Amiga CD32 + SX32

[RobertB]

     A few years ago I bought a NTSC CD32 from R.W. Bivens at the Classic Gaming Expo.  It was bare... no box, no CDs, no instructions... just the black, sealed power supply that said, "C65".  (!)  A few years after that, I bought a SX32 expansion module from eBay.co.uk.  For all this time, the two parts have sat apart... never attached (though my British friend tried out the SX32 expansion with his CD32 and pronounced it working well).
     Well, now the two have been brought out of storage, and I'm digging out all the facts on how to get the most out of them when they are mated.  I'm scrounging the Web for hints and tips, and so far, I've found the best one to be at http://www.ianstedman.co.uk  O.K., for the SX32 it'll need a 72-pin 8-meg SIMM, and because it came with no hard drive, I'll have to get a 2.5" IDE drive (the original was supposed to be 20 or 21 megs).  Heh, a larger drive up to 4.3 gigs would be o.k..  Because it is just the regular SX32 Mark II with no '030 accelerator on it, I'm limited to what I can do to expand the system.
     I'll need an appropriate keyboard, mouse, and floppy drive, naturally... colored like the CD32/SX32 combination... even if I have to do some spray-painting. 

             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

[Paul]

Apparently, A2000 keyboards will work with a simple PS/2 style keyboard adapter.

[RobertB]

Apparently, A2000 keyboards will work with a simple PS/2 style keyboard adapter.

And A4000 keyboards will work with the SX32 internal jumpers set correctly.

               Or so I've read,
               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]

...because it came with no hard drive, I'll have to get a 2.5" IDE drive (the original was supposed to be 20 or 21 megs).  Heh, a larger drive up to 4.3 gigs would be o.k..

Heh, I dug out the 2.5" 80-gig IDE drive I bought from AmigaKit when I visited them in Wales in 2008.  It's formatted for OS 3.9 and is ready to go.  I haven't yet put it into any of my Amigas, but it seems like overkill for the CD32 + SX32.    Well, maybe not...

             Spending the night at the California/Oregon border,
             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 yesterday's meet-up with TOGA repair tech, Duncan M., he dug out a 8-meg 72-pin SIMM for the SX-32, but he didn't have a 4-gig IDE notebook hard drive for it nor a short 44-pin IDE cable.  We went to the Weird Stuff warehouse and dug around the hardware there but found nothing there except IDE notebook drives bigger than 10 gigs.
     I might have to order the materials from AmigaKit.com   He also had the idea of using a CF card drive (oh, yeah, I had forgotten about that).

                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]

I might have to order the materials from AmigaKit.com   He also had the idea of using a CF card drive...

CF-to-IDE adapter ordered from DealExtreme, and a 4-gig Kingston CF card has been ordered from another shop.  I just need the short IDE cable now.

                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]

     CF card arrived.  Short IDE 44-pin cable found.  Just need the IDE-to-CF adapter, and I'll be good to go to hand these over to Duncan at this Saturday's TOGA meeting.

               That SX-32 doesn't fit so neatly on the CD-32,
               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]

     The IDE-to-CF adapter came just the other day, too late for Duncan who I met at last Saturday's TOGA meeting.  Oh, well... I won't see Duncan until the March TOGA meeting (the Feb. meeting is out, because I have other places to be).  And so, the completion of this project is on hold until March.
     After last Saturday's TOGA meeting, Duncan and I spent hours refurbishing one of my student's Windows XP desktops.  It was a computer that the student used in his family's garage.  The computer was full of dead bugs and dust, had a dead CD-ROM drive, and wouldn't power up.  The p.s. was replaced, the BIOS was updated, an extra fan was installed, another fan was oiled, Windows was updated, a used DVD burner was installed, a non-working card reader was replaced with a 3 1/2" floppy drive (just in case of emergency boot-up), and a 32-meg graphics card was installed (the computer had no graphics card).  The only cost was for the used DVD burner, which we got from a nearby surplus store for $10.  For the last few days, I myself have updated more of Windows, cleaned out the trash on the drive, updated the various programs on the computer, took out hundreds of spyware bits, fixed the hundreds of registry errors, and defragged the badly-fragged hard drive.  Whew!  It is running like a top now... much faster to access its programs... though it came with only 256 megs of RAM and still is not a speed demon.  I've ordered another 256 for $6.99, and that should significantly speed up the computer.

             Hey, at 3.0+ gigahertz, it'd better run faster,
             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