The Japanese computer odyssey

Long time since my last blog post… but here we are!

A week ago, I was browsing auctions for the Sharp X68000—an insanely expensive machine. I found a couple of interesting ones, but the one that really caught my attention was an original gray model, the very first version released in 1987—the year I was born!

The machine was sold as working, but with both HD floppy drives faulty. However, it came fitted with a SCSI2SD, the price was right, and it had even been modified with a modern European PSU. I was a bit doubtful at first, but then I decided to take the chance and buy it…

While waiting for it to arrive, I found and bought a (rather expensive) gray keyboard in overall good condition. Then, while looking for a mouse, I stumbled upon Buyee.jp, a proxy service for buying from Japanese auctions. I saw a mouse listed as faulty; having experience fixing Amiga mice, I decided to buy it too—and to my surprise, when it arrived, it was fully working!

I now had the complete set!
Here is the first picture I took of the machine!

As you can see from the picture, the computer was in perfect condition!
I started experimenting with it, connecting it to the OSSC and running some tests. The machine was sold as a 2MB system, but the base expansion wasn’t recognized, and the system kept giving me “not enough memory” errors.

It was strange, so I took the machine apart and had a look. The RAM expansion had been dislodged during shipping. I reinserted it, and everything started working!
I even bought an 8MB expansion to be able to play every game.
Here it is:

It was working perfectly, and I started gaming and having fun with it!

However, I wasn’t happy with the system installed on the SCSI2SD adapter, so I started looking online for an alternative, which I quickly found. I flashed the SD card and tried it, but it wasn’t recognizing all the partitions. I began tinkering with the BIOS (switch) settings and, of course, ended up changing something that prevented the machine from booting correctly from the hard drive. I was stuck on the “insert a floppy” screen—and as you’ve read, those floppy drives weren’t working…

The only thing left to try was fixing the drives. So I grabbed the soldering iron and a new set of capacitors and got to work…

A couple of hours later, after trying everything, the drives miraculously started working. Even the motorized ejection was functional—fantastic!

It was time to fix the PSU installation, which was quite messy and moving around inside the machine. Here it is after I spent about half an hour tidying it up as best as I could:

Happy with the machine and with the floppy drives working, I decided it was time to create some bootable system disks—complete with well-made labels, as I usually do!
Here they are!

The last thing was replacing the cable of the Hudson Joy-Card, as it was worn out and the buttons were sometimes unresponsive. Here it is removed:

And here it is with the new cable, now working perfectly!

As a final picture, here’s the complete and fully working system—now the definitive X68K battle station.

Thanks for reading, and keep on gaming (retro, of course).

Someone said Compact Discs?

 

Hi there internauts!

During my hunts at the flea's market I found this usb hdd and cd enclosure...

Here it is, after I fitted a CD drive:

I had a couple of 50pin to centronics cables so I decided to keep the power part, remove the usb board and cut it to fit these scsi cables:

It worked really well, just had to remove the fan, but the look of it was still way to different than a real amiga device, so I took an "Bright Ivory" spray color and painted it...

Here a before and after the paint job:

And back again with the drive:

The color is a bit yellower than I'd like, but it matches the little yellowing of my one thousand, take a look!

I'm using it with my a590 and the multi evolution 500 and it works really well, but the most important thing is that now really looks how it should!

P.s.

Look what I found very recently at the flea market... This time for the 1200, but I would need to get a squirrel or a compatible scsi to pcmcia card...

But I tested it with an audio CD and reads perfectly! :)

Thanks for reading and keep the amiga love flowing!

Let's Switch! (KS 102 W - KS 104 W)

Hello user of the World Wide Web do you need a switch sometimes?

Here it comes the solution! A kickswitch! :)

This model is a KS102W-KS104W from CableTronics, here it is!

The cool thing of this little board, is that it doesn't require any switch, thanks to the connection to "Pin 8" of the ODD CIA it switches rom clicking the left mouse button on power ON! 

I had the luck to get one in a "new old stock", sitted unused for years to arrive in my hands in the end of 2022! Crazy stuff...

I wanted a kickswitch to be able to use the original 1.3 kickstart to achieve maximum compatibility, and I succeded, but it was NOT plug and play!

Heres why...

When I bought it I tought that the eeprom chip that comes on it was a 1.3 kick, so I opened my Amiga 500+ that I use with the A590 Hard Drive Plus, a machine that I wanna keep as stock as possible, nothing fancy, and proceeded on removing the OG 2.04 kick in my machine, plugging the board (leaving the first row of socket's pin empty cause it's a plus machine) and installed the rom previously on the Amiga, on the KickSwitch...

NO GO

Black screen, errors, colours and flashes, nothing good! Not even the 2.04 kick was working (most of the times)

I tought, ok the eeprom is fried, let me look in my drawer for a 1.3 chip...

NO GO

my drawer don't have any of these chips :( I tought I had at least one, untrue. 

So I tought, maybe some sicilian ebayer has one... I hopped on fleabay and set nearest option... And surprise! 8 km from my cave there was a guy selling two 1.3 chips, one from Sharp, the other one, directly from Commodore! Both for 15 Euros Pieces of eight!

In less than half an hour I was back home with these chips!

I was sure that I had finally fixed this stalemate, plugged the 1.3 Commodore's chip where the eeprom where... AND

NO GO

I was very convinced that the problem were that it were something wrong, broken, in the board itself...

BUT NO

THE EEPROM has different pinouts!!! holy maccheroni!

It was working... the thing is that it is a 2.04 rom, not a 1.3 as I tought!

So the solution was to install the 1.3 kick in the empty socket of the board and leaving the eeprom where it originally was in the kickswitch!

Abracadabra, done!

Now I can choose 1.3 if I click the mouse while booting or I can boot 2.04 as usual!

SO IT'S FOR 2.04 ONLY?

You may be right, but I managed with some internet's magic to find the pinout of the eeprom and some help from "Il tecnico risponde" a journalism column from the italian "Amiga Magazine", issue 63!

If you wanna check it in Italian, take this AMAZING LINK

If you don't wanna, I comed to help ;)

Here you can find the pinout of the eeprom, with this you could write the eeprom with the kickstart you want, even 3.2.1 and be able to switch between the regular rom installed on the left side of the board and the flashed eeprom on the right!

You could even create an adapter to enable the use of regular chips!

Are you happy? :)

I am!

If you are too, drop a comment, I always answer!

Thanks for reading

And remember to insert your diskettes face up.

Old vs New: The Keyboard battle!

 Hello reader!

In this post I will talk about the differences between modern and retro mechanical keyboards!

The subject for the review are these two:

Razer Blackwidow Chroma Tournament Edition [2017]:

Hi-Tek Commodore Amiga 500 "Chicken Lips" [1987]:

But why?

You may think that there is actually no point in confronting two keyboard built 30 years apart one from another, but wait...

If we could go back in time to the end of the '90s we would end up in a world were the most "professional" computers all had great mechanical keyboards.

In that time there was no reason to cut the production costs and the build quality of most of the accessories for computers were really high, so there is an actual reason to make a confrontation!

Wait, I tried the Amiga 500 keyboard!

You may be right, most amiga 500 keyboards are awful membrane keyboards, but not the Hi-Tek's one, this particular keyboard was distributed only on some very early kickstart 1.2 amiga 500s, it's easily recognizable by the special dedicated "function keys" on the sides of the spacebar, regular membrane keyboards had two "amiga logo" keys in the Hi-Tek ones instead the key ad the left of the spacebar have a commodore logo ( C= ) and the right one a smaller than usual A. Even some big box amigas got Hi-Tek's keyboards (ex. A1000,A2000).

Hi-Tek:

Common one:

I must admit that I'm not a "keyboard expert" at all, I'm just the normal user.

But this is my comparison!

Switches:

Hi-Tek Space Invaders switch:

(White Linear)

Actuation force 45g

Razer Black Widow Chroma Tournament Edition:

(Razer Green)

Actuation force 50g

My two lines of "pseudo review":

I don't know exactly why, but after testing both keyboard with the same writing application (Final Writer 97 - AmigaOS 3.9) I have to say that I prefeer Hi-Tek's switches, the typing is more robust and each keypress is a real pleasure, it seems to me that I can actually feel the actuation better, even the travel of the keys for me it's better, the only thing I really prefeer in the modern razer, is the stability of the keys, that doesn't wiggle even a little, just the spacebar got a little worse stabilization.

But don't get me wrong, the Hi-Tek got a little more wiggle but nothing crazy!

The sound:

Clicking on these links you can experience the sound of the switches thanks to soundcloud!

Space Invaders Linear White

Razer Green

The verdict!

I cannot express a real winner here, these are both top notch keyboards.

BUT Personally I would choose the Amiga keyboard, so much that I'm actually in the hunt for this same switches to build myself a modern keyboard with those.

About the Razer, I have to say that, even if it's an incredible keyboard, it's too expensive and for the same price there are many kit's that could be better with less.

But the LED's integration with the software and the effects available are lovely!

Thanks for reading!

And always remember to keep on pressing!

Fresh and minty!

This is the 500+ board I was using until now!

As you can see on this second picture this board was plagued by the "Varta Killer",

the onboard clock's battery, that it's a well known destroyer of plus boards...

Here you can see the damage caused by electrolitic liquid from the varta!

Btw this board was saved with a deep clean, the substitution of some components and a couple of patch wires, here the underside of the board

I've used this machine without any issue since I got it, but while roaming for amiga's stuff on "flea-bay" I stumbled upon a listing of a 500+ board without any damage and looking very clean, for 100€.

The complete reproduction boards costs nowaday costs A LOT, I mean even 500€.

So getting an official clean board for such a low price was a deal I could not refuse... so I pressed buy!

Waited a couple of days and...

BOOM!

The board was on my desk!

It looked better than I tought, not even a little damage caused by the battery!!

I proceeded on moving all the juicy parts from the old board to this new one...

let's take a look at the under side!

Installed the shield and all the other stuff...

And it was ready!

Not only ready, but Fresh and minty!

Thx for reading and remember not to break your floppies!

Amiga 3000 power on the 500!

 

The time has come!

Meet the 3000 500!

This is my most powerful original amiga!

It's rocking an a501 expension with working clock installed as chipmem exp.!

bringing this machine in par with a stock plus chipmem wise.

1MB Chip.

here a couple of shots, I've been lucky enough to save this a501 before the battery melted everything!

Desoldered the shield!

Cleaned the board and installed a new rechargable battery. (you can see some light damage done only to the protective coating, had to scrap it off.)

And here it is in all it's glory!

But let's check the heart of this Miggy!

Yeah the Chinon drive is a bit rusty, but as soon as the top case is removed you can see this is not the usual miggy!

So let's remove the keyboard to take a look at the real juice!

The HARDITAL BIGBANG

It's an awesome accellerator board.

It brings this Machine to the level of an Amiga 3000 with 2MB of 32bit Memory

a 68030 running at 25MHz coupled with it's FPU.

I decided to install a switch to be able to choose to run the card in 68000 mode...

On top of the floppy drive...

Using such an accellerator requires the use of an Hard Drive to be able to use it properly, but the Commodore A590 is not compatible with it, so I'm using a Multi Evolution 500!

Here it is, dismantled for your viewing pleasure!

Sporting a new Blue LED... Cause, why not?

A very useful external SCSI port! (Zip drive!)

Here the lovely SCSI 8GB HD itself

And the board with it's 2Mb of memory (look at those lovely roms! Sent to me by my great penfriend M!)

This is my 5Mb 25Mhz Commodore "Amiga 3000"

A 500.

I hope you enjoied taking a look under the clothes of this machine!

Cya in the next post!

And don't forget to take the ball to the beach!