UPGRADING YOUR AMIGA 1200 By Bill Harvey Standard Disclaimer: I have carried out all the following hacks and have found them to work for me This information is provided as is, therefore as the Author I Bill Harvey hold absolutely no responsibility whatsoever for any damage to and or loss of data/equipment injury or loss of life resulting from the use of this info howsoever caused. This is basically here's what I did have a go if you wish. The information contained herein is shareware and as a result if you use it do the right thing and send the shareware fee of £1.00 to the Author: Bill Harvey address at the end of this text. This is the plain text version of the A1200 upgrade info and is included in case a print out is required. After carrying out the Upgrades included in this file I thought I would put down on paper details of what I had done in order to help out anyone that was thinking of doing the same. If there is anything that you find extreme difficulty in following please give me call and I will endeavour to help out. My details are at the end of this doc. Fitting a 3.5 IDE Hard Drive internal or external One of the first upgrades you will want to undertake is to fit a Hard Drive to your system, the Amiga is designed to take a 2.5 IDE Hard Drive however 3.5 IDE Hard Drives are more readily available and cheaper so I decided to fit one and heres how. Parts required: 1.3.5 IDE Hard Drive install kit, includes 44 to 40 pin 2.5/3.5 IDE adaptor,short pieces of 40 and 44 pin ribbon cable, power adaptor. This is one of the main items required and enables the fitting of a 3.5 IDE Hard Drive to the A1200's 2.5 IDE interface, it is available from most Dealers (see the A1200Upgrade.Guide for Suppliers Info) 2.A 3.5 IDE Hard drive any capacity although some people used to be under the impression that 1.5 Gig was the max you could fit, the drive should not to be higher than 1 inch if you want to fit it internally. 3.Hard drive formatting and partitioning software such as HD Prep, GVP Prep, usually supplied with the Install kit or check out the Aminet or Aminet CD's. Fitting: 1.Disconnect all power and cables. 2.Remove the 5 screws holding the A1200 together 3 at the front and 1 either side, not the two at the back as they hold the floppy drive in place. 3.Lift up the front of the top case it is held by clips at the rear which may need to be prised apart then Unscrew the led unit from the top case to enable you to remove the top case from the bottom. 4.Remove the keyboard connector from the motherboard, using a pair of long nose pliers lift up the sliding connector note it is fixed to the mother board, once it has lifted sufficiently pull out the ribbon cable at this stage ensure you take the appropriate anti static precautions. Remove the Keyboard. 5.Remove the 2.5 IDE cradle and the small piece of RF shielding you only need to do this if fitting internally, to do this the cradle simply pulls out and to remove the RF shielding open up the two tabs on the side and lift it away. 6.Remove the floppy power cable from the internal floppy drive and from the motherboard connection. 7.Connect the floppy/Hard drive power adaptor cable to the connector on the motherboard and connect the floppy drive power end to the internal floppy drive. The other end is for the Hard Drive. 8.Ensure the 40 pin ribbon and the 44 pin ribbon are both connected to the 2.5/3.5 IDE adaptor and that each cable has the red flecked side facing each other then connect the 44 pin ribbon to the 44 pin IDE interface on the motherboard located in the top left portion of the A1200. Ensure that the red flecked side of the ribbon cable is connected to pin one on the motherboard which should be located nearest the front of the machine and possibly marked. 9.Before connecting up the hard drive you need to insulate the PCB side of the drive to do this use some thin plastic sheeting and pvc tape, as the PCB section of the drive sits on the metal RF shielding of the A1200. 10.Connect the 40 pin ribbon cable to the Hard drive also ensuring that the red flecked part of the cable connects to pin one on the hard drive, the drive should fit one way but its best to check. 11.Connect the power cable to the hard drive. 12.The Hard drive you choose to use may be supplied with jumpers on it for configuring the drive as a master i.e. bootable, or as a slave device, if it does refer to any documentation that came with it and set the Drive as a Master device. If it has jumpers on it but no docs try contacting the manufacturer for more info. I got my segate drives second hand but managed to get an info leaflet for them from a local computer shop which showed the various jumper settings. 13.The drive should fit nicely in the central portion of the A1200 and can if needed be secured to the rear of the A1200 by drilling holes in the A1200's case in line with the Hard Drives mounting screw holes and securing it to the A1200 case with mounting screws. 14.When reconnecting the keyboard lift up the sliding connector and insert the cable then push the connector back down. Once the keyboard is connected its cable needs to run under or over the Hard drive, this will prove to be a tight fit but as long as your Hard Drive is not to large it will fit, then set the keyboard in place. 15.Reconnect the LED unit and fit the top case, if the top case will not close you may need to remove some of the offending internal plastic ribs. 16.Once everything is secured reconnect and boot up with the appropriate Hard drive Formatting and Partitioning software and set up the drive. If the drive once formatted is not recognized when the machine is first booted up but is recognized after a soft reset you may need to experiment by cutting line one on the ribbon cable the red flecked part. This is because some 3.5 IDE Hard Drives take a while to spin up. An alternative to fitting the drive internally is to mount it externally especially if the drive is over 1 inch high. To do this you must cut a groove on the top left hand edge of the bottom case in line with the ribbon cable in order to run it outside. You will also need to open the trap door and run the power cable through it to connect to the Hard Drive. Adding a second 3.5 IDE Device What one IDE Device not enough, well you may wish to add a second Hard drive or a CD Rom, basically the all you need to do to fit an extra device is carry out all the steps above for fitting one IDE Device and buy the extra parts and follow a few extra steps: Extra Items required: 1.A Standard 40 pin 3.5 IDE cable with three connectors for fitting two IDE Devices to a PC. 2.A Power splitter cable also for attaching two IDE Devices to a PC, Y cable. Both these items are available from any PC computer store. Carry out all stages as above with the following changes. 1.Disconnect the first Hard Drive and 40 way ribbon cable from the 2.5/3.5 IDE adaptor 2.Now instead of fitting the single device 40 pin ribbon cable to the 44 to 40 pin 2.5/3.5 IDE adaptor connect the 3 device connector and run it outside the machine. This should leave you with a 44 way ribbon cable connected from the 2.5 IDE interface in the A1200 to the 2.5/3.5 IDE pcb adaptor and now a 40 way ribbon cable attached to the pcb adaptor running outside the A1200 with two spare 3.5 IDE connectors sitting free. 3.Connect the new power splitter cable to the existing Hard Drive power cable and also ensure that it runs outside through the A1200's trap door, you'll be pushed to fit two 3.5 IDE Hard Drive inside the A1200. 4.Leave your original drive as master and set the new device, Hard Drive / CD Rom as slave. 5.Connect the master device to the middle connector on the ribbon cable and the slave device to the end connector. 6.Connect the power cables to both devices and boot up the computer once all cables are back in place. Other things to note Problems you may encounter are formatting and mounting the second drive. In order to get the Second Hard Drive up and running I had to first install it as if it where the first and only Hard Drive, format it, and give it an appropriate device name not used on the first drive i.e. DH2: Then I had to reconnect the first Dive as Master and connect the second Hard Drive as slave and set up a mount list for it and mount it in the startup_sequence of the first drive. The mountlist details where obtained using RDPrep. If you have any trouble doing this give me a call as it took me a while to suss it out. For running a CD Rom you will need some form of driver software in order for your Amiga's OS to recognize the CD Rom Drive. The driver software will mount your CD Rom startup_sequence of your master device Software such as AmiCDRom, IDEFIX, or AsimCDFS should do the trick, these should all be available from the Aminet or Aminet CD's, see the A1200Upgrade.Guide for Suppliers info on software. Normally you can only connect two IDE devices to the IDE Header on the A1200 but if you get hold of the Demo version of IDEFIX.lha from Aminet it gives info of a device obtainable from a German firm' HIRSCH & WOLF ' that enables the connection of four IDE devices. Bung it in a Tower Fitting of more than one IDE device to your A1200 especially if you have an expansion board will put a great strain on your power supply to the extent of completely toasting it. In this case a simple option is to put all these extra devices in a Tower or even a desktop case anything will do as long as it has a power supply and internal power connectors that will supply power to your peripherals. The size of Tower you buy depends on your needs. If its purely as a home for extra devices such as a Floppy drive, two 3.5 Hard Drives and a CD Rom a small PC midi Tower will do however if you are thinking of putting your A1200 motherboard in at a later stage you'll need a big bugger considering the A1200 motherboard is in excess of 390 mm long and if you still want to utilize the PMCIA connector, well even longer. This was an option when bought my Tower but due to difficulties in extending the A1200's keyboard connector I have not completed the Task, If anyone could help me out let me know. The first task is to mount all your devices in your tower. Then you can connect them to your A1200 as follows. All power for all devices comes from the Tower itself, just the reason for buying the Tower. The ribbon cable that runs from your A1200 to your IDE Devices needs to be extended to enable it to run into your Tower, this can be achieved in the following manner. 1.Get a long 3.5 IDE 40 way ribbon cable with a 40 way connector on each end, available from any PC shop. 2.Remove a 40 way connector from one end, and connect the other end to the IDE Header inside the A1200 via the 2.5/3.5 IDE pcb adaptor. This will leave you with a 40 way ribbon cable running outside your A1200 with a bare end with no connector on it. 3.Using a 3.5 IDE 40 way ribbon cable with three 3.5 IDE connectors on it (Designed for attaching two IDE Devices to a PC) attach the two IDE devices you've installed in your Tower and remove the connector from the trailing end. 4.Using one of the removed 40 way connectors splice the two bare ended ribbon cables together take extreme care to get this correct and ensure that the red flecked cables of each ribbon are connected together. This is the cable with your two devices fitted and the cable exiting your A1200. 5.Secure the connector onto the ribbon cable with a cable tie or other securing device. 6.Once the 40 way ribbon cable has been spliced together it will be a good idea to use a multimeter to check the continuity of the cable and to ensure that none of the individual strands are shorting out before connecting and powering up. Well that's about as far as I've got see how you get on and always work on the fact that to every problem there is a solution. Have Fun. Shareware Notice: The upgrade info is supplied as sharware and as such if you use it do the right thing and send the sharware fee of £1.00 to the Author, Bill Harvey, address at the end of this file. Authors Details: Bill Harvey Tel: 01271 815531 69 Tamar road RMB Chivenor Barnstaple N Devon EX31 4BH