Mac user got an Amiga

[Anhaedra]

Hey, I got my hands on an Amiga 2000 with a 68030 50mhz card, (or so it says, but I've not seen a 50mhz 030 before) I was just wondering what I can do with this. I have no keyboard, mouse, or monitor, I know how to make a VGA adapter, but can I use an old PC serial mouse or keyboard, something like that? Or are they proprietary? I've always been into 68K Macs so this is the first Amiga I've gotten to play around with, I really don't know what I'm doing.

Haven't fired it up to see if it's got an OS installed because I have no monitor

I really just want to know what all I need to make this thing work, because I've seen a lot of pretty cool things these machines can do and they seem to have a lot of games (which seem better than the DOS versions)

Thanks

[bloodline]

Anhaedra wrote:
Hey, I got my hands on an Amiga 2000 with a 68030 50mhz card, (or so it says, but I've not seen a 50mhz 030 before) I was just wondering what I can do with this. I have no keyboard, mouse, or monitor, I know how to make a VGA adapter, but can I use an old PC serial mouse or keyboard, something like that? Or are they proprietary? I've always been into 68K Macs so this is the first Amiga I've gotten to play around with, I really don't know what I'm doing.

Haven't fired it up to see if it's got an OS installed because I have no monitor

I really just want to know what all I need to make this thing work, because I've seen a lot of pretty cool things these machines can do and they seem to have a lot of games (which seem better than the DOS versions)

Thanks

Plug it in to a TV and see if the thing bootstraps on the ROMs to the "insert disk" screen.

You'll need to buy an Amiga Keyboard and Mouse. They are custom to the Amiga.

It is VERY unlikely to have a Hard drive, so you'll need a some floppies.

[Christian Johansson]

You could buy adapters to be able to use PS/2 mouse and keyboard. And you can connect the A2000 to a tv (i suppose it only has b/w composite on the motherboard though). So you'll probably need a RF-modulator to get color trough composite.

[Crumb]

If your TV has a SCART connector you can easily build a cable that will give you a very high picture quality. If you really need to see something you can use the monochrome composite port.

VGA adapters will be useless without ECS chipset (and not much useful with it as most of old games and many apps won't use it).

There are various keyboard/mouse adaptors for sale. If you are skilled with electronics you could build your own adapters using some PIC microcontrollers.

[da9000]

Hi Anhaedra,

as bloodline said, there's a TV-out plug on the back which you can hookup to any TV (or VCR) which takes a composite input and see if anything comes up. Even without mouse and keyboard, it should still show the boot up screen (if there's not hard drive).

Now the easiest way to find if there's a hard drive is to take out the 4 screws on the side and the one in the back and remove the cover. Simple.

[persia]

You need to open the case and check the battery for leakage as well.  That would be the first thing I would do before spending money on old ps2 keyboards and stuff..

[Anhaedra]

It does have a hard drive, actually. I'll go try plugging it into my TV.

No video on plugging it into a TV, I took a look at the battery and there is some corrosion.

Will it run with the battery removed, or do I need to leave it?

[pyrre]

It will run perfectly fine without battery.
But corrosive damage may be beyond repair...
Take pictures and post them here...

[Anhaedra]

Okay well sorry about the picture quality but I only have my phone at the moment. It doesn't look too terrible to me, but there is some corrosion on the pins of the 68000 chip. That seems to be a very good indicator to me as for why it won't start up properly, heh.

[rkauer]

 Don't forget the battery! :nervous:

 [EDIT] Damn! Too late...:cry

[Anhaedra]

Too late? Did I kill it by turning it on?

Well the corrosion was the worst actually on the 68000 CPU socket, some of the contacts on the socket are eaten off... So this leaves me with two options i suppose, solder the CPU directly to the board, or solder a new socket in.

Just to be sure, were some of those pins meant to be missing? I have seen some machines cut off certain pins on the CPU (Think it was a Sega Genesis)

If so, which ones?

[blanning]

Anhaedra wrote:
Too late? Did I kill it by turning it on?

Well the corrosion was the worst actually on the 68000 CPU socket, some of the contacts on the socket are eaten off... So this leaves me with two options i suppose, solder the CPU directly to the board, or solder a new socket in.

Just to be sure, were some of those pins meant to be missing? I have seen some machines cut off certain pins on the CPU (Think it was a Sega Genesis)

If so, which ones?

They're all connected.

Pull the cpu out of the socket and clean everything with alcohol.  You might be able to resolder bad connections.  But I've never tried it.  Or there may be nothing you can do.  Replacement 2000 motherboards aren't too expensive.

If it's just the 68000 missing pins, you might get lucky and be able to just replace it with a new one.

(i might have misunderstood, is it the socket that's damaged or the cpu?)

brian

[Anhaedra]

The CPU appears to be fine, the socket is damaged.