Amiga 1200, maximum upgrade
I'll tell you about the Amiga 1200 computer, as well as about how it can be upgraded almost as much as possible.
Amiga 1200 is a budget computer from the Amiga family, has been produced since 1992.
This amiga has an AGA chipset, this is the latest generation of Amigo released by Commodore before bankruptcy.
')
I continue the story about Amiga computers, the first article was about Amiga 600
Processor: Motorola 68020EC 14 MHz (16/32 bit)
Memory: 2 MB
Video: Lisa chip, from 320x200, up to 1280 Ă— 512 (256 colors from a 24-bit palette), plus a slow ham8 mode (up to 262144 colors)
Sound: Paula chip, stereo, 4 hardware channels 8 bit.
Drives: 3.5 "880 KB DS / DD
Winchester: optional.
Externally made in the form of a monoblock, the motherboard is under the keyboard.
On the left side - only the drive slot
On the back wall there is the same full set of ports as on the Amiga 600 (external drives, printer, serial, stereo audio, RGB video, composite, RF, power connector), on the left - also pcmcia.
Remove the top cover, keyboard and drive. Visible motherboard.
For information: the central processor 68ec020, this is a small chip in the bottom row of the board, in the middle of the photo.
Architecture features - access to the base memory (chip ram) by dma is provided by all Amiga co-processors, that is, the CPU is not involved for video, audio, disk work, and it does not need to be super productive. The rest of the chips are noticeably larger than the processor.
(what the PC was headed for so long. Only starting by the end of the 90s did mass accelerators begin to appear, unloading the CPU from at least video)
Without the hard drive and without the inserted disk in the drive, we will see only the standard Amig screen "flying floppy disk."
First of all, it is worth noting that for the 1200 Amiga there are two ways to upgrade, partially intersecting each other. In one case, we try to fit everything in our own case with a keyboard; and in the other, we swap the motherboard into some PC case. The second option gives a bit more options, a greater choice of components, for example, you can install a bridge on a PCI card and use more modern cards for expansion. But at the same time, of course, some of the authenticity is lost: such a modification looks like an ordinary PC and a smaller eye pleases.
In this article I will upgrade only within the standard case.
NB Why do you upgrade at all? After the Commodore bankruptcy, the Amigi stopped developing “naturally” from the manufacturer, all the designs of the next generations were buried. Nevertheless, the amiga was a very popular platform, so for this, for a long time, the body kit, which was developed by third-party companies, was produced for it.
The first, that would not be tormented with native old (ball) mice, I put the adapter
on modern mouse ps / 2. It will be fixed inside the case last.
The second is the heart of our company, the accelerator.
When designing the amig, there was a great potential for further expansion: at any moment we can turn off the processor sealed on the board, and connecting an external accelerator will significantly speed up the performance of the computer. This gave a gain in the cheapness of the production of basic amig, and flexibility for further expansion.
In this case, the last of the Blizzard PPC accelerators produced for classic amig is used. It contains two processors at the same time:
- Motorola 68060 50mhz, replaces the standard Motorola 68ec020 on the board, performing the entire
the old code (I have a cheap revision of the accelerator, with a slightly slower 68040).
- PowerPC 603e 200 mhz, it runs those programs that are adapted for PowerPC.
The difference in speed between 68ec020 and 68060 is about 12 times, PowerPC is faster than 68060 6 times more.
(It was not until 200x, until the operating systems fully compiled for PowerPC processors — MorphOS and AmigaOS 4.x) appeared.
And on this scarf, the size of all palm, there is:
- scsi controller with a tiny connector (the leftmost row in the photo).
- pci bus with again a unique connector (on the reverse side).
Back side:
Visible non-standard PCI bus connector, two beds for SIMM.
The maximum supported memory size is 256 MB (in 1997, the simm 16 mb cost 60-70 dollars).
Removed heatsink with PowerPC processor:
Set the accelerator to amigo.
Unfortunately, this accelerator consumes too much current, which is not able to provide the thickness of the tracks on the board. It is necessary to additionally supply power firstly to the motherboard itself, from where the drive was powered through the connector, secondly to the accelerator itself, to its cooler connector (not visible in the photo, on the reverse side of the board), and to power the cooler outside. From this point on, there are not enough kommodrovsky power supply units anymore, we are switching to a regular ATX with a tail soldered to it from its own.
(This is a test layout, for the final version I will make a separate power bus with connectors along the top edge)
After checking for a successful launch with an accelerator, add a video card.
This is Blizzard BVision PPC.
In fact, the usual pci video on a Permedia 2 chip with 8 mb of memory, only assembled on such a small piece of textolite and with a unique pci connector.
In the original, all the chips were without radiators, but some parts of the vidyahi heat up to 60 degrees and above, they have to be cooled, especially in such a compact case with cooling everything is inherently bad.
Accelerator with screwed vidyaha.
We put in the case. Everything is very compact, for installation you have to remove the drive for a while.
Amiga was created as flexible as possible. For example, there initially (since 1985) there are no restrictions on the number of video adapters in the system. You can install as many as there are expansion slots (relevant for “large” amig with a Zorro bus). And adding a good vidyahu, we did not replace the one that is on board. It is used in most old games and demos. And since the standard video adapter (AGA) outputs the video signal only to RGB or composite, we need a scandibler that doubles the frequencies so that you can connect a regular vga monitor.
Recently, the company Individual computing released a new version of such a doubler for 1200 amiga. The doublers of course were released before, but as a rule they had any limitations, this is one of the first that displays any video modes of the original AGA chipset.
Installed directly on the Lisa chip.
I had to solder the connector for connecting the vga loop to the corner one, since otherwise he did not get along with BVision.
Next we add the ide accelerator. The standard ide controller amiga 1200 was developed at the very beginning of the 90s and does not satisfy the speed of modern requirements. There are several accelerators, the fastest of which is FastATA, but, unfortunately, it will be difficult to put it together with the rest of the boards inside the original case. For this, choose a slightly slower Idefix Express.
Mounts directly on the Gayle chip.
We mount a scandable and an ide accelerator.
Amiga is already beginning to resemble a multilayer cake.
Despite the fact that the Amiga had one of the best sound chips among all the competitors of that time, by now it is also outdated. Instead of it (together actually) we will connect the Delfina flipper sound card, it allows you to output 48Khz / 16bit / stereo sound, also unloads the processor.
The final touch is the pcmcia network card
With amigoy, you can use several options for wired or wireless cards. Large speeds cannot be obtained because of the limitations of the Amiga itself, so there is no point in putting 100-megabit adapters, the maximum speed is still around 6-14 megabits.
We connect Delfina to the clock-port, turn on the network card.
General view of what will be inside:
Seen 2.5 "ide hard drive, 120Gb.
As far as I understand, this is the maximum amount of disk that classic Amiga can see. In this case, I do not use Scsi because one of the axes I need still does not have the scsi driver from the controller that is on this accelerator.
It is also planned to make a compact vga switch, so that you can conveniently switch between aga and bvision. It will be placed in a special empty niche under the drive.
After detailed testing, and especially solving all issues with cooling especially hot chips, all this will have to fit inside a closed case. The cd-rom will be replaced by the slim version from the laptop. Along the top cover, I will mount the rail to which all the boards, devices and apparently coolers will be attached.
You can start the car now. I lay the boards with antistatic packages, so that they would not be short. Screw and Sidir while lying outside:
To start, download the "classic" AmigaOS 3.9, which works on the Motorola 68k.
Recently installed axis, without decorations. Various gadgets can make the visual design much more beautiful.
Workbench desktop: open site browser, mp3 player, icons.
More modern operating system AmigaOS 4.
It looks more beautiful immediately "out of the box" (visually reminiscent of something between 3-4 kde).
Almost all necessary network programs work normally, Internet radio plays.
Thus, the machine is able to go to the Internet: web, mail, jabber, online radio ..., listen to music, play light video (of course only freaking). Also on it are all thousands of classic Amiga games, and a newer part, for example, ported from a PC - Doom2, Quake 1-2, Heretic, Hexen, Descent 1, Freespace, and some relatives for the “pumped” amig “Shogo: mobile armour” , Earth 2140, Wipeout 2097, etc.
That would not be unfounded video:
I show the habr page in the browser, playing a video is the hardest task for such an old machine. Then I run a couple of games.
I apologize for the quality of the video, I only have an old webcam, in games it may seem that the image is smeared, it is twofold - this is not so. In the network, you can find videos in good quality, such as Wipeout 2097 or Quake 2
With the fact that the 1200 itself has not been released since 1994, and accelerators since 1998, even the new Amiga OS is a fairly easy OS. Programs are written with great optimization, and they often work even on slow, unexpanded amiga. It turns out that on such an ancient computer a lot of familiar software works nevertheless very quickly.
For example, I measured the load time of different axes on amiga:
The heaviest modern axis loads a little faster than XP on my Core2 c sata. :)
It turned out almost the most advanced Amiga 1200.
What is not? Unfortunately, there are only one clock-port on Amiga, and there are two useful things to this port: a zvukovuha and a usb controller (I exclude any additional com and lpt, or isdn adapters that are unnecessary now). I did not manage to find a special Quaddddroport split card to connect both this and that - I hadn’t succeeded yet, I had to choose which usb or sound was most needed. With a network connection, in principle, usb is not so necessary, so the choice was made in favor of sound.
To the absolute maximum here you need to put two simm at 128mb, and probably the above USB. There is nothing more to put into it in such a case without the cruel use of a soldering iron and a jigsaw.
With the use of a soldering iron, even if only the nanoATX power supply unit is placed directly into it.
Retreatment hobby is not very cheap.
Sample auction prices for what is no longer produced:
- Amiga 1200 - $ 30-200, depending on the state and configuration.
- Blizzard PPC - $ 600-1000, depending on the installed processor.
- BVision PPC - $ 200-250
- Delfina fliper - $ 200
- Simm 72 pin 64-128mb - $ 20-40
- WiFi Prism2 - $ 20-30
- Indivision Scandoubler - $ 200
New, available in foreign online stores.
- Idefix Express - $ 60
Available with us:
- Ide hdd 2.5 "120Gb - $ 70
- Ide slim cd-rom - $ 70
In total, the price to collect such a set is approximately: $ 1600.
True, I collected this configuration slowly, for a couple of years, so many things could be found much cheaper.
For comparison, the new Amiga on the Sam440 motherboard, on a PowerPC processor (about 6-10 times faster than this 1200) costs about 450 Eur.
True, it can run only new operating systems (the same AmigaOS 4.x and Linux). And although the system programs almost all work, but old games and demos are run only through an emulator.
PS often ask what you can see the new AmigaOS 4 . It runs only on 4 platforms: the old Amiga with PowerPC, AmigaONE , Pegasos2 , SAM 440 . Emulators do not exist.
There are also NatAmi amateur projects for obtaining a clone of the classic Amiga, but on modern hardware, immediately with a video adapter, a modern body kit, and faster processors and a Minimig clone of old classic Amig, without extensions, on FPGA.
I hope it was interesting. Questions - ask.
Amiga 1200 is a budget computer from the Amiga family, has been produced since 1992.
This amiga has an AGA chipset, this is the latest generation of Amigo released by Commodore before bankruptcy.
')
I continue the story about Amiga computers, the first article was about Amiga 600
Specifications
Processor: Motorola 68020EC 14 MHz (16/32 bit)
Memory: 2 MB
Video: Lisa chip, from 320x200, up to 1280 Ă— 512 (256 colors from a 24-bit palette), plus a slow ham8 mode (up to 262144 colors)
Sound: Paula chip, stereo, 4 hardware channels 8 bit.
Drives: 3.5 "880 KB DS / DD
Winchester: optional.
Outside
Externally made in the form of a monoblock, the motherboard is under the keyboard.
On the left side - only the drive slot
On the back wall there is the same full set of ports as on the Amiga 600 (external drives, printer, serial, stereo audio, RGB video, composite, RF, power connector), on the left - also pcmcia.
Inside
Remove the top cover, keyboard and drive. Visible motherboard.
For information: the central processor 68ec020, this is a small chip in the bottom row of the board, in the middle of the photo.
Architecture features - access to the base memory (chip ram) by dma is provided by all Amiga co-processors, that is, the CPU is not involved for video, audio, disk work, and it does not need to be super productive. The rest of the chips are noticeably larger than the processor.
(what the PC was headed for so long. Only starting by the end of the 90s did mass accelerators begin to appear, unloading the CPU from at least video)
When turned on
Without the hard drive and without the inserted disk in the drive, we will see only the standard Amig screen "flying floppy disk."
Upgrade
First of all, it is worth noting that for the 1200 Amiga there are two ways to upgrade, partially intersecting each other. In one case, we try to fit everything in our own case with a keyboard; and in the other, we swap the motherboard into some PC case. The second option gives a bit more options, a greater choice of components, for example, you can install a bridge on a PCI card and use more modern cards for expansion. But at the same time, of course, some of the authenticity is lost: such a modification looks like an ordinary PC and a smaller eye pleases.
In this article I will upgrade only within the standard case.
NB Why do you upgrade at all? After the Commodore bankruptcy, the Amigi stopped developing “naturally” from the manufacturer, all the designs of the next generations were buried. Nevertheless, the amiga was a very popular platform, so for this, for a long time, the body kit, which was developed by third-party companies, was produced for it.
The first, that would not be tormented with native old (ball) mice, I put the adapter
on modern mouse ps / 2. It will be fixed inside the case last.
The second is the heart of our company, the accelerator.
When designing the amig, there was a great potential for further expansion: at any moment we can turn off the processor sealed on the board, and connecting an external accelerator will significantly speed up the performance of the computer. This gave a gain in the cheapness of the production of basic amig, and flexibility for further expansion.
In this case, the last of the Blizzard PPC accelerators produced for classic amig is used. It contains two processors at the same time:
- Motorola 68060 50mhz, replaces the standard Motorola 68ec020 on the board, performing the entire
the old code (I have a cheap revision of the accelerator, with a slightly slower 68040).
- PowerPC 603e 200 mhz, it runs those programs that are adapted for PowerPC.
The difference in speed between 68ec020 and 68060 is about 12 times, PowerPC is faster than 68060 6 times more.
(It was not until 200x, until the operating systems fully compiled for PowerPC processors — MorphOS and AmigaOS 4.x) appeared.
And on this scarf, the size of all palm, there is:
- scsi controller with a tiny connector (the leftmost row in the photo).
- pci bus with again a unique connector (on the reverse side).
Back side:
Visible non-standard PCI bus connector, two beds for SIMM.
The maximum supported memory size is 256 MB (in 1997, the simm 16 mb cost 60-70 dollars).
Removed heatsink with PowerPC processor:
Set the accelerator to amigo.
Unfortunately, this accelerator consumes too much current, which is not able to provide the thickness of the tracks on the board. It is necessary to additionally supply power firstly to the motherboard itself, from where the drive was powered through the connector, secondly to the accelerator itself, to its cooler connector (not visible in the photo, on the reverse side of the board), and to power the cooler outside. From this point on, there are not enough kommodrovsky power supply units anymore, we are switching to a regular ATX with a tail soldered to it from its own.
(This is a test layout, for the final version I will make a separate power bus with connectors along the top edge)
After checking for a successful launch with an accelerator, add a video card.
This is Blizzard BVision PPC.
In fact, the usual pci video on a Permedia 2 chip with 8 mb of memory, only assembled on such a small piece of textolite and with a unique pci connector.
In the original, all the chips were without radiators, but some parts of the vidyahi heat up to 60 degrees and above, they have to be cooled, especially in such a compact case with cooling everything is inherently bad.
Accelerator with screwed vidyaha.
We put in the case. Everything is very compact, for installation you have to remove the drive for a while.
Amiga was created as flexible as possible. For example, there initially (since 1985) there are no restrictions on the number of video adapters in the system. You can install as many as there are expansion slots (relevant for “large” amig with a Zorro bus). And adding a good vidyahu, we did not replace the one that is on board. It is used in most old games and demos. And since the standard video adapter (AGA) outputs the video signal only to RGB or composite, we need a scandibler that doubles the frequencies so that you can connect a regular vga monitor.
Recently, the company Individual computing released a new version of such a doubler for 1200 amiga. The doublers of course were released before, but as a rule they had any limitations, this is one of the first that displays any video modes of the original AGA chipset.
Installed directly on the Lisa chip.
I had to solder the connector for connecting the vga loop to the corner one, since otherwise he did not get along with BVision.
Next we add the ide accelerator. The standard ide controller amiga 1200 was developed at the very beginning of the 90s and does not satisfy the speed of modern requirements. There are several accelerators, the fastest of which is FastATA, but, unfortunately, it will be difficult to put it together with the rest of the boards inside the original case. For this, choose a slightly slower Idefix Express.
Mounts directly on the Gayle chip.
We mount a scandable and an ide accelerator.
Amiga is already beginning to resemble a multilayer cake.
Despite the fact that the Amiga had one of the best sound chips among all the competitors of that time, by now it is also outdated. Instead of it (together actually) we will connect the Delfina flipper sound card, it allows you to output 48Khz / 16bit / stereo sound, also unloads the processor.
The final touch is the pcmcia network card
With amigoy, you can use several options for wired or wireless cards. Large speeds cannot be obtained because of the limitations of the Amiga itself, so there is no point in putting 100-megabit adapters, the maximum speed is still around 6-14 megabits.
We connect Delfina to the clock-port, turn on the network card.
General view of what will be inside:
Seen 2.5 "ide hard drive, 120Gb.
As far as I understand, this is the maximum amount of disk that classic Amiga can see. In this case, I do not use Scsi because one of the axes I need still does not have the scsi driver from the controller that is on this accelerator.
It is also planned to make a compact vga switch, so that you can conveniently switch between aga and bvision. It will be placed in a special empty niche under the drive.
After detailed testing, and especially solving all issues with cooling especially hot chips, all this will have to fit inside a closed case. The cd-rom will be replaced by the slim version from the laptop. Along the top cover, I will mount the rail to which all the boards, devices and apparently coolers will be attached.
Launch
You can start the car now. I lay the boards with antistatic packages, so that they would not be short. Screw and Sidir while lying outside:
To start, download the "classic" AmigaOS 3.9, which works on the Motorola 68k.
Recently installed axis, without decorations. Various gadgets can make the visual design much more beautiful.
Workbench desktop: open site browser, mp3 player, icons.
More modern operating system AmigaOS 4.
It looks more beautiful immediately "out of the box" (visually reminiscent of something between 3-4 kde).
Almost all necessary network programs work normally, Internet radio plays.
Thus, the machine is able to go to the Internet: web, mail, jabber, online radio ..., listen to music, play light video (of course only freaking). Also on it are all thousands of classic Amiga games, and a newer part, for example, ported from a PC - Doom2, Quake 1-2, Heretic, Hexen, Descent 1, Freespace, and some relatives for the “pumped” amig “Shogo: mobile armour” , Earth 2140, Wipeout 2097, etc.
Video
That would not be unfounded video:
I show the habr page in the browser, playing a video is the hardest task for such an old machine. Then I run a couple of games.
I apologize for the quality of the video, I only have an old webcam, in games it may seem that the image is smeared, it is twofold - this is not so. In the network, you can find videos in good quality, such as Wipeout 2097 or Quake 2
With the fact that the 1200 itself has not been released since 1994, and accelerators since 1998, even the new Amiga OS is a fairly easy OS. Programs are written with great optimization, and they often work even on slow, unexpanded amiga. It turns out that on such an ancient computer a lot of familiar software works nevertheless very quickly.
For example, I measured the load time of different axes on amiga:
The heaviest modern axis loads a little faster than XP on my Core2 c sata. :)
Total
It turned out almost the most advanced Amiga 1200.
What is not? Unfortunately, there are only one clock-port on Amiga, and there are two useful things to this port: a zvukovuha and a usb controller (I exclude any additional com and lpt, or isdn adapters that are unnecessary now). I did not manage to find a special Quaddddroport split card to connect both this and that - I hadn’t succeeded yet, I had to choose which usb or sound was most needed. With a network connection, in principle, usb is not so necessary, so the choice was made in favor of sound.
To the absolute maximum here you need to put two simm at 128mb, and probably the above USB. There is nothing more to put into it in such a case without the cruel use of a soldering iron and a jigsaw.
With the use of a soldering iron, even if only the nanoATX power supply unit is placed directly into it.
| Normal 1200 | Extended | |
| CPU | Motorola 68ec020 14 Mhz | 68060 50Mhz / PowerPC 603 200Mhz |
| MIPS performance | four | 80/282 |
| Ram | 2Mb chip | 2Mb chip + Up to 256 Mb Fast |
| Sound | Paula 22050 / 8bit / stereo | Delfina 48000 / 16bit / stereo |
| Video | AGA 1024x512x8bit | BVision 1600x1200x24bit |
| Ide speed | 1.2 Mb / s | 5-7 Mb / s |
Prices
Retreatment hobby is not very cheap.
Sample auction prices for what is no longer produced:
- Amiga 1200 - $ 30-200, depending on the state and configuration.
- Blizzard PPC - $ 600-1000, depending on the installed processor.
- BVision PPC - $ 200-250
- Delfina fliper - $ 200
- Simm 72 pin 64-128mb - $ 20-40
- WiFi Prism2 - $ 20-30
- Indivision Scandoubler - $ 200
New, available in foreign online stores.
- Idefix Express - $ 60
Available with us:
- Ide hdd 2.5 "120Gb - $ 70
- Ide slim cd-rom - $ 70
In total, the price to collect such a set is approximately: $ 1600.
True, I collected this configuration slowly, for a couple of years, so many things could be found much cheaper.
For comparison, the new Amiga on the Sam440 motherboard, on a PowerPC processor (about 6-10 times faster than this 1200) costs about 450 Eur.
True, it can run only new operating systems (the same AmigaOS 4.x and Linux). And although the system programs almost all work, but old games and demos are run only through an emulator.
PS often ask what you can see the new AmigaOS 4 . It runs only on 4 platforms: the old Amiga with PowerPC, AmigaONE , Pegasos2 , SAM 440 . Emulators do not exist.
There are also NatAmi amateur projects for obtaining a clone of the classic Amiga, but on modern hardware, immediately with a video adapter, a modern body kit, and faster processors and a Minimig clone of old classic Amig, without extensions, on FPGA.
I hope it was interesting. Questions - ask.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/92862/
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