Amiga 2000 (Finally done)

Part 5/5

After,

Finally done!

Well almost, because there where some small problems. First of all, and I wonder why I didn’t notice that before, the bottom of the case was badly warped.

/img/a2000_bottom.jpg

So I had to take everything out again and bend the case into a bit more acceptable shape. And of course rebuild the whole thing again. After this “mechanical” problem, it was time to install the software. I already installed Workbench 2.1 on the SCSI2SD drive, but I was presented with the following screen.

/img/a2000_kickstart.jpg

All Amiga owners know what this means, no bootable drive/floppy found. So the SCSI2SD drive wasn’t bootable. When trying to format the drive it seemed very unstable, and failed to finish the format. After updating the SCSI2SD firmware it was clear the SCSI2SD itself was somehow working, but not when it was build in the case. First I thought it was a SD card compatibility problem, but other SD cards didn’t make a difference. After a lot of googling, there were others with kind of the same problems but nothing specific and no fix. But I did find someone that had problems with the DC DC converter and the only difference between my earlier test was how the SCSI2SD was powered, during the test directly from the PSU and when build in the case via the GVP SCSI card. A test with removing the power connector and powering the SCSI2SD from USB fixed the problems. So it did seem to be a problem with the power supply via the 3.5" connector.

/img/a2000_scsi2sd_cable.jpg
/img/a2000_scsi2sd_cable_build_in.jpg

Since the Amiga 2000 PSU only has 2 3.5" floppy connectors, and they are both in use, I needed a 5.25" connector to 3.5" connector cable. Of course I didn’t have one, so I quickly made one. Powering the SCSI2SD from the PSU and not from the GVP SCSI card fixed all problems, the Amiga now works fine. And before people complain that I just wrapped some tape around the cable to prevent short circuiting, here is the final cable I made.

/img/a2000_scsi2sd_cable_new.jpg

Since the SCSI2SD only needs 5V I removed the 12V wires, this also prevents damaging the SCSI2SD when accidentally plugin the connector the wrong way.

As some might have noticed from the Kickstart screenshot, I updated the ROM from version V37.175 to version V40.63.

/img/a2000_sys_info.jpg

I also updated Denise to a ECS hires version. The GVP SCSI card with the 8 MByte expansion RAM also shows up on the Advanced Amiga Analyzer.

/img/a2000_ram_test.jpg

To be sure the 8 MByte RAM was OK I ran the RAM check several times, and no problems where detected, everything works fine.

So now everything works off to the Scumm Bar on Monkey Island


See also