scuzzscink & scuzzblog - Keep the Faith - Commodore Amiga Retro

[scuzz]

Hi

Thought you might like to drop down the rabbit hole and see what I have been up to lately.

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog_1702.htm



scuzz
http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/car_001.htm

[scuzz]

Hi

I have this A1200 tower which is a bit of a beast made from scraps that I found around the place. Been working generally for nine years I guess. Every so often though I start to lose the computer. Starts with a flickering screen. Then failures whilst running and finally just will not boot. What I do is fold open the A1200 motherboard which is exposed as I don't have the case on the tower and then I simply press on the various connectors that sit over the chips and that does the job. For a while.

Anyway... today I stripped the machine down and tried to establish what was wrong. Couldn't really find any issues and then by luck I was having a nose around the ribbon connectors to the hard drive. And there it was... the ribbon connector had come away. I recall the issue vaguely as there is red tape holding the ribbon in place. It's broken.

I very quickly swapped the ribbon out and reconnected, together with the EZKey-board connector which had come adrift and booted up and it didn't work. Nothing... dead as a proverbial dead thing with a very good reason for being dead. And then it struck me to check the photographs I had been taking. It was then that I noted that the ribbon actually flipped over half way down its length on the original. What threw me was the connector looked the same as on the original. I struggled a bit as the ribbon had a tidy tie to keep it, er well, tidy but managed to get the connector the other way round on the buffered interface.

Whoopee and double whoopee doo doo... Magic. Worked first time. I knew she would. Anyroadup as they say [ Who are these they .. Shut up ] I decided to take some close up images of the A1200 motherboard to see if I could find evidence of the lesser spotted capacitor leaky thing. Well known in Amiga forum circles as the biggest issue affecting Amiga 1200s. I never raise issues regarding hardware any more on the forums as I always get the stock reply ' recapp ' or what ever.

The machine is now back in the little room running an animation on loop to test. Looking good.

What next ? Cuppa tea first.

At this point I'm supposed say its an Amiga 1200 EZTower system with Rev something motherboard, Blizzard whatsit turbo with 32MB RAM. Scan doubly flicker whatsit and EZkey widget running on a Japanese old stylie monitor. The OS is 3.0 as I has not changed them chips yet. Also has a buffy the hard drive slayer interface and some drives, two hard and one bendy. One of which is from an Austin A35... or should that be Amiga 500... Same thing really. And no outer case... cus that's on the other table upside down full of disks, or are they discs. Good question. That's all the tech stuff. What the **ck is in this tea... !!!!!

Pictures on the website probably later this week when I can find my developing tank and red light. Don't you just love old stuff.

I'm scuzz
http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/car_001.htm

[Kelv]

Sounds like a case of over engineering... should have just replaced the red tape

In a previous life I had IDE CD drive an hdd in a 2 bay CD tower. I hand soldered an IDE cable to the cd tower scsi connector then mounted a matching connector on the 1200 to the internal IDE port. Was a nice idea but at that age I didn't have patience to make good 80 odd solder joints and was forever waggling the cable to get the machine to boot.

Yer collection looks awesome btw, don't think I'd ever want to come out of that room, too many toys

[scuzz]

Hi

May be interesting to someone

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuz...jul17_2802.htm

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuz...jul17_2801.htm

scuzz

[klx300r]

keep em comin scuzzalways too many mini projects & not enough time eh

[scuzz]

Hi

These variations on the Amiga Workbench got me really thinking about
just which Workbench I actually had running on the various 500s or
machines with the 1.3. So I did a bit of a run around and the pictures
show the various themes.

First up is the A1500 running on an Electrohome monitor using a A2094
card to power a 3.5" drive.

Kickstart 40.63 Workbench 34.34 Commodore 1985-1993 and that was ...
Shipped with: Amiga 500, 2000, available as update 1990.

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuz..._270717_32.jpg
http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/wb_133.html

Next we have the A500 with GVP HD Plus running on a Philips CM8833-II
with a 3.5" drive in the sidecar.

Kickstart 34.50 Workbench 34.30 and so ... Shipped with: Amiga 500,
2000, available as update 1988.

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuz..._270717_33.jpg
http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/wb_13.html

Moving on to the A500 with the A590 XT drive sidecar running on a 1438
Microvitec .

Kickstart 37.175 Workbench 34.28 and so ... Shipped with: Amiga 500,
2000, available as update 1989

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuz..._270717_34.jpg
http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/wb_132.html

This was the OS that came on an Amiga magazine disk. Also was issued on
official Commodore disks 1.3.2.

Next we have a grey screen with an A500 and A590 XT drive running on a
Commodore 1081.

Kickstart 40.63 [ no less ] Workbench 40.42 Setpatch 40.16 1985-1993 .
And so this is Workbench 3.1 running off a 3.1 ROM on a humble A500 with
an old A590 XT drive. How cool is that. Released in 1994 for all classic
Amigas.

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuz..._270717_35.jpg
http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/wb_31.html

And finally we have THE VIPER. An A500 fitted with internal 2.5" drive
running on a SONY TRINITRON TV off a scart. The drive is fitted to the
Viper 520 CD.

Kickstart 39.106 Workbench 39.29 1985-1992 and is Workbench 3.0 with the
3.0 ROM designed for AGA machines.

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/car_0608/car08400.jpg

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuz..._270717_36.jpg
http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/wb_30.html

Now remember what I said at the start. These are A500 designed Workbench
machines and yet they use anything but. I struggled like mad yesterday
to find a machine running the actual original 1.3 Workbench and found it
only on the A1000, albeit on a disk with associated 1.3 Kickstart disk.
Seems that everyone in the day was hell bent on expanding their A500s to
the limit. I know the one machine here is a 1500, but it still uses the
1.3 by choice.

Fascinating... My A500 1.3 adventure is not over yet and I certainly
intend having them all in for interrogation to see what they have under
each of their hoods. What makes it more interesting is the use of the
ROM switchers on machines.

[The Workbench gallery can be found on the scuzzblog diaries section of
the website.]

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog_diaries.htm

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuz...jul17_3103.htm

scuzz

[scuzz]

Hi

My search for the missing 1.3.2. version that came on the Amiga magazine disk uncovered some A590's in need of some tender loving care.

The A590 journey in pictures from the unit I thought was the only one I had in a box to me formatting the two empty partitions and installing 2.1. Realising that I had another 590 in a box and similarly formatted and installed 2.1 . To me searching through various A590s for the missing 35.28 update installation. Found it. Phew !!

This won't mean a whole heap of sense unless you read the last two posts from my diary

Everything you see here is running on an XT hard drive

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuz...ust17_0401.htm

scuzz

[scuzz]

Hi

I was mucking around with the CP/M installation on the A4000 trying to
make sense of it all when I decided to fire up the A500 and play around
a bit. I have a whole bag of disks ranging from demos to mods to games
on the top here and as ever I just lost myself in it all. So much so
that I decided to take a photographic journey though the afternoons fun.
I have uploaded the images to the website and if you are reading this
from the website then they appear below.

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuz...ust17_0903.htm

Just a bit of light fun

scuzz
http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/a_amiga_inframe.htm

[scuzz]

Shelving some A4000ds

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuz...ust17_1401.htm

Warts and all

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuz...ust17_1402.htm

Anatomy of a brick

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuz...ust17_1403.htm

[DamienD]

@scuzz, although I (and I'm sure others) find your updates and webpage interesting, do we really need sooo many individual threads on the matter?

...think it's time to merge

[scuzz]

Originally Posted by DamienD

@scuzz, although I (and I'm sure others) find your updates and webpage interesting, do we really need sooo many individual threads on the matter?

...think it's time to merge

I don't get any comments regarding what I do anyway. Time to move on. You can always find me on my website.

Bye.

[DamienD]

No need to be like that; I'm just saying that all your threads are related to your website updates.

Best to have them in one thread instead of 10 or so scattered around EAB...

[DamienD]

Lets list some of your threads:

... Down the rabbit hole
... The joy of mending stuff
... A Change of Heart
... Workbench Blues
... An afternoon with the girlfriend
... All in a day

These can all be merged into one thread called "scuzzscink & scuzzblog - Keep the Faith - Commodore Amiga Retro" or something and then put under the Amiga websites reviews section

Is that not ok with you?

[scuzz]

Originally Posted by DamienD

No need to be like that; I'm just saying that all your threads are related to your website updates.

Best to have them in one thread instead of 10 or so scattered around EAB...

I struggle on this site cus nobody shows any interest. I work very hard to create pages, photographing , collating information etc and I very often never get a single comment. I updated the website once with a hand crafted page that had so many links to Amiga resources and disks and not one person here said a thing. Not one. Sure everyone visited the site to download all the disks..... but nobody said thank you or anything. Three massive updates to the website posted here with nearly 2000 views each and not one single comment. And the only comment this time is a moan.

What is the point. Really.

Just made me realise what a pointless exercise it is posting on this site. Sorry for that. Thanks for the scratch, probably needed it.

Like I say I'll leave you alone in future.

[DamienD]

Jesus man, why so negative / depressed?

Ok, so people don't comment often... It doesn't mean that your website isn't cool or not appreciated.

Edit: threads merged, renamed and moved to the Amiga websites reviews section

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by scuzz

I struggle on this site cus nobody shows any interest.

Everyone that basically only posts about their site is usually told to put all stuff in one thread.

Almost on every post you have made on this board you have linked to your page. If you ask me, that's spammy, and I don't think people appreciate it.
I am talking about butting in to a conversation and do stuff like this:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?...04#post1177304

Damien just merged the threads that are clearly just links to your page, if you ask me he has been very lenient.

Why do you do what you do? Because you love what you are doing or because you want people to look at it? If it's the former, you shouldn't be having this talk. Not gonna comment on the other option.

[grelbfarlk]

I've read some of your posts, I just don't really have much to say about them.

If you can tolerate a little criticism, your site is pretty confusing. Like your links above,
http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuz...ust17_1402.htm
http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuz...ust17_1401.htm
http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuz...ust17_1403.htm

they take you to a lets call it a "splash page", then you click Enter, and you're at another splash page, which then I guess you click one of the blog links, whether that's the Scuzzblog or Scuzz Diaries and then I guess a user looks up what date/link they were looking for in the first place. This is a strange design decision or maybe my browser is just not working correctly with your site.

Other than that I became aware of the Checkmate A1500 from your site, so thanks for that. I haven't found one yet.

Also 15 A1200's? There's another word for "collector" that's not so polite. It's something that a dragon sits on.

[McTrinsic]

You're lacking a Phoenixboard

[emufan]

same problem as described by grelbfarlk:
this one does work:
http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuz...ust17_0903.htm

all (!?) other blog links just leads to mainpage.
some kind of blog index would help too.

#1) I've found the scuzzblog start page.

#2) do you have any Lightwave/Videotoaster related software in your collection or Sam Basic ?

[emufan]

he fixed the design of his blog a bit.

some intersting posts:
- Once more to the cupboard - loads of old stuff
- 3D Lightwave Objects - original sets of Interior Design
- Grab some toast - toaster and other video eqip.

I stumbled over a posting on amigaworld.net

@scuzz

I hate you!