A bit of an update on this project...
Thankfully one of the users at a1k.org was kind enough to identify and dump the missing chips for me
So I now have the .JED files to program replacements and the scsi autoboot ROM.
Here they are for anyone that's looking for them.All the other SCSI controller chips etc can be found online.
So to that end I've bought a cheap and nasty G540 USB universal programmer off ebay and some rewritable GAL chips from futurlec. Waiting for them to arrive so I can try them out
Unfortunately the U60 chip, which allows a 1MB Agnus to interface to 2MB of RAM won't work in a rewritable GAL. It will only work in a write-once PAL for reasons unknown (Andrew Wilson himself said he never figured this out). It's impossible to find the required type of PAL that hasn't already been programmed, and even if I did you can't program them with a normal programmer.
Of course if I managed to track down a 2MB Agnus chip that fits, the docs say that would work too, but these are pretty rare. I might have to just make do with 1MB.
The board has 1MB of RAM installed which I've configured as all chip memory. You can reconfigure it for 512 chip and 512 slow (similar config to an A500 with the 512KB trapdoor expansion) while the sidecar expansion is 1MB fast. Funnily enough, if I configure for 512KB/512KB Chip/Slow, sysinfo reports about 3% faster speed than 1MB/1MB chip/fast? I thought the whole thing with slow memory was that it was like chip memory (controlled by agnus, which introduces a delay as the CPU can't access it every cycle) but processor had exclusive use of it, while fast mem was controlled by processor and could access it on every cycle so there was no delay. Strange.
Anyway, while I'm waiting for the chips and programmer to arrive I've been keeping busy. I've stripped the machine and cleaned it, and tried to retrobright it. I tried using cling wrap to prevent the retrobright from drying out unfortunately this just made it brighten the plastic unevenly (wherever there was a crease in the cling wrap). I work full time and I don't want to leave it out in the hot aussie sun from 8-5 without being able to check on it every hour or so... and I've been busy on weekends so its been slow progress on this front.
In the meantime I've managed to get a working keyboard.
The one that was missing the spacebar had only 4 or so dead keyswitches plus the missing switch for the spacebar. I managed to get the others working with a few squirts of WD40 to loosen them up. I managed to desolder 5 working ones off the other board (which had missing keys all over the place but funnily enough QWERTY at least worked fine) and solder them onto the new board.
I've also since replaced the dead clock battery with a coin cell holder so as to make replacements easier in the future
I've also replaced the corroded old RCA jacks with nice, clean new ones
Everything is humming along nicely
It definitely sounds a lot clearer with the new RCA jacks.
I also got the steel wool and some Autosol and polished up those metal brackets on the edge connectors, they are still dull but at least they aren't brown and rusty any more. I don't think these serve any purpose anyway? the sidecar doesn't even touch them when its installed.
I tried to polish up the RF shields but they were too far gone. After an hour of furious scrubbing and polishing they still looked crap so I've put them aside for now.
So now its basically just waiting for the chip and programmer to arrive, at which point I hope to get the FPU, kickstart switcher and SCSI working. Planning to get a 50 pin SCSI card reader so I can install workbench to it.
Most B2000 CPU expansion card don't look like they'll fit inside the standard A1000 case so I'll just forget about that for now.
