Battery Powered Amiga ..

[SamOS39]

Is it possible to power and A1200 by dry cell rechargable batteries?

Has this been done before?

cheers
Sam.

[J-Golden]

Is it possible to power and A1200 by dry cell rechargable batteries?
 
Has this been done before?
 
cheers
Sam.

I know Silent PAWS made a case replacement/laptop conversion kit for the A1200 and the A4000 years and years ago. Can't remember if they got off the ground or not, but I know for sure the A1200 laptop was supposed to run off of batteries.
 
BBOAH says otherwise ( http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=53 ), but I remember it being shown off at a NCAUG Meeting and distinctly remember the guy talking about the battery life and all that.

[tone007]

It's definitely possible, probably a couple of simple circuits would give you the voltages you'd need.  Worthwhile?  Probably not.

[KThunder]

It's definitely possible, probably a couple of simple circuits would give you the voltages you'd need.  Worthwhile?  Probably not.

A1200s don't use much power, combine one with a decent lithium laptop battery and a lcd monitor; I think it would be worthwhile.

[beakster2]

Back in the days before iPods, someone fitted their Amiga to their car in order to play MP3s.  So the Amiga was running off the car's battery.   He has a website and it has schematics for his PSU.  Might be a good starting point for you: http://amimpc.world3.net/psu.html

[Matt_H]

Now, since the Amiga lacks software power control, would the whole system just turn off once the battery was discharged to a certain level, or would weird things happen as parts of the board began to lose power?

[SamOS39]

@beakster2

Back in the days before iPods, someone fitted their Amiga to their car in order to play MP3s.  So the Amiga was running off the car's battery.   He has a website and it has schematics for his PSU.  Might be a good starting point for you: http://amimpc.world3.net/psu.html

This looks really usefull, ill check it out

@Matt_H

i was wondering about that..

[J-Golden]

Now, since the Amiga lacks software power control, would the whole system just turn off once the battery was discharged to a certain level, or would weird things happen as parts of the board began to lose power?

I wonder if you could do a APC UPS type deal and hook a logic board between the battery and the serial port for a simple comm program that would notify you when the battery reached a certain level.

[Tenacious]

Now, since the Amiga lacks software power control, would the whole system just turn off once the battery was discharged to a certain level, or would weird things happen as parts of the board began to lose power?

Laptops handle this with DC to DC converters to produce +5 and +/- 12 volts from some single battery source, usually 12 to 18 volts.  It would make sense to monitor the source battery with the computer or your own separate circuit.  I once bought a surplus laptop power converter that handled conversion from the battery, from a power supply, and charging the battery.

 I believe Kthunder is right.  I've never seen power usage breakdown, but, it seems most of the power goes to the floppy drive, hard drive and accessory add-ons.  The hard drive can be replaced with a power sipping CF.  I think the floppy can be disconnected.  

For comparison, older flashlight bulbs drew a half amp minimum, some would draw 4 times as much.

What are you planning to do?

[freqmax]

A few "simple switcher" SMPS circuits = solved.

[GrizzlyAdams]

There are quite a few powersupplies that fit the bill, you probably want to start by looking at the PicoPSU series. I believe you should be able to solder a ATX pigtail to the row of pins just behind the square din power jack, on my board theres two layouts for the filter coil, and the larger layout is unused leaving a nice row of pins with +/- 12v, + 5v and GND. (no idea on what order they are in, check the A1200 schematics on aminet)
There is atleast one of the PSUs in the series I mentioned, or a similar series available on mini-itx's store available in a Wide-Range input, capable of operating between 8v and 24v input.  Once the battery discharges to 8v, it will cut off to prevent deep-discharge of the battery.  Assuming you have a non-expanded A1200, you should be able to fit a reasonable sized battery, picopsu, and related wiring inside the stock case.

[J-Golden]

I guess the next step would be to use a Laptop keyboard to cut down on the height.  Would a simple PC-to-Amiga keyboard converter made for the A1200 work?  I know Elbox made one that I liked quite a bit...