My 600 project

[CritAnime]

So after some delayed decisions I have decided to finally start modding my Amiga 600. I went and bought some parts on Saturday from AmigaKit.co.uk and they all arrived today.

Things I bought were:
1)A604 Memory Expansion
2)Indivision ECS
3)4GB CF HDD

So first things first was to open the old girl up. And boy was she dirty inside. However it seemed to be mainly dust and the caps all look to be in pretty good condition still.


So after a good clean I got to work fitting the A604. But firstly I removed the old memory upgrade that was in there.


I then inserted the clock battery and then placed the device into my Amiga. I even put the extension card on and secured it into place. The card felt nice and tight when pushed onto the contacts. Very little flex or wobble from any part of it during the procedure.




I also went ahead and inserted the CF HDD kit that AmigaKit are now doing. The procedure was painless and after a quick test the system ran without issues.




Next was to fit the Indivision ECS card. This went on, again without so much of an hitch. Again after a quick test the system ran perfectly.




Now just to install workbench

[Cammy]

Very cool! I hope you put PFS3 on there instead of FFS, PFS is heaps faster and more flexible than that ancient FFS.

[CritAnime]

How would I go about doing that? I suppose that means I will also lose the AmigaKit OS thing too.

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by CritAnime

How would I go about doing that? I suppose that means I will also lose the AmigaKit OS thing too.

Hi!

Nice A600

PFS3 comes with full documentation but unless you are upgrading the CPU you cannot use SFS as it req's an 020+

Putting the new file system will indeed require a complete wipe of the CF card

AFAIK Amigakit do not have the permision to distribute PFS3 so I guess it will be FFS.

All the best,

Steve.

[Cammy]

Hopefully the card is partitioned into two partitions, then all you have to do is keep your system and all the files on one partition, install PFS onto the other partition and then copy the system over onto it, then reformat the first partition as PFS too. The system-swap-around trick! You can download the PFS3 archive from Aminet and install it onto your current system, then use HDToolBox or HDInstTools to install PFS onto the other partition. As Steve said, the documentation explains it all, I recently followed it and installed PFS3 onto several CF cards on different Amigas.

[CritAnime]

Thanks guys. Will deffo look into this. At the moment I am just tinkering with the system to get the Indivision looking perfect on my system. So I will look into this when I finish messing with alien breed lol.

[CritAnime]

So after spending all night pissing around with the Amiga, after all I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to play it, I decided today I would remove the RF-Modulator.

First to free the board from it's plastic housing and metal shielding.


Next locate the area to de-solder then nervously start the process


A little while later the modulator was free and the board came out in a good condition. Considering this was the first time I had done this procedure I felt it went well


Post-mortem I decided to open the RF-Modulator to take a look inside. Needless to say I mangled it in the process. Not Like I am going to be needing any time soon.


The last time I removed an RF-Modulator was in my Atari 7800 when I did a composite mod on it. However it wasn't soldered like this was to the PCB. It was a simple case of cutting some wires and off it came. This was certainly a nerve racking experience. A couple of times I heard something creak and thought I had damaged the board. However it turned out to be just the board flexing a little.

[CritAnime]

My 600 project has been progressing at a nice steady pace. Not done an update as I have ben busy with life and such... it sucks.

However I am now thinking of sticking an HxC in my Amiga as the floppy drive is starting to sound a little unhealthy. But just a quick question. Does anyone have a detailed, or atleast well pictured, way of connecting the HxC buttons and screen so I can mount everything internally.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by CritAnime

This was certainly a nerve racking experience. A couple of times I heard something creak and thought I had damaged the board. However it turned out to be just the board flexing a little.

I know how you feel man, I am always scared I'd breakj something. but I have removed the RF modulator from 3 Amigas already and one can say I am not that scared anymore :P

I remember the first one I removed, I didn't even have a desoldering gun. The desoldering gun has made the process a lot easier even though that solde doens't seem to move ever!

KEep up the good work. By the way, what is that memory expansion and what will you do with it? Does it add Fast RAM?

[CritAnime]

Put some batteries into my camera and found some pics from when I fitted my 030 accelerator.

The guts of my 600. Seem to be seeing a lot of the inside of my Amiga recently.


A close up of the accelerator.


Trying to figure out if I wanted to solder some wires to the accelerator I stumbled across an old reset switch from an old PC. The connector fits perfectly on the accelerators bypass switch pins.


So I simply just the push button off the reset wires and soldered a rocker switch to the end.


I replaced the standard kickstart that came with the 600 for one I got from Zambot_3 on this forum.


And finally a pic of my system up and running.


I am still waiting on my HxC coming. But with all the crappy weather it might take a while.

[fitzsteve]

Lookin' good

[CritAnime]

Just a quick update. My HxC has just this second arrived from Poland. It's been connected and found to be in full working order.

YAY!

Hardware pr0n to come as soon as I get some stuff done.