Tag - Amiga

SDBox Review

12th February 2022

If there was one take-away from my recent clean install of AmigaOS3.2 it was that transferring files across to a stock Amiga system is a real pain in the arse. Sure you can use CrossDOS, but that is limited to 720K files. If you have a CD drive then you can burn stuff to a CD which raises the limit considerably to 650mb. However this is pretty time consuming and my drive refuses to read CDRW discs so means I have to use CDR’s which is downright wasteful.

Enter the SDBox – a little expansion for any Amiga system that enables it to read and write data to MicroSD Cards. A few years ago I wrote a post about adding an SD Card to an A500, however that relied on having a Vampire accelerator card. This device just requires a parallel port to operate, something which all Amiga’s have.

What’s Included

The SDBox is actually a public domain Amiga community project that you can construct yourself (see here). However due to the inclusion of some surface mount components I chose to buy one ready made from Amigastore.eu. I can normally solder stuff OK but dealing with tiny surface mount components is beyond my skill level.

SDBox – package contents.

Included in the package was the SDBox device in a nice 3D Printed case, a 4GB MicroSD Card with adapter*, instruction booklet and a 3.5″ floppy containing the software to make it all work. A mini USB cable was an option too but I’ve accumulated dozens of them over the years so didn’t see the point in getting another one.

Connecting the SDBox

With the Amiga turned off the SDBox simply plugs into the parallel port socket round the back. It also requires 5V of power to function which can be provided via a mini USB cable.

The Micro SD card slot and Mini USB power socket on the back of the SDBox.

I found there was just enough clearance at the side for it to not interfere with my RCA audio plugs but this might not be the case if you have thicker plugs.

The SDBox plugged into the parallel port.

When powered on the box glows red from inside – presumably this illumination comes from an LED on the Arduino Nano. It’s not quite as noticeable as the photo below would have you believe and it’s not a big deal.

Red glow from the Arduino Nano inside.

Installing the Drivers

With the hardware powered on and connected the next task is to pop in the floppy and run the installer to install the driver software.

Contents of the floppy disk.

The floppy comes with a handy installer (in both English and Spanish) to copy over and configure everything necessary to use the SDBox.

SDBox Installer now finished.

A few moments later a message appears on the screen to inform you that the install is complete and where it has put the SD0 device.

This is the SD Device it installs in DEVS/DOSDrivers.

A quick reboot and my SD card was showing up on my Workbench screen, just like any other drive would. I brought up the drive info window for SD0 to confirm it was reading the card properly.

Icon Information for the SD card.

SD Cards

I chose to get an SD Card with my SDBox but you can use any MicroSD card you may have lying around. The one caveat is the device is only capable of accessing 4GB partitions so if you have a bigger card you must create a 4GB (or smaller) partition on it for it to work. There’s some info at the end of this post describing how to partition a MicroSD card in Windows if you need it.

If you look carefully you can see the packaging has been opened already…

*Clearly AmigaStore.eu were unable to source a 4GB card for me as they actually sent me a 32GB MicroSD card that had been manually partitioned to 4GB.

Using the SDBox

In use the SDBox performed well and exactly as described. It’s not going to set any speed records but given it’s hooked up to a parallel port that’s to be expected. To give an idea of transfer times I copied an 880K ADF file from my RAM Disk to both my internal CompactFlash card and the SDBox. It took about 1 second to transfer to the CF card and 6 seconds to the SDBox. Next I tried a bigger file; AmiSSL 4.12 which was 5.7MB. It took 6.5 seconds to transfer to my CF card and 39 seconds to complete the transfer via the SDBox. Approximately six times slower but still perfectly acceptable.

MicroSD card being inserted in the card slot.

The SDbox doesn’t support swapping thecard whilst the Amiga is running so don’t expect it to update the contents if you do – it’ll just result in an error. It requires a full reboot to refresh the contents of the card but again this is not a great inconvenience.

Fly in the Ointment – Conflict with Indivision AGA Mk3 Flicker Fixer

On a slightly more sour note I did encounter one issue with my unit. Whenever the SDBox was accessed, whether that be reading or writing data, my screen flickered/wobbled around. You can see exactly what I’m on about in the little video clip I recorded below. After testing all sorts of things I narrowed it down to an issue with using interlaced HIGHGFX screenmodes on my Indivision AGA Mk3 flicker-fixer. Normal Amiga screenmodes, including interlaced ones, worked just fine as did non-interlaced HIGHGFX modes (all of these still going through my flicker-fixer).

Naturally Sod’s law meant that my screen was utilising ‘HIGHGFX Super-High Res Laced’ which is why I witnessed the issue from the start. It’s certainly not a deal-breaker – it’s more of an irritation than anything else (especially if you are a bit of a perfectionist). It doesn’t affect the operation of the SDBox and I can certainly live with it – just something to bear in mind for anyone with a similar setup.

I tried many things to get rid of the issue and also contacted the manufacturer of the Indivision card but so far I do not have a solution. If I ever get to the bottom of the issue I’ll update this post.

How to make a 4Gb partition on a larger SD Card.

This is a pretty straightforward task to accomplish in Windows. I used a nice bit of free software called ‘MiniTool Partition Wizard‘ to do the job along with a spare 16GB MicroSD card that I had lying around.

A generic 16GB MicroSD card I used for testing.

Basically what you need to do is load up the software and then find your card in the list of drives. They normally show up slightly smaller than the stated capacity. For instance I popped in a 16GB card and it showed as 14.43GB under the list of available drives.

Once you’ve located it simply right-click it and select ‘Delete Volume’ then do the same again but select ‘Create’ to make a new, smaller partition. On the ‘Create New Partition’ screen select ‘FAT’ as the file system (see screenshot below) and it will shrink the size of the partition down to 4GB automatically. Give it a name (this will appear on your Amiga workbench) and then click ‘OK’ and then ‘Apply’ to make all these changes happen.

Partition Wizard – New Partition Settings

Now if you right-click the SD card and select ‘Properties’ in Windows you should get the screen below showing that the card is now recognised as being 4GB and formatted with the FAT file system.

Checking the size/format of the card in Windows.

Back over to the Amiga – pop the card into the SDBox and boot up your Amiga. You should now see the card appear on Workbench with the name you gave it in Windows. You can go to ‘Icon’ > ‘Information’ to bring up a similar properties screen to check it’s all setup correctly.

SD Card properties displayed on Workbench

And that’s all there is to re-partitioning an SD card to work with the SDBox. Enjoy!

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.

Zzap! Amiga Micro Action – Brand new UK Amiga magazine!

19th January 2022

Steven

Amiga, Reviews

5 Comments

2021 was a great year for Amiga magazines. Back in January there was the launch of Amiga Addict, then towards the end of the year, another brand new magazine appeared; Zzap! Amiga – Micro Action from the same guys who resurrected Zzap! 64 – Fusion Retro Books.

Zzap! Amiga Front Cover

The cover design adopts the familiar Zzap appearance and represents, perhaps, what we might have seen back in the late 80’s had Zzap fully transitioned over to the Amiga.

The magazine itself is A5 sized and is printed in full colour on thick glossy glossy paper, stapled at the centre. There’s a grand total of 58 pages sandwiched between the covers comprising mostly articles with a small smattering of adverts. From what I can gather Zzap! Amiga will be published 4 times a year (quarterly).

A Look Inside Issue 1

Zzap! Amiga Contents Page

There’s a clear emphasis on gaming here, which is to be expected considering Zzap’s heritage. This is probably why it’s only coming out quarterly too, allowing time for enough new games and news to surface. Some Zzap! regulars make an appearance including Zzap! Rrap (letters page) and The White Wizard (adventure gaming). RetroRecipes’ Chris Simpson (Perifractic) has his own section of the mag too whilst elsewhere there’s a 6 page article reminiscing about the CD32 console launch. There’s some cool featured Amiga art and a look at the success Bullfrog had with the Amiga. Of course there’s plenty of news from the Amiga gaming scene included too.

AMOS

AMOS Coding

Finally I have to mention I was really pleasantly surprised to see that there was an AMOS coding section near the back of the magazine. It even included a type-in listing to enter! The article also contained information on how you can legally get a free copy of AMOS to experiment with. As a big Amiga tinkerer this was definitely right up my street. I have a boxed original copy of AMOS so this is just the excuse I need to dust it off and put it to good use! I sincerely hope to see more of this sort of stuff in the future.

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All in all this was a great read, especially if you are an Amiga gamer. It was entertaining and informative without being dry and serious. I personally would have liked to see more game reviews – hopefully issue 2 will improve things in this respect.

At £3.99 plus postage it’s a no-brainer for me and a worthy addition to my retro magazine collection. Don’t forget you can get 15% off with code ‘LYONSDENBLOG’ at the checkout!

Head on over to Fusion Retro Books to pick up your own copy. At the time of writing issue 2 is about to be published too which I’ll definitely be getting.

Indivision AGA Mk3 Flicker-Fixer

3rd June 2021

Steven

Amiga

5 Comments

I’ve wanted an Indivision AGA Mk3 flicker-fixer for quite some time but have been stymied by a combination of Brexit and Covid-19. Individual Computers actually halted all shipments to the UK in December 2020 as a direct result of this situation. Undeterred, I kept checking the situation periodically to see if it had changed. Sure enough, towards the end of April I saw the news I’d been waiting for. Shipments to the UK were back on! I quickly ordered myself one and waited patiently for it to arrive.

Happily I didn’t need to wait for long as it arrived within a week and with no extra fees to pay too! Needless to say it was taken straight into my man cave to open it up!

Unboxing

This is the box it comes supplied in.

Inside the attractive cardboard box was the flicker-fixer, a single mounting screw and an instruction sheet.

Contents of the box.

The included instruction sheet wasn’t brilliant if I’m honest as the print quality was very poor. Thankfully there’s a much better version online on the icomp.de Wiki here.

The Indivision AGA Mk3 in all its glory.

The Indivision AGA Mk3 consists of three main components. The largest circuit board is the actual flicker-fixer whilst a smaller board handles keyboard signals. Finally there is a VGA/HDMI connector attached by means of a ribbon cable to the main board.

The main flicker-fixer board.

The main flicker-fixer board (above) features a large socket which allows it to connect to the Amiga 1200’s Lisa graphics chip and perform it’s scan-doubling and flicker-fixing duties.

The U7 CIA chip interface.

The smallest board has a socket that connects to the U7 CIA chip. This allows it to check for a specific combination of key presses to bring up the ‘Live Edit mode’.

The double sided video connector board.

The Indivision AGA Mk3 supports both VGA and HDMI monitors by means of a board that incorporates both types of connectors on it.

VGA Connection.

You simply install the board with your preferred connection method facing outwards. It’s intended to fit in the A1200’s expansion port and a single screw is supplied to securely attach it to the bottom of the case.

HDMI Connection.

Preparation

The very first job was to remove the A1200’s metal RF shield which was blocking access to the areas of the mainboard I needed to get to. This necessitated removing the floppy drive, a couple of screws along the front edge of the board and bending up several little tabs all around the shield. Once I’d done this I was able to lift away the shield with only a little bit of leverage from a screwdriver required along the back edge. This resistance was most likely the result of the small amount of corrosion present on my RF shield.

RF Shield On.

With the RF shield removed I now had unrestricted access to the entire A1200 motherboard. I don’t think I will be putting it back on any time soon as it would need modifying to fit around the Indivision. Besides, with it permanently off I have easy access to the board for future projects.

RF Shield off. Motherboard revision information viewable. (Rev. 1.D.4)

Board Revision

Interestingly, with the shield off I could now see the information printed on my A1200’s motherboard. It was identified as being a Revision 1D4 board. These boards are also recognisable by the fact that the mouse port isn’t actually part of the board itself but rather connected to it via a ribbon cable. Earlier revisions had the mouse port on the board itself whilst the later R2 motherboard had the mouse port on a separate little board. My 1D board also has a half-width clock port header whereas earlier boards had full length ones.

The chips outlined in yellow show where the Indivision AGA Mk3 connects to the A1200 motherboard. The larger chip is Lisa and the smaller one the U7 CIA.

Installation

Fitting the main Indivision AGA Mk3 board was fairly straightforward as no tools or clips are required. The board employs an empty socket to latch onto the Lisa chip and grip it tightly. I made absolutely sure that it was aligned correctly and then carefully pressed it into place. The instructions make it very clear that it must ‘click’ into place to be properly installed and this does require quite a scary amount of pressure to be applied. After a few moments of applying steadily increasing force to the board it did eventually snap into place with a very satisfying ‘click’. I then made a visual check all around the Lisa chip to ensure it was seated completely flat.

The Indivision AGA Mk3 successfully mated to the Lisa chip…

The next stage was to fit the U7 CIA chip connector. I had to consult the wiki to check the location and orientation of this as the instruction sheet was so murky I couldn’t make it out. It’s quite a tight fit next to the keyboard connector but at least it didn’t require as much pressure this time.

…and the U7 CIA chip.

The final installation step was to find a home for the HDMI/VGA sockets. In an ideal world the connectors would fit into the expansion bay beneath the floppy drive but that space is already occupied by my Blizzard SCSI port. My A1200 has had the RF Modulator removed and I had hoped it would fit there but unfortunately there was insufficient width to accommodate it so this location was out too.

My placement of the HDMI/VGA connector between the trapdoor expansion slot and the floppy disk drive.

After trying a few places I settled for a position between the floppy drive and the trapdoor expansion bay. It fits there nicely and allowed me to run the HDMI cable under the case and up through the trapdoor. I applied several strips of insulating tape to the base of the HDMI/VGA board to prevent any possible short-circuits. It’s not the perfect solution as I’m unable to unplug it without removing the case but it’s an acceptable compromise. I made sure to use a nice thin, flexible HDMI cable which made routing it through the trapdoor and underneath very straightforward.

This is the screen overlay that provides info about the current screen mode.

It was finally time for the moment of truth – the big switch on. After powering on my A1200 I waited patiently and after a few tense moments an Individual Computers overlay appeared in the corner of the screen. Having seen proof of life – it was now time to see what it could do!

Configuring a 16:9 Workbench Screen

I downloaded the HighGFX screenmodes off Aminet and also the Indivision config tool off the icomp.de website and set to work creating the perfect Workbench screen…

Adjusting the screen settings.

There are two sides to this – the Amiga screenmode and the Indivision mode. The way it works is the Indivision detects the screenmode the Amiga is using and then maps it to one of it’s built-in preset (monitor friendly) output modes. With the Indivision Config tool you are able to create your own modes too and there’s a plethora of settings to tweak if you have the patience. Thankfully the preset modes cover most of the common Amiga screenmodes so most people will probably be fine with what’s supplied ‘out of the box’.

Back to my perfect Workbench screen… I spent the next few hours fiddling about trying to get a proper 16:9 mode working on my HDTV with a native resolution of 1366×768. I was trying to get the HD720 HighGFX mode working which should have given a perfect 1:1 pixel aspect whilst also utilising the entire screen width. However I just couldn’t get any combination of Amiga screen mode and Indivision settings to display correctly, even after painstakingly tweaking the 1280×720 preset to perfectly fill my monitor screen.

My widescreen Amiga display using just the output of the Lisa chip, no RTG required!

In the end I settled on the HighGFX Super High Res Laced 1024 x 768 mode which worked perfectly as the Indivision matched it to an existing VESA 1024×768 mode. The image fills my entire screen and is super crisp and vibrant thanks to the all-digital nature of the HDMI output. The only slight niggle is the image is very slightly stretched horizontally. This is because although the Amiga screenmode has a 1:1 pixel ratio – it’s intended to be used on a 4:3 monitor screen, not 16:9. However it’s by no means a deal-breaker and having such a massive (by stock Amiga standards) screen makes Workbench even more pleasurable to use.

Screenmode preferences showing HighGFX screen mode selected.

One day I will have another go at creating a perfect 1:1 16:9 Workbench screen but for the time being I’m satisfied with what I have now.

Indivision overlay showing both the detected Amiga screenmode and the preset mode being used to display it.

Configuration Tool

The card has its own dedicated configuration tool that you install to your Preferences folder. It allows you to create, test and tweak an almost limitless array of screenmodes, whether they be for productivity apps or PAL/NTSC games. Hidden away in the advanced section there is also an option to route audio through the HDMI cable too if you have a TV/Monitor that has speakers. I have my sound routed through a Bose Soundlink Mini as my TV speakers are pretty wimpy but this would be a great option otherwise.

Indivision AGA Mk3 Configuration Tool.

Glitch in the Matrix

I did notice an issue after using the Indivision card for a few hours – I was seeing some random flickering pixels on my screen. It got worse as time went on, and my Amiga was getting very warm too, much warmer than it would normally do. Naturally I immediately thought there was a fault with the card but after I RTFM again I discovered that this is actually quite a common issue and isn’t a fault at all. I was able to eradicate it completely by using the config tool and enabling ‘CCKLine Capacitance’ from the advanced options. I’m not going to pretend I understand what this does but it definitely fixed the issue for me. There are other settings that can fix other glitches too but thankfully this is the only issue I came across. I am still not entirely happy about the extra heat it generates but I intend to sort that with a few upgrades very soon.

My Indivision card stopped being recognised!

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated

The Indivision card also tried to fake its own death at one point. I’m not entirely sure what happened but I had been messing around with the ‘live edit’ feature and the next thing I knew the Indi was no longer being detected. To make matters worse when I rebooted my Amiga it was using a screen mode that my monitor could not display so I couldn’t even see the screen. I tried removing the card and re-seating it but it still refused to work.

Now by this point I honestly thought it was dead and I’d have to return it. Then I remembered about the Rescue Disk recommendation I’d seen on the website. Amazingly I had read this and actually bothered to create one! I popped it in the drive, rebooted and after what felt like an eternity my Amiga booted up again and the card came back to life. I’ve never been so glad that I bothered to follow a set of instructions for once! I’m guessing I corrupted it’s firmware somehow and the repair disk re-flashed it but the main thing was my card wasn’t broken.

Live Edit Mode

Speaking of the ‘Live Edit Mode’ this is a utility that can be displayed at any time (even during a game) by holding down Left Shift, CTRL and Tilde. The fact this can be invoked at any time is thanks to that connection with the U7 CIA chip which allows it to detect the key-presses.

Indivision AGA Mk3 Live Edit Mode.

Whilst this mode is active you can move the on-screen image around your monitor with the mouse. You can also resize it whilst holding down the left mouse button in both the vertical and horizontal directions. This is a really useful feature and allows you to deal with any screenmodes that don’t have presets in the Indivision’s configuration. Once you’re happy with the screen layout simply press Tilde to exit Live Edit mode and ‘keep’ your adjustments. Whilst these ‘Live’ changes are not permanent by default (they are lost when power-cycling) there is an option to store them later in the config tools should you wish to.

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In the example above I used the Live Edit mode to force Cannon Fodder to fill the screen of my 16:9 TV and remove all the black borders.

Do Adjust your TV Set

Many interesting settings are hidden away in the ‘Test/Adjust’ section, not least of which is the ‘Darken’ option. This basically emulates the scanlines of a CRT monitor on your modern flat screen monitor. Settings range from 6% to 75% depending on how strong you want the effect. It only works on Double-scan modes and defaults to being switched off. There are also several settings for the On-Screen Display so you can tweak the size, length of time it is displayed and also which corner it appears in. Of course you can also adjust the size and position of each Indivision display mode from here too.

Close-up of the Adjustments tool.

Summing Up

This is a terrific device for anyone who enjoys using the Amiga 1200 as a hobby machine and wants to get the best possible image from it. The Indivision AGA Mk3 definitely allows one to maximise the power of the AGA chipset by allowing it to display resolutions that would never have been possible before. It also allows hassle free connection to modern LCD monitors and TV’s via both HDMI and VGA which is another huge benefit.

Of course that’s not to say it isn’t great for gaming as well because it is. However if all you want to do is play games then I’d consider this to be overkill and there are much cheaper options available. It also requires a certain degree of… experimentation which the average gamer may find off-putting.

Short of getting an actual RTG card for the Amiga this is as good as it gets and when utilising HDMI the picture quality is simply stunning. Considering this is still using the A1200’s native AGA chipset to deliver the image it’s a really impressive sight to behold.

In short; if you have the funds, want to push your A1200 graphics to the limit and enjoy tinkering then I highly recommend this device.

Getting an A1200 Online Part 4 – Installing an Amiga Email Client

10th April 2021

Steven

Amiga

21 Comments

Installing an Amiga Email Client (How to access Gmail on the Amiga in 2021)

In Parts 1, 2 and 3 we installed a network card, a TCP/IP stack, connected to the Internet and installed a web browser. In this part we’ll add another essential Internet tool to our Amiga 1200 – an email client.

This guide has taken me a lot longer to piece together than I expected because, well quite frankly accessing email on a classic Amiga is a minefield now. A few years ago I did a similar project getting my Amiga 500 with a Vampire accelerator to access IMAP emails with SimpleMail and it worked great. If you are interested you can read about it here. However trying to replicate that again in 2021 I discovered it just doesn’t work any more. SimpleMail hasn’t been updated for two and a half years now and trying to access anything via SSL results in it crashing out. AmiSSL was at version 4.1 when I set it all up last time, now it’s just hit v4.9. I’m guessing the two just don’t play nice together any more. IBrowse 2.5.3 needs the newer version of AmiSSL to function so I needed to find a solution that worked with that too.

So I thought, well OK if I can’t have IMAP at least I can still get Amiga email access via POP3 using good old YAM… So off I popped to Aminet to download the most recent version, 2.9p1, available here:

Aminet – comm/yam/YAM29p1-AmigaOS3.lha

I eagerly installed it… only to crash and burn as soon as I ran it because it was expecting AmiSSL 3.5. Any sort of secure POP3/SMTP access was immediately off the table and I was back to square one. I must admit I was starting to despair a little bit by this point. However I was determined to get email access on my miggy so I kept hunting for a solution and, eventually I found it.

It turns out that YAM is actually still in active development and there was a new version released just last month! This new version is able to communicate with the new version of AmiSSL so I was back in business. Why they don’t publish it to Aminet I don’t know as that’s always been the first destination for Amigans looking for software. Anyway the latest version of YAM should always be available from the website below. At the time of me writing this article it’s at version 2.10 with a compiled date of 29th March 2021. I’m using AmiSSL 4.8 but over the course of doing this article I have since upgraded to 4.9 and everything still works perfectly. I just installed 4.9 over the top of 4.8.

Index of /latest-dev/ (yam.ch)

Latest YAM ‘nightly’ build (actually more like monthly).

Installing YAM

OK before we get started there are a few pre-requisites that need to be considered before we attempt to get email on our Amiga.

Like most decent software on the Amiga, YAM requires MUI to be installed in order to function. It should also go without saying after my introduction that AmiSSL needs to be installed too. If you have followed the previous guides and got IBrowse up and running then you are good to go already. If not, head back to part 3 and install them first.

Also I’m not going to do a blow by blow account of how to install it. If you’ve been following along then you should be familiar with how to install programs on the Amiga by now. There are no surprises lurking within the installation. Besides, this article is long enough already!

A warning that this is a developer version.

Because this is classed as a ‘developer build’ a little nag box pops up each time you run YAM. It warns about it not being for general use and that it may contain bugs but it’s perfectly safe (and stable) to use.

YAM does take a little while to load, even more so the very first time you run it. All being well you should see a nice splash screen like the one below with a handy progress bar.

The YAM Splash screen.

After around 60 seconds YAM should have finished loading and you can begin the process of configuring the program to get your emails.

The program screen should look similar to the image below. Please bear in mind that I had already configured a couple of email accounts and tweaked some of the GUI settings before taking this photo.

The main YAM interface.

I have tested this out with Gmail and the mail service provided by my hosting company and had great success with both. I’d imagine that it should work with most POP3 mail services provided you are able to adapt the instructions below to fit your circumstances.

Want to use a Gmail account for your Amiga email? STOP now!

To get this working with Gmail there are a number of things we need to configure within Gmail itself before trying to access it on your Amiga. If you fail to do this it just won’t work at all. You have been warned!

Amiga email – IMAP v POP

Gmail normally uses IMAP to deliver your email to your devices. This is perfect as the mail stays on their server and you can check it from as many different devices as you like. If you delete an email on one device it will vanish on them all. POP works differently in that when you connect the messages are downloaded from the server and onto your device. They are normally then erased from the server. If you try to access your mail from another device there wouldn’t be anything there. There are steps that can be taken to mitigate the limitations of POP but the bottom line is ‘IMAP is better’.

OK, so now you are aware of the compromise we’re making by using POP rather than IMAP there are some configuration changes we must make to Gmail. Once more some compromises need to be made to make this work which I will explain shortly.

Enable POP Access in Gmail

By default Gmail does not support POP access. This is a feature that must be manually turned on. To do so follow the instructions below:

1. Click on the cog in the top right hand corner of the screen.

2. Click on ‘See all settings’.

How to enable POP access in Gmail.

3. Click on ‘Forwarding and POP/IMAP’.

4. Click on ‘Enable POP for all mail’. If you are trying to access an existing account the chances are you have a ton of emails that you might not want/need to download to your Amiga. If this is the case click ‘Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on’.

How to enable POP access in Gmail.

5. Select ‘archive Gmail’s copy’ next to ‘When messages are accessed with POP’. This will safely archive a copy of all the emails you download to your Amiga just in case you need to get them back at some point in the future. There are a few other options that you could choose here, this is just my preference.

6. Select ‘Disable IMAP’. Not strictly necessary as the two are mutually exclusive so even if you don’t disable it yourself Google will when you save the settings.

7. Click ‘Save changes’.

How to enable POP access in Gmail.

That takes care of enabling POP access and also what happens to your emails after you’ve downloaded them to your Amiga. However we’re still not done yet as there’s a few more security related settings that we need to tweak before Google will allow our decades old machine to talk to their servers!

Compromises

Remember when I mentioned about more compromises? Well this is where we have to make some more. You see in order to make their email service more secure, a few years ago Google introduced a new feature whereby ‘Less Secure Apps’ are blocked from connecting to their servers. Of course you’ve guessed it, our humble Amiga is most definitely classed as ‘less secure’.

There are a couple of ways around this problem, a quick and dirty way and a more involved but more secure way. Whichever method you choose is up to you. If you are using a dedicated Amiga Gmail account then the quick and dirty method should be fine. However if you are wanting to access your main Gmail account then I would recommend the second method. Also, if you happen to be using 2-factor authentication then you have no choice but to use the second method so skip right to that section now as you’ve already done the hardest part!

Basically if you’re here just to experiment or have a play around for nostalgias sake then create yourself a new Gmail account just for this purpose and choose the quick and dirty method. That way it doesn’t really matter one way or the other as the account will have nothing important stored on it. Likewise if you know what you are doing and can accept the calculated risk you can choose quick and dirty too – after all that’s how we rolled back in the 1990’s! Having said all that I recommend the second method. The choice, as they say, is yours.

Quick & Dirty Method

OK the quick solution is to go back into Gmail settings by:

1. Clicking on the cog in the top right hand corner of the screen.

2. Then clicking on ‘See all settings’.

How to enable ‘Less secure apps’ in Gmail.

3. Click ‘Accounts and Import’.

4. Click ‘Other Google Account settings’.

How to enable ‘Less secure apps’ in Gmail.

5. On the next screen click ‘Security’.

How to enable ‘Less secure apps’ in Gmail.

6. Now scroll down until you see the ‘Less secure app access’ section and click ‘Turn on access (not recommended)’.

How to enable ‘Less secure apps’ in Gmail.

7. Another warning will appear – you must click the little slider to allow less secure apps.

How to enable ‘Less secure apps’ in Gmail.

And that’s it for the quick and dirty method, you will get a ‘Critical Security Alert’ warning email off Google but you can ignore it as the change was made by yourself. You’re now free to skip ahead to the YAM Configuration section and start accessing your mails.

Safer Method to get around the ‘Less Secure Apps’ Issue

This method is much safer in the long run but requires extra setup and will add an extra level of complexity to logging into your Gmail account in the future from any device. This method entails enabling 2-factor authentication and then creating an ‘App password’ just for your Amiga to use. It’s something I have enabled on all my online accounts from Amazon right through to Zoho and I would recommend you enable it too. It’s probably one of the best methods of protecting your online accounts against intrusion there is right now.