History part 3 - From black to silver

On the next summer after finishing the original project I thought that it was time to fix the problems that I had faced. I had also upgraded my av-receiver to new model and it was titan color instead of black so I thought that I could change the color on my Amiga also close to that. In addition of color I wanted to change the style of the front panel also to be closer match of that Yamaha av-receiver.

I did some hardware changes also. I replaced the full sized CD-ROM drive with slim 24x TEAC CD-ROM. 3.5" hdd was replaced with 2.5" 4GB IBM Travelstar and ripped of AT power supply replaced with microATX power supply.




New hardware had better specs but also smaller dimensions so I would have more space in the case. I took out also that external disk drive as I had some reading/writing issues with it and didn't really needed that. I was planning to put it into external case at some point.

I had to buy couple of slim CD-ROM drives before I found one that was slave drive by default. The problem with those slim drives is that you cannot easily change the master/slave role. There was firmwares to some drives that could change the master/slave option, but I didn't find one for the drives that I had.

To the front panel I wanted to have a power button that would work momentarily. I remember to doing some googling and found instructions how to create such a ATX power button using 74LS74 flip-flop chip.

After figuring out the hardware it was time to do the building work. So once again I bought some aluminium and started to work that. I had to make new stands for the drives and new front and back panels obviously. Drives would be now hidden behind plexiglass which I got ready sawed from local shop. I wasn't completely happy with the end result of it, but I didn't have tools to make better one myself so it was ok.


LEDs were now also hidden behind the plexiglass, between the drives. In the first project I used dymo writer to make the stickers. This time I bought a transparent sticker sheet that was printable with laser printer.




I don't remember having any bigger problems with the build. One issue I had with the floppy drive slot in the plexiglass. I wanted to have just rectangle where to push the disk into, but after attaching the plexiglass I noticed that it was impossible to push the disk far enough. So had to make a bigger hole to the center so that one can push the disc further.






I was happy with the end result. It wasn't perfect but for the student budget it was good enough and I didn't have the issue with the scan doubler anymore.

At some point in 2007 I updated the CD-ROM drive to Hitachi GD-S250 CD-RW/DVD combo drive. I don't remember burning any CDs with the drive or using DVDs however. Negative side of the upgrade was that the plexiglass part wasn't fitting anymore to the drive so I left it out "for now"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DIY Amiga keyboard

Image
Idea While sanding the case I got time to think and it got me that I haven't owned a real Amiga keyboard since we sold our Amiga 600 in childhood. I've always been using a PC keyboard with my A1200. I really wanted a one with swedish/finnish layout, but they are really hard to find and if you happen to see one on sale it will cost very much. So I started to google around and I found out that you can actually use a Amiga 500 as external keyboard with small modification. You just need to remove the Q1 transistor to get the Ctrl+A+A reset to work. Modeling and making I started to look for a Amiga 500 keyboard which I could use to create my own external keyboard. I was lucky and found out that my old colleague had one with some missing keys so I bought it from him. He also had a A4000 keyboard so I took a lot of measurements and later opened Fusion 360 for making a model of the case. The missing keycaps I was able to find from a Facebook group for very reasonable price. They were v...
Read more

Case design

Image
My original plan was still to use aluminium sheets for creating new front and back panels to the same old VCR case. However, I got familiar to 3D printing at my job and when the Prusa launched Prusa Mini 3D printer I decided that I will get one for my other hobbies. While waiting few months in the order queue for the printer I also started to think that maybe I could use the printer also in the Amiga project. So I started to learn 3D modeling with Fusion 360. It has free plan for personal use and it seemed to be enough for this project. I started the modeling with the front panel frame. Idea was to figure out where to place DVD-drive and floppy drive so I could cut the aluminium plates exactly to correct measurements. After some thinking I realized that it would be much easier to actually create both panels with 3D printing. Somehow I got so into 3D modeling that I ended modeling all the parts and many of them way too detailed :) But later it actually paid off as I could just check all...
Read more

History part 2 - First iteration

Image
This post is translated version of my original article to finnish Amiga magazine SAKU from December 2002 which can be found from here:  http://www.amigazone.fi/saku/41/osastot/sekalaiset/eriamiga.html How it all started The idea to change the casing begin in summer 2000 when I bought my current Amiga. A1200 setup was built into small IBM tower casing which was functional but not so pretty to watch. I decided to start it slow by buying a fitting tower case when I could find one that wouldn't be too expensive. Time went by I hadn't seen a case that would be appropriate. In spring time 2002 I got another idea. A friend of mine told me how he had seen a project in internet where a PC was built into HiFi casing for home theater usage. In the next morning I took a meter and begin to study the possibilities. A1200 with Blizzard 1230-IV combination was about 41 centimeters long so they would fit in 42 cm wide casing. Other minimum measurements were 9 cm for height and about 35 cm deepn...
Read more