3-A2000 Projects Pt. 1 SaviorX's A2000

quarkx

insane in the main frame
AmiBayer
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Aug 11, 2008
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Edmonton, Alberta,
Ok, so over the next couple of months, I will be working on 3 -A2000 Units, and more. One is for SaviorX here on the boards, One is for a non-Amibay member (at this time) and one will go back in my Bomac tower.

This thread will feature SaviorX's A2000.
I will physicaly get the unit in on Sunday (if everything goes to plan). Right now it is a dedicated Toaster Unit, But SaviorX will not be using the toaster, so those parts will be put in the Bomac Tower Project.
I don't know the Exact Specs yet, but right now, what I do know is this:
A2500HD unit.
Full 8 megs of ram, '030 board. It has been sitting in storage since 1994, but I did see it fired up and running last sunday, so luckily, if there is battery damage, it hasn't affected the running of the unit.

Plans for the unit:
The unit will go through a complete and documented tear-down. I will be making a video on it also.
The Battery hack will be preformed and new 3.1 roms installed.
The unit will be cleaned through and through, this also means the tedious task of a complete Keyboard scrubbing (boy I am not looking forward to that).
The tape Back-up unit, will be replaced with a SCSI CD rom Drive.
The 250 meg Hard rive will be replaced with a 1 or 5 gig Scsi Drive (what I can find here, and either OS 3.1 or 3.5 will be installed.
I also have some surprises in store for this that SaviourX doesn't know about, but when the parts all come in, by the end he will be very happy indeed.
Durring May, I will be working at least 8 shifts a week to pay for Sunday's "Haul" so, I will be doing it about an Hour a day and updating the thread daily. I hope to have it all finished by June 1, but it could take a bit longer depending on parts etc.
I have the other 2 units either tomorrow or monday also, so either way, everything is about to get busy here.
 
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So today, a made a few minutes to actually open the machine.
WOW, I was hoping to at least get to see the battery, but that will have to wait.
You can see from the photos, that this puppy is LOADED and was even more at one time.
I didn't like the way the floppy drive cover had so much gap, but this will be fixed.
I found that this unit has 2- A2091 card in it. One is sitting empty at the end, but they all have full 2 megs ram in each. it has 2- TBC's (I think) and what I believe is a GVC 0'030 card. I wont know until I get them out.
Looking down through the cards, I can see a sticker that says Rev.6.2 on the motherboard, and the date sticker say 1990.
I am off to work right away, but I will try to pull cards out tonight when I get home. Working a double tomorrow.
 
Do I spot a PAR card in there? :unsure:

I don't know yet, but it wouldn't surprise me. The A4000 had one and the previous owner was bigtime into animation and video editing. I must have 20 lbs. of lightwave books in the one box. I will find out after work in about 6 hours.:whistle:
 
more photos before I hit the sack (it only 12:00 am here but I work a double tomorrow).
Going from outside in:
Slot 1: A2091 - looks like just used for Ram
Slot 2: TBC 3 card
Slot 3: YES! another PAR!
Slot 4: Dual Serial Board
Slot 5: Second A2091 only holding a hard drive, the SCSI cable is plugged into the GVP Card.
Processor Card: GVP 68030+SCSI+RAM @33 Mhz
looks like 8 Megs (4 on simm and 4 on board)
last shot blurry sorry -getting tired
I did peak at the battery. It starting to fuzz up, but looks like no damage at all to motherboard
 
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The parts for this are starting to slowly trickle in. Yesterday, I got in the battery hack and 3.1 Rom from AmigaToaster on the 'other bay. The battery hack is no where near a nice looking as Djbase's but They work, the shipping is much faster from the USA and I always seem to end up ordering the ROM with it. I am just to shaky and lazy to make my own battery hacks.
Now I can really start to get this done.
 
So, I am stuck at the video store for a double shift, and as of now, I have 12 and a half hours to kill, so I took the keyboard in with me today to work on. I also brought a decent scrub brush, as I forgot one on thursday for the Atari keyboard.
Some "Before" Photos, over all a bit yellowed on the palm wrest, but not too dirty.
 
the nice thing about taking you time and having 16 hours to kill is that you can let the keys soak and do the deck, let it dry and go over it again.
 
well, 4 hours to go and the keys are all scrubbed and back on, now to re-assemble and shrink wrap.
 
well, its all ready to go!
hopefully, by my crappy pictures from my cell phone, you can see some progress. At least when SavorX get this he won't be typing with 25 year crap under the keyboard:LOL:
 
Anyways, Back to the 2K.
Today, I stripped down the motherboard and RF Shield, so I could get at the battery from behind. I jus invested in a Nut Driver set, and that made things so much easier, instead of using needle nose pliers to get the the nuts around the jacks (yea, that sounds really bad),
Some crappy "Before" photos
 
Ok, today I soldered in the battery Holder, then cleaned the Mylar sheet and the RF shield.
I put the RF shield back on and put all the nuts back.
I then replaced the 2.04 Roms with the new 3.1.
Tomorrow is the fun "clean up the board" day.
If everything goes right, I should be assembling everything starting next week.
I am still waiting for a few goodies though.

This is not going as fast as I thought it would be, but my wicked schedule this month has me spinning. I try to get about an Hour or 2 a day to work on Something Amiga (whether its shipping or sorting through this big pile, working on the A500 or the A590, or this).
 
I finally stopped procrastinating and am tackling this today on my day off.
I first took a soft brush and tackled the surface dust. now I am going through it with windex and paper towels.
I had to stop because my memory card was full on my camera (I am making a video of this for later) and had to dump the footage to a hard drive.
 
Finished board, now scrub down chassis.
 
Bottom Chassis all cleaned up and re-mounted motherboard
 
I thought I would update this thread, as the machine is now done!. I am dropping it off to SaviorX next week as I plan to go down to Calgary for a few days, with my buddy and his family.
I will be throwing up pictures tomorrow, but here is the fun I had yesterday with it. I must remember for future A2000's to build a longer power supply cords, so I can have the power supply OUT of the case when working on the system, and not mount everything in the hard drive sled unit everything is done.
Here is why: I had went ahead and mounted everything, turned it on and it came right up. I had put in a used SCSI drive in it, so I knew I had to format it.
I booted to the 3.1 install disk, but the HD tool box could not see the drive, which seems like a common issue, I seem to always have. The regular work bench could see all the partitions on the drive (3) and could read the contents easily, but the Hd tools could not. I suspected it was the GVP card, so I then booted into the GVP prep tools. This could see the drive and I had to format that way, but again, the 3.1 tools could not see the drive, so I formated each partition "The old fashion way" on the desktop screen by right clicking and format. Once that was done, the floppy drive died!
I hooked up an external floppy and had to use the boot menu to boot off of that. I proceeded to install 3.1

Now to check the CD rom drive. Of course nothing, so I got out the ASIM CDFS disk and proceeded to look at the mount list. OF corse that couldn't see the CD rom, so I took apart the whole hard drive sled to change the jumpers on the CD rom drive and look for another floppy. Once the jumpers were changed, I could see the drive on the mount list and proceeded to install the CD file system.
All and all, I spent a good 10 hours on the system yesterday, but its complete and working now.
I will post photos tomorrow, but that drive sled is the biggest pain. I suggest that nothing gets mounted until you know everything is properly jumped and working. The biggest recommendation I can give to anyone working on an A2000 is do yourself a favor and before you even start, spend the money and buy a BRAND NEW floppy drive from AmigaKit. It will save you so much hassle and frustration in the long run, then trying to work with 30 year old floppy drives that can go at any time without warning.

I have 2 more A2000's to work on in the near future, I will be ordering the floppy drives real soon, as I will not go through this again.
I did instal Dopus 4 and put the Sysinfo, which Amiga and a few others on the system. I did the RAM tests from both the GVP software and the few others and the RAM is good. I do have some concerns that the Power Supply may be going, as a few times the system would not boot, once turned on, but That will be up to SaviorX to work on.
 
I first took a soft brush and tackled the surface dust. now I am going through it with windex and paper towels.

Hahah! You must've seen 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding'.:LOL:
 
I first took a soft brush and tackled the surface dust. now I am going through it with windex and paper towels.

Hahah! You must've seen 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding'.:LOL:

Actually no, but here is some photos, more on the way, I just have been too lazy to take the final photos of it all done.
 
A couple of last "final" shots, as I get it all pact up.
I am leaving for Calgary this Afternoon sometime. The plan is to drop it all off at Saviorx's place on Tuesday.
Tomorrow is my "Free" day down in Cowtown, and I will be staying at the Calaway park RV ground, so if anyone from Calgary wants to get together tomorrow, come on by for a BBQ and BYO B, lawnchairs etc.
We can set up the A2000 on the table and pimp it out if some software Guru's show up. I have let the guys from the Calgary Amiga User group know, but I really doubt if anyone will show up on a Monday night.
 
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