Amiga 1200/500 in a tower system

[bugsthor]

hey guy
i wanted and ment to put my 1200 in a PC tower for years and i know i`ve seen it done, with pictures showing whats been done.

i was just wondering anyone seen a great tutorial on the way to do it ?

1. how technical is it( i can hadle semi reasonable stuff and a solder iron) ?
2. Anything special i would need to buy ?
3. would any tower suite the board ?
4. can the A500 go in one ?

[Jiffy]

1. depends on what you want;
2. check question 1;
3. if it is big enough: no problem;
4. check answer 3.

In short: it all depends on what you want. The more perfect you want it to be, the more skilled you have to be and the more time and money it will cost you.

There are no real tutorials, as each and every one of these projects are one-of-a-kind, but you can find several of these projects online where you find good info in what has been done in that particular case.

[stevieu]

As above!

I pondered for quite a while about housing one of my A1200s in a PC Tower. It all depends on if/how you wish to expand it. It's more simple if you only plan on housing the motherboard without an expansion such as a Mediator, etc... you'd have to modify/make your own back-plate in that case, as nothing would line up.

Depending on the tower, port/cable extensions could be used to allow the Amiga's ports to be used without getting an exact fit.

You may find this link helpful: http://www.cosam.org/projects/a1200t/

In the end, I opted to get a cheap(ish) EZ Tower (ready for an A1200) from AmigaKit and modified it to my tastes with a jigsaw, dremel, gloss black paint etc

Either way, have fun!

Steve

[ramparts]

i saw some one cut the back plate of a comodore tower and adapted ,can anyone post measures of project plus the hole measure for a busboard adapter??
 
many thanks

[smerf]

hey guy
i wanted and ment to put my 1200 in a PC tower for years and i know i`ve seen it done, with pictures showing whats been done.

i was just wondering anyone seen a great tutorial on the way to do it ?

1. how technical is it( i can hadle semi reasonable stuff and a solder iron) ?
2. Anything special i would need to buy ?
3. would any tower suite the board ?
4. can the A500 go in one ?

Hi,

Answer to:

1.  I mounted my A1200 board into an old Gateway server case that I found being thrown out by a real estate company. The hardest part was figuring out what to cut out of the old case to get the A1200 board in. I had to drill out the welds of the old motherboard plate, to remove the plate so that I could mount in the A1200, I also had to cut out the lower hard drive bays in the tower (6 of them) but the upper bays which were used to mount such things as CD drives, floppies, and dvd drives 6 of them could stay.

2. I had to buy the keyboard (lyra) adapter which fits over a chip on the A1200 board, my next purchase would be to buy a pc mouse adapter so that I can use one of the new laser mice.

3. NO, NO, and NO. you really have to look at the tower to see if it will fit the board, there will be a lot of case mods, and also a lot of cutting for the connector plate on the back end of the A1200. A good dremel and cutting tool like a multitool or nibbler is a must. I had to use a drill also to drill through the tach welds on the mother board plate of the Gateway case.

4. You can fit anything into anything if you find the right case, I fit an old A1000 board with 4 disk drives, memory boads, supra board and seven scsi hard drives in an old Xerox printing case. Talk about a lot of case mods this one took over 3 months to complete.

I am pretty proud of this A1200 case mod since I used the old power supply in the case to make it happen. My next project is to cut a hole in the side of the case and put in an indentation square so that I don't have to keep the side of the case off for the Easy ADF transfer kit that I just installed. Works great.

By the way ----- Please support Amigakit, they have a lot of neat stuff to help you out with projects like this one. Without them you could not do this unless you have an engineering background and know where to get the parts to build your project boards.

By the way don't forget the Boing Ball placard, you can buy one from Amigakit, I just took a boing ball picture and printed it out on my printer the same size as the G symbol square on my Gateway, then I glued it in place to cover the G symbol. Looks great, I may buy the Amigakit boingball symbol because it looks 3D.

smerf

@stevieu,

A1200T,  603e ppc 240mhz, 040 40mhz, 256MB, Easy ADF transfer, VGA converter card, etc.  Can't find a mediator card. Also have OS 4.1 running on one hard drive, but disconnected for OS 3.9 on another, found OS 4.1 fun to try and play with but totaly useless just like some other new systems running out there. Like on MACS and PC.

[scuzzb494]

Meet my computer lovingly known as Graham.. Don't ask. Just to prove you don't really need to get a PC tower to make it work....

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz222.htm

The bits you will struggle with are the keyboard adaptors, scandoublers flicker fixers etc that use to come with the Eyetech units.. like this one I made from loads of old bits I had...

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz185.htm

Was EZ but then I have all the bits.

For the A500 there really is only one way to do it ...

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz86.htm

Personally I would stay commando and live with a 1200 but adding stuff the good old SCSI way which is what I have always preferred. You should never degrade a 1200 by destroying it and stuffing it in a tin box... And I wouldn't suggest destroying a 1500 either.