Ever since the first mediator was announced I've always wanted to put my old A1200 into a tower but never had the cash for it. Recently I got a decent job that paid enough for me to splash out a bit so I decided to make my passion a reality.
First Steps
First step was to work out what I needed.
I already had the following:
- Amiga 1200 with Kickstart 3.1
- M-Tech 1230/28 RTC with 8mb RAM and FPU
- Indivision AGA MKIIcr
- PCMCIA reset fix board. I'm not using PCMCIA cards but it was useful for the reset button.
- Rhys MKII USB mouse adaptor
- SCSI CD-ROM Drive
- Realtek 8139 Fast Ethernet card
- 700W ATX PSU
I procured the following parts:
From Amigakit
- Mediator 1200TX board
- Lyra 2 Keyboard adaptor
From eBay
- ATX Case
- Voodoo3 2000 PCI card
- SoundBlaster Live CT4810
- Adaptec 2940UW SCSI card
- Radeon 9250 256Mb PCI video card (This was an afterthought, I had already bought the Voodoo card but I heard the Mediator could use the RAM as system memory (albeit a bit slower than normal RAM)
The Mediator and Voodoo card arrived first so I put the A1200 board on a bench and hooked them up to test.
First problem
The Mediator and the M-tech card were not compatible. The memory spaces conflicted, same as the PCMICA issue.
More money was spent and an ACA1233n card duly arrived.
Second problem
The ACA card and the Mediator had issues in OS3.9. Basically the whole system would freeze up on Workbench load, although oddly enough everything worked fine in OS3.1. eventually this got sorted. You can see the journey in this thread -
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=85813
Next to arrive was the case and backplate. The backplate was slightly too big for the case, and the hole for the PSU was the wrong shape. I broke a dremel cutting the plate to size and making the PSU hole the right shape and size.
The backplate of the ATX case was removed and the new backplate riveted on.
Third problem
The hole for the PSU was located in such a position that it overhung the connector for the ATX plug on the mediator. With the PSU in place, it was putting pressure on the Power connector. This worried me a bit but everything worked. Also, the PCI backplate I had cut off the original backplate and riveted onto the new backplate was a couple of millimetres to far to the side so PCI cards were sitting at an angle.
However, they fit, the system powered on and I had a glorious 1280x720 Truecolour display.
Fourth Problem
I had pre-ordered the Lyra 2 keyboard adaptor from Amigakit but it since disappeared from the site, it was now in permanent TBA status.
Fortunately, on my sweep of eBay, I found a user selling an old Elbox Power Tower which had the old AT keyboard adaptor. Managed to sccop this up and dug out an old AT keyboard from my junk pile.
This was a relief as I was worried about the mechanical strain put on the components in my hacked together tower. having a purpose built tower was much better.
The Power Tower arrived and the old 120W ATX PSU was removed and thrown in the junk pile. The 700W ATX was transferred across and the power switch in the tower replaced.
Fifth Problem
The system would only boot up properly once in every five or six boots. The rest of the time it would hang at a black screen. After much disassembly and reassembly it was discovered the Radeon card was at issue. With the Radeon removed, every boot was perfect. Since the Radeon card was only used for extra memory and the ACA1233n came with 128Mb RAM, this was not an issue.
Pictures of the system:
External
Internal
