There is an aluminium bracket installed that supports the top CPU card.
I have noticed that the N2630 CPU card in my A2000EATX sagged a bit. This is not an uncommon problem in modern PC builds that have large and heavy graphics cards. Less so in vintage Amiga gear.
A2000EATX fully loaded – With sag
As you can see on the picture above, the CPU card, the N2630 is sagging a bit on the right side. While not really a huge problem, it was enough of a problem to irritate me.
Graphics cards support bracket – works fine in an Amiga too!
These days there are plenty of solutions for graphic card stabilizers on the PC market but not all of the solutions would work in an Amiga setup. One solution I found on AliExpress was this aluminium VGA support bracket that you screw on the back of the case. It has a rubber dome that the VGA card, or in this case, the 68030 CPU card would rest on.
A2000EATX fully loaded – No sag on the N2630!
Here the card stabilizer is installed. It was simply screwed on to the bracket screw holes for the card slots. As you can see the CPU card sits more straight with the stabilizer than without. The stabilizer is made of sturdy aluminium so it can support a heavy graphics card (or any type of card).
CPU board is fully supported and stabilized
A closeup of the card stabilizer. It is not an optimal setup if cards go in and out constantly because you would have to remove it. But this setup is pretty much done so I won’t really touch the Zorro cards anymore.
Here is my A4000TX (find out more about the project over at Amibay) as it looks today. The A4000TX is an A4000CR clone in a standardized ATX/EATX form factor. I am running this setup as my primary Amiga. I decided to do two fixes to the system today, quiet the fans and place the ZuluSCSI on the Re4091 SCSI 3 board.
A4000TX cooling with Noctua fans
I am running an old 120mm Noctua fan as the intake and a small 40mm Noctua fan on the turbo card. I wanted to make them more quiet. I solved it by adding an old Zalman Fanmate to the turbo card fan and running the fan on the slowest setting. I added a Noctua fan silencer on the intake fan. The case is nowhere silent but a lot better than running the fans stock.
While you could argue a 120mm intake fan is a bit overkill I think that it wont hurt in the long run as a colder computer lasts longer.
There is a third fan in the PSU but it rarely spins up as the system consumes so little power compared to a modern PC.
A4000TX Zorro cards and cable chaos
Zorro cards in my A4000TX.
Here is a closeup of the cards I am running. The upper card is the ZZ9000AX sound card, then we have the ZZ9000 graphics card, then barely noticeable is the GottaGoFaZt3r memory card, under that a Zorro-LAN-IDE card providing the clock port for the Solas on the Solas ISA carrier in front of it and finally the ReA4091 on the bottom slot.
I managed to fit both the ISA Solas carrier and the ZuluSCSI that is fitted to the 4091, there is not even a mm space left between them. Before I had the ZuluSCSI mounted on the case back, but it looks much better fitted directly to the 4091 card. Since getting the 4091 working with my 100MHz BFG 9060 I decided to keep it in this system.
As you can see there are quite a lot of cables all over the place. No doubt this can be improved.
I have worked on some small things here or there on my Amiga computers. Here are some noteworthy things that has kept me busy.
Installation of an 2.5″ angled CF adapter in my backup A1200
These angle 2.5″ CF adapters were popular 20 years ago
I found angled 2.5″ CF adapters on AliExpress. I have been looking for these for quite some time. They can not work if you have an Indivision AGA in your A1200 but if you do not have one they offer a great reliable way of running an internal compact flash drive in your Amiga 1200. There was only one problem:
This one has a pin blocked, probably to keep you from frying it by mounting it 180 degrees wrong
They came with one pin blocked. I used a small drill to drill into the blocked pin and realised that it was only the top layer that was blocked. Next step: try it out in my backup A1200.
How nice, a genuine C= Amiga 1200 case and keycaps
My backup A1200 has 3.1 Kickstart roms so I had to upgrade the Kickstarts before trying an Workbench 3.2 installation. So the next step was to flash some roms with AmigaOS 3.2.
FlashROMs are programmed with DiagROM and Kickstart 3.2
Here are the FlashROMs. I decided to flash DiagROM and Kickstart to them as they can hold two ROM images. It is very handy to have DiagROM availble if needed.
A white ReAmiga 1200 matches the case nicely
My backup Amiga 1200 looks like a regular A1200 on the outside but inside it is a white ReAmiga 1200 that I built a couple of years ago.
The more LEDs the better
Here the FlashROMs installed. But it failed to boot into the Kickstart screen, DiagROM worked though. So out came the T48 programmer and FlashROM adapter again. It was impossible to flash the FlashROM again. After 30 minutes of fail checking I realized that I used the wrong USB-A cable for the T48. After swapping cables the correct ROM image was flashed and everything worked.
The ReAmiga 1200 has a kickstart switch built in it
The ReAmiga 1200 has a nice Kickstart switch feature that you can enable. If enabled you can chose between two different ROM images through a jumper. If you do this with a FlashROM you do not need to jumper the FlashROM. As you can see, I never bothered to solder on the fan headers.
The angled 2.5″ CF adapter fits the A1200 motherboard fine
Here is the CF adapter mounted on the internal 2.5″ port of the ReAmiga 1200. Booting off of a WB 3.2 installation it worked fine.
I am using an old school external 23 pin scandoubler, thats why the image is a bit dull
ReA4091 and BFG9060 finally working fine together at 100 MHz
ReA4091 SCSI2 Zorro 3 card
I have had problem with my ReA4091 SCSI card when running my BFG9060 68060 turbo card at 100 MHz. Everything worked fine if the BFG was clocked at 50 MHz but at 100 MHz the system refused to run stable giving me filesystems error instantly in Workbench.
This is not a new problem as many other has had it.
I got a heads up about a thread on github discussing possible solutions to this problem. You can find it here. One suggestion there is to reprogram U305 with the file from here.
Apparently this fixed the problem for the user who suggested it on github with a drawback of 10% less SCSI performance.
BFG9060 with 68060 rev. 6 clocked at 100 MHz
I did not have anything to lose so I decided to give it a go by flashing the little PLCC chip with the file suggested. To my surprise it actually made my hardware setup stable again at 100 MHz! Now that I have put in a few hours in my system I can confirm that it runs stable.
This particular build consists of an A4000TX, BFG9060 with a rev.6 68060, ReA4091 with a ZuluSCSI compact, there is also a ZZ9000 graphics board in the setup. It is my main setup.
Solas + ISA board installation in my A4000TX
I have a Solas LED controller in my A4000TX, it is hooked up to an ISA carrier and is connected to the clock port on the Zorro-LAN-IDE card. It took a while to figure out how to connect them together and to get sound into the Solas. But after tinkering with it for a few hours it is working fine now.
The sandwich card of the Solas carrier and Solas is too thick though, making it difficult to run a full size Zorro card over it, I am thinking of soldering them together to decrease the height of the card sandwich. It could either be the greatest thing ever or the greatest disaster ever, I will need to flip a coin on how to proceed with this idea.
Second A2386SX board built and tested
I like to build things I like in pairs that is why I did not hesitate when I was given the opportunity to build a second A2386SX clone again. You can see some more pics in the previous link. I do not think I will build more of these boards as they have given me a tough time both in getting them working and in sourcing components for them.
A4000T AT case mod
Mid size PC AT case from 1998
I did not hesitate to jump on the train when an A4000T replica PCB was offered for sale on Amibay a few years ago. Building it was a lot of fun and also fascinating. The A4000T is after all the final official 68k Amiga computer released.
I was too naive expecting a case to show up by itself. Now I realize it might never show up so I decided to look for solutions. There are ATX options but I wanted to try an old AT case first.
The universe was aligned with my third eye and suddenly an AT case manifested itself on a local trading place. But the struggle is real, nothing comes without pain and struggle. The A4000T motherboard is huge, it wont fit this case without some cut fingers on old sharp PC case sheet metal edges and serious case modding. And I hate hardcore sheet metal case modding and cutting my fingers on old shitty PC cases.
The A4000T motherboard actually fits inside this case, but it will take some serious case modding to make it happen!
But once modded though, the 5.25 bays the case has wont be usable any more. It wont be able to take an AT or ATX PSU anymore either. But hey, when it is fully modded, at least I got a case for the A4000T where the daughter boards line up perfectly on the back of the case. I just need to figure out how to mod this case in the simplest way possible.
I built my Alicia 1200 last month. It was time to decide what case to use. Alicia 1200 is an Amiga 1200 clone in a Mini-ITX form factor so it was only natural to try and find a suitable ITX case to mount it in. It is difficult to chose a case when you don’t know future configurations of the machine. I am expecting to add a CPU card in it but do not expect it to grow that much in height. Thats why I went looking for a low Mini-ITX case.
Alicia 1200 motherboard mounted inside a Morex 557 Mini-ITX case
I chose to install the motherboard in a Morex 557 Mini ITX case. It is small case just slightly longer and wider than a 17 x 17 cm Mini-ITX motherboard. In these kind of cases you have to use a Pico PSU with an external adapter. Where I am from a genuine Pico PSU is quite costly but I was happy to find a reseller in EU who had genuine Pico PSUs for a very reasonable sum of money. I got two, one for the Alicia and one for the Denise in case I would need a better Pico PSU for it in the future instead of the cheap knock off.
120w Pico-PSU is powering the Alicia 1200
The Pico PSU sits very tight against the case but it fits with a millimetre to spare!
Morex 557 Mini-ITX case
I don’t think you can find a smaller size case than this and that is why I like Mini-ITX. The case is also well ventilated, perfect for passive cooling.
Two Morex 557 cases, one for my Alicia 1200 and one for my Sam440ep OS4 machine
I already knew about this case since I use it for my Sam440ep. Maybe I will get a third one for my Denise.
Find the missing chip on the ZZ9000AX Amiga sound card
I wrote about the troubles I had with the ZZ9000AX soundcard for the ZZ9000 graphics board in a post a year ago. No matter what I tried I got a horrible distorted sound from Paula if Paula output was routed through the ZZ9000AX. That was just half the story, the other half was the insane bus noise the card picked up. I was not alone with this problem as I heard quite a few who had the same disappointed stories to tell about their ZZ9000AX Amiga sound cards. One chap I know called the card “an utterly terrible piece of sh*t hardware“.
An intense discussion with the creator of this card followed where it was concluded that the problem could not be confirmed, a pointer to the schematics of the card was offered – An electronics enginering degree was however not offered. Maybe then I could have found the error myself.
Patience rewards those who wait, that is something every Amiga user knows about, it is just a matter of time before Amiga will take over the computers of the world and become the no.1 computer again.. oh wait its not 1998 anymore back to the ZZ9000AX and 2025…
Good bye…
So I was hanging out in a Discord and noticed rumors about the ZZ9000AX now performing fine by doing a simple hardware modification to it. Apparently, removing the chip U4 from the ZZ9000AX would fix the insane sh*t quality (mildly speaking) output from the card. After further investigations it was brought up that this groundbreaking news was communicated on an IRC channel (yes, it is 2025) for the Amiga community to pick up on (why not post it on usegroups next time?).
I could barely keep my hand off my soldering iron – In 5 minutes the chip was removed from my ZZ9000AX never to be seen again. If the card failed in the process I could always retire it in the round archive (meaning, in the garbage where I had been tempted to put the card to rest for more than a year).
Would it work or not!?!?!
In the middle of a brutal 90 min Amiga module testing session with my A4000TX running ZZ9000/ZZ9000AX
IT WORKS!!!!!!! The distortion and heavy background noise is gone.
But I can still hear some bus noise in the background when opening drawers, in comparison with how it was before, this is something I can live with.
Alicia is an Amiga 1200 clone in the popular Mini-ITX form factor. It is a nice DIY project you can buy as a semi built PCB. As I had previously built a couple of Denise A500+ clones, building the Alicia 1200 was a no-brainer and I think I was not alone in that thought as the interest around it has been great! Read more about the project here.
I remember when the Mini-ITX form factor was released around the new millennium, it was a really exciting time in PC hardware and watching it grow and become an established platform has been a pleasure to see.
To be able to see, build and own Amiga systems in the same form factor with real Amiga chips is amazing!
Denise, Alicias little sister
Denise A500+ ITX with TF536, Denise NIC, Mini Graka, Indivision ECS v3
I have not written a lot about Denise, the A500+ clone, here on my blog even though I have wanted to do that for some time. I “blame” my interest in this “wallet busting” hobby on this specific project YOLO. So expect a better post later sometimes.
However, I think it could be interesting to show off my Denise build before moving on to the Alicia 1200.
The Denise is an Amiga 500+ clone in Mini-ITX form factor, it has all the regular chips the A500+ has and also two “dumb” (as in no Buster) Zorro 2 slots. The PCB is jam packed but everything is beautifully laid out on the board.
Point I wanted to make was that this has been a very stable Amiga and it is awesome to have an Amiga with a small graphics board, scandoubler, NIC and 030/HDD in a standardized small form factor – That it is Mini-ITX is just icing on the cake.
To think this kind of hardware was A2000 territory yesterday is crazy. Anyway, let’s move on to the Alicia…
Approaching the Alicia 1200 Amiga 1200 clone build, what have I gotten myself into?!
Alicia 1200 is a small PCB and most of the stuff for the build fits in this small box!
Alicia 1200 is a kit, so one have to build it oneself. I have built a few Amiga kits myself previously so I did not expect any problem with the Alicia build. I usually build my projects from scratch, but in this case it came pre-mounted with all the passives and some common chips. This saved a ton of time.
Lets talk PLCC sockets and chips
I decided to build my Alicia without PLCC sockets. I have a technique that works really well for soldering PLCC sockets without removing the inner part of the socket. In my experience soldering PLCC chips directly to the PCB makes for a more secure connection and eliminates any potential contact issue. I feel hot chips such as Paula, Lisa and Alice runs cooler when soldered directly to the PCB. I do have a few Amiga motherboards with full PLCC sockets for testing purposes.
Soldering the PLCC chips might be difficult if you are not used to doing them. I solder the PLCC chips with a relatively large hoof tip. Not saying the hoof tip is the definitive success factor, it is probably from doing a LOT of PLCC chip soldering.
Difficult to find parts
Most parts for the Alicia 1200 can be taken from an Amiga 1200 or can be found on Ebay, Amibay or from the “usual” places.
You will need the full Amiga 1200 chipset, including Motorola 68020, Budgie and A1200 Gayle. You will need an ADV101 or VP101 but you wont need the keyboard MPU. Memory can be taken from an Amiga 1200 too (but pay attention, some revisions come with incompatible memory that physically won’t fit). If you want to run the RTC you need a clock chip.
A 23 pin video connector is not needed and in fact can not be used, instead Alicia uses a regular VGA socket, so you have to make your own RGB cable if you plan to use it with SCART f.e. Though you will need a PCMCIA connector, but that can also be take from an A1200 motherboard (hot air is your friend).
Everything else can be ordered from Mouser or Digikey.
So lets get the soldering iron warm…
Budgie and Motorola 68020 are done, drag soldering is your friend!
The first parts I soldered was the Budgie and the Motorola 020 CPU, they are both surface mounted chips and where desoldered from an Amiga 1200 motherboard. I actually did not know if they worked or not, but as they are mounted in a good position on the motherboard I could always desolder them and replace them if they failed to work.
Lets add some memory
SOJ40 memory is soldered to the Alicia 1200 motherboard, flux is your friend in this case
You may have built a ReAmiga 1200 and struggled with the memory, I have. It is difficult to do a good job when the chips sit so tight together. I am not a fan of using hot air to solder them. Thankfully on the Alicia 1200 the memory chips are generously spaced leaving plenty of space for my preferred hoof tip making this task very enjoyable and leaving a nice result.
Lets add some PLCC chips
First PLCC chip, Gayle, is soldered to the PCB, only six more to do!
Now its time for some PLCC chips. I have nailed the technique for soldering PLCC chips. But the challenge is getting them aligned correct on the solder pads so the joints form a straight line. I got successful with the first chip at the top left, Gayle.
All Amiga chips are now soldered to the board. But there are still plenty to do.
Here are all the PLCC chips soldered to the Alicia 1200 PCB. I think this was around 4 hours of work in total. No idea if it works and no way of testing it yet. Let’s hope it works.
And lets add some ports and connectors
Almost ready for the first test run, what if it does not work!
I am not alone when I say there is an universal curse around BOM orders. It is an unofficial rule more than an exception that it is derigeur to miss to order some small part or important part. In this case, it was a small chip on the bottom of the PCB and the ATX power socket.
First test run of Alicia 1200
It is difficult to see, but there is a blue Indivision MK3 mounted on the Alice chip
Once I got the missing parts I was eager to try Alicia 1200 out and see if it was working. And it was here I stumbled upon a problem, I did not have a suitable screen or RGB-SCART cable to test it. I thought I could use a 23 pin to VGA converter and hook up my old RGB-SCART cable with a 23 pin connector, but it did not work. Fearing that I had to do a full desolder of the custom chipset with another chipset to iron out the broken chip I instead opted for my backup solution instead: using my Indivision MK3 that I had in my Amiga 1200 so I could get HDMI output.
Update: I have since built a VGA to SCART cable according to the instructions in the manual and I recommend everyone to do that to test that the port is working.
And it works!!
Testing AGA chipset with DiagRom
DiagROM boots and all tests checked out fine! The image above does not do justice to the image quality of the Indivision MK3, I was almost ready to fork out cash for a second one! This is a beautiful hardware combo if you want AGA only.
Sound played fine on the Alicia 1200 when testing channels in DiagROM. I think the sound circuit is the same on the Alicia 1200 as on the Denise as i recognice a few of the parts here. I would descibe the sound on the Denise as slightly tinny, metallic or a bit more clean than a regular Amiga 500 or Amiga 1200, it is an interesting attribute of these motherboards and adds another dimension to the sound output of the Amiga. Cant wait to try it out with the Sound Enhancer.
Lets finalize the Alicia 1200 build
Alicia 1200 fully built!
Once Alicia 1200 was fully tested I could go ahead and add the final connectors including the PCMCIA slot (that I cut down to make it shorter since it sticks out a lot).
So let’s end this post with some features that Alicia 1200 has that a genuine Amiga 1200 does not have. First it has a real time clock. Then it has a video slot on top left side. There are no devices to connect here today, but there are rumors of scandoublers and other exciting stuff. Lets see what the future holds. I have suggested a 3DFX card numerous times lol.
The Alicia 1200 Tornado slot CPU slot adapter.
The larger slot is the Tornado slot, as you can see on the image above it is converted into the Amiga 1200 slot. Hopefully someone will release a direct mount CPU card for the Alicia 1200, if not, we can just use the converter above and run our TF1260s or PiStorms or whatever will be available directly on that.
Next steps!
Let me follow up in the future what case I will chose and what CPU card I will use. I am leaning towards PiStorm, but the beauty of a 060 in this little system is very tempting, almost too tempting to resist. And with the way the CPU card is mounted, there is plenty of space to run a badass heatsink over the 060 unlike in an Amiga 1200… you can be sure I will follow it up here in the future!
Just finished the last bit on the AmiGUS I built this weekend. I don’t have an USB blaster so wont be able to program it yet… if it works I will build two more for my self and have two PCBs for sale.
My Alicia is ready for a test run, but I am missing two key parts, one IC I forgot to order and the ATX PSU connector. Hopefully it works because its going to be a challenge replacing some of the chips if not.
There was a new update to AmigaOS 4.1 Final edition released recently, Update 3 for AmigaOS 4.1. I run AmigaOS 4.1 on an old Sam440ep and thought it could be a good idea to run an update updating it from 2 to 3.
Installing AmigaOS 4.1 Update 3
The update is shown in AmiUpdate once you log into the updater.
Runing the AmigaOS 4.1 FE update 3 installation
Once the update is downloaded it goes into an installation dialoge. Both the download and the installation went smooth and quick. I did not bother to do a backup before doing the installation.
Installation was successful and now i am runing Update 3 on my Sam440ep
After a reboot I was greeted with a new title bar text, it says “Final Edition Update 3” now. There is also an AmigaGuide in sys: that goes through all the changes.
Most changes seems to be technical of nature but I did find the system to feel a bit snappier and quicker in use (or maybe that was just my imagination). I also think I read somewhere that network speed has been improved. As I have the slowest next gen systems, that is good info! Read more about improvements and changes here.
Conclusion
It was nice to see an update for AmigaOS 4 being released, hopefully we will see more updates in the future and also new high end cheap hardware to run it on.
I also wanted to do a quick test of the AmigaOS 4 port of VIM, and here it is in full glory and running great:
Here is my test setup: Acill A4000D motherboard with ReA3630 and two BFG9060 cards including Firestorm PCI daughterboard, Multifix-AGA and a replica A4000D case
I had two summer projects this year that I recently finished. One was an Acill A4000D replica motherboard and the other was a Hese made A4000+ Alice A4000D CR motherboard replica. You could say two brothas from different mothas or something…
Both motherboards worked fine when doing basic test runs, however they both failed to run with a BFG9060. All I got when running them with a BFG9060 060 CPU card was a black screen.
Amiga 4000D motherboard in shiny red
Anyway, as usual building them up was pure pleasure from start to finish. I even enjoyed desoldering the Acill A4000D motherboard from a few passives and pin headers someone else had a false start with. I mean, off course you want a full set of pin headers soldered to your 400+ small parts PCB (not really).
As good as it was looking it failed to run with the BFG9060. It was working fine with the A3630 CPU board I built earlier this year, but not with the 060 card. That reminded me that I had the same problem with my Alice A4000D motherboard a couple of weeks ago.
A4000+ Alice motherboard during assembly phase
The Alice A4000D has an 030 CPU on the motherboard so it does not need a CPU card. It was working fine with the on board 030.
Here is the A4000+ Alice motherboard during the testing phase inside the A4000D case
I got the suggestion to try a new delay line as that could be the problem the CPU card failed to run. As the A3630 has exactly the same CPU as the one mounted on the motherboard, it is difficult to say if the A3630 was running or not.
Testing the A4000D motherboard + BFG9060 with a PicoPSU
If you are in this hobby you have to grow a passion for trying all hardware combinations to find the solution. In this case, the reason for the Amiga 4000 getting a black screen when running a BFG9060 was the PSU as everything seemed to run fine with another PSU than the SFX one I had in the A4000D case.
I changed the SFX PSU that previously was working fine with the EXACT hardware setup I am running here (but different Amiga 4000 motherboard) with a small ITX PSU and suddenly DiagROM worked fine and detected the 060 CPU.
This lead me to believe that maybe the PSU was not pushed too hard as some ATX PSUs fail to run if there is a tiny load on them (or something like that). So I decided to do a final test by adding some cards to my A4000D and try the SFX PSU again.
Unfortunately it did not start with the SFX PSU and 060 card even if I loaded the machine with all Zorro slots filled, including adding an old 3.5″ harddrive.
So next step is to get a new SFX PSU. But at least I know I have to working motherboards!
Update! 20251215
Apparantly it was the Kickstart that was the problem.
