[geeks] A very d'oh! moment

[Mark]

On 10 May 2007, at 22:36, Bill Bradford wrote:

> Got the replacement Amiga 2000 power supply in today.  Went into my  
> "lab"
> to swap it out with the old one (which I hadn't touched in almost a  
> week,
> since my first attempt to power it up).
>
> As I went to unplug the old power supply's motherboard connector, I  
> noticed
> that I'd plugged it in off-by-one when I reassembled the system after
> dusting it out and reseating everything.
>
> D'OH!
>
> I plugged it in properly, prayed, and hit the switch:
>
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbill/492918491

Hey we all have off-days man :o) I can plead guilty to equally  
forehead-slapping moments of idiocy when working on Amigas, and many  
other computers. It's almost as bad as attaching an Array to your  
Ultra 60 then wondering why the drives don't show up - assuming it's  
knackered then 3 days later remembering you didn't issue a 'boot -r'  
to rebuild your devs...

A combination of inexperience with the hardware and just plain bad  
memory, combined with probable tiredness, and the fact the 2000 is a  
real SOB to reassemble - the drive/PSU carrier is really awkward with  
all the cables etc. to re-attach that Commodore so thoughtfully made  
just to short to be any use :P

I'm just glad to see you raise the purple screen of life from the  
dear thing!

> Oh well, at least I've got a spare now, with another A2K and an A4K  
> on the
> way.  I might still do the ATX power supply mod, as the "factory"  
> power
> supply for the A2K is a bit noisy.

if you get an AT or ATX PSU make sure you get one with the switch on  
the back - seems like a silly thing to say but I'm against butchering  
the cases of old Amigas (they aren't in the kind of supply that old  
Macs are). The wiring isn't a major problem as long as you can source  
the PSU to motherboard connector. It's a single line of big fat pins  
on the 2000 which is fairly standard fair (unlike the weird one on  
the A4000).

My only gripe with the 2000 chassis is if you have 2 floppy drives (I  
have 1 Amiga drive and 1 PC drive hooked to a Catweasel) then there  
are no Hard Drive mounts. I have my 1GB HP SCSI disk bolted to the  
SCSI card (most earlier era cards
are designed with a hard disk mount) but I'd like to put a second  
larger data disk in, maybe a 9GB or something but I have nowhere to  
put it :o( I think a strip of aluminum angle with the right honing at  
each end would do the job - I reckon I can get 2 drives on something  
like that then suspend them in one of the ISA slots at the end (which  
I never use as I don't have a bridge board).

-- 
Mark Benson

My Blog:
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"Never send a human to do a machine's job..."