Timtheloon's A600HD PiStorm Build

[Timtheloon]

Hello Retro Users

Here is another small project that I have been working on My A600HD PiStorm build

Fitted with the following
Amiga 600 Rev 2 Motherboard.
A600 PiStorm with Pi 3A+ (which gives me HDMI RTG and WIFI capabilities).
Individual Computers A604n
Individual computers Indivision ECS V2
HDMI Passthrough with 3d printed bracket.
Gotek drive as DF0: The addition of Digital Retro Bay's "GoDRIvE600" and Original Teac Floppy drive (09/12/24)
2x Roctec external floppy drives.
Zappo Overdrive CD with floppy inline adapter for the power
ALFA DATA light up tracker ball
A600 monitor stand
CaffeineOS with emu68

The motherboard has been recapped by @scrappysphinx

This mobo rev actually give me issues and I would only see 1mb of the 2mb chip ram to fix this I had to downgrade my PiStorm firmware to the original which allowed it to be seen there is not much info on this but it seems to happen with the Individual memory upgrade on the rev 2 mobo's. if i used other memory expansions it was ok but I wanted to be able to use the indivision so needed this expansion to work.

another issue I had was a conflict between the WIFI and the overdrive CD but this was a driver/Assign conflict which has now been sorted.

Another few small recent upgrades I have added to my Amiga 600 PiStorm build are:

1. New PCB membrane for the Keyboard from Monideth Pen . first PCB membrane I have had that just works, others I've purchased have had issues with keys not working but this one is great. Thank you. Link to Keyboard PCB Membrane.

2. Activity LED working showing PiStorm HDD activity. See attached pictures and video of it working.

info on how I got it to work here: Link and the little adapter is available here: Link to Sordan IE

Things I love is the wifi and auto update feature and the RTG.

Things still to do is a fan for the Pi cooling.



Pictures to follow










Other projects of mine you maybe interested in:

A500+:

Timtheloon's A500+ with A570 CD-ROM and TF536 Build​

A600:

Timtheloon's A600HD PiStorm Build​

A2000:

Timtheloon's A2000 Triple Processor Project​

A1200:

Timtheloon's Checkmate A1500 Plus (A1200 Build)​

CD32:

Timtheloon's CD32 SX32 Pro Setup with Cosmos Kickstart Mod​

Timtheloon's CD32 TF360 Plus ProModule Build​

A4KD & A4KT

Timtheloon’s A4000cr Alice project​

Timtheloon's A4000T Project​

Acorn RiscPC:

Timtheloon's RiscPC 600 build​

RetroPC

Timtheloon's Retro High-End AGP (HD3850) PC (Dual Boot WinXP & Win7)​

 

[Xanxi]

Very nice.
I wanted also a Pistorm A600 but it didn't went well, and i still don't know if my socket is no good or my Pi Z2WH.
I switched to a plain 68000 A600 with A608, 2 MB Chip RAM and RTC and RGB2HDMI with OS 2.1 on a small Microdrive and it is lot of fun. At last, i have a working 68000 machine for gaming and tests.

 

[SilkWorm]

Very nice.
I wanted also a Pistorm A600 but it didn't went well, and i still don't know if my socket is no good or my Pi Z2WH.
I switched to a plain 68000 A600 with A608, 2 MB Chip RAM and RTC and RGB2HDMI with OS 2.1 on a small Microdrive and it is lot of fun. At last, i have a working 68000 machine for gaming and tests.

What is revision of the A600 motherboard you have?

 

[Xanxi]

What is revision of the A600 motherboard you have?

1.5. I believe that should be the overall best revision for any accelerator.

 

[Timtheloon]

The 1.5 I believe is the most common revision and this is what the PiStorm Devs work to because that is what they have to work with.

 

[Timtheloon]

Defo need a fan, If its on for a while, I get a yellow screen and I need to leave it to cool down and ten minutes, its fine for an hour and then bang, yellow screen again.

might go for something like this:

Thingiverse Design

 

[SilkWorm]

The 1.5 I believe is the most common revision and this is what the PiStorm Devs work to because that is what they have to work with.

Question I’ve asked was not without a reason and personal experience.

My PiStorm600 works fine when used with motherboard 2D - anything below shows only EMU68 logo over RPi HDMI output.
I have tried with both Rev. 1.5 and Rev. 1.1 with same outcome.
I’ve been told by reseller there is another firmware for lower motherboard revisions that makes the PiStorm compatible with them.

 

[Timtheloon]

So my PiStorm works fine with the Rev 2 mobo its was just if I used the A604n memory expansion I would only see 1mb of Chip Ram, all other mem expansions worked correctly showing 2mb. Obviously I needed the a604n due to having an IndivisionECS V2 in this build.

I asked on discord and the member that responded stated I've seen this before, try a different firmware. The only one that worked was the original firmware which allowed the full 2mb chip ram to be seen by the Amiga. the member that had the issue also responded stating it was him that had the issue before and his motherboard was also a rev 2.

 

[Xanxi]

Question I’ve asked was not without a reason and personal experience.

My PiStorm600 works fine when used with motherboard 2D - anything below shows only EMU68 logo over RPi HDMI output.
I have tried with both Rev. 1.5 and Rev. 1.1 with same outcome.
I’ve been told by reseller there is another firmware for lower motherboard revisions that makes the PiStorm compatible with them.

Yes, i was told to flash something else with "long" in its name but got no time to do that, then i switched to a simplier project.
I already have a perfectly working A1200 with PiStorm32 lite anyway, no need to multiply the same flavor everywhere.
Anything cliping over that 68000 has always been a source of trouble on the A600s with me, and i have started as old as the Viper 630.
The A608 RAM expansion is a very small board which holds very firmly and unlikely to pop out alone.

 

[HomeLate]

Nice machine! Mine has RGB2HDMI, but not with an adapter but picking the signals directly from the mainboard. By the time I added RGB2HDMI, no adapters were yet available.

I decided not to go Pistorm with this one (I already have a Pistormed A500). It has a passive cooled Furia which works great. I might upgrade to an A630 when it's available again.

 

[Xanxi]

@Timtheloon i see you are powering the PiStorm via the floppy connector. Is it necessary? I didn't do it with mine.

 

[Timtheloon]

I connected it because I will be using the Fan header eventually and wanted to ensure there was no power issues

 

[Timtheloon]

GoDRIvE600 Addition to the A600

A600 had another mod today. The addition of Digital Retro Bay's "GoDRIvE600".

I saw this item at a retro event, and at the time, I wanted to buy it then, but I was short of pocket money .

This is a gotek device which allows you to hot swap between it and the original internal floppy disk drive .

Now, obviously, this is designed for an Amiga 600 not used with a monitor stand, and I was hoping the control box would fit between the CD-ROM & external Floppy drives, but it's just a wee bit too big. But using it this way seems to work and I can slide it left and right for now.

I may look into a very long ribbon cable if I find it to be a nuisance where it is and move it elsewhere but it seems to work OK here.

I love the internal design which allows the PCB to fit nicely and safely under the original floppy drive.
You can find them @ digitalretrobay.co.uk and its also available for other models of the Amiga and the Atari ST

The video demonstrates the hot swap and shows the device does not affect external drive functionality.