Amiga PPC card setup on the A4000D

Posted on March 28, 2026 by erkorh

Emerson-Motorola PrPMC8005E PPC PMC card

There has been an active initative at getting some PCI cards with PPC CPUs working on Amiga systems that has PCI slots. That means it is possible to run WarpUp PPC software on Amiga with modern PPC hardware.

I have been following this project with some interest from time to time but never pulled the trigger to get the relevant hardware to get a setup going.

Partly it was because I was swamped with Amiga hardware projects, partly because PPC on 68k Amigas was not really that relevant anymore – unlike yesterday when it was the next logical step for the Amiga to evolve to.

But times change and I reconsidered that last opinion about it not being relevant when I skimmed through the supported applications a year or so ago.

Emerson-Motorola PrPMC8005E PPC card

One supported PPC card by the initative to get PPC working on PCI Amigas is the Emerson-Motorola PrPMC8005E that I was lucky to be able to pick up for a very reasonable sum on Ebay.

The PrPMC8005E-2261 contains a 450 MHz MPC7410 G4 PPC CPU and 128 MB memory. It is a PMC card and fits a PCI card that acts as a PMC carrier on the Amiga.

Originally it is not meant to be used on an Amigas at all, I think the main use is in industrial applications and in telecommunication, but exactly how and why – No idea!

Before I continue, lets look at some previous PPC setups I toyed around with a few years ago.

Previous Amiga PPC setups, time flies…

Phase 5 CyberStormPPC 233Mhz PPC / 50Mhz 68060

This was a top of the line Phase 5 turbo board that I got when I purchased an Amiga 4000D second hand in 2007. This was the top model from Phase 5 that had a 233Mhz PPC chip and a 68060 68k CPU. I had a CVPPC graphics card for it and was running SCSI. It was a fast setup but was highly complex in setting up. I spent a few days before I got it working fine. I think I paid 400 euros for the complete system.

Phase 5 BlizzardPPC 200Mhz PPC / 25Mhz 68040

Here is another Phase 5 turbo card, it is the BlizzardPPC, I remember that it had a 68040 68k CPU and a PPC clocked at 200Mhz (I think). I have forgotten where I got this card from, I guess it was in a bundle, possibly with an Amiga 1200 tower, I had the BlizzardVision graphics card for it too.

Amiga 4000D PPC setup from 2007 or so… those where the days

Here is my Amiga 4000D setup from 2007 with the CyberStormPPC installed. Not much has changed with today really, just the shape of the hardware and the amount of machines.

I got AmigaOS4 for classic PPC system and installed that. Then I played around with some software in 68k Workbench, but no matter how I twisted and turned things I felt like I had expensive hardware that I used too little and just heated up the Amiga 4000 too much – So I sold it all!

…and now I am back (never sell stuff).

PMC PPC PCI carrier board

So to use the PMC card above on the Amiga you have to add it to a PMC carrier that slots into a PCI slot. This version of the PMC carrier made by a friend in the hobby from a Discord channel we frequently visit. It has a small 40 mm fan to cool the PPC card.

PPC card fits over the PMC carrier card perfectly

The Emerson-Motorola PrPMC8005E PPC PMC card is mounted to the PMC carrier board. As you see it is a perfect fit. The 3D printed bracket has holes for ventilation.

PMC carrier and PPC card sandwiched together

As you can see, the card is really slim even though its a sandwich. The CPU on the PPC card sits under the heatsink on the left side.

Installing PPC card in Amiga 4000D

PPC card + 3DFX Voodoo 3 cards – PCI hardware setup complete

My Amiga 4000D has a Firebird PCI daughter board installed. The PPC card is inserted in the top PCI slot. The card under the PPC card is a normal 3DFX Voodoo 3 card, without it the PPC card wont work. The Voodoo 3 graphics card is the AGP version that is why the bracket is not flush with the case as there is an adaptor that converts AGP to PCI. Bottom slot contains a Multifix-AGA scandoubler.

My original plan was to use a 3DFX Voodoo 4 card but my Voodoo 4 failed to work in my setup in combination with the PPC card for some reason, thus I had to go with a Voodoo 3 instead that is better supported on the Amiga I guess.

Here is the setup from the top. Even with active cooling this is a hot running setup, especially with the hot running 3DFX Voodoo 3 graphics card. I wont be running long sessions with the lid on (if at all) and will possibly move the PPC/3DFX setup to a tower setup in the future to enable better cooling.

Problems with running PPC based Warp 3D software

Firebird PCI Amiga daughterboard Molex power connector

As is de-rigeur when dealing with Amiga hardware something has to be weird and strange, unexplainable or simply illogical or based on an error or fault that can not be guessed by mere mortals (or it might be me who f”d up when building something in this Amiga).

In this case everything worked fine, except Warp3D enabled PPC applications that crashed the system – All the time.

68k Warp3D applications worked fine. Non Warp3D PPC applications also ran fine. It was just PPC Warp3D applications that failed to run.

Can you guess how I fixed it? -By not running power to the Molex connector on the Firebird.

With the Molex connected, crashes.

With no Molex connected to Firebird, could run PPC GLQuake all day happily. Why? No idea.

Some demo PPC software on the Amiga

PPC was thought of as the next generation CPU for the Amiga. It was logical because both PPC and 68k was made by Motorola and 68k was not developed anymore. Motorola was not Intel which was considered Wintel and was lame and dumb.

It was a different time back then, much more fanatical, had they chosed ARM or Intel for the Amiga in the middle of the 90ies then probably half the user base would have left the Amiga community in disgust.

In hindsight PPC was maybe not the right choice, but who knew it back then. What everyone wanted was the OS, Workbench, to be fully ported to PPC.

AmigaOS4 installed on an A4000D with a CyberStormPPC

That eventually happened with AmigaOS4 around 2006 for owners of a Phase 5 PPC accelerators. Using AmigaOS4 classic was nice but limited as it only supported system friendly software, understandable as it is just like AmigaOS4 for next gen hardware.

Thus for most PPC owners, they still run Workbench on 68k CPU while the PPC CPU is just sort of a co-processor that runs PPC applications launched from the 68k Workbench when needed.

But that does not mean there are no interesting PPC software to run. You wont see them here today though as I was just trying my PPC card out with some standard software such as:

Warp3D Gears demo

This is just a demo to check that Warp3D and PPC is working. Imagine the gear spinning around very smoothly.

WarpUp Voxelspace

This is another PPC demo, the Volxelspace demo where you can travel around a voxel landscape. Hit F1 to render the voxel landscape with 060 or PPC and see the impressive speed up with it running on the PPC CPU.

PPC GLQuake

Off course, the raison d’être for having hi-end Amiga systems – trying out Quake on it for 15 seconds and then doing something else.

Links

Here are some links about PPC on the Amiga:

N2630 Amiga 68030 CPU card metal bracket

Posted on March 20, 2026 by erkorh

N2630 is a great 68030 CPU card you can build yourself for the Amiga 2000 or A2000EATX project. You can find more information about the N2630 project on the website here.

N2630 CPU card with 3D-printed bracket (that has a part broken off)

There is a model for a bracket for the N2630 that you can 3D print. I did that but it was too flimsy and eventually broke in two pieces.

I was planning on ordering a 3D metal print of the bracket from JLC but heard of arymanx on Amibay who had made a small batch of metal brackets for the CPU card. In this hobby, you have to act fast, or the chance might never come up again so in less than a week a shiny metal N2630 Amiga 030 CPU card bracket arrived to me from UK.

If you are interested in a metal bracket for the N2630 too, feel free to contact arymanx directly about it on AmiBay.

Another view of the N2630 metal bracket.

Its just a bracket, but is a great reminder of that it is the small details that makes a DIY build great.

Metal bracket mounted on to the N2630, my A2000EATX is in the background.

I mounted the bracket to the N2630 with two screws and nuts. The nuts got a drop of blue Loctite to hold them secure. Fitment was excellent.

Back of my A2000EATX. One slot left for a NIC.

Not only does it hold the card better in the case it also looks better.

Pay no attention to the nut wedged between bracket and case. The CPU slot I used when building my A2000EATX motherboard was taller than a regular CPU slot used on the Amiga 2000 making the CPU card sit further out from the motherboard.

Installing 3DFX Voodoo 4 in Amiga 4000D with Firebird PCI daughterboard

Posted on March 8, 2026 by erkorh

Amiga 4000D setup for PCI card installation and test run

Here is my Amiga 4000D with PCI slots. It has an Firebird daughterboard that has PCI slots, Zorro slots and one video slot. More information about the Firebird PCI boards here.

Firebird PCI daughter board for Amiga 4000D

This is an older picture of my Firebird PCI daughterboard with no cards mounted to it to get a better look at it. This was before it was fully built, that is why it only has one PCI slot.

I tried PCI on the Amiga years ago on my A1200 with a Mediator A1200LT – I was not sold on the concept as I felt the performance was lacking. Since then I wanted to give PCI on the Amiga a fair chance again and so I had to get the Firebird to try out PCI on a big box Amiga properly!

Here is a 3DFX Voodoo 4 PCI graphics cad I got years ago, back when they sold for a reasonable sum. It has spent close to 15 years in storage. Along the way it got a capacitor knocked off (that I am pointing on). I replaced the capacitor, added a heatsink and fan to it and hoped that it would still work.

Amiga 4000D with PCI cards, Zorro cards and a video slot card

Here is a closeup of the Amiga 4000D with the Firebird PCI board holding the Voodoo4 PCI card and a PMC carrier holding a PPC card. I will make a separate post about the PPC card in the top slot in the future. The other cards you see is a purple Multifix-AGA, GottaGoFaZt3r and a CPLDICY.

Testing Voodoo 4 PCI RTG output in Workbench with HippoPlayer

…aaaaand surprise, the 3DFX Voodoo4 PCI graphics card worked!! Installation went really smooth even if it was not a simple point and click installation.

Looking at the cards listed on the PCI bus

There is only so much time on the weekend so I ran out of time installing the PPC card, hopefully I will look into it next time. I will also need to set up an automatic switcher between RTG and scandoubled output. As usual, you are never done in this hobby….

Removing PLCC sockets from A4000TX

Posted on February 15, 2026 by erkorh

A4000TX with PLCC sockets desoldered and custom chipset removed

The A4000TX in the picture above was one of the first Amiga hardware projects I built. I was clearly way over my head when I took the bold decision to build it with so little prior soldering experience. I got it working in the end – It was a great experience in patience finding the small errors I made before I got it going.

And then I proceeded to build a second A4000TX. The second A4000TX I built was arguable a better build with the custom chipset directly soldered to the PCB, components more neatly soldered and having no 030 CPU soldered to the motherboard. But I had a lot of fun building them both and the learning experience was signficant!

As most beginners chose to do, I built my first A4000TX with SMD PLCC sockets for all PLCC chips. I made the decision to cut off the inner sqare of the PLCC sockets to make them easier to solder. Since then, soldering PLCC sockets with the inner square left is something that pose no challenge for me anymore. So the thought of replacing the flimsy sockets with high quality full 3M sockets has lived rent free in my head for a long time, as has the thought of cleaning up the build a little here and there.

Anyway, I desoldered the PLCC sockets today with a hot air station, then I cleaned up the pads and resoldered some parts that was sloppily soldered. While investigating ways of desoldering the PLCC sockets I got the suggestion to just solder the chips directly to the motherboard. On a second thought, I decided that is the way to go forward as it makes for a more stable setup, better looking hardware and cooler running chips.

Besides, I already have a spare ReA1200 I purchased from another builder with full sockets if I want to test most PLCC chips.

Oldschool Amiga Workbench 3.1 setup ala 1997

Posted on February 6, 2026 by erkorh

My Amiga Workbench 3.1 installation running DOpus 5.91 Magellan II

I mostly log my Amiga hardware activities on this blog, but I thought it would be interesting taking a look at how I set up Workbench 3.1 for my Amiga 4000D.

I prefer to install Workbench from scratch on my Amiga computers because I think the prebuilt Workbench installations you can find here and there online are configured so different than what I am used to.

While I have moved on to Workbench 3.2 on my main system I still prefer to have an older Workbench 3.1 system running and tweaked the way things looked like back in 1997.

So lets go through my wild WB 3.1 AmigaOS installation “1997 edition” that I recently set up in WinUAE for my A4000D.

Magic Workbench icons

MagicWorkbench 2 was the second Amiga Icon replacement of MWB and much better looking than the first

Back in 1997 you where either running MWB2, NewIcons or the original Commodore Amiga icon set. I prefer MWB2 because it is a beautiful icon set with a lots of icons to download on AmiNet.

Off course this is Amiga, land of drama, conflicts and useless legal battles no matter we talk about peoples egos or the type of icons people prefer – Who remembers the MWB vs NI war from the 90ies (ketchup’n’mustard-look), predating the PowerUP vs WarpOS war a year or two IIRC?

New Icons was fine but I think the design of MWB icons is just more professional and better, even the third party MWB icons are generally better looking and faster loading than NI since they are 8 colors.

What I like with MWB2 is that there is a wide variety of drawers you can chose from. I tend to prefer GlowIcons these days but MWB2 is timelessness in icon format, the HDD icon is iconic Amiga. How would MWB3 have looked like if it was made? MWB icons in 64 colors? What could have been – c’est la vie…

Directory Opus 5

I run DOpus5 (Directory Opus 5.91 Magellan II) as a Workbench replacement. DOpus5 is a complex program to talk about. But to explain it in simple terms: I use it to primary get the same functionality you get in Windows when you use Explorer. But DOpus5 is so much more than just a Windows Explorer clone for Amiga and that is also why it is such a complex program to get into on the Amiga.

Check this out:

This is the content of a drawer containing music modules in a DOpus5 Lister

I have clicked on my Data partition on the image above and dived into the folder structure. I have set it up to open Data: as a DOpus Lister in text mode.

The reason why is the ability to browse in and out of folders quick and easy. See that blue icon in the toolbar with a green arrow pointing up?

One click on that icon takes you up in the file hierarchy. I have a huge module collection with thousands of drawers containing thousands of music modules. Browsing them in DOpus5 is so much more effcient than going through folders, clicking, open and closing drawers in Workbench.

Double clicking a module file opens up HippoPlayer automatically with file types set up

The function that sold DOpus5 for me on Amiga was the ability to browse folders up and down like you do in Windows Explorer (or any file explorer in any OS). But it was also the ability to click on a filetype and automatically open a program that plays or opens the file. Such as clicking on a module file and having it open up in HippoPlayer playing the module file automatically.

This functionality modernizes Workbench tremendously and makes exploring a huge tree of folders and files much more efficient, like the way you are used to interact with a computer these days.

Here is another cool function in DOpus5, you can enable outlines on fonts. Makes fonts on Workbench and folders more visible on backgrounds. No need to run a separate hack for this functionality.

DOpus 5 enables button banks if the user so wish to have one.

And here is a little button bank in the bottom left corner, off course you can configure this to be text instead of icons, or configure it to hide itself, or configure it to be an icon, or configure it to be a start menu, or add it as a menu in the WB bar, or change background to be a color or pattern, you get the point.

There are tons of ways of configuring even the smallest things in DOpus 5.

This is both a strength and a weakness. As a reviewer said in his conclusion in an Amiga mag from 1996 “It is very powerful, but I dont have the time to invest learning DOpus5“.

Listers can look like regular Drawers in Directory Opus 5

Just to show an example of how you can confugure DOpus5, I chose to display my Work: partition as a regular partition in icon mode. But I have configured my Data partition to be displayed in a Lister as text only as it contains only data files.

Amateur attempt at pitching DOpusMagellan for Amiga

There are tons of functionality in DOpus5 and I think the problem Directory Opus had BITD was that the authors crammed all possible features and functionality into the program and enabled it as default when you installed it.

I think what they were going for was for the user to go absolute bonkers and excited over all the awesome functionality they managed to add to DOpus. Not expecting users to feel somewhat lost in all menus, options, functionality and occasional bizarre configuration logic.

I spent a week playing around with DOpus5 in the evenings before i got it configured to where I wanted it to be (almost) and when I reached that point it was a very satisfying Workbench experience.

But no doubt, this is a product of its time and it shows in the amount of time that one has to invest to get it going, to understand certain functionality, find solutions to potential problems and figuring out logic behind some configuration options.

My suggestion is to disable all functionality that is not needed, the amount of things that can be configured is wild. For example, you can see that I removed the buttons in the lister that I will never use (such as changing file attributes).

I also do not need a text button bank with every weird file operation thinkable. In every possible color combination. With secondary function if you click with right mouse button.

Also, it has to be said, that yin-yang symbol for parent folder in the Lister toolbar was stupid, who came up with that idea for that icon must have been responsible for most of the UX in DOpus5, get ready for a crazy ride back to 1997 when bad UX was considered good -because it was not as it was on Windows- if you are brave enough to take the leap.

Microknight – System font

Microknight is a great classic Amiga font

Lets talk about the font I am using for CLI and the icons on Workbench. The font is called Microknight. To be honest I do not remember where I found it, but IIRC you can find it somewhere on Aminet in some package, you just have to Google it. But it is a classic Amiga font with just the right look. Works great in hi-res but also in hi-res laced. I have used it since 1997, will probably use it in 2037!

I use XEN as drawer icons just to get icons sorted more compact with outline enabled.

Statram

I found Statram on a BBS in 1998 and really liked it. It is a RAM disk that survives resets. Statram grows with the amount of files that is added to it (SD0:). It is perfect to extract files to. And it is also perfect these days when we have 256 MB+ in our top of the line hi end Amiga computers. Some even has 1 GB.

TitleShadow

This is a cool Workbench hack that I found this year, it is so cool I had to run it. TitleShadow adds a shadow to the title of the drawer windows. Highly recommended. Wish it could be used on the icon text too.

Birdie 2000

Birdie 2000 is one of my all time favorite Amiga Workbench hacks. It is much more than just a rotozooming image of a cool parrot as it can place an image file in the border of Workbench drawers.

In my Amiga Workbench setup I have a rather wild setup with many colors, this is 1997 after all, but that is no reason not to go for something more subtle such as a light gradient.

The possibilities are endless and I had a ton of fun playing around with Birdie BITD – I even ran it on my A1200 with AGA and a 030 in 128 colors back in 1997!

This was hi end 3D rendered graphics and cool in 1995!

I remember that I emailed the author asking where he found the background image he used on the demo image of Birdie uploaded to Aminet BITD. He did not have it or knew where he got it. Recently I found the exact image as seen above, funny thing is I dont remember where I found it, what comes around goes around…

Birde is configured through CLI but there is a third party GUI for it, although from a usability perspective BirdiePrefs was highly confusing getting used to the first couple of times i used it. BirdiePrefs and Birdie should have been added to Workbench 3.2, make it happen in 3.3!

VisualPrefs

VisualPrefs is an awesome WB hack that lets you change the look of borders and other GUI parts of Amiga Workbench. I set it up to the same style I always run when installing it, XEN gadgets, with thicker title bars and proportional arrows. Exactly as how it looks like in the picture above.

Depending on what screenmode the Amiga is running the gadgets of a drawer can look disproportional. With VisualPrefs it is possible to change proportions of gadgets to make them proportional.

I have never deep dived into the theme functionality of VisualPrefs but it is possible to add bitmaps to the Workbench menu bar.

ClickToFront

This is placed in my WBStartup folder to make programs and drawers pop to the front by double clicking the upper border of a window.

KingCon and Amiga shell setup

KingCon is installed to enable tab completion of filenames. I think I will change to CSH as KingCon did not click with me. I have also set up CLI to have a black background with white text.

MUI, P96, AHI and all the rest…

Off course, no Amiga Workbench 3.1 installation is complete without the essential add ons such as MUI, Picasso96, AHI, Data types, a bunch of background images to keep Workbench fresh and that odd app here and there…

I am also running a file requester replacement that I have forgotten how I installed. IIRC it was a replacement library. Main reason the swap file requester was to get directories to list before files in the file requester.

Partition setup

I also want to point out that I always install Workbench to a partition called Workbench (DH0:). I always create a Work partition (DH1:) that contains all programs. If I am installing on to a larger harddrive I also create a Data partition (DH2:) for files such as modules.

Typically I do not install any general use programs to the Workbench partition as that should contain the operating system and files relevant for Workbench only (such as Picasso96, MUI and so on). For example, I do not install Ibrowse to that partition as Ibrowse goes into the Net drawer in Work. Neither Deluxe Paint as that goes into the Graphics drawer in Work.

Some of the ready installations of Workbench floating around the net has a weird missmatch of installed software all around different partitions with less structure – If one is used to a specific structure that is very difficult to adapt to.

Conclusion

Using an Amiga running a Workbench that is tuned to your preferences is a great pleasure to use.

I am back in the Amiga classic 68k PPC club again

Posted on February 1, 2026 by erkorh

Apocalypse PrPMC8005E-1259 450 MHz PPC card waiting for its PCI carrier to make it work on a PCI Amiga Z3 system.

Don’t know why or how, but somehow I am back on the classic 68k PPC hype train! Enjoy watching me rip my hair off my head trying to get this PPC board going in my A4000 in the future!

Daily soup of Amiga Custom Chips

Posted on January 28, 2026 by erkorh

A set of custom chips from an Amiga 1200 resting in a plate of IPA

Bought a rotten non working Amiga 1200 motherboard recently and spent the evening desoldering and cleaning up the Amiga custom chips. TBH I was only after the Alice chip… hope it works!

Update on the Amiga custom chips: 2026-02-01

Amazingly, all chips was confirmed working! Especially considering the motherbaord that I desoldered the chips from looked like this (warning):

A thick layer of dirt covering the A1200 motherboard. I especially like the unmatched Kickstart chips!

This is how I tested the Amiga custom chipset, I have an ReAmiga 1200 with sockets for the custom chips so I could just swap the chips on it and give it a go in Diagrom. I bought this Amiga 1200 motherboard built by someone else. I do not recommend building it with sockets, but for testing purposes it is fine.

ReAmiga 1200 with sockets for Amiga custom chips

Amiga 2000 EATX CPU board stabilizer

Posted on January 5, 2026 by erkorh

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.

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.

Some A4000TX maintenance

Posted on December 26, 2025 by erkorh

My A4000TX with the ATX case side panel removed.

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

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.

Some Amiga activites I have worked on in December

Posted on December 22, 2025 by erkorh

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.

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

Making the ReA4091 work with a BFG9060 clocked at 100 MHz

I had problem with my ReA4091 SCSI card when running my BFG9060 68060 turbo card at 100 MHz. The Amiga 4000TX 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. But at the same time, many have gotten A4091 and a BFG with a 060 clocked at 100MHz working without trouble.

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 (and now more than 6 months later I can confirm that it has been working great).

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

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.