Hello from Rugby, UK

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GentleBen

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I got an Amiga 500 back in 1988, when I was 14 years old - I convinced my Dad that it would be much better and cheaper than buying a PC for his business needs. I still have that Amiga (rev 5 motherboard and 1.2 ROM) - I've fitted a Gotek, and it still works fine, though it's not in great shape. A couple of years ago I bought an Amiga 600, as it's small footprint is very desk-friendly. Since then I've got sucked into fixing up Amiga 600s and bought 2 more A600s and 2 motherboards. I've done my fair share of retrobrighting, recapping, etc, and even recently built an Amiga 600 Junior , taking the main chips from a very corroded motherboard I bought.

I've also got a few other retro systems - a few ZX Spectrums, a Megadrive, Dreamcast, Playstation 1, Playstation 2 - most of which have been modded in some way.

I seem to always be on the lookout for Amiga bits, and I'm thinking of replacing my Furia with an A630. Got a few things on my list to finish first! :)
 
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Welcome to Amibay!
 
Welcome to AmiBay.

Interesting read about the A600 Junior. I just like to ask, this new motherboard is just a 1:1 replacement of the old one, or it comes with improvements as well?
 
Interesting read about the A600 Junior. I just like to ask, this new motherboard is just a 1:1 replacement of the old one, or it comes with improvements as well?
Click to expand...
You can ask AmiBay user Adi @uniquefreak.

Last year he sold me a new black Junior 600 v. 1.31 pcb that do not require the trace fix.
Pick & Place was done at the factory with the board production.
 
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The A600 Junior has some improvements/options over the stock board. You can add headers to it to access RGB signals from Denise. It's got round holes where the HDD sled thing goes, so my Furia is solidly screwed to the motherboard (with spacer posts, of course). It supports the improved CXA2075 RGB encoder for composite / s-video. You can use different types of power input jacks. You can use through-hole rather than surface-mount for some of the caps (for the audio ones this is ideal!). Some things have been re-positioned for easier soldering. You can get the full run-down here:


...and Chucky has made a locator for the board here:


I bought a 1.3.1 board with pretty-much all of the 1206 and SOT23 package stuff already soldered on (life's too short! :) ).
 
Welcome! :) Derby UK here.

The A630 is a great replacement for the previous top dog, the Furia. The latest A630 v3 has the FPU too! Shout if you need, I have some 3D pro printed brackets for the A630 so you can play catch with the Amiga and the card will never come loose!
 
uniquefreak said:
Welcome! :) Derby UK here.

The A630 is a great replacement for the previous top dog, the Furia. The latest A630 v3 has the FPU too! Shout if you need, I have some 3D pro printed brackets for the A630 so you can play catch with the Amiga and the card will never come loose!
Click to expand...
Derby! Just up the road! :)

Thanks. That's good to know! That's a worry of mine with the A630 - no way to secure it properly. I'm sure a knock would dislodge it from the CPU. My Furia is fine and super reliable unless I try to use shadowrom or rom mapping. It will work for a while before failing with some weird error message and/or red-screening, which is a real shame because IDE and screen drawing really flies with it enabled. I've got an xT accelerator in one of my A600s, and the shadowrom function on that is rock solid. I also like that the acceleration on the xT can be turned off, turning the A600 back to stock 7Mhz 68000, which is handy for some demos and things that don't play nice with accelerators. I think the xT cards have some QA issues though - I've had two duds, and ended up transplanting the CPU from one to the other to make a working one.

Regarding those Junior 1.3.1 boards you have - do they have the passives already soldered on?

I'll stop rambling now. :)
 
GentleBen said:
Derby! Just up the road! :)

Thanks. That's good to know! That's a worry of mine with the A630 - no way to secure it properly. I'm sure a knock would dislodge it from the CPU. My Furia is fine and super reliable unless I try to use shadowrom or rom mapping. It will work for a while before failing with some weird error message and/or red-screening, which is a real shame because IDE and screen drawing really flies with it enabled. I've got an xT accelerator in one of my A600s, and the shadowrom function on that is rock solid. I also like that the acceleration on the xT can be turned off, turning the A600 back to stock 7Mhz 68000, which is handy for some demos and things that don't play nice with accelerators. I think the xT cards have some QA issues though - I've had two duds, and ended up transplanting the CPU from one to the other to make a working one.

Regarding those Junior 1.3.1 boards you have - do they have the passives already soldered on?

I'll stop rambling now. :)
Click to expand...
No it's all good. I'm a software guy, not hardware (so I defer to people better than me, when it comes to soldering). I loved my Furia and following some simple rules got it super stable. I run retroez.com (which is badly in need of updating with lots of stock I don't have on there currently) I've attached a couple of photos; let me know what you think, re. passives?
Best,
Ady.
 

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Yep, it looks like the 1206 and SOT23 shaped stuff is already on the board, so it's mostly just chips and ports that need soldering into place. Having those passives already on the board saves so much time, and looks so much neater than I could ever manage by hand. Do you know what kind of price they'll be going onto your site for?

I built an A600 Junior board a couple of months back, and I'm thinking of doing another one: https://petemuckingabout.blogspot.com/2024/07/building-amiga-600-junior.html

Any tips for getting the Furia working with shadowrom are more than welcome! :)
 
A quick update on my Furia. I had the firmware updated to 14.3, and now all is well - all the features work flawlessly, and no more red screens!

200.gif
 
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