Cosmics 68040 A2000 Rebuild Including the A1500

cosmicfrog

The 1 That Ribbits
Joined
Aug 21, 2008
Posts
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Potteries
Some of you may know that I brought an A1500 the weekend we went to Replay in Blackpool.
It was/is a nice machine with a GVP 68040 Combo scsi card and an EGS GFX card as well.
The Mobo was a Rev 6 but I don`t know if its a 6.1 or a 6.2 anyway it came with 3 x 4Mb GVP sims
giveing me 12Mb of 32Bit fast Ram, Need another 4Mb sim then I can use burst mode, With the
Mother board haveing 1Mb of chip Ram, I have since disoverd theres a Mod that can be done to
upgrade the 1Mb to 2Mb of chip, It invovles replaceing the ram chips and makeing a multiplexer curcit.
Thats a little bit beyond my abbilites and equipment at the moment but cerntaly something to think about
for the future

Luckily a few days after comeing back from blackpool I swapped a Dreamcast for an A2000. On opening the A2000
up I discovered it had no 68000 in it !! but it did have a nice 8Mb ram card, But no HDD but this was more
than made up by the battery not leaking its guts out all over the place, which was the main problem with the A1500.
The A1500 had Sever Battery leakage, but citric acid and the nylon bristle wheel on the dremel and some fun
splashing the Blue juice that zetro is so fond of plus more citric acid had the 68000, KS Rom and expansion slots
free of the horrid green oxide in a few hours. Took about 3 days in all with repeated cleaning and drying
then I could replace the chips and pray that when I flicked the switch she would spring into life, which I am glad to say
she did. Only after trying the battery mod with diode then useing a rechargable battrey did I find out that
the A1500 is unable to remember the time or date :( but am glad to say the A2000 is not aflicted with this problem
and it is also a Rev 6.2 Mobo, yay

So the next thing to do is add the extra bits to the 2 ISA ports to make em 16bit as at some point I intend to try out
my A2088 BridgeBoard. haha before I knew about the time disfunction I added them to the A1500 then went and did
the same again to the A2000 Mobo but I almost messed that up as one of them was at an angle and not flush with
the front bit of the ISA slot but I sorted that problem, Just hope they all work fine :)

and now the pictures :)

album.php


Ok I`m still learning how do da pictures but at least my camera has started working again. For time being I have created 2 Albums https://www.amibay.com/album.php?u=698

now I just need work out how to display them here then I can tell you what was or was`t happening :cool:

Ok so this the 2 Mobos side by side
9961134e37a8d910e45cf3996bf8fe3e_402.jpg


This is after I cleaned up the A1500 Battery
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Compared the the A2000 battery, Lovely but she has to come out
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So lets extend those ISA slots
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PSU anyone ?? !!
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Right Thats enough faffing about lets get this built already

First some toys
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Then its big box tetris, That green thing is my battery, Lots of fun with the glue gun, well we all like to play
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then the GVP 040, now whos got a spare 4Mb or better yet 4 x 16Mb GVP sims :) I live in hope and I hop in a pond
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GVP EGS Spectrum 240 GFX card, Someone somewhere must have some Docs for this
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Look at the size of that thing !! All 300Mb of it
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And I thought I would`t use a zip drive again
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Yay She`s Alive
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Humm seems to be a bit faster than my 040 A4000, So who needs AGA anyway
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Now the problems realy begin apart from installing stuff what am I going do with all these drives ?? 1HDD-300Mb, 1HDD-200Mb, 1ZIPDrive-100Mb, 1SCSI-CD drive

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Well thats my A1500/A2000 adventure so far, being wanting to post about this for weeks and preferable before the new year. Once I get this reasonable sorted out I can move on the the A4000 which I hope is going to live on top of the A2000 and then I can finaly get round to my A1200 PPC 060 tower with mediator pci slots, me thinks theres still lots of adventuring to be had in 2011. So Ribbits all have a good time and be happy
 
Awesome pics mate! Nothing better than some hardware pr0n in the afternoon!
Pity the thumbnails don't have link for better resolution pics :(
 
Thanks ppl, now just need someone tell me how to link to some pictures but think problem is the size, I`m just glad my camera has started working, watch out steve ;)

For what I paid for it and or both machines it was a better bargain than the Blizzard PPC card I bought not that I`m complaining ;) just whish it did`t take so long to get round to getting the old girls working


Heres some links for the A200 2Mb ChipRam Hack
http://www.mylinuxisp.com/~jdbaker/oldsite/documents/2MBAgnushack_v1.4.txt

http://www.a68k.de/ftp/manualz/CBM/AMIGA/Hacks+Reps/A500plus+A2000-2MB.pdf

and the much-simplified XCLK MUX circuit
http://www.mylinuxisp.com/~jdbaker/oldsite/images/2MBAgnusClkMux.gif

If you look closely at my sysinfo screen it says I have a 2Mb angus \o/
 
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think you need new glasses mate hehehehhe

see links at end of my post anyway going poste em for tommo in his thread
 
How do you know? I'm desperately in need of new glasses...

And this time reading glasses too!:banghead:
 
@cosmicfrog: Cool machine you're rebuilding there mate; and the a68k.de link you put, is a superb source of inspiration! Thanks (y)
 
@Cosmi

My friend, I haven't forgot the 4MB GVP SIMM for you - its here in a packet ready to rock - I was waiting till after the chrimbo rush to send it.

I may be able to sort you out a 4.5GB SCSI harddisk on the cheap for you my friend hit me up in PM

I will also have a look into making / adapting a back plane for you accelerator card (so it wont wobble)

Finally I have been looking into a 2MB Chip mod for both the A2000 and A500 - you will need a 2MB agnus for sure.

if you want to hack the mobo - you can use and 8372AB/B or if you want to build a small adapter board (much easier IMHO) you can use any 2MB agnus - like the 8375 318069 / or with a little re-routing a 3190544 =)

if ever I get the time.... I will design these and throw 'em up here for peeps to use.

BTW, some great pics my friend - look forward to seeing more.
 
Thanks Z

I`ll hit you with a PM later this week or some time next week

If I have the right angus and come across the right ram chips I`ll look into the 2Mb chip a bit more closely
 
yay update

Thanks to Zetro for the 4Mb gvp ram and Fitzsteve for sending it up to me I now have 16Mb of fast ram, Yay whats more I now have Burst mode enabled :)

Took a look at the Angus chip or FatLady on the Mobo while I was at it
8372A
318069-02
4890 23

Hope thats of some help to someone

Now my next problem is to find my afladata ide card which seems to have sported legs and hoped off oh well hope it turns up soon
 
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