Want some A2000 tips 'n tricks!

[8bitbubsy]

So I got myself an A2000 r4.3.
I've upgraded to kickstart 3.1, Super Denise, Fat Agnus 8372A (1MB chip RAM adressing), and I've done some jumper hacks on the motherboard to make all of RAM chip instead of half-chip half-fast. 1MB of chip RAM goodness! I've also changed the CIA timer from 60Hz (after upgrading to 8327A) to 50Hz, as I got forced NTSC mode after the Fat Agnus upgrade.
Pretty nice setup, but there's a world of upgrading possiblities for this specific Amiga. I want to populate this miggy with some Zorro II cards, any advices? I want a graphics card, a sound card and a CPU+fast RAM expansion. Also if possible, a cheap IDE controller. I know this will cost a whole lot but I'm going to buy one card at the time, with a big margin on the next buy.

Oh, and the PSU - should I replace it with an AT/ATX PSU? The internal PSU works fine, it gives 4.8v and 11.8v, and it's clean inside. But I've heard these can die spontaniously, should I show attention?
That's not my only concern, the PSU fan is so noisy I get a headache. I mean, it's a neutral fan sound, just amplified times a million. I tried to feed the fan +5v from the horde-of- 5v feeds inside the PSU, but then the fan spinned for like a second and stopped. In this state, the voltage levels dropped massively... No short-circuits, what the duck can cause this? I did the measurement while the PSU was under load.
Really dumb, I want to make it more silent.

Enough messy explaining -- any must-have tips'n'tricks appreciated!

[fitzsteve]

Hi Mate,

If you are on a budget you could grab a PicassoII, they're pretty cheap and do a decent job. Plus you can pass the native video through it either via a flicker fixer of if you have a monitor that syncs to 15khz then without.

Sound card wise I have a Tocatta 16bit Zorro card, its pretty awesome and you can pass the native audio through it via the mixing software.

Cheap IDE controller would be a Buddha IDE, I'm not sure of the speed gains you'd get but it would be functional. A FastATA would probably be expensive and I'm yet to find one (been looking for a while) which suggests they are a little rare

You could always grab an X-Surf Network Card, this has an IDE Header on it and works well with the IDEFix Software driving a CDRW in my A4000 Tower, not sure if its bootable though.

CPU/Fast Ram, the GVP Combo/040 look pretty tastey, but you might have to pay a decent sum for one.

Can't advise on PSU - I'm sure one of the Guru's will be along.

All the best.

Steve.

[CrashMidnick]

Change your PSU fan and put a silent PC one (I did it on my A4000, now I only hear my floppy drive like an A1200 ). It is a 80mm if I remember

For PSU, changing caps could be usefull but in some of them, there are 2 big ones that are difficult to find...

For Zorro II boards, Stevy said everything. Choose a 040 (that can be upgraded) or 060 accelerator.

[8bitbubsy]

The PSU has got Rubycon capacitors, I don't think they are any problematic.

[CrashMidnick]

Like everything, capacitors (even rubycon ones) have life cycle... it is up to you to change them or not

[8bitbubsy]

I changed the old Commodore PSU fan for a PC PSU one and connected it to the +5v rail, and I added some resistors (~112 ohm)... Now it sounds perfect!
Like a new modern PC. Very soft, and the air flow is absolutely OK. Even +5v without resistors was very noisy.

EDIT:
Ordered a three-way SCSI cable + a clock battery NiMH for my A2000 from AmigaKit. Gonna give her new life with a CD-ROM drive, old Macintosh Classic SCSI HDD and a working backup clock!

[amigakit.com]

@8bitbubsy

Thank you for your order- much appreciated :-)

[source]

I don't know, but softeare hut was selling gvp 060 boards. And ecs indvision wold be another cosideration. My 2000 has 160 gig from left to right. 160 GIG ide hd, isa 8 bit sound, vga 16 bit, 386 bridgeboard, buddha in the zorro past the bridgeboard, delfina lite, deneb, cybervision 643d, gvp 060 128 meg, video toaster. I don't think I csn do much more with it. Hope this gives you some ideas

[8bitbubsy]

One thing is puzzling my mind... This is a rev 4.3 Amiga 2000 "B2000-CR", and according to amigahardware these ones did not come with more than 512kB RAM. Well, mine has got 1MB?! It had 512kB chip and 512kB fast when I got it. I later did the 8371->8372A upgrade + changing some jumpers and did some cuts to make it all 1MB chip RAM.

There were no expansions nor hacks done, I was the first one to hack it... I find this a bit odd, but it's for sure a free bonus!

EDIT: Nevermind, seems like I did some false reading... It's indeed supposed to be 1MB on most A2000 models. It's neat, though.

[source]

If it is not a german 2000 - one of th very first 2000 basedonthe 1000 - then it came with 1 meg of ram. 512 k was chip the other was fast. With the Agnus you removed, it could only address 512 k. When you put in the 8372 it could address 1 meg as chip. So now if you look you wont have any fas ram. That canbe fixed by putting in a memory board or onan accelerator. As for accelerators, thay say if you want to use an 040 or 060 you have to modify the 4.3 to 4.5.

[8bitbubsy]

Any schematics/guides for converting a 4.3 motherboard to 4.5? I've heard it's just minor changes, I want to do them.

[source]

I can show you how to convert a 4.4 to a 4.5. I googled it an did find how to change the different versions. The changes are minor. For 4.4 to 4.5 you solder a resistor I think 330 ohm between 2 pins on one chip by the cpu slot.

[8bitbubsy]

Originally Posted by source

I can show you how to convert a 4.4 to a 4.5. I googled it an did find how to change the different versions. The changes are minor. For 4.4 to 4.5 you solder a resistor I think 330 ohm between 2 pins on one chip by the cpu slot.

Any pictures/schematics?

[Zetr0]

@bubsy

Originally Posted by 8bitbubsy

So I got myself an A2000 r4.3.
I've upgraded to kickstart 3.1, Super Denise, Fat Agnus 8372A (1MB chip RAM adressing), and I've done some jumper hacks on the motherboard to make all of RAM chip instead of half-chip half-fast. 1MB of chip RAM goodness! I've also changed the CIA timer from 60Hz (after upgrading to 8327A) to 50Hz, as I got forced NTSC mode after the Fat Agnus upgrade.
Pretty nice setup, but there's a world of upgrading possiblities for this specific Amiga.

good work, did you take pics? its never to late to take pics =)

Originally Posted by 8bitbubsy

I want to populate this miggy with some Zorro II cards, any advices? I want a graphics card, a sound card and a CPU+fast RAM expansion. Also if possible, a cheap IDE controller. I know this will cost a whole lot but I'm going to buy one card at the time, with a big margin on the next buy.

to be honest this is the order of purchase I recommend

1. DISK + RAM card
There are a couple out there but I would humbly Recommend the GVP Impact Series 2 HC8+ card, this gives you 8MB fast and very nice DMA Fast SCSI 2!

Masoboshi Master Card - this gives both DMA fast SCSI and IDE - up to 8MB in ZIP ram and is NSD/SCSI enquire compliant

There are other DISK+RAM controllers, most of these are not DMA and performance will fall off because of it, so have a look on amiga.resource.cx


2. CPU / Accelerator Upgrade

This is a must if you want to move past games and onto productivity - a good 020/030 will see you well in this area, arguably the A2620 and A2630 are quite nice cards for their expected prices - although both are limited to a maximum of 8MB because they only the 24bit Zorro Space - Unless you get the DKB A2632 (upto 112MB of 32bit FAST)

if you stick with the GVP route you will get bootable SCSI adapter, unfortunately you will get stuck with proprietary 64pin SIMM's and the maximum ram will only be 64MB even after spending a lot of pennies.

The ultimate choice would be the Blizzard B2040 or B2060 (the 2040 can be upgraded to the 2060). however if you are incredibly lucky the DKB Wildfire is an amazing card, with 100mbit DMA Networking 10MB DMA SCSI, two Mini PCI ports and a special graphics card (the inferno)

yeah.... I want a wildfire one day..... one day.....


3. Graphics

There are many solutions on the A2000, but I humbly recommend the Picasso 2, its great card for its time and complements well the A2000, with auto-switching (you will still need to SD/FF the native out) - it offers a great development and productivity platform. You will need an 020 or higher CPU to install P96


4. Networking - XSurf
Now this is a great card, I love it, although the XSurf cannot boot IDE it can certainly read and write them, its also NSD complient out of the box - I strapped up a 40GB SFS formatted 2.5" unit and it found it and used all the space without any issues. I have a lot of love for that.

Oh and its a 10Mbit card too - think of this as a direct link to AmiNet =)


5. USB: Thylacine
This is a great card and after I save up all my pocket money, one day I will get this card - while it initially only offers 1 USB port -this can be added / modded to a 4 or many port HUB - there are lots of possibilities here from Mass Storage to input/output devices.

Originally Posted by 8bitbubsy

Oh, and the PSU - should I replace it with an AT/ATX PSU? The internal PSU works fine, it gives 4.8v and 11.8v, and it's clean inside. But I've heard these can die spontaniously, should I show attention?

To be honest the PSU is over 20 years old, unless you want to service the unit with fresh caps and replacement of other wet-ware components, then I suggest you replace it with a better alternative. I use a large ATX 550W PSU that I converted to fit inside the PSU cowling of the A2000. - This way it looks stock but offer's a lot of clean juice for the system - since I have a lot of stuff going on in there its certainly needed.

Originally Posted by 8bitbubsy

That's not my only concern, the PSU fan is so noisy I get a headache. I mean, it's a neutral fan sound, just amplified times a million. I tried to feed the fan +5v from the horde-of- 5v feeds inside the PSU, but then the fan spinned for like a second and stopped. In this state, the voltage levels dropped massively... No short-circuits, what the duck can cause this? I did the measurement while the PSU was under load.
Really dumb, I want to make it more silent.

The original PSU fan of the A2000 I think is 12volt - connecting this to the +5DC will certainly draw way to much - I am surprised you didn't damage anything.


Once thing I will mention is that most of the CBM bridge cards are dire implementations of x86 even the fast 486SLC is woeful at best - its important to note that if you decided to go for an 040 or 060, these cards and accelerators will clash.

Instead if you want to go with a split PCx86 and Ami68x environment, I suggest you look at a x86 SBC and perhaps Siamese to link 'em up.

[8bitbubsy]

Thanks Zetr0
Can't take any pics, I do not have any camera here, and the camera on my iPhone doesn't work. It just won't init.

Is it worth upgrading Buster 5721 to a Buster 5731 Rev A?
What's the difference? Any limitations/bugs in Buster 5721?

[source]

I have a 4.4 and a 4.5 mobo. The 4.4 was the one I had when I was a kid. the 4.5 mobo I stumbled across when I was trying to fix up my 4.4 to accept the indivision ECS. The electronics store (electronics salvage) I found an amiga 500 and a 2000. the 2000 just happened to be a 4.5. the only difference I could see with visual inspection was the placement of the resistor. The computer mobo is at my clinic. I will take a pic tomorrow.