[geeks] A very d'oh! moment

[Bill Bradford]

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 12:37:25AM +0100, Mark wrote:
> 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...

drvconfig;disks

BTDT too, just not 3 days later.  More like "2-3 reboots later.."

> 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

And such tight clearance above the motherboard, too.  I've got this 
'030 accelerator here that had bent pins; I'm thinking of putting a 
new socket between it and the motherboard socket as a spacer/to have
stronger pins going into the motherboard, but I'm not sure if there's
that much clearance under the drive tray.

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

Me too!  I'm glad the flickerfixer works with the Dell flat panel.

> 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).

If I do the ATX mount, it will be one of the PSes with a switch on the
back - but I still have to rig a "softswitch" for the ATX connector.
I'll most likely use the connector off one of the existing Amiga 2000
power supplies, but make it into an "adapter":

ATX PS -> ATX female plug-----Amiga female motherboard connector

That way if I want to switch to a different ATX PS in the future, it's
literally plug-and-play.

> 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'll probably put a Plextor SCSI CD-ROM drive in the 5.25" bay, then 
put a 9G SCSI drive where the second floppy drive would normally go.
If I do that, it lets me use a floppy-bay cover to also host the 
power switch that's connected to the ATX-to-Amiga power supply adapter. 8-)

All this is, of course, if I end up expanding this system instead of using
the Amiga 4000 that will be on its way to me this weekend - I scored
another A2K and an A4K for cost-of-shipping.  Hopefully the A4K is a later
model (the A4000cr) that uses the normal "coin cell" battery on the
motherboard, or has not had any battery leakage/damage.

For now, I'm just glad to see Kickstart come up on this machine; now all
I need to get it basically functional is a physical set of WorkBench 2.1
floppies.  Unfortunately my source for those is out of town until Monday,
then he'll have to make them on Monday and mail them, so I may not get
to do anything further with this box until late next week.

Bill

-- 
Bill Bradford 
Houston, Texas