Amiga questions you've always been too embarrassed to ask

[slaapliedje]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

I don't know off hand, but they are possibly to allow for slightly different configurations of the chassis. Perhaps a different drive cage was planned, or they're left over on the design from when the case was intended for PC use.


That's not a magnet, but a ferrite core. Its purpose in general is to absorb electrical spikes in the cables. In this case I would expect it's to meet emissions regulations, as the cables to the LEDs and key switch all pass out of the metal casework, meaning that any electrical noise they carry could be radiated out and interfere with other equipment. It will work fine if you remove it.


The HD LED on a 4000 (and 600 & 1200) is linked directly to the relevant pin on the internal IDE port. If you don't use the internal IDE port, the LED won't be used. Most add-on controllers have their own separate header to use for activity LEDs, so you can disconnect the LED from the motherboard and connect it to the controller instead to get activity there.

Huh, so what I have in there now is one of the little blockers that disable the onboard IDE, a FastATA (which is where my IDE hard drive and CDrom is plugged into) and now I have a Cyberstorm PPC. For whatever reason, with the Cyberstorm in there, the LED light blinks once when I turn on the computer, but afterward no longer works. Weird, eh? it's like the CSPPC is overriding it.


I have an ACARD SCSI to SATA bridge coming, I'll switch to an SSD at that point (that IDE drive I have causes way too much heat for my tastes).

[Daedalus]

Yep, though that could simply be a side-effect of the blocker. If it's a very short flash, it could also simply be the logic IC that buffers the signal righting itself after the first power up. But there's no way that the LED can be controlled by any other part of the computer.

[slaapliedje]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Yep, though that could simply be a side-effect of the blocker. If it's a very short flash, it could also simply be the logic IC that buffers the signal righting itself after the first power up. But there's no way that the LED can be controlled by any other part of the computer.

Yeah, I tend to think the initial flash is an initialization of the board.


Was just reading that perhaps the FastATA is what is causing OS4.1 to hang at the pink screen, because it can't load the cdrom.


Would have been nice if there had been some wiring for expansions to use the on board LED, but I could see why that isn't the case.


I also need to see why the Cyberstorm scores about 9MB/s reads and the FastATA is only 1.1MB/s. doesn't quite seem right.

[slaapliedje]

I've got a question, perhaps good for this thread...

Why has no one engineered a straight SATA zorro bridge board? or other expansion? Instead we're stuck with IDE ones with adapters, or SCSI with adapters, but no one (besides maybe the full FPGA expansion boards, like the Vampire?) has SATA for the Amiga. Any particular reason?

[NorthWay]

Originally Posted by slaapliedje

Why has no one engineered a straight SATA zorro bridge board? or other expansion?

Extremely good question. Only bad answers so far.
Everyone seems to be tip-toeing around it or suggesting using an adapter to convert to IDE.


A Zorro 2/3 card with DMA (or even without) doesn't feel like (IMO) it is out of reach of hobby hw hackers, even less so for the more professional shops.

[slaapliedje]

Originally Posted by NorthWay

Extremely good question. Only bad answers so far.
Everyone seems to be tip-toeing around it or suggesting using an adapter to convert to IDE.


A Zorro 2/3 card with DMA (or even without) doesn't feel like (IMO) it is out of reach of hobby hw hackers, even less so for the more professional shops.

Yeah, like the Elbox FastATA board that I got came with a CF adapter and a IDE ->SATA adapter, but they should have just done an SATA card. I actually think SATA might even be easier than IDE to implement from a design point of view. I could be totally wrong about that, but it would make sense to ditch the old IDE interface and get native SATA for SSDs and easier to find optical drives.

[Daedalus]

IDE is actually quite easy to implement by simply bit-banging the pins. The same isn't true of SATA, where you would need to have a Zorro to PCI bridge (or similar), then the SATA controller. I don't think it's so difficult that it's beyond the capabilities of people, but you have to consider the market too - most people are more than happy with IDE because they use CF cards as hard drives. Very few people actually want a modern drive with hundreds of GB of space they'll never use, especially when there's no practical speed advantage. And, given that a homebrew Zorro-II only IDE card retails for €105, the added complexity of a SATA card would mean it would end up costing a lot more than that.

[kolla]

Rather than SATA controller, I would prefer faster and better USB host controller.

[Hewitson]

I have asked this in the past but don't believe it was answered. Why did they prevent a Ctrl-A-A in XCopy? Does anyone know of any other software which prevents a reboot?

[indigolemon]

I suppose I use http://aminet.net/package/disk/salv/DiskSafe to deliberately do so, but only till all writes are completed - rather than indefinitely.

[slaapliedje]

Originally Posted by slaapliedje

Yeah, I tend to think the initial flash is an initialization of the board.


Was just reading that perhaps the FastATA is what is causing OS4.1 to hang at the pink screen, because it can't load the cdrom.


Would have been nice if there had been some wiring for expansions to use the on board LED, but I could see why that isn't the case.


I also need to see why the Cyberstorm scores about 9MB/s reads and the FastATA is only 1.1MB/s. doesn't quite seem right.

With the embarrassment, I figured out why my LED stopped working for my hard drive!


Apparently while swapping between SCSI and IDE, I accidentally broke pin 39 off of the drive, which happens to be the LED pin!

[-Acid-]

When connecting to the internet via dial up in the old days, the modem would make it's caclking and screeching noises and then stop once connected. Why does the modem not make any further noise even though it is still sending data as sound through the telephone line?

[idrougge]

Because the speaker is turned off once you're connected. It's only there so you can hear the dial tone and the initial handshake.

[slaapliedje]

Originally Posted by idrougge

Because the speaker is turned off once you're connected. It's only there so you can hear the dial tone and the initial handshake.

Ha, could you imagine if it was on the entire time making racket with every packet? ah, lack of CRC in the communication was painful. When I first got a modem for my STe, it took 3 days to download 1mb (it was a 1200 baud). While I love the old computers, I don't miss that aspect of it much.

[Jope]

The ATM command allows you to adjust the modem speaker behaviour.

M0 Speaker always off
M1 Speaker on until carrier detected
M2 Speaker always on
M3 Speaker on only while answering (not on all modems)

[-Acid-]

Ah it was just that simple then lol

[Akiko]

I've always wondered if there was a reason why Amiga hardware vendors never added some kind of voltage protection to their clock-port products to protect against people accidentally connecting them up wrong?

I recall over the years hearing of many different disasters stories, dead Prelude sound cards, and I recall seeing a picture of a subway card which had actually caught fire.

I haven't done this myself, but the amount of times I have accidentally connected up a hard drive or CF on the Amiga the wrong way it's a good thing they don't blow up as well.

[slaapliedje]

Originally Posted by Akiko

I've always wondered if there was a reason why Amiga hardware vendors never added some kind of voltage protection to their clock-port products to protect against people accidentally connecting them up wrong?

I recall over the years hearing of many different disasters stories, dead Prelude sound cards, and I recall seeing a picture of a subway card which had actually caught fire.

I haven't done this myself, but the amount of times I have accidentally connected up a hard drive or CF on the Amiga the wrong way it's a good thing they don't blow up as well.

Ha, reminds me of when I was trying to show off to my younger brother and wasn't paying attention and inserted my brand new ZorRAM upside down. Had to send it back to Amigakit for repair.

[NLS]

Originally Posted by slaapliedje

Ha, could you imagine if it was on the entire time making racket with every packet? ah, lack of CRC in the communication was painful. When I first got a modem for my STe, it took 3 days to download 1mb (it was a 1200 baud). While I love the old computers, I don't miss that aspect of it much.

Actually I left the speaker on all the time. Most MODEM also had volume control (!)... so I had it on low.
From the sound I knew there was an issue with the line and when there was a new retrain coming etc.

[005AGIMA]

2 questions I have for this thread

1) What colour lights should a UK A500 from late 1989 have?
I thought my one back in the day had one green...or yellow?
However the one in my Batman pack I've purchased, looking at the photos, has 2x red. Not that I care. I'll be comparing the serial numbers anyway. It's Kickstart 1.3 I know that from the photos too, which is the correct.
(and yes I checked this thread first: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=83198)

EDIT: Actually there's 3 posibilities here....
a) My memory is wrong and mine were red.
b) My original A500 was a rare early adopter of green LED?
c) I'm actually remembering my Nephew's Amiga 500+ (He lived with us for a time so I used his machine quite a bit also).

2) Can you link up an 89 A500 to an A1200 via RS232 for gaming? Or will there be issues?