Category - How to’s

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

19th April 2024

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!

Razer Basilisk Ultimate Battery Replacement

23rd April 2023

Steven

How to's, PC

2 Comments

When I am not tinkering around with my old Commodores my ‘daily driver’ computer is a Windows PC and lately the mouse I use with it has been driving me crazy. It’s a wireless Razer Basilisk Ultimate that I bought three years ago and it’s been terrific until recently. Over the past 6 months or so the battery life has deteriorated to the point where it barely lasts an hour before it needs charging again! I made sure the contacts were clean on both the mouse and dock and even charged it with a micro USB cable but nothing worked. Basically the rechargeable battery was completely knackered and so began my mission to replace it!

Positions of the 5 screws holding the case together.

The first job was to find where the screws were hiding so I could take the mouse apart. I removed all the glide feet and managed to find two of the screws. The remaining three screws were hidden underneath the serial number/barcode sticker which I also had to remove. The sticker came away quite cleanly with the use of a craft knife to lift up a corner. However the glide pads were really stuck down well so although I got them all off in one piece they were quite tatty afterwards and wouldn’t stick back down properly. They ended up in the bin! The good news if you are looking to do this yourself is that you now know that only the bottom two gliders need removing so if you are careful you might not need to replace them like I did!

The T-6 bit needed to undo the screws.

The screws were tiny little torx head ones and required the use of a T6 bit to remove them as you can see in the photos above and below.

Removing the screws.

With the five screws now removed the top of the mouse shell could be lifted off. There was a short ribbon cable joining the two halves but it was just long enough to not have to bother disconnecting it whilst working on the lower half.

View of the two halves of the case.

The battery was connected to the mouse by means of a short connector with red, yellow and black wires which unplugged easily.

The battery is lurking under this piece of grey foam.

The battery itself was stuck to the mouse chassis but pulled away fairly easily.

Battery removed.

The top of the battery had a small square of foam attached. I can only assume it was there to help make sure the battery didn’t work its way loose so I opted to keep it and carefully removed it with my craft knife.

Razer Basilisk Ultimate Battery still covered by the foam.

With the foam removed (mostly in-tact) I could finally read the label to get the exact specs of the battery.

Foam removed in one piece.

Sourcing a New Battery

The battery model number was ‘PL782144’ and the specs stated it was 3.7v, 700mAH and 2.59Wh.

The old battery label.

These specs didn’t help too much initially as I scoured both Amazon, eBay and even AliExpress for a suitable replacement. I found many batteries with the same ratings but they were all the wrong shape or size or only had two wires instead of three. The battery was quite a snug fit inside the mouse so I needed something the same size.

Razer Basilisk Ultimate Battery Listing on eBay.

After a lot of searching around I found a battery that claimed it would fit my mouse and had the right specs, connector and size. The seller was based in China and the delivery time suggested it could take up to two months to arrive but it seemed to be my only option so I went ahead and ordered one. Here’s a link to the one I ordered: Mouse Battery. The link works right now but at some point in the future it may not so just use the details in the screengrab above to search around for an alternative.

Razer Basilisk Ultimate Gliders Listing on eBay.

As I’d also messed up the gliders I found a set of those too here. They were only a few quid including postage from China so well worth it. The picture showed them as being white but they were actually black when I got them. No big deal as I think they look better black anyway. Besides, you never get to see them when the mouse is on your desk anyway!

New Gliders and Battery in supplied packaging.

Thankfully both items arrived in a little under three weeks, much sooner than the listings had stated. I guess they quote the worst case scenario so that people don’t complain.

New Gliders and Battery unpacked.

When I placed the battery next to the original they were a pretty good match in terms of size with the new one just a millimetre or two smaller.

New Gliders and Battery in supplied packaging.

Old battery (left) and new battery (right).

Installing the New Battery

Now that I had everything I needed to fix my Razer Basilisk Ultimate mouse I set about finishing the job.

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The first thing to do was peel off the adhesive cover on the new battery ready for it to be stuck into position.

Peeling the tape off the adhesive pad.

I made sure to orient the battery with the cable nearest the socket but as it was quite a bit longer than the original I looped it around a section of the battery holder to keep it from getting into harms way when reassembling the mouse.

New battery fitted.

Once the battery was fitted and the wire connector plugged back in I re-fitted the foam pad to the battery. It had enough residual stickiness left to just stick right back on. Not entirely sure it was necessary but it was on there before so I put it back,

Old piece of foam re-fitted.

With the battery stuck in place, reconnected and foam replaced I put the case back together and turned my attention to the bottom of the case…

Fitting the New Gliders

To fit the new gliders I used a pair of precision tweezers to remove them from the backing sheet and position them on the base of the mouse before pressing them firmly into place. It’s far easier to see where they go when your view isn’t obscured by the end of a finger!

Holding one of the gliders with a pair of tweezers.

The gliders had a thin protective film on them that needed removing after application.

Peeling off the protective film.

I also carefully replaced the barcode sticker and also the square glider around the laser in the middle. I hadn’t removed this but since all the new ones were now black and this was still white it had to go!

Ta-da! The finished article with all gliders and serial number sticker fitted.

Whilst I was at it I decided to give the charging contacts a quick clean too.

These are the charging contacts that need periodic cleaning.

A quick spin of an isopropyl alcohol soaked cotton bud was all it took to make sure they were nice and clean. I did the same thing with the prongs of the charging dock too for good measure.

Cleaning the contacts with some Isopropyl Alcohol on a cotton bud.

I then gave the whole mouse a quick wipe down to remove any dirty marks I’d made before taking the photo below and then putting it straight back into active service.

My Razer Basilisk Ultimate Mouse – Restored to its Former Glory!

At the time of writing it’s been three days since I fitted the new battery and my mouse is still going strong on the one and only charge I gave it that first day. The battery replacement has been a resounding success and my Razer Basilisk Ultimate is basically as good as new now. The total cost was £32 for the battery, gliders and postage whilst the repair probably took about 30 minutes. Given that the mouse cost me £150 when new I think that was money and time well spent for another three years of top class service (touch wood).

Adventures with JiffyDOS

22nd March 2023

Steven

Commodore 64, How to's

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I recently bought some official JiffyDOS ROM’s from Retro Innovations in the USA and they arrived a couple of weeks ago. They came individually cossetted in small little cardboard boxes packed with fluff like tiny little eggs in nest. The boxes themselves were packaged inside a jiffy bag. Interestingly no instructions were supplied but these are readily available on their website so not too much of an issue.

The three different types of JiffyDOS ROM’s I received.

I excitedly opened up the case on my 64C so I could set about installing the replacement Kernal ROM chip… and immediately encountered my first major problem. My ROM wasn’t socketed, meaning I would have to de-solder the existing chip before I could even think about replacing it.

C64C kernal ROM soldered directly to motherboard.

I don’t have any fancy de-soldering tools, just a cheap solder sucker and some braid. I’ve never had much luck with a solder sucker as the solder always seems to solidify by the time I get the sucker into position. I knew it would all end in tears unless I bought a new tool to make life easier. I’ve seen people on YouTube using electric de-soldering guns that use a vacuum pump to suck out the solder which would be perfect but I didn’t want to spend that much money on something I wouldn’t be using very often. I settled for the tool you see below (Preciva Electric Desoldering Pump) which was a nice compromise coming in at under £40. Instead of a vacuum pump it uses a spring loaded mechanism just like a normal solder sucker – but with the added benefit of a heated nozzle to melt the solder.

Preciva Electric Desoldering Pump

Thankfully the device turned out to be a good investment and worked well. I just placed the nozzle over each of the pins in turn and left it there for about 6 seconds or so and then triggered the suction pump. I repeated the process a couple of times for each pin to make sure I’d got all the solder out. Obviously not as convenient as having continuous suction but no big hardship to re-prime the pump each time.

De-soldering the Kernal ROM with my new tool.

Of course things are never quite so simple and when I tried to remove the chip a few pins were still being held in place by a few bits of solder so I revisited those a couple of times before it finally came free.

De-soldered and ready to remove.

Once I had removed the original kernal ROM I stored it away in a safe place and popped in the new socket, making sure the notch was in the correct place (facing the back of the C64).

This is the 28pin socket I needed to install to take the JiffyDOS ROM.

I then soldered each corner of the socket in place whilst holding it in position with a few lumps of Blu Tack.

Socket soldered into place.

With the socket now held secure I soldered the rest of the pins. I always use a lead based solder as I just find it so much easier to work with than the lead-free stuff. I used flux to ensure the solder flowed nicely too which did leave a sticky mess to clean up afterwards but it came off easily with some isopropyl alcohol.

Socket now soldered into place. Flux still needs cleaning off.

After satisfying myself that all my solder joints were ok (by using a magnifying glass) I reinstalled the mainboard into my C64 and popped in the JiffyDOS kernal ROM.

JiffyDOS ROM installed in the socket.

Now I just needed to find a home for the switch. I chose the area above the datasette port to mount the switch but it could have gone anywhere really.

JiffyDOS toggle switch installed on the back of my C64C.

If I was bothered about drilling my case I could even have routed it through to the outside via the openings for the user/datasette ports.

JiffyDOS Startup message.

With the install finished I put my C64 back together and booted her back up to make sure everything was working. I was greeted with a brand new message on startup; ‘JIFFYDOS V6.01 (C)1989 CMD’ which meant that the new Kernal was working. I turned my C64 off, flipped the switch and turned it back on to check I could still get the usual ‘BASIC V2’ message which I did. Happy days!

Phase one was complete. Next up was phase two – installing all the JiffyDOS ROM’s into my disk drives!

Installing JiffyDOS in my 1581 Drive

I started with the easiest drive to upgrade – my 1581. The version of the kernal for this drive doesn’t require a switch as it’s able to detect whether the C64 itself is running JiffyDOS and can switch modes on the fly automatically.

There were only 2 screws holding the two halves of the case together and once the top section was lifted off I could see the familiar steel casing of a 3.5″ drive inside.

1581 drive with top cover removed.

This was held in place by four more screws and could be lifted out of the way entirely once they had been removed.

1581 drive mainboard.

Thankfully the kernal ROM was socketed which was a real stroke of luck as every other chip on the board was soldered directly in place.

Removing the 1581 kernal ROM.

It needed a good old tug with the chip removal tool to get it budge but it parted ways with the socket eventually allowing me to drop in the replacement, taking care to make sure it was aligned correctly.

1581 JiffyDOS Kernal ROM installed.

With the new JiffyDOS kernal installed I put the drive back together again, hooked it back up to my C64 and powered everything back on. Using the ‘@’ command I was able to read the error channel of the drive which confirmed the V6 JiffyDOS ROM was working. Two installs down, two remaining!

Reading the drive error channel (by pressing just one key!) to make sure the new ROM was working.

Installing JiffyDOS in my 1541-II Drives

Next up were my two 1541-II drives which I knew would be a little more involved as they would both need a small toggle switch installing to change between the standard kernal and JiffyDOS,

Removing the four screws holding the 1541-II case together.

There were four screws holding the two halves of the case together which I removed from the bottom of the drive. Flipping the whole case over then allowed the top half to be lifted off and placed out of the way.

1541-II Drive latch lever removed.

The drive latch lever needed removing in order to get the front panel off. It just pulls off with the application of a bit of force, but shouldn’t require any tools.

Drive mechanism flipped over out of the way allowing a clear view of the drive belt and stepper motor.

With the front bezel removed there were an additional four screws holding the actual disk drive mechanism to the base of the case. After these were removed I was able to flip the mechanism over and place it at the back of the case leaving all the cables still attached.

1541-II mainboard with kernal ROM removed (bottom left). Not yet had it’s spring clean in this photo!

The kernal ROM was also socketed on the drive so it was an easy job to remove it (bottom left in the photo above). At this point I realised the inside of the case was pretty dirty so I actually removed the whole board and gave it a good clean before continuing!

1541-II JiffyDOS ROM fitted – after the drive had received a spring clean!

I fitted the JiffyDOS ROM and then routed the wire through to the back of the case where I found a nice spot to mount the switch.

1541-II JiffyDOS switch location.

I replaced the disk mechanism, making sure that I didn’t trap any of the wires underneath and that they wouldn’t foul the drive belt either.

Re-fitting the drive mechanism.

Whilst I had the lid off I thought I may as well give the drive head a quick clean. Normally I just use a 5.25″ cleaning floppy every few months but theres no substitute for a proper clean.

Another view of 1541-II with JiffyDOS ROM and switch installed.

I used a few drops of isopropyl alcohol on a cotton bud and gently wiped across the head a few times to ensure it was in tip top condition.

Giving the read/write head a quick clean with a cotton bud and some isopropyl alcohol.

With the new JiffyDOS ROM installed, the case sparkling and head shiny clean I reassembled everything and gave it quick test before repeating the entire process on my other 1541-II drive.

Back of the 1541-II drive showing the location of the JiffyDOS selector switch.

Speed Tests

Although the process took a little while longer than I expected (thanks mostly to carrying out an impromptu spring clean) the actual installs went smoothly. It was finally time to see what sort of benefits the JiffyDOS system would bring!

To test the speed increase I used a 40 block program, Klondike, that I had typed in from a listing a while back. I copied the same file onto both a 3.5″ floppy and a 5.25″ floppy. I then timed how long the program took to load on each drive with the standard kernal and then with JiffyDOS enabled. Here’s the results:

JiffyDOS Speed Test

Drive	Standard Load Time	JiffyDOS Load Time
1541-II	27 seconds	5 seconds
1581	21 seconds	5 seconds
1541 Ultimate-II+	22 seconds	5.5 seconds

Time taken to load a 40 block BASIC program off a 5.25" disk in a 1541-II, a 3,5" disk in a 1581 drive, and a 1541 Ultimate-II+ cartridge with and without the use of JiffyDOS..

The speed improvement was pretty dramatic, going from 27 seconds to load the game on the 1541 drive to just 5 seconds – a reduction in the loading time of over 80%. The speed increase was also very impressive on the 1581, reducing the loading time by 76%. It’s interesting to note that the standard loading time on the 1581 was already 6 seconds quicker than on the 1541-II drive thanks to an improved read/write speed.

Assigning a digital JiffyDOS ROM to use in my 1541 Ultimate-II .

I also tested JiffyDOS out on my 1541 Ultimate-II+ device after installing a digital copy of the 1541-II ROM into the Flash memory of the cart. I got almost identical results to my real 1581 drive with my stopwatch recording times just a whisker slower for the virtual drive.

Quality of Life Improvements

JiffyDOS offers a lot more than just data transfer speed increases, it actually incorporates a complete implementation of the Commodore DOS 5.1 wedge command set in ROM. What this means in practise is an end to the ridiculously complex strings of commands needed to perform simple tasks like formatting a disk and the introduction of a new easy to use command set. Being in ROM means these benefits are available all the time, from the moment you power on your computer.

Here’s a few examples:

Reading a disk directory: Normally this would require entering the command ‘LOAD”$”,8’ which would load the directory of a disk into the C64’s memory so you can list it. It works and it’s not particularly difficult to remember but it wipes the C64’s memory in the process so is not ideal. With JiffyDOS you can simply enter ‘@$’ and it will LIST the directory of the default drive WITHOUT destroying whatever program is resident in RAM. In fact you don’t even need to type it in, simply press ‘F1’ and then hit RETURN. A whole bunch of common commands are pre-programmed into the function keys to make your life easier.

Formatting a disk: This would normally require the following command ‘OPEN 1,8,15,”N:NEWDISK,01″:CLOSE 1’. However using JiffyDOS you simply enter ‘@N:NEWDISK,01’ which is much easier to remember.

Reading the error channel: This is a much more striking example. Remember trying to find out why the error light of your drive was flashing? You would normally have to type in a small BASIC program like this:

10 OPEN 15,8,15
20 INPUT#15,F,E$,T,S
30 PRINT F;E$;T;S
40 CLOSE 15

However with JiffyDOS all you do is enter ‘@’ (or ‘@””,9’ for a non default drive number) to achieve the same thing! Incidentally this feature is also really useful for checking that JiffyDOS is enabled and working on a specific drive when first powering up.

My Commodore 64 hooked up to my 1541-II and 1581 drives.

In addition to dozens of new easy to use disk commands there are other amazing new features like a built-in file copier. Copying files from one disk to another is now a doddle – simply set the source and target drive, tag files you want to copy from a directory listing using ‘CTRL+W’ and then ‘RUN’ the copy.

Now you might be wondering, as I did, how all these extra commands and functions have been added to the kernal without squeezing out other functionality. Well in truth they haven’t – the datasette routines have been removed to make space for them. This means that whilst JiffyDOS is enabled you are unable to load or save data from cassette. In reality this is no great hardship though as a quick power cycle and flick of the switch will revert back to the regular kernal and enable tape operations.

JiffyDOS is an amazing upgrade and something I wish I had installed years ago. The speed improvement it brings is pretty amazing but it’s probably all the new DOS features and commands that I appreciate the most. They turn what was, in all honesty, a pretty horrible and unintuitive user experience, into a pleasure.

Installing a LumaFix64

9th March 2023

Steven

Commodore 64, How to's

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I’ve actually had this LumaFix64 kit (from SharewarePlus) lurking around the back of my ‘future projects’ box for quite a while now. I was waiting for a good opportunity to fit it so whilst I had my C64 in bits recently to work on a JiffyDOS install I thought the time was definitely right to install it.

In a nutshell the LumaFix64 is designed to help remove, or at least reduce the vertical lines and chequerboarding that you often experience with the Commodore 64’s video output, particularly when hooked up to a modern flat screen TV/Monitor. These issues are caused by noise generated within the VIC-II video chip. TheLumaFix64 allows you to adjust AEC, PHIO and CHR using tiny little potentiometers (pots) on the device itself. According to the manual it is able to improve the displayed image by inverting these errant signals and feeding them back into the Luma signal.

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The device itself came supplied in a small Ziplock bag along with a small manual and a warning card that says you might have to do a lot of adjusting. With hindsight I now know exactly why they included this card!

Close-up of the LumaFix64 device.

Thankfully my VIC-II chip is socketed so installing the LumaFix64 was pretty straightforward. All I had to do was remove the VIC-II, install the LumaFix64 into the now empty socket and then put the VIC-II chip into the socket on the LumaFix64.

LumaFix64 installed and ready to go!

With the LumaFix64 installed I turned on my C64 to check everything was still working OK and was immediately horrified at the sight before me. Rather than improve the image, it had completely ruined it, so much so that I actually thought I’d damaged the VIC-II somehow during the installation.

Noooooooooo! This is how the display looked immediately after installing the LumaFix64.

Fearing the worst but hoping for the best I started turning the topmost Pot (AEC). I turned and turned and turned it and nothing seemed to happen at all. Was it broken? Had I turned it too far? Turns out I still hadn’t turned it enough! After a few more twists of my screwdriver the image started to improve until eventually I heard a faint ‘click’ which signified I had turned it as far as it would allow. I then turned it back the other way and did some further fine tuning until I got the best image I could before moving on to the next pot .

Next I moved onto the centre pot (PHIO) and adjusted that back and forth until I got the best looking image from this pot. Same deal with the third and final part of the puzzle (CHR) which didn’t need too much tuning to reach a sweet spot. I went back and forth like this a few times, cycling through the 3 pots until I was finally happy with the image. I didn’t time it but the whole process of tweaking the pots probably took around twenty minutes. There was no real methodology to it, just trial and error. With the benefit of hindsight I should have marked the screwdriver in some way before starting so I knew how many full rotations I’d made. It was pretty much impossible to keep track after the first few twists but I got there in the end which is all that really matters.

This is what the vertical bars looked like before installing the LumaFix64. Not terrible but room for improvement.

When I used to have my C64 connected to an LCD TV the image was significantly worse than the one I now enjoy on my 1084S and they (LCD’s) are really the main use case scenario for the LumaFix. The C64 was designed to display images on CRT’s so you would expect a decent picture when using one. The picture I had beforehand (on the 1084) was pretty good already and the vertical bars were only really noticeable on light coloured screens like the green one above. However I was able to almost completely eradicate them with patience using the LumaFix as you can see in the photo below. I do think they are still very faintly visible and maybe I could improve the image even more if I persevered but I’m happy with the quality now so will leave well alone.

Improved image after tinkering with the LumaFix64.

The only other problem I ran into was the result of me previously attaching a heat-sink to my VIC-II chip. With the added height of the LumaFix64 it was simply too tall to fit under the keyboard. As a result I had to elongate the cutaway section I had previously made in the black plastic frame (to fit over my SIDFX) to accommodate the VIC-II as well. There would have been just enough clearance without the heartsink..

Keyboard modification to clear the LumaFix64 + VIC-II Chip + Heatsink combo!

All in this was a pretty simple, cheap (less than £20) upgrade that produced a small but noticeable improvement in image quality. All it requires is a little bit of patience to dial in the correct settings for the three pots. Of course if your VIC-II isn’t socketed then it’s a much bigger job and depending on your skills and/or available equipment you might want to reconsider. Similarly, if you have a heatsink fitted to your VIC-II like me then factor that in to your buying/installation decision too.

Getting ‘SAY’ Speech Synthesizer to Work on Workbench 3

21st February 2023

Steven

Amiga, How to's

4 Comments

I remember having an awful lot of fun with the speech synthesiser (called ‘Say’) on my Amiga 500 back in the day. As a teenager I would spend far too much time getting it to utter all sorts of obscenities and disparaging remarks to anyone within earshot. So imagine my disappointment a few days ago when I tried to revisit that memory on my Amiga 1200 and discovered the Say program was nowhere to be found!

Turns out that Commodore, in their infinite wisdom, killed off Say back in 1992 with the release of Workbench 3. As my A1200 is running the very latest Workbench 3.2.1. it simply wasn’t included and hasn’t been for a great many years.

I couldn’t leave it there though, I really wanted Say on my Amiga and wasn’t going to settle until I made it happen. Thankfully the fix turned out to be pretty simple, provided you can lay your hands on an old Workbench floppy disk that is! Luckily I have loads of old workbench disks going back to version 1.2 so finding the files wasn’t too difficult..

The first and most obvious thing to grab is the Say program itself. This can be found in the Utilities drawer on a Workbench 2 disk. Once you’ve found it copy it to the Utilities drawer on your Workbench 3 machine. Now you may be tempted to run it at this point and have it say something infantile like ‘I like boobies’ but you will be disappointed. There are some missing pieces of the puzzle we need to find before it will work.

Everything you need to get Say working on a Workbench 2.0 disk.

There are three additional files that are required to restore the Amiga’s voice (which I found through trial and error with the help of good old SnoopDOS). The files we need are:- ‘narrator.device’, ‘translator.library’ and ‘speak-handler’ and thankfully all of these files can be found on that very same Workbench 2.0 floppy disk.

Now I realise not everyone has a bunch of Workbench disks to hand so I have gathered the files together and made them available for you below. This LHA archive contains all the necessary files you need so just download it and unpack it on your Amiga.

SayStuff.lha

Where to put the files?

The main ‘Say’ program itself can technically go anywhere but traditionally it was found in the Utilities drawer so I recommend copying it there. The other three files must go in the correct drawers otherwise the program won’t work. You can use any method you like to copy the files into place. I prefer using Directory Opus but you can use the Shell or Workbench too, whatever is easiest for you.

Here’s a quick rundown of where to put the files (and by extension, where to find them too, if you are using your own floppy to source them):

narrator.device -> Devs:

translator.library -> Libs:

speak-handler -> L:

Once all four files have been copied across you can finally run Say and have some fun. Enjoy!

Amiga Speech Sample

Below is a sample of speech from my Amiga 1200 just for fun. I think the quality of the speech is pretty good but in case your ears aren’t tuned to 80’s speech technology here’s a transcript of what it is saying:

“Hello there and a warm welcome from the Lyonsden Blog Amiga 1200 computer. I really hope you enjoyed this article about getting my voice back!”

How to access a network share on the Amiga

11th January 2023

Steven

Amiga, How to's

13 Comments

After getting it online this has to be the next best thing your can do with your Amiga. Being able to access a network share on the Amiga is really a liberating experience. It affords you not just the freedom to quickly access files you may have downloaded on your PC but also near unlimited extra storage for your Amiga. It’s quite a straightforward process and I’ll go through the whole thing from start to finish in this post.

Before going any further it’s assumed that you already have your Amiga networked and have configured a TCP/IP Stack as these are essential. You will also need a Windows based PC to create a shared folder on (or a suitable NAS that supports the SMB1).

Installing the Amiga Software

I’ll deal with the Amiga installation side of things first as that’s much more straightforward. To begin with you need to download two packages off Aminet, smbfs-68k.lha and SMBMounter.lha.

We only need a single file from the SMBFS package so simply extract the LHA archive to your RAM disk and then copy the ‘SMBFS’ file to your C: drive. (Strictly speaking if you are comfortable with the command line then this is all you need but we’re going to install a GUI for it, hence the need for SMBMounter).

Next extract the SMBMounter archive, run the installer and select ‘Intermediate User’ as shown below.

Installing SMBMounter

Select ‘Install for real’.

Installing SMBMounter

Choose where to install the software. It doesn’t really matter but in my case I selected my ‘Internet’ drawer as I like to keep all my internet/network related stuff in one place. Note that you do not need to create an SMBMounter drawer – one will be created automatically in the location you choose.

Installing SMBMounter

Next choose a language if English is not your native tongue.

Installing SMBMounter

The final thing to choose is the icon set that will be used for the program files. I’m using OS3.2 and like GlowIcons so chose that option.

Installing SMBMounter

The program will now be installed. After a few seconds you should get an ‘Installation Complete’ message along with a reminder of the install location.

Installing SMBMounter

If everything went well you should have a drawer looking just like the one in the photo below.

Installing SMBMounter

That’s it for the Amiga side of things, at least for now anyway. Time to boot up your Windows PC and configure something for the Amiga to connect to!

Configuring an SMB1 Share on a PC

Enabling SMB1

I just want to preface this section by saying that I created this guide on a Windows 11 PC (which was upgraded from a Windows 10 install). It should work with older versions of Windows too. However Microsoft is actively trying to kill off SMB1 (see here) so if you are reading this in the future you may have a few extra hoops you need to jump through to get this working. (Alternatively just use an old PC running Windows 10!)

Right, with that out of the way the first thing you must do is determine whether your PC has SMB1 file sharing enabled, and if not, enable it. The easiest way to achieve this is to open the ‘Turn Windows features on or off’ control panel.

Turn Windows Features on or off

To do this use the start menu search facility and type ‘features’. Windows will have a rummage around the C: drive and then present you with the program so you can just click on it as shown above.

Checking that SMB1 client/server is enabled.

Scroll down the list until you get to the SMB section. You want to see little check boxes next to ‘SMB 1.0/CIFS Client’ and ‘SMB 1.0/CIFS Server’. If they aren’t ticked, click in the little boxes to enable them and then click on OK. You will have to restart Windows for it to complete the installation of the new features.

Please note you do NOT want to have a check mark next to ‘SMB 1.0/CIFS Automatic Removal’. If you do have it ticked this will cause Windows to remove SMB after a few weeks of the protocol not being utilised.

Creating a Local User Account

This part isn’t strictly necessary but I recommend it as it helps keep things neat and tidy and also prevents issues in the future should you change your PC account password. I’m doing this in Windows 11 Home. There are multiple ways to achieve this but I’m just going to describe one method which is very straightforward. If you already know how to do this then skip to the next section.

Firstly using the start menu search enter ”netplwiz’ and then run the program that Windows finds.

Running NETPLWIZ to access user accounts.

This will bring up the ‘User Accounts’ window. You should see at least one account here which will be your main Windows account. There may be others too, depending on how many people use the PC.

Windows 11 Local User Accounts window.

I had already created an Amiga account when I took the above screengrab but will pretend I didn’t for the rest of this section so click on ‘Add…’ to continue.

No I don’t want to create another Microsoft account…

Ignore Microsoft’s recommendation and click on the bit at the bottom which says ‘Sign in without a Microsoft account (not recommended) and then click ‘Next’.

I just told you I don’t want one, take the hint!

Select the ‘Local account’ option from the bottom of the next window that appears…

Microsoft finally took the hint and let me set up a local account.

Enter the name for your local account, ‘Amiga’ in my case, a password (twice) and a Password hint in case you forget it (this can’t be skipped unfortunately). Click on ‘Next’ when ready.

One local Amiga account all ready to go.

This will bring up a confirmation screen with the name of your account. Click ‘Finish’.

Mission accomplished.

This will bring you back to the User Account window (above) which you can now safely close by clicking on ‘OK’. Your local account is now created and ready to be used in the next section.

Creating a Shared Folder

With SMB1 enabled it’s now time to setup a shared folder that your Amiga can actually connect to. Choose a location with enough free space on your PC and create a new folder there. I chose my E: drive as it has plenty of free space but you can choose any location you want. Give it a suitable name.

Creating a folder for our share.

Now we need to SHARE this folder so right-click on it and select ‘Properties’ and then ‘Advanced Sharing…’

Selecting Advanced Sharing

Once the Advanced Sharing windows pops up you need to tick the box next to where it says ‘Share this folder’ and then give the share a name in the box below. Try to keep the name short and without spaces or punctuation to avoid any problems connecting to it down the line.

Enabling sharing and giving the share a name.

Before closing the Advanced Sharing window, click on the ‘Permissions’ button near the bottom.

Click permissions.

A new window will pop up allowing you add a new user to access the shared folder. To do this click on ‘Add’.

Click Add.

The will bring up yet another window where you can enter the account name of the user you want to access the share.

Enter the username into the box. My local user account was called ‘Amiga’ so I entered ‘Amiga’ in this box. You can click the ‘Check Names’ button on the right to make sure you have done this correctly. If you’ve made a mistake Windows will say ‘name not found’ which means it cannot find an account with that name. Time to check your spelling! Click on OK when done.

Add YOUR local user account name.

You will be back looking at the Share Permission window again now and you should see the username of the account you just added at the top of the list (see below). Make sure it is selected and then click the empty box next to ‘Full Control’ to grant your Amiga this permission, then click ‘Apply’ then ‘OK’..

By the way, if you are not aware of the name of your computer, you will see it here. It’s the name in the brackets before the backslash (GAMING-RIG in my case) – jot it down as you will need it later!

Giving your local account full control of the share.

You should end up with a window looking like the one above. Click OK when you are happy everything looks correct and then on OK once more to get back to the main properties window as shown below. Were are nearly there now – just one last thing to do.

Click on the ‘Security’ tab (highlighted below).

Select the Security tab.

Next click on the ‘Edit’ button…

Click Edit.

Then click on the ‘Add’ button…

Click Add.

Then just as you did before, enter the same local account username into the box so we can define the permissions this user should have. Once done, click on OK.

Enter YOUR local account name once more.

Back in the Permissions window make sure that the user is highlighted in the top section and then click on the box next to ‘Full Control’ to grant them full access to the share.

Ensure all the boxes are ticked.

Click on OK and then OK again. Congratulations, you have just created a shared folder on your PC and granted access to it from the local user account you created earlier. Time to get back to the Amiga!

Connecting to the Shared Folder from your Amiga

With the share created, a local account setup, SMBFS installed to C: and SMBMounter installed on your Amiga we are ready for the final piece of the puzzle; configuring SMBMounter.

Note the two different versions of SMBMounter (with and without MUI).

There are actually two versions of SMBMounter included, a regular one and one that utilises MUI. They both perform exactly the same functions but I prefer the layout of the MUI version so that’s what I’ll be using here.

Use the ‘Remove’ button shown above to get rid of the supplied mount entries.

The program comes with a few mounts already configured but they are years out of date and no longer work so delete all of them before going any further to keep things neat and tidy. To delete them simply highlight each one in turn and click on the ‘Remove’ button (see photo above).

Preferences menu.

Next, open up the Preferences window (accessible from the menu – shown above) to configure a few parameters.

We haven’t bothered installing Samba but to prevent it from complaining I set the path here for it to ‘C:’. The path to SMBFS should be set to ‘C:smbfs’. Note you can browse to the location using the file browser icon on the right of each box if you prefer.

Editing the preferences.

The default workgroup is actually set to ‘WORKGROUP’ and you can probably leave it as is. However I do actually have a workgroup configured on my network so I entered the name of it here; ‘LYONSDEN’. The rest of the settings can be left alone. Double check you have entered everything correctly and then click on ‘Save’ to have it remember your settings and move on.

Entering the settings for our share.

The final hurdle is to configure the connection to our shared folder. Click on ‘New’ and then enter the details of your share using the guidance below to help you.

SMBMounter Configuration

Name – this is an arbitrary label for the connection as it will appear in the SMBMounter list. (Like the connections it came with when you first installed it for example). I called mine ‘PC Share’ but you can call yours anything you want..
Workgroup – this will default to WORKGROUP and you can leave it like this but I entered the name of my own workgroup; ‘LYONSDEN’.
Hostname – this is the name of your PC, in my case ‘Gaming-Rig’. If you are unsure what it is refer back to the section in red where I told you to make a note of it during the ‘Creating a Shared Folder’ section.
Service – this is the name of the shared folder we created earlier, in my case ‘AmigaNet’.
Username – this is the name of the local user account we created earlier, in my case ‘Amiga’.
Password – the password we set for the local user account earlier.
Volume – this is the name you want the share to have on your Amiga. This is like naming your hard drives when you use HDToolbox. Whatever name you enter here is the name that will appear on workbench when the drive is mounted.
Automount at Start-up – self explanatory really. I leave this off as I don’t always want the share connected, especially if I just want to play some WHDLoad games for example.
Prompt for Login – this is an alternative to having the username and password stored and entered automatically. If ticked it will ask you to login with a username and password every time you want to connect. I leave this feature off as it’s would be a pain for me to do this all the time.

Once you’ve entered all the above details and checked they are all correct click on OK. Be sure to ‘Save all mounts’ from the Project menu before proceeding so you don’t lose all those settings when rebooting your Amiga.

Saving your mount settings.

Now for the moment of truth! Click on the ‘Mount’ button in SMBMounter and if you’ve done everything correctly the share should appear on your Workbench after a couple of seconds. (Note – the icon that appears for you will differ depending on what icon packs and settings you are using).

Success – an icon like this on your Workbench means your share is connected!

You can use this drive just like you would any other. Drag and drop files into it, off it, delete them, save stuff there, even change the drive icon. It’s accessible from other programs just like a regular Amiga partition too so you can use it in Directory Opus, Wordworth or whatever other stuff you use.

My SMB Share – 1.2Tb free!

As can be seen in the image above the Amiga is able to recognise the full capacity of the shared folder, that’s 1.2 Terabytes in my case – an insane amount of storage for any Amiga.

Quick Troubleshooting Tips

If you get any errors, such as ‘access denied’ or ‘incorrect username/password’ you will need to double check that you have entered the correct and IDENTICAL username and password in both SMBMounter and Windows. Likewise you might need to double check the name of the share in each and so on.

If you’ve done all that find that you cannot connect at all, or if one day in the future it all stops working then your firewall may well be to blame…

Firewalls

A real quick way to prove whether your firewall is at fault is to just disable it and try to connect again. If it works then you have found the problem – if not then at least you’ve ruled something out. Make sure you turn it back on after testing though!

Assuming your firewall is to blame, to fix the problem you are going to need to find a way to allow traffic to flow between your Amiga and PC. I’m afraid there’s no single magic bullet for this – there’s too many variables at play. All I can do is explain how I got around this problem myself. Networking is a pretty complex topic and well beyond the scope of this post to explain everything.

Anyway I use Norton 360 which has it’s own firewall (by default Windows 10/11 use Windows Defender) and it decided to block my Amiga from accessing my share after my Internet went down and my router rebooted. I couldn’t even ping my PC from my Amiga so I knew something wasn’t right.

Adding a trusted device in Norton 360’s Firewall settings.

Norton 360’s firewall allows you to add trusted devices that are allowed to connect to your PC irrespective of any other rules that may exist. To do this you must enter either the IP address of your Amiga or the MAC address of the network card you are using in it. This is probably the best method for most users as the MAC address of the card will never change and it is easy to find. Most cards will have their MAC address displayed on a label affixed to them somewhere. Finding out your Amiga’s IP address is not always so straightforward and unless you possess the knowledge of how to make it static you are going to keep having this issue over and over. Why? Because the IP will change frequently and your firewall will no longer know it should be trusted.

Adding a trusted device in Norton 360’s Firewall settings.

As I knew what my Amiga’s IP was (using the Roadie GUI for Roadshow) and I knew how to make IP reservations on my router (so my Amiga always gets the same IP) I used the IP address to configure my firewall as shown above.

Using Roadie to find out my Amiga’s IP address.

After adding my Amiga as a trusted device I was able to ping my PC and connect to the share immediately.

If you too are experiencing firewall issues then hopefully my experience has given you enough pointers to sort them out for yourself. You might have to do some Googling but at least you should have an idea of what to search for!

Transfer Speeds & Conclusion

Transfer speeds are not as fast as the internal Compact Flash HD using the SCSI.device interface. I timed a few different file transfer operations to give some practical examples. A 3.5Mb LHA archive file copied from DH0: to DH1: took 6 seconds to transfer. It took the same time to transfer to my RAM Disk. That exact same file took 49 seconds to transfer to the SMB shared folder across the network. This is to be expected though – my A1200 is using a really old 10Base-T network card.

Guess who got an Apple Watch for Christmas and wanted an excuse to use it?

For the sake of completeness I timed transferring the same file to an SD card using my SDBox device. That took 26 seconds, so basically twice as fast as the SMB share. However that isn’t accessible to the PC when it’s in the Amiga and vice versa, plus there’s the faffing around swapping the card from one reader to another so probably slower all things considered.

In reality for most regular sized Amiga files you probably won’t notice much of a lag in moving them around at all. An ADF image takes 13 seconds to transfer which is perfectly acceptable in my view. Besides, these timings are missing the point really. The sheer convenience of having a drive that you can use to share files ‘on the fly’ between your PC(s) and Amiga(s) trumps any small time penalties experienced whilst doing so.

I have access to floppy disks, Zip disks, CDR’s, SD cards, PCMCIA CF cards but I choose to use the SMB Shared Folder most of the time when transferring stuff to and from my Amiga. It just works and its really convenient. That should speak volumes about the usefulness of such a setup so if you have the resources available, go for it!

Anyway I hope this article helps a few at least a few people access a network share on the Amiga. Let me know of your successes (or fails!) by leaving a reply below.

Amiga Tank Mouse Gets Laser Upgrade & Refurbishment

15th June 2022

Steven

Amiga, How to's

6 Comments

Love it or loathe it the Tank mouse is synonymous with the early Amiga computers and even though they’re very angular in design I actually find the ergonomics of them quite comfortable to use. However what I no longer appreciate is the imprecise and clunky ball mechanism and the constant need to remove the fluff and detritus that always collects on the rollers.

Now I know that some may consider this part of the nostalgia, and if it was only used occasionally then I might possibly agree, but as someone who uses my old machines on a regular basis I say balls to that – give me an optical mouse any day! With this Amiga Laser Mouse Upgrade kit I picked up from AmigaStore.eu I can finally have the best of both worlds!

The laser upgrade kit contents.

The upgrade kit took around a week to arrive and included a single PCB with optical sensor, a little lens to fit over it, a replacement cover and a couple of little plastic spacers. There was also a small instruction booklet.

Instruction manual.

Annoyingly everything (even all the plastic parts) was covered in sticky soldering flux. All the components came supplied in a small Ziplock bag so the flux must have smeared itself onto everything in transit. I had to spend a good fifteen minutes giving everything a thorough cleaning with Isopropyl alcohol to get rid of the residue.

What the board looked like before the excess flux was cleaned off it.

The manual was also a little disappointing – all the photos were dark and murky so details were near impossible to see. It was like a photocopy of a photocopy of a… well you get the idea. Thankfully it’s a pretty straightforward install and you don’t really need much guidance but it’s definitely something that could do with addressing in the future.

Quality of the photos in the manual leave a bit to be desired.

Preparations

My tank mouse had been sat in a cupboard, unloved, for many years so when I dug it out for this project it was looking a little sorry for itself and was quite yellowed, especially underneath.

Top of the mouse doesn’t look too bad, a little dirty perhaps but nothing major.

One of the glide pads on the base of the mouse was also looking quite tatty so I wanted to sort this out too.

The underside of the mouse is a completely different story. It’s turned a very unpleasant looking shade of ‘nicotine’ yellow.

Dismantling the mouse was pretty straightforward. Two small silver screws either side of the cable entry point needed removing to free one end of the case, whilst a couple of plastic clips secured the opposite end and just needing to be gently teased apart.

With the case opened you can see the ball mechanism in all its fluffy glory.

There were a further two black screws above and below the ball mechanism, holding the circuit board in place that also needed removing. I set both sets of screws aside somewhere safe as they would be needed later on when putting it all back together.

The two black screws at the top and bottom of the black plastic ball housing need to be removed and put to one side safely for later.

Once the board was out, the cable connector was removed and the ground wire soldered to the circuit board cut. It isn’t required for the the new laser board to work.

The black ground wire that is soldered directly to the board needs to be cut here.

The old board is surplus to requirement now but I’ll be keeping hold of it as it may come in handy to repair another tank mouse in the future.

The extent of the yellowing was clear to see once the cover and sticky pads had been removed.

After removing the old glide pads and the cover off the ball compartment the extent of the yellowing was pretty evident. The original beige colour could clearly be seen underneath. Hopefully this is the colour the whole mouse will be by the end of this project after a spot of Retrobrighting.

Retrobriting

I live in North West England so hot sunny weather is something of a rarity here so I had no chance of just using the suns UV to do the job as I have in the past. Just as an example, at the time of writing it’s raining and about 12’C outside.

To this end I decided to buy the necessary kit off Amazon so I could do this sort of thing indoors whenever I wanted in future and not be beholden to the weather. I picked up a small 10W UV lamp that came with a built-in bracket and power cable with inline on/off switch and moulded UK plug.

The UV lamp.

I also got a 500ml bottle of 6% Hydrogen Peroxide to make a nice bath for the mouse to soak in. I only had to use half of it too so could have got away with buying a smaller bottle.

Hydrogen Peroxide.

To begin the process I first gave the mouse case a clean in some soapy water before putting both sides into a tin foil lined plastic box. The idea behind the tin foil was two-fold. Firstly it would reflect the UV light around the box helping ensure even coverage and secondly it would prevent the UV light from making the plastic box brittle and possibly even bleaching the colour out of my desk.

Plastic mouse case sitting in the bottom of a tin-foil lined box.

I then covered them with a 50/50 mix of warm water and Hydrogen Peroxide solution. I chose a box that wasn’t much bigger than the mouse case which kept the amount of fluid needed to a minimum.

UV light suspended over the box.

Once the case halves were immersed in fluid I positioned the UV light over the top of the box and held it in place with some helping hands and switched it on. Everything looked good so I left it for about an hour and then came back to check on it. The plastic parts were covered in hundreds of tiny air bubbles which meant the process was obviously working. The bad news was that those same bubbles were causing the case to float up and no longer be covered in the hydrogen peroxide solution. Over a period of a few hours I had to keep adding blobs of blu-tack to the underside of each part before they would finally stay submerged.

Blu-tack weights to keep the case submerged.

Once I was happy that the case wouldn’t float up any more and that the UV light wasn’t going to overheat or nose-dive into the liquid I shut the door to the man cave and left it all overnight to marinate.

Results

The following evening after work I fished the case out of the water and had a look at the results which you can see in the photo below. Needless to say I was pretty chuffed with how it turned out as everything was now a nice uniform beige colour top and bottom.

Freshly retrobrighted cases.

Compared to the mouse ball cover (which I deliberately didn’t treat – see photo below) the difference was night and day. All in I’d say the case probably spent about 24 hours under the UV lamp in the hydrogen peroxide solution. Perhaps they might have been ready a bit sooner but I wasn’t able to keep checking in on them. Either way I’m quite happy to wait a day for such a good result. Incidentally, the liquid solution was at room temperature (about 22′-24’C) the whole time, I didn’t use any kind of water heater.

Spot the difference.

Replacing the Glide Pads

Unfortunately in my excitement to finish my mouse refurb I forgot to take pictures of the case before fitting the new glide pads so you’ve already seen pictures of them fitted.

To get the correct sizing for the glide pads I simply placed the old pads on top of the new ones (photo below) and cut around the outline with a sharp craft knife. I struck it lucky with the curved pad at the bottom as it matched the curvature of the new one exactly so I only had to cut the rounded ends. The only slight issue I had was that the new pads were half the thickness of the old ones so I needed to cut out two of each and stick them on top of each other. If I hadn’t done this then they would not have cleared the recesses in the case and they’d have been a waste of time.

Anyway, I’m really happy with the end result as the mouse glides around like a dream now. I also still have enough material left to kit out another mouse should the need ever arise.

Cutting out the glide pads.

Incidentally the mouse glide pads I bought were designed to fit a “Logitech G Pro X Superlight”. There are plenty available on eBay at the time of writing.

Installing the Amiga Laser Mouse Upgrade Board

With the case now looking fine and dandy it was time to fit the laser upgrade itself. The first task was to fit the new plastic cover in place of the original. This is made out of some sort of flexible plastic material (TPU?) and I found it didn’t want to sit completely flat. Luckily it doesn’t hinder the use of the mouse but I might add a few tiny blobs of glue around the edge to hold it securely if it proves to be an issue in the future. Not sure why they made it grey either – definitely loses some style points for not being beige! At some point in the future I might have a go at 3D printing a better looking cover for it.

New mouse cover fitted – it now has a square hole to better fit the new laser mechanism.

The next task was to fit the transparent plastic ‘lens’ to the circuit board. This slots into the bottom of the board and thanks to the different sized plastic pins it has on the corners it would only fit one way.

Plastic lens fitted to the underside of the circuit board.

With the lens fitted I carefully lowered the board into the bottom of the mouse case. The plastic lens needed to be held in place during this operation otherwise it kept falling out. Once the board was is in place, the flexible plastic cover fitted earlier prevented it from falling out through the bottom.

New board fitted into mouse base.

Next the two little plastic spacers were fitted over the existing screw posts allowing the board to be secured in place using the original black screws removed earlier. I then reattached the cable connector to the pin header on the new board.

Board secured in place and cable reconnected.

Now I just needed to replace the top half of the case by carefully relocating the clips at one end and securing the other with the two silver screws.

Job done.

Test Drive

The only thing left to do now was plug it into my Amiga and take it for spin. Happily it performed very well indeed, it was just like using a brand new mouse – which is effectively what it is now. I did find the mouse buttons to be quite stiff compared to modern mice but it’s something I could get used to. The stiffness will be down to the type of switches they’ve used in the construction of the new board and they may possibly soften up a bit in the fullness of time too.

Mouse back in action!

All in all I can heartily recommend this laser upgrade kit. Sure, the photos in the instruction manual are a bit ropy and the grey mouse cover isn’t perfect but the stuff that really matters, the laser mechanism itself, is spot on. This upgrade has totally transformed my crusty old tank mouse into a device worthy of being used in the 21st century.

Unfortunately at the time of publishing this if you want one you will need to register your interest on their website as they are currently out of stock. Still, good things come to those that wait!

Close-up of the underside of the mouse.

Amiga 1200 ‘Triple LED’ Adapter Kit

12th March 2022

Steven

Amiga, How to's

9 Comments

I recently spotted a neat little bit of hardware over on the AmigaKit website (they call it an ‘A1200 Triple LED Adapter’) that allows the user to change the colours of the Amiga 1200’s activity LED’s. A quick impulse purchase and a few weeks later the kit arrived, well packaged and protected in a zip-lock bag with a wad of foam to stop the LED’s from being damaged.

A1200 Triple LED Kit Packaging.

A Closer Look at the A1200 Triple LED Adapter

The adapter actually offers a number of small improvements over the Amiga 1200’s stock LED’s. For a start the connector cable now incorporates a 4-pin plug that can easily be removed from the LED circuit board. This will be a real boon when opening up my A1200 in the future allowing the case lid to be removed easily without straining the soldered wire connections.

Back view of the A1200 Triple LED Kit.

The biggest benefit though is that the LED’s are now removable and completely interchangeable. When selecting the kit on AmigaKit’s website you can pick what colour you want each LED to be. I chose Red, Amber and Green to represent HDD, FDD and Power activity respectively. They sell spare LED’s too in case you should need them in future which is good to know.

Here you can clearly see the 3 coloured LED’s.

The LED’s are all socketed and they can be removed by simply pulling on them gently so if you change your mind and want a yellow power LED – no problem!

A1200 Triple LED Kit with one of the LED’s removed revealing empty socket.

In the photo below you can clearly see the difference in the LED’s. The original A1200 board features transparent LED’s that light up pale yellow/orange/green colours when powered. By contrast the new board has coloured LED’s that I think provide deeper and more pleasing colours when illuminated.

Original LED board on the left, new one on the right.

Fitting the Kit

Fitting the new LED’s couldn’t be any simpler really. Start by removing the two phillips screws holding the old board to the case. Keep them safe as they will be needed to fix the new board in place shortly.

Original LED board attached to case with two Philips screws.

Unplug the power LED from the A1200’s mainboard. In the photo below it’s the lower (black) connector. The white connector is for the floppy drive. The old board can now be completely removed and stored away safely in case you ever want to put it back.

Amiga 1200 original LED power connector on mainboard (the lower of the two).

Fitting the new board is basically the same procedure in reverse. Start by connecting the power cable to the board. The colouring is slightly different with the new wiring but just make sure the black cable goes on the left (below photo).

Amiga 1200 new LED power connector on mainboard (the lower of the two).

Before fitting the board to the case make sure you orient it correctly; the power cable connects to the top of the board. Don’t forget to thread the cable through the square hole in the metal keyboard frame too!

New triple LED adapter connected and ready to be attached.

Attach the board using the two phillips screws that you removed earlier. The correct board orientation can be seen in the photo below.

New A1200 Triple LED adapter attached to A1200 case lid.

At this stage it might be worth a quick power up to check that the LED’s are working. Assuming all is good, carefully reassemble the case and the upgrade is complete. If not, check the connector is pushed all the way down onto the pins and that it’s oriented correctly.

Finished Result

I found the new LED’s to be ever so slightly narrower than the original ones so there’s a tiny gap left on either side of them. However it’s hardly noticeable, especially once they’re actually illuminated.

LED kit fully fitted.

I recorded a quick video to demonstrate what the drive activity LED’s look like in use. I’m very happy with the results and would definitely recommend this kit to anyone that wants to spruce up their A1200 a bit.

A1200 PCMCIA Reset Bug – Hardware Fix

16th February 2022

Steven

Amiga, How to's

12 Comments

The A1200 PCMCIA reset bug is an annoying glitch in the implementation of the card slot on the A1200 that was never fixed by Commodore. In a nutshell the Amiga 1200’s Gayle chip fails to reset PCMCIA cards during system resets such as when you press ‘CTRL A A’. Whether this is an issue for the user largely depends on the card being used but my network card is definitely one of those that is affected by the bug. Without either a software or hardware fix it requires a full power cycle to restore card functionality every time the bug manifests.

I’ve written about this issue before where I described fixing it using two command line programs called CardPatch & CardReset on Aminet. That software solution served me pretty well up until recently when I ran into the issue again after doing a clean AmigaOS3.2 install. After scratching my head wondering why Roadshow wasn’t working I decided it was time for a permanent hardware fix so that I would never encounter the issue again.

My Hardware Fix

A quick browse around my favourite Amiga suppliers revealed that AmigaKit made one such device and they had it in stock. Fast forward a couple of weeks and I had one sitting on my desk.

The adapter consists of a PLCC socket attached to a small circuit board that contains the electronics for the fix.

AMIGAKIT A1200 PCMCIA Reset Bug-fix Adapter (PLCC socket side).

Besides the reset bug fix the device also includes pin headers for attaching a reset switch, a PCMCIA activity LED and also A14 and A15 signals for other devices such as clockport expanders. It’s a well made, neat little device.

AMIGAKIT A1200 PCMCIA Reset Bug-fix Adapter (circuit board side).

The device is designed to sit on top of the A1200’s ‘GAYLE’ chip which is where the fault stems from.

Amiga 1200 GAYLE chip (centre of the photo).

Installing the Adapter

To install the hardware fix you simply place the PLCC socket over the top of the GAYLE chip. However before doing this you must make sure that the device is oriented correctly otherwise it won’t work and may even damage your Amiga.

The adapter circuit board has ‘Gayle Pin 1’ written along the bottom edge and if you look closely on the A1200 mainboard below the Gayle chip you will see a ‘1’ marked beneath it (when viewing from the front). Make sure that these two are on the same side. Another, probably easier, way to tell is that the writing on the board should be the right way up once installed (viewing from the front). The pin headers should point towards the right hand side of the machine where the floppy drive is and away from the PCMCIA port too.

It takes a some force to get it to seat properly and the top of the board is not particularly finger friendly so be careful. It should click into place securely and not wobble around at all.

AmigaKit PCMCIA Reset Fix installed on the Gayle chip. Note how ‘Gayle Pin 1’ on the adapter lines up with the ‘1’ on the mainboard.

There’s nothing else to connect and no software to install. Once the device has been installed you can close up the A1200’s case and switch it on.

My Amiga 1200 mainboard sporting a number of extra expansions.

If everything has gone to plan the Amiga will boot up normally with no visible signs that anything has changed… except that PCMCIA cards will just work as intended now. No more unresponsive network cards after a reset from now on then!

I’ve had the device fitted for a week now and experienced no issues with my cards since. It does exactly what it says on the tin.

The expansion pin headers on the board are an interesting addition. I’ll probably add a reset switch to it in the near future as that would definitely come in handy. Not sure about the PCMCIA LED as I don’t use my CF adapter that often.

Anyway, if you are coming up against the A1200 PCMCIA reset bug and want a ‘fit and forget’ solution I highly recommend this; it’s cheap, easy to fit and does the job.

Upgrading to AmigaOS 3.2.1

14th February 2022

Steven

Amiga, How to's

9 Comments

I’ve not even had my Kickstart 3.2 ROMS installed in my Amiga 1200 for a month and I’m already replacing them! Why? Because AmigaOS 3.2.1 was released by Hyperion in December 2021. This incremental update fixes a number of issues and also adds a few new features so naturally I wanted to get my hands on it. Strictly speaking the physical ROMS are not required as you can map copies of them into RAM. However I wanted the real deal so ordered a set from AmigaStore.eu as this was were I bought AmigaOS 3.2 from. They arrived quickly and well packaged (along with an SDBox I ordered at the same time).

AmigaOS 3.2.1 Kickstart ROMS for the A1200

Installing the ROMS

Naturally the first thing I did was to open up my A1200 and fit the two new ROM chips. If you are looking for more comprehensive instructions on how to do this you can follow my guide here. The important things are to get the ‘HI’ and ‘LO’ chips in the correct sockets, that you orient them correctly (notched end of chip goes next to notched socket) and finally that you leave the last pair of pins in each socket empty as the sockets have 42 pins whereas the ROMS only have 40.

Removing the ROMS with a chip puller.

Before going any further I booted up my Amiga to make sure everything was working and that the new Kickstart ROMS were the correct version. Sure enough Workbench reported a Kickstart Version of 47.102 which is the 3.2.1 edition. Happy days.

Kickstart 3.2.1 (version 47.102).

Next I needed to obtain the 3.2.1 Workbench update. This is a free download from Hyperion but does require you to register your copy of AmigaOS 3.2 before it will allow you access. This requires the little code that was stuck onto the cellophane wrapper of the AmigaOS 3.2 box. The update comes in the form of a 15MB LHA archive that includes Kickstart ROMS should you need them.

Installing AmigaOS 3.2.1

AmigaOS 3.2 introduced native support for ADF image files so I thought I’d make use of this feature to update Workbench.

Contents of the Update3.2.1 LHA Archive

The LHA archive unpacks into a single Update3.2.1 folder that includes everything necessary to get things up and running. Opening up the ADF folder reveals 26 ADF’s and it’s these we need to do the upgrade.

Contents of the ADF Folder.

The ADF we need to get the ball rolling is called ‘Update3.2.1’. Simply double-clicking it opend that ‘disk’.

The Update3.2.1 ADF Image

It will then appear on the desktop just as if you’d inserted it into a physical drive yourself.

It all Starts with the Update3.2.1 disk.

Opening that disk, and then the Install folder within it, reveals a bunch of different country-specific installers. I went for the English(British) option as I’m in the UK.

Contents of the Install Folder,

Go!

The install process is now underway and we just need to click ‘Proceed’ to begin.

AmigaOS 3.2.1 Update Begins

The first choice to make was picking an installation mode. I left it on the default ‘Novice User’ option as I’ve not done much customisation to my A1200 since doing a clean install of 3.2 a few weeks ago.

Selecting the Installation Mode.

A warning pops just to confirm you are happy to proceed with the update which will obviously replace a bunch of your 3.2 files in the process. I clicked ‘Yes’ to proceed.

Confirming the start of the upgrade.

Next up you get to choose which language(s) you want. Check the boxes next to the one(s) you would like and then click ‘Proceed’.

Language selection.

It’s at this point that the installation really starts and files get copied across.

Files copying across.

Now I thought I was going to need to select each ADF as and when the installer requested a new disk. However that wasn’t the case at all. Something pretty cool happens during the install – it mounts and unmounts each ADF image as it needs them – automatically. During the install you see a bunch of disks appear and then disappear on the Workbench like magic. Impressive stuff indeed.

ADF images are switched on the fly.

Thanks to the auto-switching virtual disks the update only takes about a minute to complete. Once finished it asks you to click ‘Proceed’ to reboot your Amiga. It was at this point that I got my second pleasant surprise – my Amiga automatically rebooted itself! Many installers have the same message at the end but I don’t recall any that actually rebooted the machine before.

Upgrade complete.

Once Workbench had loaded back up I did another quick check of the version numbers. Reassuringly Workbench was reporting being 47.3. Combined with Kickstart being 47.102 this confirmed that my upgrade to AmigaOS 3.2.1 was complete.

Both Workbench and Kickstart displaying correct versions.

New Feature – Eject

This release includes a lot of bug fixes and a number of new features too. Out of all of them though, the one I was most excited to see was also probably the most trivial. The Amiga now has an ‘Eject disk’ option under the Icon menu! Not unsurprisingly this lets you eject any disks that supports this feature. It was probably mainly intended for un-mounting ADF images but it also works with physical drives. I tried it out on my SCSI CD drive and it worked like a charm it also worked well with my Iomega Zip drive. Sure this was possible before via 3rd party programs but to have this feature natively available in Workbench is a first and worth upgrading for alone in my book.

Installing AmigaOS3.2

26th January 2022

Steven

Amiga, How to's

33 Comments

Seems like it was only yesterday that AmigaOS3.1.4 was released and yet here I am with AmigaOS3.2! I actually bought this in June last year but I’ve only just got around to having a play around with it. For the time being this release is only available physically on CD which is fine by me. Hyperion say there will be a digital download version of it at some point in the future.

I will preface this post by saying that things didn’t go smoothly during my first install attempt. Hopefully someone can benefit from the issues I experienced and how I overcame them.

A closer look at the what you get…

Anyway I ordered the CD along with the Kickstart ROMs for my A1200 from Amigastore.eu. I have to award top marks for presentation as the CD came in a very attractive DVD style case along with professionally printed jacket. Inside there is a 14 page manual and the silk-screen printed CD itself. Finally but by no means least there were 2 new Kickstart ROMs to replace the existing chips.

The AmigaOS3.2 case, CD and manual.

The serial number is on a little sticker affixed to the cellophane wrapping on the outside of the box – don’t make the mistake I did of throwing it in the bin. Luckily I realised before the bin was emptied! The code is needed to register your purchase on the Hyperion site in order to be eligible for future updates.

AmigaOS3.2 ROMS.

Workbench 3.2 actually spans a grand total of 35 floppy disks now which is why the decision was made to supply it on CD. Although half of those disks are either country or machine specific but it’s still a lot. The CD contains ADF images of all the discs should you wish to create your own physical versions. Likewise it contains the new ROM images so you can use them with a Vampire, map the ROMs to RAM or just use them with an emulator.

Fitting the 3.2 Kickstart ROMS

Kickstart 3.2 ROMS Installed.

Naturally the first thing I did was to open up my A1200 and fit the two new ROM chips. If you are looking for detailed instructions on how to do this you can follow my detailed guide here. The important things are to get the ‘HI’ and ‘LO’ chips in the correct sockets (see photo above), that you orient them correctly (notched end of chip goes next to notched socket) and finally that you leave the last pair of pins in each socket empty as the sockets have 42 pins whereas the ROMS only have 40!

My new A1200 hard drive – a 32GB SanDisk Extreme Compact Flash card.

Whilst I had the case open I thought it would be a good time to install the new Compact Flash card I’d bought for the occasion. I opted to go with a nice big 32GB card this time around as it’s surprising how quickly you fill these things up without even trying. The card I bought was a SanDisk Extreme 32GB Compact Flash. I wanted something that would prove reliable and SanDisk is a brand I trust.

32GB Card installed.

With the ROMS and new Compact Flash card installed it was time to power up my A1200 and make sure everything was working.

The new 3.2 ROM boot screen.

Just a few moments after turning the power back on I was greeted with a brand new boot screen. Gone was the multi-colour tick that has been there for the last thirty years – replaced by the Amiga ‘boing’ ball. Commodore’s name has also been removed and replaced with Hyperion’s. Anyway, mixed feelings aside, so far so good! Now it was time to get cracking with the Workbench install.

Prepping the disks

(The Discovery of problem no. 1)

As I mentioned previously there are a whopping 35 disks in total for this install. Even after I weeded out all the language specific variations it still left 11 disks to install. Thankfully the CD contains all the disks as ADF images and if you have a Gotek drive available it’s a simple matter of copying them across to a USB flash drive and using that. This time around there are no snazzy pre-printed disk labels included either so that was another reason not to bother making physical copies of the ADF images. There are a bunch of PNG images included on the CD for you to print your own labels should you wish to though.

The Install3.2 ADF selected ready to boot on my Gotek drive.

The journey starts with the ‘Install3.2’ disk so I selected that on my external Gotek and then selected DF1 as the boot device from the A1200’s Boot options screen. (Accessible by holding down both mouse buttons on bootup until the power LED flashes). If you have a Gotek configured as DF0 then you won’t need to do this.

Amiga 1200 Boot Options Screen

A short while later I was greeted with a basic Workbench screen and I thought I was on my way. Well you know what thought did… Everything looked OK but the mouse pointer was completely frozen – likewise the keyboard wouldn’t respond either. I tried to boot a few more times with no success. I unplugged all my peripherals, PCMICA card, audio cables, SCSI devices until all that was left was power, video and my external Gotek. Still it wouldn’t work. Maybe it didn’t like my Gotek, or the fact it was hooked up as DF1? So I created a physical Install3.2 floppy disk, disconnected my external Gotek and tried again with a real floppy in DF0. Another fail. So it wasn’t that either.

AmigaOS3.2 Workbench Screen (with frozen mouse).

I tried all sorts of things like re-formatting my USB flash drive and copying across the ADF’s again. I even tried a different flash drive and removing my Indivision Mk3 flicker fixer, all to no avail.

Eventually I was left with one thing I hadn’t tried – removing my Blizzard 1230 MkIV card. Luckily I remembered that the card could be disabled by holding down the ‘2’ key on boot so I gave it a try. Just like magic after doing this Workbench loaded fine and I could use my mouse and keyboard without any issues. Clearly something was up with my accelerator card.

Blizzard 1230 MkIV – MAPROM feature disabled with jumper removed.

More head scratching and investigations ensued until I finally discovered the source of the issue. I had the MAPROM feature enabled on my card which is supposed to speed the Amiga up by copying Kickstart into FASTRAM. However for whatever reason OS3.2 didn’t like that because from the moment I disabled it by removing the jumper (see photo above) the problem simply vanished. Happy days!

Prepping the Compact Flash Card

(The beginning of problem no. 2)

Now I had a working 3.2 Workbench it was time to Partition that nice shiny new Compact Flash card. I loaded up HDToolBox from the disk and clicked ‘Change Drive Type’.

Amiga HDToolBox – Defining a New Drive

Next I clicked ‘Define New…’ which brought up the Define/Edit Drive Type window shown below.

Drive parameters screen.

The Amiga is perfectly capable of doing all the heavy lifting here – I just needed to click on ‘Read Configuration’ to get it to extract all the necessary parameters from the card. A little info window popped up and I clicked ‘Continue’.

Info Message

A second or so later and all the parameters had been pulled from the card and filled out on the screen.

All drive parameters configured.

Clicking ‘OK’ brought me back to the ‘Set Drive Type’ window where I could see my newly created drive listed as ‘SDCFXS-0 32G’.

Newly configured drive now listed.

Clicking ‘OK’ again brought me back to the main HDToolBox screen, shown below.

Don’t click SAVE just yet…

Partitioning the Card

Now it was time to partition the drive by clicking on the appropriately named ‘Partition Drive’ button.

Configuring my DH0 partition.

I chose to make my first partition 4GB, this would be my System/Workbench drive. To select the size I simply dragged the little triangle pointer and slid it along the bar. Annoyingly it’s still impossible to size a partition exactly so I just got it as close as I could which was 4011MB.

I called the first partition ‘DH0’ as this is the time honoured name for the Amiga’s boot drive and what most software expects to see by default. I also ticked the box to make it bootable as this is the first partition and the one the Amiga boots off.

Configuring my DH1 partition.

I made the second partition 6GB (6018MB) and called it DH1. To do this I clicked ‘New partition’ and then clicked on an unused portion of the card in the visual representation on the screen.

Configuring my last partition; DH2.

Finally I used all the remaining space to make one big 21GB partition and called it DH2. This will be were I install games, whether they be WHLoad or otherwise.

Once I was happy that all my partitions were sized and named exactly the way I wanted them I hit ‘OK’. (You can click each of the partitions in the bar to check their details before committing). This took me back to the main HDToolbox window shown below.

Drive with changes waiting to be saved back to it.

To save all that configuration info and partition detail I clicked ‘Save Changes to Drive’ which flagged up a message (shown below) that a reboot was required. I then clicked continue to finish the process and write all the settings to the compact flash card.

‘Reboot Required’ message.

Next I rebooted my Amiga off the Install3.2 ADF disk so I could begin formatting them. Unfortunately this was were I encountered problem number 2…

Spot the missing drive 🙁

There should have been three additional icons on the desktop, one for each of the partitions I had created. However for some reason DH0: was not being displayed. I tried going back through the HDToolbox configuration and making DH0 smaller and even making it the only partition on the card. Nothing worked.

Fixing the Problem

It turns out that for whatever reason, some cards are created with all the sectors on them filled with ‘1’s’ instead of ‘0’s’ and the Amiga doesn’t like that one bit. So I had to remove the Compact Flash card from my A1200 and hook it up to my PC via a USB card reader.

I loaded up a piece of drive management software on my PC called ‘MiniTool Partition Wizard‘ (available as a free download). I then clicked on ‘Disk and Partition management’ which is the large green button near the bottom of the menu screen in the image below.

Main Menu Screen.

Next I needed to select my CF card from the list of available drives as can be seen in the image below. I knew my card was 32GB so it was pretty easy to spot – it appeared as a 29.82GB drive. It’s imperative to select the correct drive here – the consequences of picking the wrong one don’t bear thinking about!

Selecting my Compact Flash card from the list of drives.

With my CF card highlighted I right clicked on it to bring up the menu and selected ‘Wipe Partition’.

Selecting the ‘Wipe Partition’ option.

This brought up another window along with a warning that doing this is irreversible so once again I made absolutely sure I had the correct drive selected. Definitely better to be safe than sorry when messing with partitioning software! Anyway the option to fill all sectors with zeros was already selected by default so I simply clicked ‘OK’ here.

Choosing how to wipe the drive.

This took me back to the main screen. Up until this point no changes had actually been made to the drive. To actually wipe the drive I needed to click ‘Apply’ in the top left hand corner. A warning then popped up about not running any other applications whilst applying the changes and then I clicked ‘Yes’.

Applying the pending changes to the card.

Finally the ‘Apply pending operations’ window popped up and a progress bar slowly made its way across the bottom as my card was being fill with zeros.

Operation Progress Window.

The whole operation took around 5 minutes or so to complete successfully at which point I was able to close down the program and remove the card.

Mission Accomplished.

Back on Track.

Now that I finally had a correctly prepared Compact Flash card, I re-installed it into my A1200 and begin the entire Partitioning process again, choosing exactly the same options as before. When I rebooted at the the end of it this time I was greeted with the Workbench screen I’d been looking for. One with all 3 drive icons showing on the screen waiting to be formatted as shown below.

Unformatted drive icons.

To format each drive I selected the relevant icon and then selected ‘Format disk…’ from the Icons menu.

Amiga format disk window.

I named DH0 ‘Workbench’, DH1 ‘Work’ and DH2 ‘Games’. I also made sure that long file name support was ticked along with the Trashcan and Fast File System.

Obligatory data loss warning.

I used the ‘Quick Format’ option otherwise I’d be waiting all day for the format to finish! It’s totally unnecessary for large drives anyway – the only time I ever do a full format is on floppy disks.

A couple of warning messages popped up reminding me that all data would be lost. I simply clicked ‘Format’ on both of them to get the job done.

Last chance to bail if you’ve selected the wrong drive by mistake!

The format was almost instantaneous and once I’d done all three drives I ended up with a screen looking like the image below.

All partitions successfully formatted.

Installing Workbench 3.2

Finally it was time to install Workbench for real. I opened the Install3.2 disk and ran the English(British) installer from within the Install folder.

AmigaOS3.2 English(British) Installer.

This invoked the first of many disk swaps. Thankfully I had all the ADF images on my USB flash drive so it was simply a matter of flicking through to the correct ‘disk’ and then letting the install continue.

Beginning the 3.2 install.

I clicked ‘Proceed’ on the first menu to appear as the other options are concerned with amendments/additions to an existing install.

Selecting the 3.2 Install option.

As I was doing a straightforward ‘clean install’ I left the Installation Mode set to ‘Novice User’ and then clicked ‘Proceed With Install’.

Selecting the Installation mode.

The next screen asked where I wanted to install OS3.2. I selected my ‘Workbench:’ partition and then clicked on Proceed.

Selecting where to install AmigaOS3.2.

The installer asked me which language(s) to install so being in the UK I naturally chose ‘English-British’ before hitting ‘Proceed’.

AmigaOS3.2 Language Selection Screen.

The next choice to present itself was whether I wanted to install GlowIcons or not. I most definitely did so I clicked on ‘Yes’.

GlowIcons option.

I spent the next several minutes swapping ADF disks as the installer plucked files from everywhere based on the choices I’d selected.

CPU Library warning.

Eventually the installation reached 100% and then popped up a message telling me I would need to install some CPU specific library files to support my 68030 CPU.

Installation complete.

Hitting ‘Proceed’ on that screen and then on the next concluded the first part of the install.

Booting Workbench for the First Time

A reboot was required to test out the new install so I reset my A1200 and hoped for the best…

Missing CPU library nag screen.

Soon I was greeted with yet another reminder that I had an 030 CPU but no library for it. I hit ‘Return’ to continue booting and a few moments later I reached the AmigaOS3.2 Workbench screen complete with backdrop and snazzy GlowIcons.

AmigaOS3.2 Workbench Screen.

Content with the knowledge that Workbench was working nicely it was time to fix that CPU library issue.

Installing CPU Support Libraries

Back when I installed AmigaOS3.1.4 I remember having to source the necessary MMULIBS files from Aminet. Thankfully that’s now a thing of the past as 3.2 can install the required files itself. In order to do so I needed to re-run the installer and this time select ‘Install CPU Support Libraries’ from that initial menu.

Installing CPU Support Libraries.

A confirmation window popped up and I simply responded with ‘Yes’ to proceed.

Confirming the location of my Workbench install.

The following dialogue wanted to know which model of accelerator card I had installed. As I have a Blizzard 1230 MkIV I chose ‘Phase 5’ from the list and then clicked ‘Proceed’.

Selecting my accelerator manufacturer.

A few moments later and the installation was complete – all I needed to do now was reboot my A1200 and make sure all the warning messages had all cleared. (They had).

CPU Library Installation Complete.

Configuring CD Access

There was one other quick configuration change I could make to round off my install and that was to get my CD drive working. OS3.2 includes a CD filesystem so I didn’t need to install anything extra.

The first thing to do was drag the CD0 device from STORAGE/DEVS/DOSDrivers to DEVS/DOSDrivers and bring up the Icon Information window to edit the Tooltypes. The Information window has changed a little bit under 3.2 so the Tooltypes now reside under a Tab called ‘Icon’.

Setting the CD ToolTypes.

There were two tooltypes I needed to alter; ‘DEVICE’ and ‘UNIT’. As I have a Blizzard SCSI card I needed to set ‘DEVICE=1230scsi.device’ as that is what my SCSI device is called. My CD drive has a SCSI ID of 3 so I set ‘UNIT=3’ and then saved my changes. As no CD device had been mounted up to this point I simply double-clicked the CD0 icon to test if the new settings worked and popped in my 3.2 CD. Happily a few moments later I could see a fancy little AmigaOS3.2 CD icon on my Workbench. Another job done.

Workbench 3.2 Installed and CD access working too.

With Workbench 3.2 successfully installed it was now time to get busy sorting out internet access and installing all my apps and games once more…

I’ve covered all that stuff before with 3.1.4 but if anything crops up that poses an unexpected issue I’ll add to this post.

VIC20 Game Box Preservation

22nd February 2021

Steven

How to's, VIC 20

40 Comments

It’s winter here in the UK so recently I decided to spend a particularly cold and rainy afternoon on a little VIC20 game box preservation project I’ve been meaning to do for some time.

Why did I want to do this?

Unfortunately, unlike Sega games which came in sturdy plastic clamshell boxes, Commodore cartridges were supplied in flimsy cardboard boxes. Consequently many of these have not stood the test of time – as a quick glance at all the box-less cartridges on eBay will attest to. I’m really proud that my collection has remained largely in tact for almost 40 years but for them to survive another 40 I figured they’d need a little helping hand.

I’d already found some great looking box protectors on eBay and also picked up some sachets of Silica Gel off Amazon for good measure. All I needed was a some time to apply them to my VIC20 cartridge collection.

Sachets of Silica Gel

The Silica Gel sachets came in a sealed bag of 100. The moment you open the pack they will start absorbing any moisture in the air so it’s important to minimise their exposure and keep them in a sealed container once opened.

A VIC20 Box Protector folded flat (this is how they are supplied).

The Box Protectors

The box protectors are made of PET material which according to Wikipedia “makes a good gas and fair moisture barrier, as well as a good barrier to alcohol (requires additional “barrier” treatment) and solvents. It is strong and impact-resistant”. The boxes were supplied with a protective film on them to prevent scratches in transit. I have to admit I hadn’t realised this at first and was wondering why they looked slightly opaque. When the penny dropped and I removed the film they were crystal clear. You can see the difference clearly in the photos below.

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Protect and Preserve

After ensuring that my game boxes were dust free and that the cartridge inside was similarly clean I added a couple of sachets of gel inside each box. The plastic box protectors should do a good job of protecting the contents from the environment but they’re not air-tight so the gel will absorb any moisture that makes its way inside. This should prevent any mould from forming on the contents. At some point in the future the sachets will need replacing but as I’m keeping the games in a nice warm room they should be fine for years.

Game box, with the cartridge and instruction manual laid out alongside it.

If I was placing them in a damp, cold basement, loft or garage then they would need replacing far sooner. However in those locations the games would need to be sealed in an air-tight box too.

Silica gel sachets placed inside the bottom of box.

The protective cases were supplied flat-packed so needed folding into shape before they could be used. I found this really easy to do and it took less than a minute per box.

A completed box… with the protective film still attached in this photo!

Now it was simply a matter of carefully sliding the game box into the protective case. The cases were a very snug fit so I did need to ensure the box went in straight before it would fit inside.

Game box fitted inside a protective case.

There is a seam down one edge (where the box spine is) so I made sure to position that at the back when displaying them on my shelf.

Notice how the game on the far left looks slightly opaque – this box still had the protective film on it. It has been removed from the other two.

I think the games look terrific inside the boxes and from most angles you can’t even tell they’re inside a cover. In fact I’d go as far as saying some of my games looked much better inside the protective cases. Take the Menagerie game shown below which has suffered some box crushing and creasing over the years.

Before…

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Because the protective covers are such a snug fit they actually force the game boxes back into their original shape when inserted. In effect the covers act as a kind of exoskeleton, almost eliminating the effect of the creasing. The creases are still there of course but just far less noticeable now.

After…

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All in all I’m really pleased with how this project worked out. It was inexpensive, effective and the whole project only took me a couple of hours to complete. That included taking the photos for this post too.

A bunch of VIC20 games in their new protective covers.

My VIC20 games not only look better than before but I feel much happier knowing that I’ve taken steps to ensure they last for another 40 years!

Row of protected games on my shelf.

Brucie Bonus

I discovered that the protectors are also a perfect fit for the Commodore 64 Microprose style boxes. This means they’ll also fit similar style boxes from the likes of Rainbird and Level 9. I can see another batch being ordered very soon!

The VIC20 box protector also happens to be a perfect fit for the popular Commodore 64 Microprose style game boxes!