My 1200L project

I started this some while ago but had to put it away for a while but now it's back and is almost finished.

A few years ago I built an A600 as a sort of laptop albeit very heavy in a homemade sheet steel case. It worked but was a bit flaky and rattly.

This time I decide to go for a 1200 but use a brief case as a case to make it a little more portable.

The specs of the machine are:

1D4 motherboard
Apollo 040/40 accelerator with 32Mb RAM
Eyetech SD/FF
Eyetech 4way bufferred IDE
Eyetch EZKEY keyboard adapter
Slimline CDROM with ATAPI/IDE adapter
Slimline PC(laptop) floppy with adapter with just pins 2 and 34 crossed on the cable
4Gb CF card with CF/IDE adapter for the hard drive
PCMCIA CF adapter for file transfers
PCMCIA wireless card
PCMCIA ethernet card
Shuttle PSU
Slimline PS2 keyboard
Synaptics PS2 trackpad from a dead laptop
Cocolino PS2 mouse adapter
Switchable external amiga mouse port
12" desktop LCD screen stripped out for the display with inbuilt speakers and amp
CU Amiga CDDA mixer to mix CD audio with the native audio
The mother board has been modified with the PCMCIA reset fix from aminet and the PCMCIA LED fix found on EAB courtesy of doobreynet and the modulator has been removed.

Here are a few pics,

http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...a/DSCF8184.jpg

This is the PSU cabling. All it has now is a standard MOLEX connector to feed to the motherboard, a floppy connector which feeds a power distribution board, a connection to the ON/OFF switch and an earth connection.

http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...a/DSCF8182.jpg

This is the mouse connection. The external and internal connections on the cable have the power and gnd lines switched to select either the internal track pad or the external mouse/joystick.

http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...a/DSCF8175.jpg

PCMCIA LED mod

http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...a/DSCF8185.jpg

CF card harddrive

http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...a/DSCF8187.jpg

Fully fitted lower case.

And a few piccies of the "finished" thing.
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...a/DSCF8337.jpg
Overall shot
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...a/DSCF8338.jpg
View of the keyboard and track pad. The 4 screws allow easy access to the guts of the machine.
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...a/DSCF8340.jpg
Screen view. I used Bloodwych's ClassicWB OS3.9 as a starting point and then tweaked it the way I wanted it. The backdrop is a MAC backdrop which I used to create a pattern for the dock. Only problem I have is I have not found a way or removing the border from the dock. Anybody got any thoughts on whether it is possible?
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...a/DSCF8342.jpg
CD and PCMCIA slot
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...a/DSCF8343.jpg
Floppy and power
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...a/DSCF8345.jpg
Rear connections with the external mouse / internal trackpad switch next to the mouse port
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...a/DSCF8348.jpg
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...a/DSCF8349.jpg
http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x...a/DSCF8350.jpg
Some benchmarking screen shots.

It's finished for now, there are still some improvements I want to make, USB support for one and change the PSU for a battery and Pico PSU and charger cct, but that will come in due course.

Hope you like it! I do!!

Awesome work, very impressive :thumbsup:

Whaaaaaat?? This is absolutely amazing work !!! Wow, more pics please! Love the fact you've reused a laptop touchpad, and a 12" LCD! How is it connected to the LCD? Composite/SVHS or through a scandoubler?

Real nice job mate! I hope she's more sturdy and stable than the A600 you said was rattly! Keep us posted on more details :thumbsup:

Lovely work :o :thumbsup:

However, I was just planning my own A1200 laptop and I appear to have been outspecced and outclassed by a fellow Devonian...therefore I have to hate you forever :Doh:

PS Bloody nice work though :D

I WANT ONE!

:woot: :drool: :bowdown:

That's something very beautiful right there! Thanks for sharing!

:thumbsup:

Wow :D Looks very Cool :thumbsup:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tahoe

Whaaaaaat?? This is absolutely amazing work !!! Wow, more pics please! Love the fact you've reused a laptop touchpad, and a 12" LCD! How is it connected to the LCD? Composite/SVHS or through a scandoubler?

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Cheers for the compliments! :D

The screen is a 12" desktop unit that used to be powered via an external 12v supply and had a standard VGA input. I basically ripped the guts out of it, supplied the 12v from the laptops PSU and hard wired the VGA input from the internal SD/FF output.

I was lucky in so much as the screen came with an audio input and amplifier built in so I could utilise that for the Amiga's audio output and control its volume with the on screen menu!

Inside the screen was nothing more than a 40 pin IDE style connector which I traced the connections through to fathom out how to connect up the Amiga. Straight forward really but nerve wracking the first time I fired it up!

---------- Post added at 23:11 ---------- Previous post was at 23:10 ----------

Quote:

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Originally Posted by salaxi54

Real nice job mate! I hope she's more sturdy and stable than the A600 you said was rattly! Keep us posted on more details :thumbsup:

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Thanks.

Next project is to re use one of the A600 motherboards I have and build it in to the smallest and shiniest blackest desktop cases I can shoe horn it in to. Apart from that, I am not sure what angle to take on it yet though.

@amimadman: Most interesting! I hope you got the screen's model and details if any of us wants to follow your steps. I might as well build another Ami-laptop in the future. Having been through the hassle with an A600, your screen solution would've made my life far easier. My lappy is stuffed with things like the tv tuner pcb and backlight psu board, taking precious space from within the main case..
As long as it's alright with you, i'm sure we'd all appreciate some specs :thumbsup:
If you're curious for what i did, google up Amiga A600 GRL :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by salaxi54

@amimadman: Most interesting! I hope you got the screen's model and details if any of us wants to follow your steps. I might as well build another Ami-laptop in the future. Having been through the hassle with an A600, your screen solution would've made my life far easier. My lappy is stuffed with things like the tv tuner pcb and backlight psu board, taking precious space from within the main case..
As long as it's alright with you, i'm sure we'd all appreciate some specs :thumbsup:
If you're curious for what i did, google up Amiga A600 GRL :)

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I've just googled the 600 GRL and read the thread all about it on amigahellas. Fantastic!! Unfortunately it lost a bit in the google translation but the pictures are brilliant! (Had to use google to translate as my Greek is not good. In the 3 years I lived in Cyprus I only learn't very little. Pretty much only how to ask for food and beer! :D )

Your 600 laptop is very similar to the one I built a few years ago, including having the board back to front. Great minds think a like! Except your case building skills are far better than mine. Mine was made of sheet steel for the base and screen back and perspex for the rest. Instead of using a TV tuner I used an external SD/FF board which I stripped out and mounted internally. It worked quite well but I scrapped it in the end because of the case mainly. I started on the next version, the one you see here as a 600 originally but I switched to a 1200 when my daughters 1200 needed to be swapped for a M$ PC for more school compatability and I realised that the 1200 MB I had put in her tower case was the version with the mouse on a ribbon cable meaning the motherboard was shorter and would fit in the case I had.

With regard to the screen I used, I cannot remember what make or model it was but it is similar in design to the one you used on the A600GRL.

Your A600GRL has got me thinking now about what to do with my 600. Slight change of tack coming up methinks. Best I get on and do some research on the hardware I might need! ;)