Amiga
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Building an Amiga Null Modem Serial Cable
Sometimes a project starts because I have an idea. This was one of those times. Sometimes it starts because somebody else has an idea and I somehow end up making the hardware for it. Yawning Angel got in touch because he was working on a forthcoming video exploring serial communications in AMOS Pro. To do that properly, he needed a cable to connect two Amigas together. Unfortunately, he didnāt have one. So naturally, I volunteered to make it. Fortunately, this is actually a fairly straightforward little project, and it also gave me an excuse to take a closer look at how the Amigaās serial connection works. https://youtu.be/x2WhIUoGgPc What I Needed…
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My Journey to Build a Fully Functional Amiga 500 Plus in a Mini-ITX Case (and Survive the Battery Damage, Fake STM32s, and 2000 Angry Sockets)
There are two kinds of retro builds: the ones where everything just clicks into place, and the ones where you spend hours soldering your way into a functional Amigaā¦ only to discover you put a SIM socket in backwards. Ask me how I know. In this post, Iām taking you along my hands-on journey to build a fully functional Amiga 500 Plus using a dense Denise board in a mini-ITX caseāincluding the keyboard/PS2 āmodern comfortā upgrades, the FlashFloppy GOTEK stack, the joystick/drive mods, and the hilarious-but-educational detours caused by mistakes, tight tolerances, and a small army of sockets. Watch the video on YouTube Starting Point: āThis Isnāt a Raspberry Piā…
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JuiceBox: From Purple PCB to an Upgraded Power Supply (Amiga USB-C Power, Revision 2)
Thereās a special kind of nostalgia that kicks in when youāre powering an old computer with modern bits. Itās half engineering, half archaeologyālike digging up a treasure chest but realizing itās full of capacitors and optimism. In my JuiceBox series, I set out to make a compact, USB-C-powered supply for an Amigaāstarting with a purple PCB in an orange case, then pushing it through real-world use, teardown nerves, and finally an upgrade to make everything tidier (and calmer) in revision 2. watch it here Chapter 1: The Orange Case Dream (and the Purple PCB that Made It Happen) Before the JuiceBox had a name and a case, Iād already been…
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Alicia Build: Resurrecting an Amiga 1200 into a Mini-ITX āMac Proā-Style New Home
I didnāt set out to build āanother retro computer.ā I set out to resurrect an Amiga 1200 in a different form factorāonly to discover, as always, that the past has a way of handing you extra homework. Thatās the ethos behind my āAliciaā series: journeying forward into the future while journeying back to remember the past and learn from its lessons. In other words: yes, weāre making something tiny and powerfulā¦ but weāre also documenting the dents, the detours, and the surprisingly educational moments along the way. watch the Alicia build completeāPart 1 here Chapter 1: Resurrecting the Amigaā¦ into an Alicia When I started this Alicia project, it really…
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The Curious Case of the ETX Amiga 2000: A Debugging Odyssey
What you see on the bench now is a working ETX-form Amiga 2000ābut to understand how we got here, we need to rewind a bit. This strange little tale really begins when I picked up the board from Cathers in Cambridge. The First Setup Fresh back from Cambridge, I wired it up with a ROM switcherātechnically meant for an A600. Not the perfect fit, Iāll admit, but it had all the Kickstart images I needed to investigate the problem for myself. That issue? Something was seriously wrong with the displayāespecially under Kickstart 2.0 or higher. The colors were just… off. Glitching, corruption, odd effects during animation. It was like looking…
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A600 Upgrades Continue
After completing the restoration of my Amiga 600, I found myself craving a deeper challenge. Sure, I couldāve gone all out with accelerators and high-end mods, but thatās expensive, and honestly, I wasnāt looking for overkill. What I really wanted was a compact machine that stayed true to its roots while still offering a touch of modern convenienceāperfect for playing classic games. Aesthetic Masterpiece Externally, the A600 is now a thing of beauty. Itās got a two-tone paint job with a gunmetal gray top and a pearlescent candy orange bottom. If Iām being honest, itās probably one of the nicest case customizations Iāve ever done. But as striking as it…
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Flashing PCIe X1900GT for G5 Mac
I did this to install MorphOS on a PCIe G5 PowerMac Required Hardware Flashing Steps MS-DOS Boot Disk Download I have a pre made disk image here Dos6.22 ATI.img at the prompt type cd ATI then to check the contents type dir You should see ‘X1900GT.ROM’ and ‘ATIFLASH.EXE’ listed. We need to know the adaptor number, type atiflash -i note the adapter number of the installed X1900 GT, which is identifiable by the ‘R580+’ tag in the middle column. Usually, the adapter number to the far left of the ‘R580+’ will read ‘0’, provided the card was installed to the PC’s first (or only) PCIe x16 slot. Note In the…
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The Purple OLED Project
If you’ve been following my journey, you might recall a video I did a while back where I converted an old Amiga external floppy drive into something cool and retro-inspired. If you missed that one, no worriesāIāve linked it below. We’re taking things a step further. Iām about to transform this incredibly grubby, stained Cumana drive into something truly special, and Iām super excited to share the process with you. Retro GOTEK The Vision: A Purple OLED Dream Ever since I started this project, Iāve had one thing in mind: creating a purple OLED screen. I know it sounds a bit ambitious, but thatās exactly what Iām aiming for. Imagine…
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My Journey Creating a Universal Amiga ROM Switcher
In the world of retro computing, where nostalgic gamers reignite their passion, the Amiga stands as a titan of vintage technology. My latest project has taken me on an epic journey to create a ROM switcher for these beloved machines. This isn’t just an upgrade; it’s a labor of love to preserve and enhance a classic. The Challenge: Building a ROM Switcher I set out with a simple goal: to build a straightforward, passive ROM switcher for the Amiga. The challenge arose from the fact that not all Amigas were made equal. The early revisions of these machines had a hardware bug where the ROM socket wasn’t correctly wired. Specifically,…
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The Final Chapter of the Amiga 500 Frankenstein Build
Part 1 is here -> Building a Frankenstein Amiga: A Journey of Restoration and Customisation Welcome to the final part of my Amiga 500 Frankenstein build, which I’m doing for the More Fun Making It charity auction. This journey began with a couple of neglected and yellowed A500 cases. Well, to be precise, it involved parts from at least three different cases that had all seen better days. One of the bottom halves was particularly damaged, so I swapped it out for a better one. When this project is finished, it’s going to be more of a Cinderella transformation rather than an ugly sister. However, I must warn you, the…
