Category - Amiga

Amiga, CD32, Commodore 64, MEGA65, PET, Playstation, Sega Megadrive, VIC 20

A couple of years ago I backed a Kickstarter campaign for a new ‘Retro Styled Modular IPS Display for old and new systems” (from now on I’ll just refer to it as the ‘Checkmate Retro Monitor’). It was basically a brand new monitor using a modern IPS display that incorporated a ton of ‘old’ inputs for hooking up all the retro game consoles and computers we know and love.

I’ve been following the project closely over the past two years, tuning in to Steve Jones’s regular YouTube updates documenting it’s progress, revisions and refinements along the way. However the wait is finally over now and my shiny new Checkmate Retro Monitor is in my possession courtesy of DHL.

Monitor Box

It came double-boxed which ensured it arrived in tip top condition with the inner box not suffering any damage at all

Checkmate Retro Styled Monitor Box

The monitor itself is protected by heavy duty polystyrene, further protecting it from damage.

Colour manual tucked into packaging

A little recessed area houses the spiral bound full colour manual.

Checkmate Monitor Manual

After removing the top half of the polystyrene packaging the monitor is finally revealed. In true retro fashion, even though I ordered the white version (the alternative was black) it is actually beige. This is a good thing as I don’t own a single ‘white’ retro computer – they have all yellowed to some degree or other, even after retro-brighting.

First glimpse of my new monitor

The packaging was hiding a few more things out of sight…

Just as well I didn’t toss the packaging straight in the bin!

…inside another box tightly wedged into a recess in the polystyrene.

Accessories box

This contained the remote control, PSU for the monitor and a couple of alternative panels for the bottom front panel of the monitor.

Accessories

There were a couple of noticeable omissions here, namely a set of batteries for the remote and an IEC (kettle) cable. We (the Kickstarter backers) were told not to expect these so this came as no surprise. I’m sure most people will have these things in plentiful supply if they’re anything like me.

Back Panel

The back panel is where all the magic begins and is where you can add and remove the ‘pods’ that give the monitor its unparalleled versatility,

Ports galore

Out of the box none of the ports are labelled – this is a little DIY job for the user!

Sticker Sheet

Tucked inside the manual is a small sheet of stickers which need to be aligned correctly and stuck to the relevant areas on the back to identify each group of connections.

Labelled ports.

I used a pair of tweezers to carefully position the stickers followed by a blast from my heat gun to ensure they were firmly attached.

Pods

All the monitors come with the bottom ‘Pod 0’ which leaves two bays to fill. I opted for (Appy’s) Retro Scaler with GBS Control and a Raspberry Pi pod. I could also have chosen a MiSTer Pod but I already own a few Raspberry Pi’s so that was the more appealing option. I do hope to pick up a MiSTer at some point in the future, funds permitting, but for now I’m looking forward to setting up either PiMiga or AmiKit on a Pi 4 housed inside my monitor!

Contents of the Raspberry Pi Pod Kit

The monitor includes a fully functioning tilt and swivel base, stereo speakers, an OLED display panel on the front, a remote control and of course more inputs around the back than you can shake a stick at.

Powering On my Checkmate Retro Monitor for the first time

Screen with light bleed

The monitor powered on without issue and displayed a very natty ‘Checkmate’ logo. However I was a little bit disappointed to see quite a lot of backlight bleed down both sides of the screen which is definitely something I wasn’t expecting. I put up with it for a week or so before deciding to tinker with the bezel screws and managed to greatly reduce the issue thankfully.

Screen without the light bleed issues

I basically had to slacken the side bezel screws off almost to the point were they came out completely but this did pretty much eradicate the bleed as you can see in the photo above (taken a week later after I had rearranged my desk). The bezel is a little loose both sides now but it’s not going anywhere (there’s other screws holding it in place) so it doesn’t bother me too much.

OLED Screen for the GBS Controls

Underneath the screen is a tiny little OLED panel that provides access to some of the GBS Control features/pre-sets on the Scaler via the jog dial. You can use it to check what the current settings are and also reset the scaler without having to power it off and on again. Changing pre-sets (stored custom configurations) is as simple as selecting a numbered pre-set from the menu and pressing in the jog dial.

Hooking up stuff to my new Checkmate Retro Monitor

Amiga Workbench via HDMI

My Amiga 1200 is fitted with an Indivision AGA Mk3 board so I was able to hook this up to the Checkmate Retro Monitor directly via HDMI. After a (good) few minutes playing around with the Indivision config tool (and some pointers off a helpful soul on the discord channel) I was able to achieve a beautifully crisp, rock-steady Workbench display running at 1280×1024 resolution that filled the screen from edge to edge.

Roguecraft running on my new Checkmate monitor

This also gave me a good excuse to boot up Roguecraft for a quick blast which displayed just fine straight out of the box. Such a great game too – I don’t need much of an excuse to fire it up!

After a few goes of Roguecraft I decided it was time to hook up a few different systems to the monitor to see how it performed with those.

Sega Rally on Dreamcast via Composite cable

I tried my Dreamcast first and hooked it up via a Composite cable and got a really nice picture.

Sega Rally on Dreamcast via Composite cable

Next up I hooked up my OG Xbox and had a blast of Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb. This was hooked up via an HDMI adapter cable and I had no issues with picture quality.

Indiana Jones on Xbox via Composite to HDMI adapter

I fired up my trusty Commodore 64C next with an (admittedly cheap) composite cable and got a pretty decent looking picture. It was a little soft but perfectly useable. There were some very very faint vertical lines but I’m sure I could eradicate those if I spent some time twiddling with the pots on my LumaFix64 board.

Commodore 64 via Composite cable

SCART Test

I thought I’d give the Scaler inputs a test next. I hooked up my pretty ancient Matsui VCR (which used to belong to my Grandad back in the 1990’s) using a SCART cable and popped in a copy of the greatest movie of all time…

I’d buy that for a dollar!

…and then proceeded to spend the next hour and a half watching the whole movie. Picture quality was really good considering the source and sound was great too with some very meaty gunshot and explosion effects coming through the built-in speakers.

ED209 vs Robocop

It’s probably been 20 years or longer since I’ve watched this with a PAL 5:4 aspect ratio as all my subsequent purchases have been in widescreen. To get this to display I had to select AV3 as the channel but other than that it just worked.

Dick Jones really does live up to his name…

Getting an Amiga to display an image via (RGB) SCART proved a little trickier. Initially I just couldn’t get an image at all. After going on the Discord I realised that there are basically multiple ‘hidden’ VGA channels that you can access by pressing the channel up and down buttons on the remote. After doing this a few times (pausing for a few seconds in-between) I eventually got an image to appear. Not very intuitive for sure but at least my monitor wasn’t faulty and now I know! The colours were washed out but I’m putting that down to an issue with my Amiga SCART cable as I’ve had it for donkeys years and not used it for a long time. The colours from my VCR were just fine.

Amiga via RGB SCART (think I need a new SCART cable).

Component Video Test

Thought I’d test out the Component video input next so hooked up my PlayStation 2 slim via Component, making sure to select ‘Y Cb/Pb Cr/Pr’ for Component Video Out in the PS2’s System Configuration. Again I had to jump VGA channels blindly until I stumbled across the correct one. I also needed to spend a bit of time messing around with the settings to get a decent looking, centered image as the default one was over to the far left and was ghosting quite badly. I did get a terrific picture in the end though and made sure I saved my GBS Control settings into a special ‘PS2’ slot which I can easily select from the OLED control on the front panel in future.

Some of my GBS Control Pre-sets – including one for my PS2

Unfortunately there are no red/white RCA stereo inputs which you would normally expect to find with component cables. Thankfully I discovered in the manual that the VGA audio input will accept audio for the component input so by using an RCA to headphone jack converter I was able to get the sound working as well.

PS2 Config Screen

Playing Media Files via USB Ports

Not really Retro related but there’s a couple of USB ports on the back so I thought I’d give them a quick try and see what sort of media files I could access through them.

USB Media Access Screen

Turns out quite a lot! I put a bunch of music, photos and videos on a USB flash drive and popped it in one of the ports. There are two of them and you have to select the correct one from the on-screen menu via the remote.

Audio Player

I had no problems dealing with audio files and was able to play back both high bit-rate MP3’s and FLAC files. You can have it play them sequentially, randomly, utilise playlists and access track info – it’s got quite a lot of functionality for a tacked on feature.

Image Viewer

Likewise pictures were no problem at all and the monitor helpfully displays them as a slideshow automatically complete with random transitions.

Video Player

I didn’t fare quite so well with video playback. It doesn’t like MOV files and although I had better success with MP4 files it is quite fussy about the resolution of them. I was able to play back some (very) old home movie footage in MP4 format successfully though so it’s just a matter of working out the resolutions it likes.

Final thoughts about the Checkmate Retro Monitor

This is a great monitor and I’m really glad I bought it. It works amazingly well with all my Commodore machines, especially my Amiga via HDMI. Workbench was never meant to be displayed on a 16:9 display and it’s great to be able to enjoy a lovely, crisp and vibrant image in the original aspect ratio. The quality of sound from the speakers is impressive and the huge variety of input options is a retro collectors dream come true. It does however make me regret not purchasing the extra S-Video/RF expansion and also the HDMI splitter to make use of those unused HDMI ports and the blank holes in the back of the scaler. Steve from Checkmate has said he’ll be offering these for sale separately soon so I’ll be ordering those as soon as they’re available.

It’s not without its drawbacks though and most of those are related to the complexity of using the scaler. There’s frequently an element of ‘fiddling’ required to get something to display on the screen. Once you’ve got an image you often then need to ‘tweak’ it to get it displayed optimally. This is exacerbated by the fact there are actually two ways to adjust the image size; the panel has it’s own built-in adjustment via the VGA menu and then there’s the GBS Control which offers a myriad of customisable features on top of this. It’s quite easy to mess up when adjusting things to the point where you think the monitor is broken so it’s best to make small incremental changes rather than wading in clicking everything in sight! Thankfully you can save GBS Control settings into ‘Presets’ that you can load up in future for each device.

The issue with light bleed (even though I have now sorted it) from the bezel being too tight didn’t create an amazing first impression. The lack of RCA audio inputs for the component cable was also a bit disappointing as most consoles have these connections when you get a component cable, although once more there was a solution which involved purchasing a suitable adapter.

The instruction manual, whilst well made and very interesting, doesn’t really do a great job of actually explaining to a lay person (i.e. someone who wasn’t involved in making the monitor) how to use it. It’s more of a technical reference really. Thankfully there is an active and helpful bunch of people on the Checkmate Discord and Steve himself is quick to respond to issues by email.

This is very much an enthusiast project – a product made by a hardcore retro fan, for other hardcore retro fans. So long as you are happy to tinker, mess around with configurations, menus, twiddle knobs, experiment and learn as you go along then I’m sure you will love the Checkmate Retro Styled Monitor just as much as I do.

Roguecraft Amiga Review

17th October 2024

Amiga, CD32, Reviews

1 Comment

I’ve had my eye on Roguecraft ever since I heard Badgerpunch Games were making an Amiga version of their previous game, Rogue64. This game was released way back in 2022 and remains one of my favourite games for the Commodore 64 to this day.

When I heard they were releasing a physical boxed edition of Roguecraft for the Amiga I pre-ordered immediately. With the ‘Standard Edition’ costing a very reasonable £19.99 plus P&P it was just too tempting to pass up on.

Finally, after many months, the waiting is over and my copy of the game has arrived!

Roguecraft box artwork

The box itself is a thing of beauty featuring one of the tentacled monsters on the front in glorious, vibrant, glossy colour.

Back of the box

The back of the box features screenshots from the game to whet your appetite along with some scene-setting words and a Retro Gamer Sizzler seal of approval.

Lots of Roguecraft goodies!

Opening up the box reveals a variety of goodies inside, including the games instruction manual, a copy of the game for the CD32, A Roguecraft postcard, a Roguecraft floppy disk label and a Thalamus sticker.

I should point out that I was also emailed a digital copy of the game so I also have a bootable ADF and a WHDLoad version of the game and this is what you would get if you bought the game from their itch.io store.

Choose your hero!

The excellent manual has been printed in full colour on glossy paper and takes you through the characters you can play…

Some of the monsters you can expect to confront

Along with the monsters you’ll be battling as you venture further into the game world. There’s plenty of other information provided to enhance your Roguecraft experience too.

Roguecraft CD32 disc

As there was a disk label included in the box and I have the ADF image of the game it would be remiss of me not to create my own ‘game disk’ so I can load it up off a proper disk on my A1200.

DIY Roguecraft Disk

I used the brilliant GoADF 2020 to write the image to a spare floppy disk…

Writing the ADF image to a real floppy disk.

,,,and then popped it into my A1200’s internal floppy drive so I could load up the game the way ~~nature~~ Commodore intended.

Ready to load

Loading the game

I loaded the game up on my CD32 and have to say it looks simply stunning displayed on my Philips CM8833-II monitor with vibrant colours that ‘pop’ right off the screen. The photo I took below doesn’t do it justice. It’s accompanied by a superb music track that sets the tone for the game proper.

Roguecraft Title Screen

Before starting the game you can choose to view the credits or read the instructions. Very handy if you got the digital version of the game without the printed manual.

Roguecraft instructions

I chose the ‘Warrior’ for my initial playthrough as it’s the default choice. Turns out this is also the ‘easy’ option too. The other choices on offer were the ‘Rogue’ and ‘Wizard’ which represent the ‘medium’ and ‘difficult’ options as they have progressively lower health and strength. The wizard is the only character to have a ranged weapon which should make for an interesting gameplay change. The Rogue has a unique ability too – he can teleport which can get him out of some tight spots.

Choosing the ‘easy’ option

The graphics look simply gorgeous on my CRT monitor. If this game had come out 35 years ago it would have been a stonking success for sure.

There be treasure ahead!

CRT vs LCD

I tried the game on my accelerated A1200 too and whilst it still looked great I think it lost some of its charm when displayed on my LCD screen with black borders and crisp pixels. The picture just wasn’t as warm or vibrant and the dithered pixels were clearly visible.

It definitely loses something when played on an LCD screen

You can clearly see the difference in the two photos of the title screen taken from each screen type below.

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I think the CD32 version will be the way I play this going forward as this is the Amiga I have hooked up to my CRT. I mean just look at this close-up of the graphics on my CRT below – this is how it was meant to be played for sure. The dithered colours blend into each other and those natural scan lines look fantastic. It’s very clear that someone has spent a massive amount of time labouring over these graphics to get them ‘just right’. Your character and the monsters are fully animated too and look great as you navigate around the isometric levels.

Look at the pixels on that….

Further enhancing the game is an amazing soundtrack composed by Jogeir Liljedalh. I’m a huge fan of the SID soundtrack from the original Rogue64 game and I can hear elements of it in this new Amiga version but Jogeir has knocked it out of the park with this one, It’s so good I went ahead and bought the soundtrack so I could listen to it whenever I wanted.

Gameplay

The aim of the game is the same as its predecessor – to progress down through the ten levels of the Mordecoom dungeons by locating the key hidden in one of the rooms on each. These levels are procedurally generated so no two playthroughs should ever be exactly the same. This is pretty essential really as being a rogue-like means you will be dying and replaying the levels a lot, hopefully progressing a bit further each time.

Controlling your character couldn’t be simpler – you simply push in the direction you want to go to both move and attack. Having said that, I did struggle with working out which direction on the D-pad corresponded to the direction I wanted to move on the screen. I’m sure it will become muscle memory in time but for now I found it infinitely easier to play with my controller held at a 45′ angle as you can see below. Steve Jobs was right all along – I was holding it wrong! Jokes aside I really did find directional control to be completely logical and intuitive when I held it this way.

Orienting my controller to match the screen!

Roguecraft is a turn-based game so you and the enemies take it in turns to move and attack. In true RPG fashion combat takes into account your relative strength against the enemy, active potions and also an element of RNG. Sometimes your attacks will miss their mark, same goes for the enemy attacks on you. However if they land a successful hit it reduces your health which is displayed in the top left corner. Underneath this is your strength which determines how much damage you do when attacking. Both your health and strength can be upgraded by finding red and blue gems respectively which are dropped by downed enemies after you’ve killed enough of them. You can replenish your health with hearts which can be found dotted around here and there. These are used immediately unlike the potions which you can carry so sometimes it’s better to save them until you are ready to progress to the next level rather than waste them.

Battling a Gluthulhu

Speaking of potions there are numerous different types you will find peppered around the dungeons of Moredecoom. The green potions heal you but the red and blue ones effects are randomised at the beginning of each game. There’s a couple of new status effects in this version that I won’t spoil. Will they help or hinder your progress? There’s only one way to find out! In addition to the potions and gems there are also treasure chests in some rooms and opening these will boost your score.

Another new feature in this game are hazards which litter the floor, lave pits, acid pools, spikes, fires… you really need to watch where you tread now!

Just like it’s predecessor Roguecraft features an auto-mapping feature, but improves on it by clearly marking the ‘exit’ room on the map after you find it so it’s easier to back-track when you are ready to proceed down to the next level. In doing so it has addressed one of my criticisms of the first game and is all the better for it.

I love this game, it looks and sounds terrific and is a hell of a lot of fun to play. It feels more challenging now and I died a lot at the ~~hands~~ tentacles of the level one Gluthulhu monster as he’s quite tough to kill until you can boost your strength. Nevertheless it has that ‘just one more go’ factor in spades and is the perfect ‘pick up and play’ game when you have some spare time.

Wireless Tank Mouse

12th July 2024

Amiga, Commodore 64, MEGA65

4 Comments

I missed the initial Kickstarter for this ‘Wireless Tank Mouse’ back in 2022 but now that they are on general sale I decided to pick one up from Sordan.ie to see if it was any good and hopefully use it with my Commodore and MEGA65 machines.

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The packaging is certainly very attractive featuring a very 80’s neon VHS style design on the front and a multitude of specs and features plastered over the sides and back of the box.

Wireless Tank Mouse

In the flesh it certainly looks the part and is very similar to the Amiga tank mouse we all know and love. Of course there’s two striking differences, the first of which is that this is now an optical mouse with the ball having been relegated to the history books. The second is the lack of a wire as this is now fully wireless, utilising either Bluetooth or 2.4Ghz to transmit the necessary signals back to your computer. You can switch between these options using a little 3-way switch underneath. This same switch is also used to power the mouse off when it’s placed in the middle position.

Wireless Tank Mouse underside

An optional extra that I purchased was the Tom adapter which came packaged separately in a little plastic bag. I have to confess to wondering why it was called Tom for a little while until I remembered the Tom and Jerry cartoons and then it all made perfect sense! Without this little gizmo the mouse will only work with modern computers which would defeat the purpose of it for me.

Wireless Tank Mouse with Tom adapter

The Tom device is basically just a USB to DB9 adapter with some clever electronics to convert the USB signals into something old Commodore computers can understand. Compared to most of the Tom adapters available on eBay this one seems to be extremely compact and is actually referred to as a ‘Micro Tom’. It’s housed in a really nice 3D printed case that holds everything together securely.

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When placed next to my original Amiga Tank mouse you can see just how close the design is. The main visible difference, besides the obvious lack of a wire, is that the buttons are a little narrower and spaced further apart on the new mouse. There’s a good reason for this that I will get to later on.

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Opening up the battery compartment reveals a small USB receiver tucked away at the bottom.

Wireless tank mouse battery compartment and USB receiver storage

This USB receiver can be plugged directly into a modern computer should you wish (Mac, Linux or PC) so you can use the mouse with those systems (or emulators running on them). If your computer has Bluetooth then you can leave the receiver in its cubby hole and simply pair it with your PC using that instead.

USB Receiver

To use the mouse with Commodore machines you need to insert the USB receiver into the Tom adapter.

Tom adapter with USB receiver plugged in

It was a really tight fit, so much so that I felt the need to double check I was putting it in correctly before risking applying more force to get the job done!

Let there be (green) light!

It’s powered by a couple of AAA batteries (rechargeable ones appear to work fine) which helps to add a bit of weight to it. I know some people like their mice light but I’m not one of them so the batteries went some way towards compensating for the lack of the ball.

Mousing Around

Before trying the wireless tank mouse with my retro machines I gave it a quick go in my Windows 11 PC and it worked immediately and completely flawlessly. I also tried it with my MorphOS Apple Mac Mini G4 with similar success. When used with modern machines you can use it with your favourite emulator for a more immersive experience or even as your daily driver should you wish.

In addition to the obligatory left and right mouse buttons the wireless tank mouse actually fully supports mouse scrolling too. Now you may well be thinking how’s that possible – it has no scroll wheel? Well remember earlier on when I mentioned about the buttons being spaced further apart? That’s because the designer has ingeniously incorporated a touch sensitive strip between the two buttons. You can simply swipe up and down with your finger to scroll in those directions. It works really well too. Obviously it lacks the tactile feedback of an actual wheel but having one of those would ruin the whole aesthetic.

Using the wireless tank mouse with my A1200

I have plenty of mice for my modern computers though, I got this to use with my Amiga mainly so I plugged the Tom adapter into port 1 of my A1200 and powered it on, and it just worked. No messing around, no pairing, no software to install, just plug and play. The scrolling support worked seamlessly too, (I installed scroll wheel support for my existing wired Amga mouse years ago). Tracking was super accurate and smooth and the mouse was just as comfortable to hold as ever – in fact more so now as I’m not constantly fighting against the cable in the limited space I have available to use it!

Wireless tank mouse ‘Tom’ adapter (on the right)

Satisfied that it worked with my Amiga I fired up my MEGA65 and loaded up GEOS65 and sure enough it worked really well with that too.

GEOS 65 running on my MEGA65 controlled by my wireless tank mouse

Next I invoked ‘GO64’ and switched my MEGA65 into C64 mode to load up a BASIC Solitaire game that I typed in a few years ago. This was designed to work the the Commodore 1351 mouse and sure enough this also worked like a charm with just occasional jittering. Incidentally this is also a game that really benefits from switching the CPU to 40Mhz mode – no more lag when shuffling the cards!

I tried it with my real C64C computer and ran into my first problem. It simply refused to work. After a bit of RTFM (or RTFW in this case) I discovered the following…

Switching between C64 and Amiga Mode

Out of the box the Tom adapter is configured to run in Amiga mode. Consequently when plugging it into a C64 it just doesn’t work. (Same for the alternative C64 CORE in the MEGA65). Thankfully it can be switched into C64 1351 mode quite easily by plugging in a USB mouse, holding down the middle button (usually the scroll wheel) at bootup and whilst still holding it down press the left mouse button a few times until the red LED flashes 3 times and then you can let go. The adapter will now behave like a 1351 mouse forever until you change it back.

I did come a little unstuck trying to change it back to Amiga mode though. Either I have a slightly different model of Tom adapter or whoever wrote the instructions on the Sordan site got a bit confused. Thankfully after about 30 minutes of swapping different mice, power cycling, cursing and failing I figured it out. To switch to Amiga mode I had to hold down the right mouse button at bootup and then rapidly press the left button until the red LED flashed just the one time and then let go. (The instructions tell you to do the complete opposite which makes it flash twice which appears to be Atari ST mode).

What do I think of it?

All in this is a fantastic product that works with a huge range of machines, both old and new. It oozes nostalgia thanks to its design but at the same time embraces modernity by swapping the ball for an optical sensor, the wire for wireless connectivity and adds ‘invisible’ scrolling support beneath the plastic case. It works with pretty much every machine I own; all my Amigas, CD32, MEGA65, Commodore 64, Mac Mini running MorphOS and even my PC’s and emulators. My only criticism is the method of switching modes on the Tom adapter is a bit of a faff. I would much prefer a little 3-way toggle switch than trying to pull off some kind of weird secret handshake with the mouse. Other than that though the wireless tank mouse seems to be a jack of all trades and a master of them all and I’m really glad I picked one up.

Amiga Future #168 – May/June edition out now

15th May 2024

The latest issue of Amiga Future (Amiga Future #168) for subscribers arrived a few days ago. Excitingly the cover features a brand new Amiga computer – the AmigaOne A1222 Plus which I can’t wait to read about. No doubt it will be outlandishly expensive but one can dream!

Front Cover.

The Coverdisk

The main event on this months cover CD is ‘Photofolio 2.6’ which appears to be some sort of Amiga ‘Lightroom’. Regardless, I’m looking forward to investigating it!

Cover CD.

What’s in Amiga Future #168

Here’s a quick snap of the contents page to give you an idea of what is in this issue. There’s plenty of both game and software reviews this issue and some interesting hardware gets covered too.

Contents Page

Below is a little peek at some of the stuff inside Amiga Future #168. If you’d like to purchase a copy then do please take a look here. – Incidentally I don’t get any commission or anything if you buy a copy, I’m merely trying to spread the word and ensure our little community continues to thrive. 🙂

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Never come across Amiga Future magazine before? Perhaps you’d care to take a look at some of my other Amiga Future magazine previews here.

Converting a Simulant ‘Classic USB mechanical PC Keyboard’ to work natively with the Amiga

19th April 2024

Amiga, CD32, How to's, Reviews

6 Comments

Back when I purchased my Amiga USB keyboard in 2022 from Simulant it carried a disclaimer that it wouldn’t work with ‘real’ Amigas but that they were working on an adapter. That was about 18 months ago now and I had almost forgotten about it. However a few weeks ago I received an email saying they were taking pre-orders for the adapter so I jumped on board. It arrived a few days ago so I’ll go through the installation and how well it works in this post.

Amiga Conversion Kit Contents

The kit included the adapter, an A4000/CD32 keyboard cable, an A2000/A3000 adapter and a small strip of doubled-over plastic.

Raspberry Pi Pico

The adapter itself consists of a small Raspberry Pi Pico board affixed to a custom PCB that has some extra chips, sockets and circuitry to interface with the keyboard itself.

Back of the custom PCB

There were no instructions supplied with the kit at all, not even a bit of paper with a URL to visit for more info. Unsure if that was an oversight or not. Thankfully I received an email from them shortly before the delivery was due and it contained a link to download some new firmware for it. Within the zip file there was a small text file with basic instructions and a few photos. It was enough to set me on the path anyway.

Updating the Firmware

The very first task was to install the latest firmware on the Pico board. This was really straightforward and just required me to hook it up to my PC with a Micro USB cable whilst holding down the ‘BOOTSEL’ button on the Pico board. After a few moments it then appeared on my PC as a regular storage device; ‘RPI-RP2’ and I was able to copy the firmware across.

The RPI-RP2 mass storage device

The drive disappeared automatically once the firmware had successfully installed which was my cue to unplug it and move on to the next stage.

Dismantling the keyboard

The next job was to get the keyboard opened up. The top half of the keyboard overlaps the bottom half and is held in place by a series of plastic clips. There are four along the front edge and another four along the back – there are none on the sides.

Spudger time!

The two halves fit together extremely snugly so to avoid any cosmetic damage I used a plastic spudger tool to gently prise the them apart and then slid it along, disengaging the clips as I progressed.

Top half of case removed.

With all the clips dealt with the two halves separated easily and I was able to lift the top off and place it to one side.

Keycap puller

The next job was to remove some of the keycaps to gain access to the screws holding the keyboard and bottom of the case together.

Keys removed revealing screw beneath.

First I removed the Caps Lock, Tab, Q and A keys on the left…

Keys removed revealing screw beneath.

Then the 7 and 4 keys from the numeric keypad on the right.

Removing the left-hand side screw.

Then I removed the small phillips screw from each side of the keyboard…

It’s a screw!

and placed them, along with the keycaps, somewhere safe so I wouldn’t lose them in the black-hole that is my desk!

Don’t want to lose these!

With the screws removed I was then able to separate the keyboard from the bottom of the case.

Bottom of the keyboard released

I then set about removing the cable clamp from the bottom of the case.

Removing the cable clamp screws.

The clamp was held in place by two phillips screws, smaller than the ones I had encountered earlier.

The cable clamp.

The cable was then free to be moved around to give me more slack to work with for the next stage.

The path of the cable is a curvy one…

In order to fit the adapter I needed to remove the old cable from the keyboard circuit board.

Silcone…

Unfortunately for me, whomever made it decided it would be a good idea to squirt lashings of silicone all over it.

Slcing the silicone off

I spent the next 20 minutes very carefully removing chunks of silicone…

Another chunk of silicone removed…

using a combination of craft knife and tweezers, doing my best not to slice through anything I shouldn’t!

A lovely mess.

It was a pretty tedious task but eventually I had a small pile of silicone bits and I was able to remove the old plug from the socket and feed it back out through the small slot in the case.

Finally – all gone.

This eventually left me with a nice, silicone-free, keyboard cable socket!

Installing the adapter

Now it was finally time to install the adapter. I began by gently feeding it through the small slot in the base of the keyboard case until I had enough cable to work with,

Pushing the new cable through the slot.

Next I connected the plug into the empty socket on the adapter board.

Cable now hooked up to the Pico board.

Simulant recommend the adapter be placed out of the way with the two sockets straddling the plastic ridge in the case so I placed it between the left foot and the cable entry point as shown below.

Placing the adapter board out of the way.

Once I’d placed the cables where I wanted them to go I re-attached the cable clamp to hold it in place.

Attaching to the keyboard.

The final connection task was to plug in the short fly-lead running from the adapter into the socket on the keyboard (the one that was previously covered in silicone).

Plastic shielding.

Before closing everything up I wrapped the adapter in the plastic sheathing provided and secured it with a little sticky tape. This was there just to prevent any kind of electrical short occurring between the adapter and the bottom of the keyboard circuit board.

Making sure nothing gets trapped as the case is reassembled.

I then carefully mounted the keyboard back into the bottom of the case making sure that nothing got trapped in the process and then re-seated the top of the case over everything to hold it all together once more.

Ta-da!

Testing

The conversion was now complete so it was time to hook it up to my Amiga and put it through its paces!

A4000 PS/2 connector.

The standard cable it comes with ends in a PS/2 connector, like the one you would find on an A4000.

The 5-pin DIN adapter.

It also comes with an adaptor to convert it into a 5-pin DIN style connector more commonly found on A1500/2000/3000 machines.

The adapter cable.

Sadly I do not own any kind of big box Amiga to test it out with… the price of these machines has skyrocketed in recent years and it’s difficult to justify the expense when they appear on eBay, However I do have a CD32 console and this is blessed with an A4000 style PS/2 socket so I used that for my testing.

CD32 PS/2 ‘AUX’ socket.

My CD32 is equipped with a ‘TerribleFire 330‘ which means I am able to run a fully loaded Workbench environment off a compact flash ‘hard drive’. I have it hooked up to my Philips CM8833-Mk2 monitor via RGB. Not as good as an A3000 with RTG but it’s still a nice setup.

New keyboard connected.

I loaded up a copy of Final Writer and began bashing away on the keyboard. It’s a lovely typing experience with plenty of tactile feedback without being too clicky and annoying. All the characters and punctuation marks appeared correctly including the likes of £, @ and $ (I’m in England so use a British keyboard layout). The caps lock key also functioned correctly as did the number lock key.

Final Writer.

One little quirk I did notice was that the hash key next to the Return key was basically redundant and had no function at all. Interestingly this is a blank key on my A1200 and doesn’t exist at all on my A500 so it makes more sense in light of this. It was not an issue anyway as the hash character was accessed using the key to its immediate left whilst the tilde character was accessible from the key to the left of the numeric 1 key (which is where it is located on a real Amiga keyboard).

Proper Amiga keycap layout.

The other important thing I realised was that the Amiga keys didn’t work when trying to access Amiga shortcuts, however I found that the two ‘Alt’ keys did. I solved this by simply swapping the keycaps over so that the Amiga keys were placed directly either side of the space bar and the Alt keys adjacent to those. After that everything behaved correctly with shortcuts like ‘Amiga+ S’ to save and of course the ‘three finger salute’, CTRL, A + A to reset it proving to be no problem at all.

Rounding Off

At a shade over £50 this is not a cheap kit, especially when you’ve already shelled out over £100 for the Amiga USB keyboard. However it’s been well designed and does exactly what they said it would. Considering the price that original A4000 keyboards can go for on eBay it begins to look a lot more economical! It’s also been made in very small numbers so there’s no economies of scale at play either.

My only criticism would be levelled at the lack of any instructions included with the kit but maybe someone just forgot to throw them in the jiffy bag when they were packing mine? Additionally, and this is not a criticism – more of a request really, it would be great if they could give us the option to quickly switch from the original USB configuration to the Amiga one without having to take it all apart again. I’d like to continue using it with my MorphOS machine as well as with my emulated Amigas and not be forced into choosing one or the other. A first world problem for sure!

Anyway if you already have one of these Amiga USB keyboards and want to use it with a big box Amiga then I can heartily recommend this as it does exactly what it says on the tin!

Zzap! Amiga Issue #15 is out now

3rd April 2024

Today I received the latest edition of Zzap! Amiga Issue #15 ‘Micro Action’ in the post. Here’s a little glimpse inside so you can get an idea of what to expect in this issue.

Zzap! Amiga Front Cover

A Look Inside

Here’s the contents page and below it, a handful of the 60 pages within this edition.

Zzap! Amiga Issue #15 Contents Page

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At £4.99 plus postage for 60 A5 pages of Amiga goodness this is, as always, another worthy addition to my retro magazine collection. Don’t forget you can get 15% off a copy of your own with code ‘LYONSDENBLOG’ at the checkout!

Head on over to Fusion Retro Books to pick up your own copy of Issue #15.

Some more Zzap! Amiga magazine previews here.

Amiga Addict 28 out now

26th March 2024

Behold, the latest issue of Amiga Addict magazine, issue 28, arrived today. This month the cover is devoted to the awesome Scala multimedia software to complement the in-depth six page feature within the magazine itself.

Issue 28 cover

Below is a peek at the contents page giving an overview of what’s inside this months issue.

Contents page

Here’s the coverdisc page providing details about what you can expect to find on this months disk (whether that be real or virtual). This month brings a collection of 3 PD games; Baldy: The Search For Missing Disks, Mad Bomber and Zerberk.

Coverdisk Capers

If you are not familiar with Amiga Addict cover disks, they only provide the labels – you have to supply the floppy disk. The self-adhesive labels are always of a super-high quality in glossy full colour with a peel-off backing. When applied to a suitable floppy they really look the part and provide a good excuse to blow the cobwebs out of your Amiga’s floppy drive.

My Maxell CoverDIsk 🙂

The magazine consists of 60 A4 full colour pages and features loads of news, reviews, articles, tutorials and more. This issue costs £6.50 (plus P&P) and is available from the Amiga Addict website. Amazingly it is also available in some bricks and mortar newsagents such as WHSmith so you may be able to pick it up there if you’re lucky and save yourself the postage!

A Look Inside Amiga Addict Issue 28

I’ll leave you with a quick look at just few of the articles that can be found in issue 28.

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Finally, here’s a link to some of my previews of other, earlier editions of Amiga Addict magazine.

Amiga Future #167 – March/April edition out now

22nd March 2024

The latest issue of Amiga Future (Amiga Future #167) for subscribers arrived a few days ago. This time around the front cover features the A1200 PiStorm Lite Adapter along with some nice artwork from the ‘Stuntman Seymour’ and ‘Super Delivery Boy’ games that are reviewed in this issue.

Issue #167 Front Cover.

The Coverdisk

The main event on this months cover CD is ‘Fatman’ and ‘Wheelspin’ for the gamers and ‘Font Machine 3’ and ‘X-DVE 3.5’ for the tinkerers. Pretty decent disc this issue with something for everyone really.

Issue #167’s cover CD.

What’s in Amiga Future #167

Here’s a photo of the contents page to give you an idea of what is in this issue. There’s plenty of both game and software reviews this issue and some interesting hardware gets covered too.

Contents of Issue #167

Below is a little peek at some of the stuff inside Amiga Future #167. If you’d like to purchase a copy then do please take a look here. – Incidentally I don’t get any commission or anything if you buy a copy, I’m merely trying to spread the word and ensure our little community continues to thrive. 🙂

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Never come across Amiga Future magazine before? Perhaps you’d care to take a look at some of my other Amiga Future magazine previews here.

Amiga Addict 27 out now

8th February 2024

Here’s the latest issue of Amiga Addict magazine, issue 27, that arrived today featuring some artwork for the Wolfchild game on the front cover. This months mag includes a six page in-depth look at the story behind the creation of this particular game,

Issue 27 cover

Below is a peek at the contents page giving an overview of what’s inside this months issue of Amiga Addict.

Contents page

A Look Inside Amiga Addict Issue 27

I’ll leave you with a quick look at just few of the articles that can be found in issue 27.

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Finally, here’s a link to some of my previews of other, earlier editions of Amiga Addict magazine.

Zzap! Amiga Issue #14 is out now

8th February 2024

A few days ago the latest edition of Zzap! Amiga Issue #14 ‘Micro Action’ arrived on my doormat so lets take a quick peek inside.

Zzap! Amiga Front Cover

A Look Inside

Here’s the contents page and a handful of the 60 pages within this edition.

Zzap! Amiga Issue #14 Contents Page

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At £4.99 plus postage for 60 pages of Amiga goodness it’s a no-brainer for me and yet another worthy addition to my retro magazine collection. Don’t forget you can get 15% off a copy of your own with code ‘LYONSDENBLOG’ at the checkout!

Head on over to Fusion Retro Books to pick up your own copy of Issue #14.

Some more Zzap! Amiga magazine previews here.

Amiga Future #166 – Jan/Feb edition out now

18th January 2024