Kategoriarkiv: Amiga hardware DIY

ReAmiga 3000 motherboard is fully built and tested

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ReAmiga 1.4 motherboardboard

I had an old Amiga 3000 in my stash that I got in a trade years ago. It was traded to me as fully working but never worked no matter what I did. When the ReAmiga 3000 project became known I wanted to save the broken A3000 by building up a ReAmiga 3000 motherboard with the parts from the broken Amiga 3000.

I did not have the soldering skills 15 years ago to do that, but today is a different time (and maybe I was better off 15 years ago with just one A1200 instead of a fleet of Amiga replicas today lol) – So the broken Amiga 3000, or at least what was left of it has gotten a new lease on its life!

Find out more about the ReAmiga project here.

I have already started soldering in stuff that I should have waited with, as usual it is difficult to wait for the right parts to arrive at the post office before starting the project properly.

So this is how it started out. This time I started off with a motherboard with all passives already mounted which saved a ton of time. Interestingly though, I found one error where the BOM specified a tantal capacitor, a regular ceramic cap was placed instead. It was an easy fix once I found a suitable component to replace it with!

Here is the original Amiga 3000 motherboard which acted as a donor card

The components I used from my broken Amiga 3000 was all the custom chips (more on that later), the special memory chips for the scandoubler and some odd pieces here and there such as the trim pot, power socket, disable switch for the scandoubler and the stacked female 25 pin port.

Most of this stuff can actually be found new. But I usually like to keep some parts from donor Amigas in new builds not just the custom chips for some weird reason.

Believe it or not, I actually used the same KEL connector for the CPU board that was soldered to the broken A3000. It was a painful experience desoldering it as it is soldered with 200 pins to the motherboard.

I also wanted to save the two edge card connectors for the daughterboard, desoldering them was a major hassle since the ground plane is very strong on the A3000. Instead I ordered replacements from AliExpress because they where extremely difficult to desolder.

Chipset gave me a surprise

As is de rigeur when building an Amiga replica, there are always some kind of surprises no matter how much prepping one does.

There are some very expensive chips on the Amiga 3000. First is the Amber chip which is part of the scandoubler/flickerfixer area of the A3000. Then there is the DMAC chip, both chips costs a ton of money to source if replacements are needed.

I did not know if these chips where working before starting the build and I was not prepared to pay 250-450+ euros for replacements if they did not work. Luckily, once I had the board fully built, I can now confirm they are working just fine!

But surprised I was, the Ramsey chip was broken. My ReAmiga 3000 would not start with my original Ramsey chip installed. Luckily I had a NOS Ramsey 07 chip in my stash that worked fine as a replacement.

And as lucky as I was, the same day, I noticed that a Buster 11 was offered for sale on a local website meaning I could skip the Buster 7 I had from the broken A3000. As it was offered on a local trading website I got it muuuch cheaper than from Ebay.

But…. I know what you are thinking, Super DMAC 02 and Ramsey 07, that is a recipe for trouble.

Lets find out if Ramsey 07 plays well with my revision 02 of the Super DMAC. I will just have to find out once system is fully up and running with Workbench installed. Then I will be able to do some stress testing. If problems occur, I will need to track down a Super DMAC replica.

Next steps….

Now all I am waiting for is a replica A3000D case to be available and I will order one in black ASAP. I am also doing a daughter board for it which I will post about later in the year here.

FlashROM 40 & 42 pin Kickstart Flash EPROM

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A weekends work resulted in 17 FlashROMs – this is actually the second batch I have made for myself

There are a couple of different hardware Kickstart solutions for the Amiga. The most proven one seems to be 27C400 chips that you can program in a T48 (with an adapter) and erase with UV light. If you buy a Kickstart from a retailer, that chip is probably an 27C400 EPROM. I dont like the UV light eraser, and the 27C400/27C800 chips are expensive, so I went looking for another solution that had the possibility to scale up in volume fine.

I don’t know what it is about burning Kickstarts for the Amiga but the topic is highly confusing at first. Not only do you have to have the correct byte swapped file (or build the ROM file correct if you want to run a custom ROM) but you need some kind of adapter to be able to program some of the solutions on modern cheap programmers.

This is not a tutorial in how to burn a Kickstart or how to build your own Kickstart, I suggest you schedule a weekend to do a deep dive into that topic. Then it sort of makes sense (I think).

No doubt in the future something like the KickSmash will probably be the defacto standard and I contemplated ordering a batch of PCBs and building a suite of KickSmashes for my fleet of Amigas. Instead I went with the FlashROM, because right here and now, it is possible to run FlashROM on all Amiga models while the KickSmash fits the Amiga 1200, Amiga 3000 and Amiga 4000 (and A4000T).

With new Kickstart ROMs being released fairly regularly these days. And the need to be able to build your own Kickstart so you can f.e. add ehide.device for a TF1260 system or PeterKs Icon library to the Kickstart, an easy way of updating Kickstart is IMHO, a must have, these days!

What is the FlashROM?

The FlashROM is basically a Kickstart replacement that you can program yourself – FlashROM has 1024 KB of space, meaning it can take two Kickstart files. This is great as it is possible to run one Kickstart ROM and one DiagROM rom on the same chip.

You change what bank you want to be active by setting a jumper on the pinouts between GND and A18.

If you do not need dual ROM functionality, just concatenate the same ROM twice and flash it to the EPROM.

Programming a Kickstart to the FlashROM

I use a T48 to program chips, an adapter was needed to be able to flash a Kickstart ROM to the FlashROM. I actually chickened out and just ordered a ready made programmer to reduce the complexity of this project, you can find out more information about the FlashROM adapter on Levo’s website.

Using the adapter is a breeze, just have to connect the wires correct and everything works just like programming any other chip. Erasing the EPROM is no different.

40 pin FlashROM

40 pin FlashROM, I notice it was not cleaned properly as you can see flux residue left at the top left corner

Here is the 40 pin FlashROM, this will go into my Amiga 500, Amiga 2000 and Amiga 4000 and so on.

42 pin FlashROM

42 pin FlashROM for my Amiga computers that can take a 42 pin Kickstart chip (such as Amiga 1200)

Here is the 42 pin FlashROM, this will go into my Amiga Denise clone, Amiga 4000TX and Amiga 1200. One benefit of running it in a ReAmiga 1200 is that the jumper on the motherboard select which bank you want to be active.

Replica A3630 Amiga 4000 030 CPU card build

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This is actually the underside of the A3630 030 CPU card

Today I built a replica of the A3630 030 CPU card. The A3630 CPU card came with non CR Amiga 4000D models (the card works on the A4000T and on the A3000D/T also). The CPU card replica PCB is made by Chucky, read more about it here if you are interested in getting one yourself!

Top side of the A3630 contains no parts.

I got an (original Commodore made) A3630 in 2005, mainly for testing purposes. It was placed in storage for 15 years and I failed to check the capacitors on it. Sure enough the capacitors had leaked, the board had a fishy smell to it.

When I recapped the genuine C= A3630 board one solder pad lifted off the PCB (very common if capacitor have leaked for a long time). Sure, that is not a big issue, can be fixed quite easy with a bodge wire. But I thought rebuilding the A3630 it with a new ReA3630 PCB was a better option.

I decided to use the CPU and the KEL male edge connector from my current card instead of wasting a new mint in box unobtainium KEL connector from my stash on such a low end card. I removed the CPU from the card by using a hot air rework station. I used a desoldering gun to remove the KEL connector by desoldering each of the 200 solder points for it.

As you can see it is a quite simple card, especially if one do not mount the socket for the FPU. Since my main usage of this card is for testing purposes, the 33MHz FPU and crystal will be used on my ReA3000 instead.

Multifix AGA Amiga scandoubler and flicker fixer

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The Multifix scandoubler is another great hardware project by talented Amiga hardware DIYselfer Matze. Read more about the Multifix AGA scandoubler and flicker fixer here.

What is a scandoubler and flicker fixer?

In my humble opinion a scandoubler is a must have for an Amiga. It lets you display native screen modes on a regular PC monitor. A flicker fixer is great to have also, it means you can use higher resolutions screenmodes without nasty flicker. There is however less reason to use flicker fixer modes in Workbench if you have an RTG graphics card since an RTG screen is faster than a flicker fixed screen typically.

Building and testing the Multifix AGA scandoubler and flicker fixer

I have to be honest, the first time I looked at the project page I did not have a clue on how to build it. But after having finished a couple of projects and being more used to projects with less documentation I felt ready to tackle this beautiful scandoubler.

The Multifix integrates well with the GBAP2++ Amiga RTG graphics card, being able to hook up directly to the graphics board. Doing so auto switches output between scandoubled/flickerfixed output and RTG output meaning, you could run the graphics board and scandoubler in one aligned Zorro slot and video slot.

It is difficult for me to say something about the video output since on a CRT the picture quality is probably superb. I do not have a CRT so can only test on modern flat screens. And also, I am using a cheap VGA to HDMI converter that introduces lots of banding on the output. The picture quality on my TFT is not as good as I get from an Indivision or ZZ9000. But even with the cheap VGA to HDMI converter, I have seen worse banding with other VGA scandoublers and with that said, the colors are correct. Overall I am very happy even if the picture quality is not as sharp as those other devices I mentioned. And the picture quality might be even better with another flat screen or a genuine VGA screen.

OKI M5142 and NEC 42101 are also used on the Amiga 3000

Difficult to find chips

There are some chips on the scandoubler that is a bit difficult to find and it is the OKI M5142 and NEC 42101. One card uses six chips of each. As usual, some chips pop up here and there on Ebay and there are the usual places where you can find these chips (Aliexpress). If you do some research you might even find clones of these chips that are fully compatible.

ADV7120KP30 is the same chip the A4000D uses, I got 5 from Aliexpress last year for my A4000D build so had 4 to chose from.

Anyways, building this Amiga scandoubler/flickerfixer is very straight foward.

Ports and switches on the back

The backside of the Multifix AGA is kind a busy, more so than a typical scandoubler that usually only has a 15 pin female VGA port.

You might wonder why it has two USB ports, two switches and an audio port on the back. I did too, and it is not quite obvious why by reading the documentation on Git-lab. Turns out, the USB ports are powered only, meaning, you can use these for devices that uses USB power such as VGA to HDMI converters. There is a pinout on the Multifix PCB so you can hook up the USB ports to your USB card saving one bracket space. The switches disables the flicker fixer functionality and the scandoubler functionality (useful if you just want to pass through video output). And what about the audio output? I think the card picks up audio from the video slot so you might be able to get sound from here (I am not sure though).

Oh, and that bracket, it was not made by me, I found a guy on a1k.org who could sell me two (I plan to build another), I could never make one that good looking myself.

Practice makes you perfect (when building an Amiga motherboard)

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Motorola 68030 25Mhz on the A3000D motherboard (ReAmiga 3000 SMC version)

I am working on a ReAmiga 3000 motherboard. I am in no rush to finish it, taking it really slow ordering one set of parts at a time. Last week I got the 68030 so I decided to solder it on the motherboard this weekend. Hopefully I will be able to do a test drive before Q1 is over!

GottaGoFaZt3r 256 MB Zorro 3 memory card

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GottaGoFaZt3r 256 MB RAM Zorro 3 card for the Amiga

GottaGoFaZt3r is a memory card for Zorro 3 big box Amiga computers that you can build or buy premade. Find out more information about the GottaGoFaZt3r Amiga memory card here.

Amiga with a Zorro 2 bus supports up to 8 MB memory on the Zorro 2 bus, that memory is shared with other devices on the bus so if you have a graphics card with 2 MB you can only have 6 MB additional fast mem on the Zorro 2 bus. With Zorro 3 that is IIRC increased to 1 GB.

Phase 5 Fastlane vs GottaGoFaZt3r

Before this card was released there was not a huge offering of Zorro 3 memory cards, the most famous was probably the Fastlane from Phase 5, a huge full size Zorro 3 memory card that uses rare 30 pin memory and commanded high prices on the second hand market. The Fastlane has 16 30-pin SIMM sockets and can be expanded to 256 MB, but that would require 16 very rare 16 MB 30-pin SIMM memory. Phase 5 made awesome hardware back in the day but time marches on.

While the Fastlane was also a SCSI card the GottaGoFaZt3r is just a memory card. Where the Fastlane is full size the modern card is a mini half size Zorro 3 card. It is autodetected and just does one thing, adding more memory to your Z3 Amiga.

Whats the point of a 256 MB memory card in an Amiga?

The GottaGoFaZt3r can be built to be a 128 MB card or 256 MB card. Off course I went for the 256 MB option. While this could be seen as just bragging rights to be able to pump up your Amiga with a 256 MB memory card, keep in mind that this is actually usable on an Amiga, even with oldschool applications thanks to being able to use the memory card as a huge RAM disk.

Some comments about building the GottaGoFaZt3r Amiga memory card

Memory and CPLD was sourced from China, other than those parts its a very straight forward BOM. The build is also very simple. While the BOM does not mentions a capacitor at C1 I got the recommendations to add one so thats what I did.

My setup

In total there is 660 MB Fast RAM in my Amiga 4000TX

I installed the GottaGoFaZt3r card in my A4000TX. Currently the memory setup looks like this on my Amiga 4000TX which is alsy my primary Amiga.

  • GottaGoFaZt3r: 256 MB
  • BFG9060: 128 MB
  • ZZ9000: 256 MB

I will add 128 MB fast ram to the motherboard (which will be used as 96 MB by the A4000TX), so in the future I will have 736 MB fast mem in my daily driver. Currently the memory is reported as 660 MB as I have a memory stick that is not really supported by the TX so it only partially works.

Another Mini version of GBAPII++ built and tested

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I got the opportunity last year during fall to purchase a GBAPII++ mini graphics card with all passives already mounted. Only thing it did not have was the Cirrus Logic chip, memory chp and the CPLD (and some small components). The mini version of the GBAPII++ is the same card functionality wise as the regular one. You can read about the regular GBAPII++ here, you can read about the mini version of the card here.

As I was going to build the regular version of the graphics card in parallell I got lazy when I put together the BOM and assumed that the voltage regulator was the same for both of the cards. I was wrong, the GBAPII++ mini uses another voltage regulator, which explains why I could not program the CPLD and why the voltage regulator was running very hot on the card once I had built it.

Having received another shipment of components from Mouser late last year in December with the correct voltage regulator, I was anxious to find out if I had fried the card or if it was going to work. Happy to tell you the card in the picture is working fine after I swapped the voltage regulator to the correct one!

Whats the point of such a small Amiga graphics card?

I use my other GBAP2++ mini card in my Mini-ITX Amiga Denise but I think I will use this one in another big box Amiga. As you can see the Denise is installed in a very low profile case – The tiny card makes it possible to use a small case. If anyone is wondering what case I am running, it is a Chieftec IX-01B Mini-ITX case but it has the CD/DVD addition stacked on top of it to make room for the graphics card (Chieftec MK-35DV).

This Amiga is based on the Denise Mini-ITX A500+ clone motherboard. It has a TF356 68030 turbo card with 64MB memory, a 4 GB CF card and an Indivision ECS MK3, it also has a GBAP2++ mini graphics card. The video output from the VGA connector is beautifully switched from native ECS to P96 output (and vice versa).

Here is another closeup of the card running fine in my Denise Amiga clone.

OpenA1200RTC – Amiga real time clock built

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The final Amiga hardware project of the year for me is this nice mini hardware kit for the Amiga 1200, the OpenA1200RTC. A real time clock that you can hook up to an Amiga that has a clock port. Find out more about the OpenA1200RTC here. The real time clock makes the Amiga 1200 keep track of time.

Building the OpenA1200RTC

This was a very simple 20 minute build containing only 13 parts. The only moderately difficult to find part is probably the RTC chip which can be found on Ebay or AliExpress.

What is the clock port in an Amiga?

The Amiga 1200 has a port fameously dubbed the ”clock port”. The clock port is a 2 mm double row 22 pin header close to the CPU slot. It was rarely used for its intended purpose, to host a real time clock, since hardware engineers figured out how to hook up sound cards, serial ports and other things to it.

There are some Zorro cards that also has clock ports. That means it is possible to run clock port hardware on a big box Amiga that can carry Zorro cards.

So what do you use an RTC for anyways on an Amiga?

The main purpose of having an RTC such as the OpenA1200RTC is for the Amiga to not lose time when it is powered off. Having your computer keep track on time is not only usable for having a clock on the desktop. If the computer keeps track of time, that means all files will have timestamps whjen they where created or last edited. While it is possible to sync date and time with a server over the internet it could be handy to have an internal RTC on an Amiga that is not hooked up to the internet a majority of time. Also, it could be nice to finally use the clock port for its intended application once.

BFG9060 Amiga 060 turbo card in PCB color red fully built and tested

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BFG9060 with rev 1 68060 under testing in my A4000TX

I built a BFG9060 060 turbo card last year that I could clock at 100Mhz, this is the second BFG9060 I have built and it is in a cool red PCB color. Thanks to the Xilinx programmer I got I could finally program the CPLDs on it but did not have time testing it fully. Now that I have tested it I can finally confirm that it is working 100%.

Actually, I just ran Quake for an hour with it mounted in my primary Amiga, my A4000TX daily driver, and the card performed just fine. Once I have it permanently installed in one of my big box Amigas I will do a proper 24h POVRay fish render test. But as it is now, I am happy with how it performed!

Mystery 68060 CPU

I got this 68060 chip from Vesalia years ago (probably 12+ years ago), and for a really good price too. It was a deal too good to pass on even though I did not know what to do with it. Well I am happy that I kept it but for all these years I wondered three things:

  1. Did it work?
  2. What kind of 060 was it?
  3. Is it a fake? Why did it have these strange markings and not the typical Motorola markings?

The answer to those questions are:

  1. Yes the 68060 works fine! And it does not get that hot either (though I have a heatsink/fan on it).
  2. It is a rev 1 68060.
  3. It is not a fake 060 – It came from a Phase 5 turbo card – Phase 5 used to add this text to the 060s on the turbo cards.

While the CPU works, it is a little bit of a bummer that it is a rev 1 as that revision has bugs. But there are work arounds for that so it does not really matter. Unfortunately, as its rev 1, that means no 100Mhz overclock. But to be honest with you, I am glad just having another full (MMU/FPU) 060 on a big box Amiga turbo card.

68060 low profile 5v cooler

I was afraid that the CPU I had was going to run too hot so I went into my stash of heatsinks to look for a suitable cooler for it. I found this thin 5v laptop cooler that I must have kept in my stash for more than 15 years. I got it from an old Acer Celeron laptop I found in the trash at a job I had and I was glad I finally found a use for it.

It is a thin radial fan that sits on an aluminium bottom plate that acts as a heatsink. I have not found modern alternatives in this size for a good price so I guess they have become rare these days.

I used thermal adhesive tape (also called ”frag tape” BITD) to secure the heatsink to the CPU. Believe me, this thermal double sided adhesive tape has insane stickiness, there is no chance of the heatsink falling of the CPU if mounted vertically.

I can confirm, according to tests done with my finger, that the CPU does not run hot at all with the heatsink/fan on it. I am starting to wonder that maybe it was overkill, but if I end up using it in an A3000D case it might come in handy as that case has poor cooling performance.

A500-GraKa GBAPII++ Amiga Graphics Card built and tested

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GBAPII++ Amiga graphics card

This is the second GBAPII++ Amiga graphics card I have built. I finished the last bit of the build two weeks ago. Today I tested it in my Denise Amiga clone and could confirm that it was working fine. If you are interesting in building one yourself, check out more information about the graphics card here. There are some details about the background of the card there too.

Hardware specs

The GBAPII++ is a Zorro 2 based Amiga graphics card based around the Cirrus Logic GD5434 chip. It has 2 MB memory and is a relatively affordable Amiga graphics card. Occasionally you see users referring to the card as an open Picasso 2 card as you can order empty PCBs yourself and build it. But if you know Amiga hardware well this card is based on another chip. The similarities are close though, both cards has only 2 MB and is probably likewise in performance as they are both Zorro 2.

The VGA adapter plate has both output and input so its possible to run scandoubler output through one VGA output, very handy and a must have these days IMHO. I use mine with a Indivision MK3 and it works perfectly out of box. Or run it with the Multivision-AGA scandoubler.

It is possible to use the card on an Amiga 500 by soldering an 86 pin 2.54mm edge card slot to the side of the card, thats probably why the graphics card goes by the name A500-GraKa.

Components

The graphics card is based on the Cirrus Logic GD5434 chip

If you are thinking about building one I suggest you go looking for a GD5434 chip first. These chips are not impossible to find but can be pricey. I have paid between 20 to 40 euro each for Cirrus Logic GD5434 chips (currently have built four cards based on this chip). Finding an old VGA card and desoldering a chip with hot air is also a possibility.

The memory used is the same type of memory that is used in an Amiga 1200 1.4d revision. The typical SOJ40 2MB memory chips in the quantity of 4 chips.

I had difficulty finding the correct voltage crystal but eventually found the right one on AliExpress (and it worked too).

Building the graphics card

For some reason I thought building this card was incredibly confusing. I think the main reason is that I somehow got the build instructions for a previous revision of the A500GraKa card, once I got the correct file everything worked out fine! IIRC there are some solder pads marked as ferrite beads that should take resistors (or it was the other way). To find out what components go where one can look into the designer files, also study the BOM.

Performance

The graphics card works especially fine in lower resolutions and fewer colors like this 800×600 8 color Workbench

I have not tested performance yet and will probably never do, but make no mistake, this is no competition for a ZZ9000 graphics card. It is a fine card to use on a 030 based Amiga with a Zorro 2 bus as long as one do not go crazy on the amount of colors or resolution used. It is much better than using hires laced. I stick to 800×600 in 8 colors and it works fine.

Conclusion

The graphics card is hooked up to the VGA adapter plate that is fitted to a3D printed bracket

Many thanks for the creators of this card and previous cards it is based on. I think this card is a no brainer, just get one if you have an empty Zorro slot and no graphics card. I will list the good things first and negative later, these are strictly my personal opinions.

Positive

  • Half size card
  • Has a hole cut out for your finger so you can remove it easely
  • Autoswitch between scandoubler/VGA
  • Open card, PCBs can be ordered by yourself. There is also commercial version of it
  • There is a thread on a1k.org where you can ask questions about the card
  • Supported in P96 (so you can install the card with the P96 installer)

Negative

  • Somewhat confusing build instructions
  • Only has 2 MB
  • Is a Zorro 2 card so its slow (but still perfectly fine for lower resolutions/fewer colors)
Here is Doom running on the GBAPII++ Amiga Graphics Card