200. All of them need to be fitted into a tower before you can expand them.

Even the A2000 should be in a tower - the case doesn't have nearly enough bays for storage devices. - My A2000 has the hard drive just sitting inside the case. Hope it doesn't short itself on anything.

Get real, man. The A2000 is old and slow and you can only go so far with it. It was professional until something like 1990, but time has gone past it.

Stop looking at the box and start concentrating on what you can do with the machine. An A500 can be upgraded to take A2000 CPU cards and Zorro-II cards, making it just as "good" as the A2000.

Me personally, I don't like waiting for the sloooow Zorro-II bus to transfer screens into the graphics card's VRAM.. If a screen flip is measured in seconds, then forget it. Zorro-III or PCI is the way to go.

[iamaboringperson]

Wow, even I don't call my A2000 professional anymore.

Now I'm beginning wonder if my A 4000 T even fits into that category.

[darksun9210]

*cough* G-rex A4000T *cough*

even the a4000t isn't limited by zorroIII pci if you have a cyberstorm3/PPC

anyway, can someone show me the speed results in transfering data to a PCI card on a mediator? as i'm still a bit dubious about its "essentially zorro2" page flipping to access the PCI address range, as i'm under the impression that even zorro3-PCI is better than a mediator... am i wrong? can someone show me the light?  :-)

[DoomMaster]

Boy, did I start something or what ?!  I am sorry guys if I offended any of you, that was not my intention.  I really just need your guys help on this drive LED problem.     :-D

[adz]

DoomMaster wrote:
Boy, did I start something or what ?!  I am sorry guys if I offended any of you, that was not my intention.  I really just need your guys help on this drive LED problem.     :-D

I don't think you have offended anybody, more annoyed than anything, why can't you just refer to your A2000 as an A2000, not an "A2000 professional computer", it is simply just another computer. As for your led problem, who cares if the led doesn't light up, for pete's sake you can hear the damn thing when it is reading/writing.

[xeron]

Maybe he just wants it to work perfectly?

Anyway. Try replacing the LED, maybe you broke it (not likely, but hey). You could try swapping the PCBs over, unless of course that was what was wrong with the original drive.