That GVP's price tag back in the day was so expensive that most of us simply dreamed about such an upgrade. What you have added today would make Jay Miner proud!
Your Amiga 2000 is really coming along nicely! I love your solution with flipping the 3D printed SD card hard drive caddy. Very smart and clean cable management.
Another nice way to do this is to mount the SD-based SCSI card in the 5 1/4" bay using a 3 1/2" mounting bracket for SCSI2SD (~$15 via Inertial Computing) combined with a 3 1/2" to 5 1/4" adapter (~$5 via Amazon). Then the SD card is right up front. Looks like there is also a SCSI2SD mounting bracket for 5.25" drive bay, but currently out of stock at Inertial Computing.
It always amazes me how much work you put into your projects, from the researching of mods to all the 3d printer designs and the various trial and errors you've documented. These videos will be invaluable to folks in the future.
Bless you mate enjoy your 2000. I purchased a Heavily Souped Up Amiga 2000 from a music studio in 1998 when they switched over to using Macs running Cubase music software. I loved that machine...
Very nice! As one of the original Amiga 1000 owners, I used to want an A2k upgrade in my college years (even though I had a "Toolbox" expansion chassis that let me plug a couple of A2000 cards into my 1000). Getting away from kickstart disks would have been nice. Alas, I fell into corporate IT a few years later and had to jump over to PC. All the years from 1985-1995 I was railing about how bad PC operating systems were compared to AmigaOS/Workbench.
DKB made a kickstart switcher for A1000 back in the day called a KwikswitchII that allowed real roms on A1000 eliminating kick disks. You could also program 4 roms onboard the A1000 with a kickstart. Today there are many kickstart adapters out for the A1000.
As an fyi, your upgrade to OS 3.1 should eliminate the need for a floppy switch. If you press both mouse buttons on startup it brings up a boot menu that allows you to select your boot device, just remember the 2 finger salute! Great video, love me some Amiga fun 😀
This is great! Still trying to work out what to do with my A2000. It came with an accelerator card, and a flicker free card. I just don’t know a whole lot about them. This video helps!
I was surprised to learn that you actually don't need the power cable to run the SCSI2SD emulator, it takes its power off of the ribbon cable. This was true of the original V5, V6 I would be surprised if that feature has been removed.
Awesome job. I like the fact is that still classic ECS/OCS machine like A500 (yeah i know its 2000 :) ) just much faster. I'd like to see such computer on my desk to play all that Amiga games and use Deluxe Paint once again as it was my first graphic app (I'm graphic designer nowadays). Good times. Gratz, mate!
I had similiar issues with an 8MB FastRam upgrade and my 2086 XT Bridgeboard, it seems Memory Allocation can make conflicts. I use 3.2 and there you can have large HDD images. Nice Video!
@@MrLurchsThings You buy one license and are legally allowed to use (if you like) 3.2 (3.2.1 as of now) on all your Amiga´s in your possession, including CD32 or CDTV, that sweetens the deal a bit, otherwise brings some nice new features like dragging windows outside the border etc.) Anyway, may the A2000 bring hours of fun :)
20:14: I'm honestly surprised no hacking crew appears to yet have had a crack (heh) at fixing Frontier's performance issues. I bet there are some people out there who could optimise the game to run better on a stock Amiga. Maybe the hesitancy is because the game is just too useful as a benchmark as it is, so nobody wants to tinker with it?
GVP was quality back in the day, used to run the hdd ram combo in my rev5 2000 back in the day amiga taught me scsi, i still have a 2000 its my favorite big box amiga these days its vampire powered, i am putting together another one it has a re amiga 2000 pcb i built 2mb chip, zz9000 video with audio card, gvp gforce 040 combo
My 2000 had _severe_ battery damage. I must have missed some corrosion, because it's recently died again. (I have yet to see anyone with a board with as many destroyed vias as mine had. Not just broken traces, but the holes themselves corroded away.)
Thanks for the tips about the df0/df1 boot swap! I hadn't thought to do that before in my 2000, but it would be nice! I already have a df1 (internal) but am curious to see if I could make it work with external df2.
What a coincidence, I watched Jan Beta's recent Amiga 1200 accelerator upgrade video just this morning! I've been thinking of picking up a ZuluSCSI; I just bought a BlueSCSI which was less than half the price, so I'm curious how they compare (aside from the obvious microSD vs full size SD).
I’ve got a BlueSCSI here too. However there *seems* to be some compatibility issues with Amigas depending on SCSI controller/etc. So in the end I just didn’t have the time to battle that and went for the known working solution.
@@MrLurchsThings GouldFish On Games is the only person (YT channel) that I've seen post about getting BlueSCSI to work on an Amiga. I talked with Eric who created BlueSCSI about this when I was at VCF Midwest and he thought that method was quite a hack (in the negative sense.) An issue is that the BlueSCSI creator seems currently only interested in (and knowledgeable about) Macs, so his focus/testing is exclusively there. I don't understand the incompatibility given that we (Amiga users) regularly use Mac SCSI peripherals, but BlueSCSI definitely currently doesn't work with known/unmodified Amiga SCSI host adapters.
2MB chip ram is bad for compatibility anyway, if I remember right some games wont start with it so I had a switch to toggle on my A500. But I cannot remember what the benefits were with 2MB. I had a kickrom switcher between 1.3 and 2.04. Honestly, for just gaming kickrom 1.3 is the way to go for max compatibility with old games. But for Workbench the newer kickroms are cool.
Another great video. I'm really torn what to do with my A2000A board (The imfamous German version) as it's going to be a lot of work to get fixed, and even then, it's basically an A1000 in a fancy case.
Now all you need is an old school flicker fixer and an old school RTG card!!! Lovely job Mr L. Also - do you need to install MMULib or is that 030 an EC model without the MMU?
Great video! The Amiga 2000 looks to be a great system with a lot of expandability. Question on the Agnus chip, I have a 500 with a 8370. Prices for upgrades seem outrageous. Where did you find a 8375?
The floppy drive mount/faceplate -- to make the smaller size devices fill the larger A2000 floppy size -- was that 3d printed or a commercial product? I could use some of those.
What old Amiga hardware do you have for this A2000? I was wanting to try some things (or get someone to try some things).... and maybe you can do a video on it if you got the parts (or similar ones). Or even feel like tracking them down. There's a reason for all of this, my brother had one, and back in 1998 I had a fight with him over an ebay issue and to make a long story short, I never got to help him "fix up" his A2000. He ended up smashing the 2000 mobo out of frustration over not being able to install OS 3.5 (it required an 020). In hindsight, the A2091, was causing DMA problems with just about everything including a wonderful GVP 040 card he had bought. It worked for a bit... but was very slow. Reason why was it didn't have ANY GVP RAM on it (that's why it was so cheap for him). So the thinking was to use the 2mb on the 2091 as the... heh... "Fast RAM". But DMA problems with the 2091 (which is legendary) is what caused problems. I had come up with a solution but he was adamant about selling off the 040 (which I did sadly). The parts list I had in mind to help him "beef up" his A2000 (back in 1997-98..) Was: 1.Bigfoot PSU for A2000 2.DKB Megachip (the one with the 8375 Agnus -Highest revision Agnus before they made the AGA Blitter) They made three different "MegaChips" 2000 and 500/2000 and plain ole MegaChip. (Planned on soldering the "clip" to the Gary CHIP with a touch of solder so it wouldn't "come loose" at an inappropriate time and Guru the machine. Something he had had happen with the 8372b version of DKB's MegaChip 500/.2000) 3. DKB's "Multistart II" The one with the "Three ROM chips (not the one with the two sockets) Seems there are two different versions of the Multistart II.... That ROM switcher had a jumper you could attache a switch to. That switch could determine if you start with the center ROM or the one on the side. Holding reset for 7 seconds makes a sound and switches to the third socket... then cycles back. Third one really isn't relevant... I'd use it with a Diagnostic ROM.. Putting 3.1 and 1.3 into the primary and secondary was the key. Speaking of Keys... 4.Was going to use an old fashioned Aluminum Keylock with key as a "switch". With one turn, it would turn on the A2091 card (disabled initially) and turn on the 1.3 ROM. If the Megachip was present, then that means the System would boot from the 2091, 2mb of 16 bit RAM, 2mb of CHIP and 1.3 ROM. The idea was to put Workbench 1.3 on the 2091's drive. Turning the key to this position would also, turn OFF the following cards in the list. 5. DKB Rapid Fire SCSI II controlled with 8mb of 16 bit RAM. SCSI-2 drive with Workbench 3.1 installed. Turning the key to "1.3 mode" would turn this card off. Creating an executable for 1.3 to use "addmem". using the Device ID of the Rapid Fire and the Upper bound 8mb space of the 16mb window could allow Workbench 1.3 to access 10 Mb of Fast RAM. Whether or not a DMA issue would arise from the 2091 complaining... is the real test. Any SCSI II card (like the GVP card you have) could be used in its place... doesn't have to be DKB's Rapid Fire. Our goal was to load this A2000 up with DKB stuff :D Other card that could be tested with this same concept of disabling the RAM's autoconfig (or the entire card) and then re-adding it using AddMem command would be Expansion SYstem's Dataflyer RAM with 8mb... or Microbotics 8 & Up board (8 mb)... or any Zorro II RAM card that adds 8mb. The attempt would be to circumvent the A2091 from acting like the "Karen" of the Amiga Cards world. :D Truth is, I couldn't stand the bugs that the 2091 had, and trying to defeat it (while still trying to use it) became something of an Albatross... If the Addmem idea failed... it would still be a kickass system for 1.3. 4mb Total.. WB 1.3 from HD... perfect for old 1.3 software and very old games. Not sure if there was a 1.3 WHDLoad version.. (there probably was at some point)... but that would have been a good spot to put a lot of older 1.2 to 1.3 games. Textcraft, was something my brother used to write novels on. Later on he did switch to Amiga Writer (under 3.1)... but he had a time trying to find a way to convert Textcraft documents in a way where it didn't retain "garbage characters". RAM became an issue with some large files and the program did NOT work on anything past 1.3. So backing things up or copying and pasting them to a notepad-like tool to weed out the formatting characters became a massive chore for him that sent him over the edge. So that was why the Addmem idea was going to be explored and still would make an interesting discovery if it did. 6. DKB Wildfire 060 + DKB Inferno graphics (attached to the Wildfire). This of course would be working under the 3.1 option and OFF under the 1.3 option for obvious reasons. It's the best A2000 Accelerator of all time (barring the new stuff they came out with that has a 68080...) it also... is the rarest thing to locate. You better post a REWARD of $500.00 just for the right to buy it from someone.. heh... I've never even SEEN the Inferno addon card. hard to find an image of it anywhere. It also has a SCSI II controller which, would make a good spot to connect a SCSI II CD Rom writer and put it into the 5.25 bay of the 2000. :D That way you don't have too many cables stringing around the entire computer. Also, it has space for 128mb of 32-bit RAM... this normally would make the 8mb RAM card obsolete. and,... might render the idea of using Addmem (from the 3.1 side... to find the 2091's 2mb and add it to the upper boundary address space. But just for giggles... if that were possible.. (138mb of Fast RAM) and another defeat of the 2091 card if it worked. (shoots off fireworks). The overall plan was to get the other stuff first so he could have 3.1 with 8mb of Fast on the Rapid Fire... The Wildfire, would have been the ultimate addon. But it never happened. Never got to see it. We argued over an ebay price (ebay was still new to people back then)... he freaked out when he saw the old Megachip 500/2000 with bid for $52.00 on it (7 bids) when he was expecting it to get $150 or at even $200. It sold for $212 or more I think... But his "freak out" caused a fight... Out of frustration, he put a fist into the center of his 2000 motherboard, believing it would never be upgraded so he could use OS 3.5. Sigh. Threw it in the trash... (so I could see it)..... Of course I salvaged it... sold the case... the keyboard... the PSU... the surviving custom chips (one of them, Paula or Gary was destroyed... with knuckle impression in them). Then I sold the bashed in motherboard on ebay for parts. I think I even got $30 for it. Heh 10 years later... we finally reconciled. I sold the cursed 2091 card with a drive on it. Included the old DMAC and old boot ROMS... Sold the stupid 2088 card... (hated that thing!.. it was useless) In the end he had won a Quik Pak A1200... then later sold that. Sigh. He should have kept that one. Anyways..... if yer up for a little experiment with Addmem... it might be fun to try it. Expect some gurus along the way. Be careful about switching Zorro slots... that could change the Board's ID location or address... making an executable that goes in WBStartup is the best idea.. or maybe just stick it into Utilities and click it when extra RAM is needed. This worked once with an A500 AdRAM board + a Dataflyer 500 with 8mb.... on a 68000! Then later a similar board, Expansion Systems "Baseboard. A clone of the AdRAM 540... :D So it is possible to break the 8mb barrier.... (not including CHIP RAM)
If I may ask- where did you get GVP Fast Prep? I found GVP Impact 500 and I will be buying same Zulu card for my A500. Problem is, I want to keep with original WB 1.3 which does not have any disk tools, and for the life of me I can not find any GVP drivers online. I can find just latest one which I suppose is not compatible with my one as I don't have 3.15 rom installed. Thanks.
it could be! Just check your 8375 revision. Unlike the 8372a (Pal/Ntsc switchable in software/hardware), the 8375 was made in two different packages (one for Pal, another for Ntsc). Give this a try.
@@MrLurchsThings it seemed like the left channel was missing from the elite 2 footage and then the drums kicked in. i'm guessing that's an accurate recording and it only stuck out to "thelemminkainen" since it feels like a mistake if you're not familiar with the source material (not that i am). all of those demos are mixed very well, actually.
@Mr Guru no I was talking about how it sounded to me on my desktop monitor speakers which have enough directionality that I can identify a missing channel very well.
If you want to save that extra Zorro slot and don't need the external SCSI connector, you can just desolder it from the hard card, and use the SCSI cable's slack to move the zulu card further back and re-purpose the bracket hole to insert/eject the SD card.
I've been repairing on Amiga's for 20+ years and i can tell you old Hmos chips are quite robust,that being said touching the case to ground yourself before handling stuff is usually more than adequate. I have never harmed any Amiga chips or boards from static in all that time.
That GVP's price tag back in the day was so expensive that most of us simply dreamed about such an upgrade. What you have added today would make Jay Miner proud!
Your Amiga 2000 is really coming along nicely! I love your solution with flipping the 3D printed SD card hard drive caddy. Very smart and clean cable management.
Yeah, can you image trying to flip that ribbon cable in that small space? Yikes!
Another nice way to do this is to mount the SD-based SCSI card in the 5 1/4" bay using a 3 1/2" mounting bracket for SCSI2SD (~$15 via Inertial Computing) combined with a 3 1/2" to 5 1/4" adapter (~$5 via Amazon). Then the SD card is right up front.
Looks like there is also a SCSI2SD mounting bracket for 5.25" drive bay, but currently out of stock at Inertial Computing.
It always amazes me how much work you put into your projects, from the researching of mods to all the 3d printer designs and the various trial and errors you've documented. These videos will be invaluable to folks in the future.
Thanks mate. I appreciate the support 👍
I've never wanted an Amiga 2000 more than after watching this video. Maybe one day! A girl can dream. Thanks for another amazing video Mr Lurch!
Thank you. I’m really happy how it turned out.
I remember so well playing Elite 2 on my A500. An awesome trip back in time. Thank you.
This is turning into a real dream Amiga 2000. Great vid!
Bless you mate enjoy your 2000. I purchased a Heavily Souped Up Amiga 2000 from a music studio in 1998 when they switched over to using Macs running Cubase music software. I loved that machine...
Very nice! As one of the original Amiga 1000 owners, I used to want an A2k upgrade in my college years (even though I had a "Toolbox" expansion chassis that let me plug a couple of A2000 cards into my 1000). Getting away from kickstart disks would have been nice. Alas, I fell into corporate IT a few years later and had to jump over to PC. All the years from 1985-1995 I was railing about how bad PC operating systems were compared to AmigaOS/Workbench.
Very similar experience here. PCs were just fancy typewriters. Never got that excited about computers until I saw the Amiga Juggler demo running.
DKB made a kickstart switcher for A1000 back in the day called a KwikswitchII that allowed real roms on A1000 eliminating kick disks. You could also program 4 roms onboard the A1000 with a kickstart. Today there are many kickstart adapters out for the A1000.
A 2000 w/accelerator is SO much better, for all sorts of reasons.
You have a great machine there. I'm jealous!
As an fyi, your upgrade to OS 3.1 should eliminate the need for a floppy switch. If you press both mouse buttons on startup it brings up a boot menu that allows you to select your boot device, just remember the 2 finger salute! Great video, love me some Amiga fun 😀
This is great! Still trying to work out what to do with my A2000. It came with an accelerator card, and a flicker free card. I just don’t know a whole lot about them. This video helps!
Keep the 2000 stock, sell the cards and use that money to buy a 1200....
6:45: I'm retrocomputing (shrimp on the) Barbie. Filming CRTs is hard. Let's go shopping!
I was surprised to learn that you actually don't need the power cable to run the SCSI2SD emulator, it takes its power off of the ribbon cable. This was true of the original V5, V6 I would be surprised if that feature has been removed.
Gonna pull out my old Amiga and take a crack at fixing my GVP 030 accelerator card!
Awesome job. I like the fact is that still classic ECS/OCS machine like A500 (yeah i know its 2000 :) ) just much faster. I'd like to see such computer on my desk to play all that Amiga games and use Deluxe Paint once again as it was my first graphic app (I'm graphic designer nowadays). Good times.
Gratz, mate!
14:53 Who else had the Elite:Frontier song in their head?
I can’t tell you how many hours I spent on Frontier as a kid (PC version). The sound on the Amiga version seems superior, will have to give it a go
Wibbly wobbly
I had similiar issues with an 8MB FastRam upgrade and my 2086 XT Bridgeboard, it seems Memory Allocation can make conflicts. I use 3.2 and there you can have large HDD images. Nice Video!
I haven’t invested in 3.2 yet. Maybe this is the machine do to that.
@@MrLurchsThings You buy one license and are legally allowed to use (if you like) 3.2 (3.2.1 as of now) on all your Amiga´s in your possession, including CD32 or CDTV, that sweetens the deal a bit, otherwise brings some nice new features like dragging windows outside the border etc.) Anyway, may the A2000 bring hours of fun :)
@Mr Guru Thats why I retired the bridgeboard. Managed to get it to work with 4MB but with unpleasant side effects.
@Mr Guru Never used 3.1.4 and just remembered that part from the feature list, I find it usefull but not game changing like the >4GB HDD support.
Always great to revive a classic, what next you ask? perhaps an RTG card?
20:14: I'm honestly surprised no hacking crew appears to yet have had a crack (heh) at fixing Frontier's performance issues. I bet there are some people out there who could optimise the game to run better on a stock Amiga. Maybe the hesitancy is because the game is just too useful as a benchmark as it is, so nobody wants to tinker with it?
GVP was quality back in the day, used to run the hdd ram combo in my rev5 2000 back in the day amiga taught me scsi, i still have a 2000 its my favorite big box amiga these days its vampire powered, i am putting together another one it has a re amiga 2000 pcb i built 2mb chip, zz9000 video with audio card, gvp gforce 040 combo
@Neb6 Yes! And what a team, also Fred Bowen was in there (he took part into the design of A500 and A590/A2091 projects, at least).
i found with a GVP scsi card in an a2000, I needed to install 1.3 then install 3.1.
This is my favourite machine in my collection.. I would love to upgrade it with a zulu scsi.. NICE Retro build.. Only Amiga makes it possible.......
My 2000 had _severe_ battery damage. I must have missed some corrosion, because it's recently died again. (I have yet to see anyone with a board with as many destroyed vias as mine had. Not just broken traces, but the holes themselves corroded away.)
Thanks for the tips about the df0/df1 boot swap! I hadn't thought to do that before in my 2000, but it would be nice! I already have a df1 (internal) but am curious to see if I could make it work with external df2.
What a coincidence, I watched Jan Beta's recent Amiga 1200 accelerator upgrade video just this morning!
I've been thinking of picking up a ZuluSCSI; I just bought a BlueSCSI which was less than half the price, so I'm curious how they compare (aside from the obvious microSD vs full size SD).
I’ve got a BlueSCSI here too. However there *seems* to be some compatibility issues with Amigas depending on SCSI controller/etc. So in the end I just didn’t have the time to battle that and went for the known working solution.
@@MrLurchsThings GouldFish On Games is the only person (YT channel) that I've seen post about getting BlueSCSI to work on an Amiga.
I talked with Eric who created BlueSCSI about this when I was at VCF Midwest and he thought that method was quite a hack (in the negative sense.)
An issue is that the BlueSCSI creator seems currently only interested in (and knowledgeable about) Macs, so his focus/testing is exclusively there.
I don't understand the incompatibility given that we (Amiga users) regularly use Mac SCSI peripherals, but BlueSCSI definitely currently doesn't work with known/unmodified Amiga SCSI host adapters.
2MB chip ram is bad for compatibility anyway, if I remember right some games wont start with it so I had a switch to toggle on my A500. But I cannot remember what the benefits were with 2MB.
I had a kickrom switcher between 1.3 and 2.04. Honestly, for just gaming kickrom 1.3 is the way to go for max compatibility with old games. But for Workbench the newer kickroms are cool.
That's why WHDLoad is awesome, as the game installers tend to have compatibility fixes for systems with higher specs.
I believe that GVP faastprep wont work with zulu scsi- its so easy to setup compared to older bluescsi you don't need to...(have one on my A3K)
Nice !
Another great video. I'm really torn what to do with my A2000A board (The imfamous German version) as it's going to be a lot of work to get fixed, and even then, it's basically an A1000 in a fancy case.
Nathn in the AVCC group has repaired a few of these now.
Do you have a Bridgeboard demo video?
Your image is stable and showing 2mb chip ram on sys info also have you tried setting gvp ram to extended or auto config. Might help
Now all you need is an old school flicker fixer and an old school RTG card!!! Lovely job Mr L. Also - do you need to install MMULib or is that 030 an EC model without the MMU?
Great video! The Amiga 2000 looks to be a great system with a lot of expandability. Question on the Agnus chip, I have a 500 with a 8370. Prices for upgrades seem outrageous. Where did you find a 8375?
EBay UK. And I paid the ridiculous amount 😔
The floppy drive mount/faceplate -- to make the smaller size devices fill the larger A2000 floppy size -- was that 3d printed or a commercial product? I could use some of those.
3D printed. I’ll stick the design up on thingiverse later.
www.thingiverse.com/thing:5614906
What old Amiga hardware do you have for this A2000?
I was wanting to try some things (or get someone to try some things).... and maybe you can do a video on it if you got the parts (or similar ones). Or even feel like tracking them down.
There's a reason for all of this, my brother had one, and back in 1998 I had a fight with him over an ebay issue and to make a long story short, I never got to help him "fix up" his A2000.
He ended up smashing the 2000 mobo out of frustration over not being able to install OS 3.5 (it required an 020).
In hindsight, the A2091, was causing DMA problems with just about everything including a wonderful GVP 040 card he had bought.
It worked for a bit... but was very slow.
Reason why was it didn't have ANY GVP RAM on it (that's why it was so cheap for him).
So the thinking was to use the 2mb on the 2091 as the... heh... "Fast RAM".
But DMA problems with the 2091 (which is legendary) is what caused problems.
I had come up with a solution but he was adamant about selling off the 040 (which I did sadly).
The parts list I had in mind to help him "beef up" his A2000 (back in 1997-98..)
Was:
1.Bigfoot PSU for A2000
2.DKB Megachip (the one with the 8375 Agnus -Highest revision Agnus before they made the AGA Blitter) They made three different "MegaChips" 2000 and 500/2000 and plain ole MegaChip.
(Planned on soldering the "clip" to the Gary CHIP with a touch of solder so it wouldn't "come loose" at an inappropriate time and Guru the machine. Something he had had happen with the 8372b version of DKB's MegaChip 500/.2000)
3. DKB's "Multistart II" The one with the "Three ROM chips (not the one with the two sockets) Seems there are two different versions of the Multistart II....
That ROM switcher had a jumper you could attache a switch to. That switch could determine if you start with the center ROM or the one on the side.
Holding reset for 7 seconds makes a sound and switches to the third socket... then cycles back. Third one really isn't relevant... I'd use it with a Diagnostic ROM..
Putting 3.1 and 1.3 into the primary and secondary was the key.
Speaking of Keys...
4.Was going to use an old fashioned Aluminum Keylock with key as a "switch". With one turn, it would turn on the A2091 card (disabled initially) and turn on the 1.3 ROM.
If the Megachip was present, then that means the System would boot from the 2091, 2mb of 16 bit RAM, 2mb of CHIP and 1.3 ROM. The idea was to put Workbench 1.3 on the 2091's drive.
Turning the key to this position would also, turn OFF the following cards in the list.
5. DKB Rapid Fire SCSI II controlled with 8mb of 16 bit RAM. SCSI-2 drive with Workbench 3.1 installed. Turning the key to "1.3 mode" would turn this card off. Creating an executable for 1.3 to use "addmem". using the Device ID of the Rapid Fire and the Upper bound 8mb space of the 16mb window could allow Workbench 1.3 to access 10 Mb of Fast RAM. Whether or not a DMA issue would arise from the 2091 complaining... is the real test.
Any SCSI II card (like the GVP card you have) could be used in its place... doesn't have to be DKB's Rapid Fire. Our goal was to load this A2000 up with DKB stuff :D
Other card that could be tested with this same concept of disabling the RAM's autoconfig (or the entire card) and then re-adding it using AddMem command would be Expansion SYstem's Dataflyer RAM with 8mb... or Microbotics 8 & Up board (8 mb)... or any Zorro II RAM card that adds 8mb.
The attempt would be to circumvent the A2091 from acting like the "Karen" of the Amiga Cards world. :D
Truth is, I couldn't stand the bugs that the 2091 had, and trying to defeat it (while still trying to use it) became something of an Albatross...
If the Addmem idea failed... it would still be a kickass system for 1.3. 4mb Total.. WB 1.3 from HD... perfect for old 1.3 software and very old games.
Not sure if there was a 1.3 WHDLoad version.. (there probably was at some point)... but that would have been a good spot to put a lot of older 1.2 to 1.3 games.
Textcraft, was something my brother used to write novels on. Later on he did switch to Amiga Writer (under 3.1)... but he had a time trying to find a way to convert Textcraft documents in a way where it didn't retain "garbage characters".
RAM became an issue with some large files and the program did NOT work on anything past 1.3. So backing things up or copying and pasting them to a notepad-like tool to weed out the formatting characters became a massive chore for him that sent him over the edge.
So that was why the Addmem idea was going to be explored and still would make an interesting discovery if it did.
6. DKB Wildfire 060 + DKB Inferno graphics (attached to the Wildfire). This of course would be working under the 3.1 option and OFF under the 1.3 option for obvious reasons.
It's the best A2000 Accelerator of all time (barring the new stuff they came out with that has a 68080...)
it also... is the rarest thing to locate. You better post a REWARD of $500.00 just for the right to buy it from someone.. heh...
I've never even SEEN the Inferno addon card. hard to find an image of it anywhere.
It also has a SCSI II controller which, would make a good spot to connect a SCSI II CD Rom writer and put it into the 5.25 bay of the 2000. :D
That way you don't have too many cables stringing around the entire computer.
Also, it has space for 128mb of 32-bit RAM... this normally would make the 8mb RAM card obsolete.
and,... might render the idea of using Addmem (from the 3.1 side... to find the 2091's 2mb and add it to the upper boundary address space.
But just for giggles... if that were possible.. (138mb of Fast RAM) and another defeat of the 2091 card if it worked. (shoots off fireworks).
The overall plan was to get the other stuff first so he could have 3.1 with 8mb of Fast on the Rapid Fire...
The Wildfire, would have been the ultimate addon.
But it never happened.
Never got to see it.
We argued over an ebay price (ebay was still new to people back then)... he freaked out when he saw the old Megachip 500/2000 with bid for $52.00 on it (7 bids) when he was expecting it to get $150 or at even $200.
It sold for $212 or more I think...
But his "freak out" caused a fight...
Out of frustration, he put a fist into the center of his 2000 motherboard, believing it would never be upgraded so he could use OS 3.5.
Sigh.
Threw it in the trash... (so I could see it).....
Of course I salvaged it... sold the case... the keyboard... the PSU... the surviving custom chips (one of them, Paula or Gary was destroyed... with knuckle impression in them).
Then I sold the bashed in motherboard on ebay for parts.
I think I even got $30 for it. Heh
10 years later... we finally reconciled.
I sold the cursed 2091 card with a drive on it. Included the old DMAC and old boot ROMS...
Sold the stupid 2088 card... (hated that thing!.. it was useless)
In the end he had won a Quik Pak A1200... then later sold that. Sigh.
He should have kept that one.
Anyways..... if yer up for a little experiment with Addmem... it might be fun to try it.
Expect some gurus along the way.
Be careful about switching Zorro slots... that could change the Board's ID location or address...
making an executable that goes in WBStartup is the best idea.. or maybe just stick it into Utilities and click it when extra RAM is needed.
This worked once with an A500 AdRAM board + a Dataflyer 500 with 8mb.... on a 68000!
Then later a similar board, Expansion Systems "Baseboard. A clone of the AdRAM 540... :D
So it is possible to break the 8mb barrier.... (not including CHIP RAM)
If I may ask- where did you get GVP Fast Prep? I found GVP Impact 500 and I will be buying same Zulu card for my A500. Problem is, I want to keep with original WB 1.3 which does not have any disk tools, and for the life of me I can not find any GVP drivers online. I can find just latest one which I suppose is not compatible with my one as I don't have 3.15 rom installed. Thanks.
Pretty sure I’m using the latest one. Although interestingly, the installer does boot into WB1.3. If I can find where I got it from, I’ll post a link.
Is the 2M chip upgrade using a NTSC agnus or wired for ntsc when you are using pal? might explain the screen corruption
it could be! Just check your 8375 revision. Unlike the 8372a (Pal/Ntsc switchable in software/hardware), the 8375 was made in two different packages (one for Pal, another for Ntsc). Give this a try.
DOOD!
Other channel is missing on Amiga audio?
Huh?
@@MrLurchsThings it seemed like the left channel was missing from the elite 2 footage and then the drums kicked in. i'm guessing that's an accurate recording and it only stuck out to "thelemminkainen" since it feels like a mistake if you're not familiar with the source material (not that i am). all of those demos are mixed very well, actually.
@Mr Guru no I was talking about how it sounded to me on my desktop monitor speakers which have enough directionality that I can identify a missing channel very well.
@@MrLurchsThings music sounded weird?
If you want to save that extra Zorro slot and don't need the external SCSI connector, you can just desolder it from the hard card, and use the SCSI cable's slack to move the zulu card further back and re-purpose the bracket hole to insert/eject the SD card.
What amazing lack of ESD protection
I've been repairing on Amiga's for 20+ years and i can tell you old Hmos chips are quite robust,that being said touching the case to ground yourself before handling stuff is usually more than adequate. I have never harmed any Amiga chips or boards from static in all that time.
Amazing that DFx soft switcher! Want one for me, too. Cheers, M