Posts by W3DRK

Hello! I’m curious to know if there is currently a way to purchase from your store using Bitcoin, and if not are there any future plans to support Bitcoin?

Regards!

Very nice indeed!

Perhaps this has been answered elsewhere, but will there be a possibility for the customer to supply their own CPU? I have a few of Chucky's A3660s I've built (all three with rev 5 masks so just fine for 66MHz and under) and a dead GVP 060 kicking around too, I would certainly be tempted to use a spare 060 from one of those to beef up my trusty 1200 on a budget.

Also, I should add I'd happily whip out the credit card for a modern 3000/4000 040/060 accelerator in an instant. That ecosystem is completely lacking any source of new accelerators that adds local bus FASTRAM and DMA HDD controllers.

I don't think a missing upper shield would cause your machine to become so completely unstable with an accelerator installed, but having that shield certainly wouldn't be a bad idea if one can be found. If this was a recent acquisition, is there any chance the person you bought your A1200 could provide you with one?

I don't understand why so many A1200 owners were eager to leave those out, it's not like they are difficult to put back. Considering these computers were designed to sit so close to CRTs with high-current degaussing coils, big power bricks, etc, that shield was put there for reasons beyond simply reducing spurious emissions.

In any event, hopefully the power supply you noted you use with your A500 will make a difference. If it can reliably power an accelerated 500, it should work fine with your 1200 too.

Otherwise I suspect your motherboard has timing --or rather signal integrity issues. In the past I believe the suggested mitigation was E123C, E125C = OPEN, E121C, E122C = 22pf NP0, and E121R, E122R = ferrite choke. Since you said all 4 caps are gone, it's possible someone hastily removed the caps when it wasn't warranted and inadvertently caused the issue you're having now.

Hopefully Jens doesn't mind my jumping in...apologies if so!

What revision motherboard is in your 1200?

Thank you for the information Jens. It's nice to see a product creator also engaging directly with his customers!

I agree PLCC sockets can be flaky, and in fact the same can be said for any kind of socket-none are more reliable then solder. In my experience though, when high quality sockets are used properly (only clean components socketed, use of proper pulling tools, chip swaps kept to a minimum, etc) they seem to hold up OK. As a tech veteran I'm willing to accept these caveats in exchange for the ability to swap between native PAL or NTSC Agnus if necessary.

In any event, should you decide you'd like some beta testing your bootblock PAL/NTSC switching tool please feel free to reach out to me.

Cheers Jens!

Dieter

Is your power supply up to the task? I also just recently installed a ACA1233n-40 in my A1200 and it's been rock solid. In fact it just ran a 24-hour stretch extracting over 2700 WHDload games from PCMCIA to Compact Flash, then several hours of playing Ambermoon without a hiccup or reboot.

The power supply I'm using the "light" SMPS supply that's rated for 3-amps on the 5V rail. I believe some of the heavier linear supplies typically sold with the A500 weren't up to the task of powering accelerated systems.

Anyway, just a thought.

Greetings! I have purchased an ACE2 and Agnus 318069-10 from iComp which are both currently en-route to me. I'm very exited such a product has been made available since a 2meg chip RAM A500 is just outstanding. Thanks for making this happen!

I am curious if you think there would be any issue refitting the "native" NTSC Agnus with PN 318069-10 so I don't need to switch into PAL mode via software? Electrically 318069-10 and 318069-11 are identical, so unless your CPLD implementation somehow requires the NTSC part, I assume this swap would be fine?

Further, it looks like it would be a very tight fit with the pads for the GARY leads being in close proximity, should fitting a low-profile PLCC socket be possible?

I have an IR BGA rework tool so safely lifting the existing Agnus shouldn't be an issue assuming this "NOS" chip doesn't "pop" from moisture infiltration, and I'm careful not to damage the "inverted" PLCC socket underneath.

And I obviously accept any responsibility for damage.

My PAL A500 is fitted with a TerribleFire 68030 40MHz accelerator in the 68K socket, so no need for an ACA500 - which unfortunately means no facility to kick the Agnus into PAL mode in early start-up... so I'd prefer to either convert this to a native PAL device, or even better- a socketed one to switch between them if necessary.

Cheers!!