Amiga 1200s upgraded

[RobertB]

     A few weeks ago at the last TOGA meeting, I left two A1200s - one with a Blizzard 68040 @ 33 MHz and the other with a Blizzard 68060 @ 50 MHz. - for tech Duncan M..  He was supposed to install Tracker Hero in both.  However, to my pleasant surprise, he took it upon himself to upgrade the A1200s.  He got rid of the old, mechanical hard drives in both and put in CompactFlash-to-IDE adapters and 4 gig CF cards as solid state drives.  He installed OS 3.9 and Boing Bags 1 and 2.  He put dual 2" fans blowing over the motherboard.  He removed the CPU fan on the Blizzard '040 and knocked the Blizzard back down to 25 MHz instead of its overclocked speed of 33 MHz.  He gave the Blizzard '060 128 megs of RAM and the '040 64 megs of RAM.
     I picked up the A1200 '060 today, and Duncan threw in an extra-heavy duty power supply that he modded from an AT p.s..  That's the machine I'll be taking to Notacon 8/PixelJam Demoparty next weekend.  The attendees there should have a lot of fun with it.
     He's keeping the A1200 '040 to try and mod its Blizzard board some more, perhaps even replace the '040 with a '060.

          All done at a low price,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug
          July 23-24 Commodore Vegas Expo 2011 - http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex

[RobertB]

A few weeks ago at the last TOGA meeting, I left two A1200s - one with a Blizzard 68040 @ 33 MHz and the other with a Blizzard 68060 @ 50 MHz. - for tech Duncan M..  He was supposed to install Tracker Hero in both.

     Ack!  Tracker Hero is not working well with the '060 and OS 3.9.  The attendees at the show will have to use Shredz64 on the C64.

          Wrote to the TH developer,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug
          July 23-24 Commodore Vegas Expo 2011 - http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex

[RobertB]

He got rid of the old, mechanical hard drives in both and put in CompactFlash-to-IDE adapters and 4 gig CF cards as solid state drives.  He installed OS 3.9 and Boing Bags 1 and 2.

     Some corrections here... A1200 '060 has a 2 gig CF card drive, and the unofficial Boing Bag 3 has also been installed.
     The A1200 '060 had some damage on the way to/from the Cleveland Notacon/PixelJam Demoparty.  A key was broken, and I blame over-zealous TSA handlers.

          Truly,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug
          July 23-24 Commodore Vegas Expo 2011 - http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex

[RobertB]

He's keeping the A1200 '040 to try and mod its Blizzard board some more, perhaps even replace the '040 with a '060.

     I pick up the A1200 '040 on Sunday.  Duncan told me that he had to replace the motherboard on it with that of another PAL board (I wonder what happened).  The damaged A1200 '060 from the Notacon/PixelJam Demoparty will go in for repair (hopefully, quickly done).  The prize A2000 Video Toaster system for the July 23-24 CommVEx will be left for him to go over before it is raffled off.

          Truly,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug
          July 23-24 Commodore Vegas Expo v7 2011 - http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex

[RobertB]

I pick up the A1200 '040 on Sunday.

     The A1200 '040 is working well, and because Duncan has had more time with it, he has loaded more good stuff on its 2 gig CF card drive.

Duncan told me that he had to replace the motherboard on it with that of another PAL board (I wonder what happened).

     It just suddenly quit.  He tried replacing all the capacitors on the board, but that didn't bring it back. 

The damaged A1200 '060 from the Notacon/PixelJam Demoparty will go in for repair (hopefully, quickly done).

     The repair was done within 30 minutes.  The most troublesome were all the screws that had to be removed just to get to replace one key stem.

The prize A2000 Video Toaster system for the July 23-24 CommVEx will be left for him to go over before it is raffled off.

     He immediately got to work on cleaning up the motherboard and replacing the clock battery, though he could have waited.  I won't pick it up until I have come back from Europe in July. 

          Truly,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug
          July 23-24 Commodore Vegas Expo v7 2011 - http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex

[RobertB]

     I forgot to mention that the modded PC power supply that he provided for the A1200 '040 did not put out *enough* power!  Before I took possession of it, he tested out the system, and the A1200 kept crashing, the screen going blank when trying to move windows around.  At first, he thought it was a memory SIMM on the Blizzard accelerator.  But after attaching a standard A500 p.s. to the system, he found that there were no more crashes.  I came away without a p.s. (though I have standard ones back home); he promised to get me another heavy-duty PC p.s. to replace the broken one.
     He also gave me another external CD-ROM drive to connect to the Blizzard's SCSI port.

          A generous fellow, indeed,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug
          July 23-24 Commodore Vegas Expo v7 2011 - http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex

[RobertB]

     While digging around the house two days ago, I came across an A1200 box.  Inside was an A1200, cushioned by plastic bags filled with confetti.  The computer was labeled as being from Bobbie Sellers.  I had forgotten that she had given this away when I visited her in San Francisco several years ago (I remembered another A1200 and an A3000 she gave away but forgot this one).  It's labeled as having '060 board, 8 megs of RAM, and a SCSI port peeking out of the rear.  I'll have to open it up and find out what that board is.  Could it be a Blizzard?  (Not again!)  The power supply was missing, and so, I haven't been able to test it out yet.

          If it works, it needs more memory,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug