The rebuilt A1200 tower

[RobertB]

I wrote:

I'll give the specs on the new tower tomorrow, when I've recovered a bit more from the show.

Here is the info from the flyer I put next to my A1200 tower when it was displayed at the AmiWest Show 2009 --

Amiga 1200 tower
owner - Robert Bernardo
rebuilt by Duncan MacDougall

NTSC 1200 motherboard
4 gig + 8 gig SCSI hard drives with OS 3.9, Boing Bag 1, Boing Bag 2
Blizzard 1260 accelerator board at 50 MHz., 128 meg RAM
Blizzard SCSI board, 64 meg RAM
EZ Z4 tower case from AmigaKit
Mediator 1200 LT4 PCI busboard from Elbox
Radeon 9250 PCI graphics card from Elbox
Creative Labs CT475 PCI sound card from eBay
Lyra 2 keyboard interface from AmigaKit
right-angle PCMCIA adapter from AmigaKit
SCSI-to-IDE converter board from eBay
IDE-to-Compactflash board from local source
wireless Ethernet PCI card from local source
monitor switcher from local source
Iomega ZIP-100 SCSI drive from local source
3.5 inch low-density floppy drive from local source
CD-R IDE drive from local source (to be replaced with CD-RW IDE drive)

               Truly,
               Robert Bernardo
               Fresno Commodore User Group
               http://videocam.net.au/fcug
               The Other Group of Amigoids
               http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
               Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
               http://www.sccaners.org

[RobertB]

     After talking to me at yesterday's TOGA meeting, Duncan made some revisions to the original informational flyer.  Here is the revised info -

Amiga 1200 tower
owner - Robert Bernardo
rebuilt by Duncan MacDougall

NTSC 1200 motherboard
4 gig + 8 gig SCSI hard drives with OS 3.9, Boing Bag 1, Boing Bag 2
Blizzard 1260 accelerator board at 50 MHz., 128 meg RAM
Blizzard SCSI board, 64 meg RAM
Phase 5 FlickerMagic scandoubler
EZ Z4 tower case from AmigaKit
Mediator 1200 LT4 PCI busboard from Elbox
Radeon 9250 PCI graphics card from Elbox
Creative Labs CT475 PCI sound card from eBay
Lyra 2 keyboard interface from AmigaKit
right-angle PCMCIA adapter from AmigaKit
SCSI-to-IDE converter board from eBay
IDE-to-Compactflash board from HSC Electronics or other local source
wireless Ethernet PCI card from HSC Electronics or other local source
monitor switcher from HSC Electronics or other local source
Iomega ZIP-100 SCSI drive from HSC Electronics or other local source
3.5 inch low-density floppy drive from HSC Electronics or other local source
CD-R IDE drive  (to be replaced with CD-RW IDE drive) from HSC Electronics or other local source

If the above is not labeled with a source of origin, it is hardware which came from the original A1200 tower.
     Duncan is quite proud of his work, after putting in many man-hours into creating this ultimate A1200 tower.  Other than a CD-RW IDE drive, the only thing missing is 64 megs more RAM for the Blizzard SCSI board.

                Truly,
                Robert Bernardo
                Fresno Commodore User Group
                http://videocam.net.au/fcug
                The Other Group of Amigoids
                http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
                Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
                http://www.sccaners.org

[RobertB]

SCSI-to-IDE converter board from eBay
IDE-to-Compactflash board from HSC Electronics or other local source

At this year's AmiWest Show, Matthew Leaman of AmigaKit tried to get me to buy a Deneb USB adapter to be used with the A1200 tower.  I knew that going through the A1200's clockport would be slow for USB and kindly refused his reasonings, saying that I already had a CompactFlash slot in the machine.  CF-to-IDE would be much faster than USB through a clockport.
     Also for cross-platform transfers, I could use a nifty CF-to-USB stick.  This is the one I bought --

           http://www.jascoproducts.com/products/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=69&idcategory=6

It's like a big USB stick, and it comes with a connecting cable for those computers that don't have much room around the USB port.

                I bought mine from Amazon.com,
                Robert Bernardo
                Fresno Commodore User Group
                http://videocam.net.au/fcug
                The Other Group of Amigoids
                http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
                Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
                http://www.sccaners.org

[RobertB]

     At the December SCCAN meeting a few weeks ago, I had brought the A1200 tower to show to everyone.  The unit powered up with hard drive activity, but the monitor screen remained black.    Yesterday I brought the A1200 tower back to TOGA repair tech, Duncan M., for him to diagnose the problem.  He thinks that the cheap monitor switcher that was installed may have failed.  Perhaps the A1200 tower will be fixed by the time of the next TOGA meeting in a couple of weekends.

                  Happy New Year!
                  Robert Bernardo
                  Fresno Commodore User Group
                  http://videocam.net.au/fcug
                  The Other Group of Amigoids
                  http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
                  Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
                  http://www.sccaners.org

[RobertB]

Yesterday I brought the A1200 tower back to TOGA repair tech, Duncan M., for him to diagnose the problem.  He thinks that the cheap monitor switcher that was installed may have failed.

Ah, nothing so serious.  Duncan found that the "CPU card (and your sound card and your wireless network card) worked loose due to transport. The case isn't terribly sturdy- it flexes a LOT, and that has a way of knocking things out of their sockets."  I need to make sure to push in all cards if I transport the tower again.

                  Happy New Year!
                  Robert Bernardo
                  Fresno Commodore User Group
                  http://videocam.net.au/fcug
                  The Other Group of Amigoids
                  http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
                  Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
                  http://www.sccaners.org