Back after 28 years, bought a job lot - now what?

[Elmo Putney]

1st post here, hello!
Ok so after a long holiday I had an itch that needed scratching so I "won" a job lot of Amiga stuff, my main target was an A1200 but I got an A600 thrown in, and then a M1438s monitor too...I have boxes of games and mags too yet to explore.

So I want to first check the A1200 is healthy, then perhaps add a CF card for whdload etc...etc...



A bit of a result was an 030 50Mhz accelerator and ram hiding in the trap door not advertised.

Whats my best plan to check basic health?

- Open to check for obvious bad caps
- Check output of PSU
- If ok fire it up?
- if it fires up then recap it
-or should I go straight to the recap without giving it a go?
-other?

[Leon Besson]

Get hold of Amitestkit run through some tests such as RAM, Sound, Floppy, etc…

Obviously what you describe as well.

[Elmo Putney]

With pictures this time (I Think)

[jbenam]

That must have costed you a pretty penny!

The M1438 is a great CRT (imho much better than the over-hyped 1084S) and the 030 will pretty much suffice you in doing almost everything with your 1200.

Even if the caps don't seem to have leaked, they might just start leaking after being powered a few times. Happened to a friend of mine. Turn it on just to check that everything works as expected (AmigaTestKit works wonders) then turn it off and recap it before starting to use it "seriously"

IMHO I wouldn't recap it before testing it beforehand. If it doesn't work afterwards, you won't know if the issue lies with the recap or if it was there in the first place, which will complicate troubleshooting.

[Elmo Putney]

Originally Posted by jbenam

That must have costed you a pretty penny

I think it was a steal the Monitor got thrown in after I won the auction - so £340 for a boxed 1200 + unknown (now tested 600) and some other stuff I have yet to explore.

I opened up the 1200 and also tested the PSU with some load, wow super clean inside and a vintage hard drive in there. Given how good everything looked I fired it up and it all behaved.

I did try putting Xenon 2 into the floppy but got a guru meditation, the same floppy did work on the A600. It's a 2B board so could this be the Escom floppy issue?

The A600 is minty, still has the protective film on the A600 badge.

I'll buy a recap kit for the 1200 - any tips on a reliable source.

I will probably recap the PSU and should I do the M1438s too?

[alexh]

Could be. Just as likely A1200 68020 or AmigaOS3.x issue.

[supaduper]

Nice buy mate, yes you have the ESCOM A1200 so I would do the floppy fix and get a genuine Amiga Floppy, it`s one wire fix and removing a wire ESCOM put on the A1200, link below

And just make sure you buy a quailty cap kit, polymer ones if you can as they will not leak.

[ Show youtube player ]

[Elmo Putney]

Thanks all for the input, do all a1200 board revisions require the same number/value of caps? i.e. if I buy a cap kit from a reputable company is it board revision agnostic.

On the floppy drive - I've got no issues modding the board back to an Amiga drive but where does one find a reasonably priced "good" replacement.

In researching I have seen it is possible to mod the panasonic drive to behave as an Amiga drive. http://www.softpres.org/article:hard...u-257a605p_fdd

Anyone have experience of this, it could be a better solution as I keep the original hardware and not trying to hunt a replacement.

I've found a 20gig and a 40gig laptop drive(s) in my pile of "stuff" - would they be a better bet than a CF card. I like the idea of no noise/low power from the CF solution.

So much to think about but I really need to focus on the basics - re-cap first.

I have also found a good list of caps required for the M1438s monitor.

[Shadowfire]

The laptop drives will probably max out the IDE interface, however random accesses are still going to be slow. That being said, the CF card will be faster at random reads, but also a hell of a lot slower at any kind of writes (CF's are all based on 20+ year old flash technology and as far as I know none of them use a modern flash controller). I'd suggest getting a modern SATA SSD (like a PNY 250GB or 500GB unit) and a 44-pin IDE to SATA adapter off of Ebay or Amazon.

This also eliminates the potential issue with using 15+ year old hard disks (they are far and away past their expiration date, so the prospect of a failure is significantly higher than with a new drive). I know, I know, its a hobby machine and you don't care about data loss, but its more about how much time its going to take you to rebuild the image when the failure happens.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by Elmo Putney

I think it was a steal the Monitor got thrown in after I won the auction - so £340 for a boxed 1200 + unknown (now tested 600) and some other stuff I have yet to explore.

That's an extremely good deal!

Originally Posted by Elmo Putney

I will probably recap the PSU and should I do the M1438s too?

You can check the voltages, if they're okay, IMHO there is no urgent need. Same goes for the M1438S. They're single-sided PCBs, even if caps leak, damage is usually very contained. You will notice issues stemming from dry caps far before any actual damage will be done to the board.

Can't say the same about Amiga motherboards, though

[Elmo Putney]

Originally Posted by Shadowfire

I'd suggest getting a modern SATA SSD (like a PNY 250GB or 500GB unit) and a 44-pin IDE to SATA adapter off of Ebay or Amazon.

All really good points, and i have a virgin 128 or 250GB ssd drive in the same box of stuff. So decision made.

[supaduper]

I like these PC/Amiga Panasonic floppy Drives as you just alter three switches on the back of the unit and bridge two pads and you are good to go, but be warned these all have x2 10uf smd caps that will have begun to leak so you must change them out the one at the front where the Floppy disk goes in is the worst one and the the other cap is on the second board where the heads are attached( Its not hard but fiddly), but this one can most times be ok, but it must be checked.

info below
http://jope.fi/drives/ju257-203p/

[Leon Besson]

Originally Posted by Elmo Putney

Thanks all for the input, do all a1200 board revisions require the same number/value of caps? i.e. if I buy a cap kit from a reputable company is it board revision?

No. The board revisions were due to what Commodore did to fix things with the chipset. So every Cap replacement set out there is for all revisions. Including the ESCOM version of the 1D4 and 2B boards. The difference with the ESCOM revisions were that the timing fixes were applied for troublesome accelerators such as the ACA and the classic Apollo boards, such as on the Commodore 1D4 and 2B the E123c and e125c parts needed removing. As well as the fix to use PC floppy disk drives as you have mentioned.
Also remember that if not doing the fix to floppy drive in the ESCOM board will mean you will not be able to use a Gotek drive internally.

[Elmo Putney]

Again thanks all, and I'm probably going to ask some questions I could answer myself with some searching #lazy.

The difference with the ESCOM revisions were that the timing fixes were applied for troublesome accelerators such as the ACA and the classic Apollo boards, such as on the Commodore 1D4 and 2B the E123c and e125c parts needed removing

It has an Apollo 1230 Mk2 in it, I'm not sure from what you write whether 2B is good for this board or if there are more mods I need to do to make it them play happily together?

Also remember that if not doing the fix to floppy drive in the ESCOM board will mean you will not be able to use a Gotek drive internally.

Does a gotek work externally without the mod? And is a gotek the easiest way to get files onto the internal hard drive/CF? i.e. PC -> USB stick -> Gotek -> workbench -> hard drive.

I like these PC/Amiga Panasonic floppy Drives as you just alter three switches on the back of the unit and bridge two pads and you are good to go, but be warned these all have x2 10uf smd caps that will have begun to leak so........

Is there an advantage to this approach over modding the drive thats already in it as per quoting self:

In researching I have seen it is possible to mod the panasonic drive to behave as an Amiga drive. http://www.softpres.org/article:hard...u-257a605p_fdd

Again thanks all, really just want to play but can't rush it!

[supaduper]

Nothing to stop you modding the drive that is already there, I just mentioned it in passing and because it is a one wire fix, but still check those 10uf caps in the Floppy drive you already have in the A1200

[Elmo Putney]

Originally Posted by supaduper

Nothing to stop you modding the drive that is already there, I just mentioned it in passing and because it is a one wire fix, but still check those 10uf caps in the Floppy drive you already have in the A1200

Got it, thanks. Thought I was missing something.

[Leon Besson]

Originally Posted by Elmo Putney

Again thanks all, and I'm probably going to ask some questions I could answer myself with some searching #lazy.



It has an Apollo 1230 Mk2 in it, I'm not sure from what you write whether 2B is good for this board or if there are more mods I need to do to make it them play happily together?



Does a gotek work externally without the mod? And is a gotek the easiest way to get files onto the internal hard drive/CF? i.e. PC -> USB stick -> Gotek -> workbench -> hard drive.



Is there an advantage to this approach over modding the drive thats already in it as per quoting self:



Again thanks all, really just want to play but can't rush it!

When I mention the classic Apollo accelerators. I was referring to the 1240 (68040) ones. You normally get a black screen on power on with one fitted without the timing fix. The Phase 5/DCE Blizzard 1240 cards were fine.

External Gotek should work from the top of my head. I had a ESCOM 1D4 board. I just got the mainboard done to accept normal commodore floppy drives.
The ESCOM boards already have the timing fixes, so you shouldn’t have any issues there with accelerators.

You need to be using a PCMCIA adapter and a CF or SD card to transfer files across. It’s better though to download and use WinUAE on a PC with multiple card reader/writer. That way you can emulate the Amiga of your choice on the PC and do an actual OS install onto a CF or SD card and then put it into a Amiga.

Plenty of YouTube videos out there for the above.

[Elmo Putney]

You need to be using a PCMCIA adapter and a CF or SD card to transfer files across.,

I think I don't have that option, the accelerator (+mem) as I understand it is pcmcia unfriendly or I need to do more reading.
Is there an alternative way to get files onto the hard drive that have been downloaded on a windows box that doesn't involve pulling the drive out of the amiga?

Again sorry for noob questions.

[Elmo Putney]

You need to be using a PCMCIA adapter and a CF or SD card to transfer files across.,

I think I don't have that option, the accelerator (+mem) as I understand it is pcmcia unfriendly or I need to do more reading.
Is there an alternative way to get files onto the hard drive that have been downloaded on a windows box that doesn't involve pulling the drive out of the amiga?

Again sorry for noob questions.

[Leon Besson]

Originally Posted by Elmo Putney

I think I don't have that option, the accelerator (+mem) as I understand it is pcmcia unfriendly or I need to do more reading.
Is there an alternative way to get files onto the hard drive that have been downloaded on a windows box that doesn't involve pulling the drive out of the amiga?

Again sorry for noob questions.

You have a 1230 accelerator that uses 32-bit memory. So no PCMCIA memory intrusion. The lower type,fast RAM expansions that only use 4 or 8MB RaM such as the Hawk, 1208 etc.. uses 24-bit RAM which after 5.5MB will cause PCMCIA intrusion on the memory area.