10MARC Episode 33 - Amiga 2000 Adventure: The Beginning

[@maxsmarts8210]

Very nice video Sir, Ill be waiting for more A2000 Adventures !

[@10MARC]

I have been very busy getting the Video Toaster to work perfect. A new video on that coming soon!

[@AS-ly3jp]

This is a real joy to watch. Funny and informative! Great Video!!! 🖖🏻

[@10MARC]

Thanks! The guy you see on the videos is just me in real life... I like to have a bit of fun.

[@Rip-Van-Tinkle]

Nice video Doug, the joys of working with old machines! But that's why we love em! 😁

[@mutetus]

Been there. Fixed an Amiga 2000 that had been stored in hazardous conditions for nearly two decades. The CPU socket just practically turned into dust and the ROM socket wasn't so good either. But after very, very careful desoldering, new sockets and few jump wires it came back alive. I'm not using it much at the moment, because I need to find something to tune it with, since I already have a bunch of those 7MHz 68000 machines. It doesn't even have a hard disk, but I was very pleased when I realized it came with the "space invader" keyboard, which may be the best keyboard I've ever used.

[@10MARC]

That battery acid just devastates that 68000 and ROM socket! I just got two boards back from repair for that issue. I will do a video on those soon

[@Channel-Zx]

Great detective work there glad you got it up and running. Big Box Amigas are great at throwing the odd curveball and the A2K line are the workhorse for sure!

[@10MARC]

Yep! I have big plans for every single expansion slot of this beast! I hope the power supply can handle it!

[@RetroRecollections]

A beauty of a machine and some amazing extras you have for it. Great video! Cheers Doug 👍

[@10MARC]

Thanks! I really have been having fun with my Amiga 2000. It is huge, but so expandable!

[@RetroRecollections]

@@10MARC yeah I would love one but unfortunately way out of my price range! 😀

[@HeyBirt]

Nice find! Those stray solder blobs pick the worst time to come back and bite you in the butt. They can hide out for years and get knocked loose and then wham! you have a failure. Good job locating the source of the problem!

[@10MARC]

Yep - glad I found that little thing. It looked like fairly new solder - bright and shiny, not dull like the rest of the solder on this 30 year old board. I have owned it since probably 2003 or 2004 - not sure who did it.

[@RetroPanic]

Very cool you did it! Can not wait How you Go forward with the Toaster ! 👍Perfect Retro casts! Thx

[@10MARC]

I have a few ideas on how to integrate the toaster into modern videos - but no clue if it really will work. We shall see ...

[@a500]

You had me worried there for a bit. So glad you got it all working and happy. Looking forward to coming along for the ride.

[@10MARC]

I truly thought that I had destroyed something important when it just stopped booting at all. Dodged a bullet for sure!

[@a500]

I’ve had a few scares my self over the years. Thankfully yet to lose a patient apart from a far from rare intel P4 motherboard that no-one will loose sleep over.

[@DomedagsPoeten]

Dang! Thats turning in to a really hot 2000! Wish it was mine 😅

[@stephenbruce8320]

Pretty cool. I hand an A2000HD that I have owned since the very early 1990's. I am the 2nd owner of it and its been my favorite computer forever. When I moved to where I live now I did not have any room to set it up so it was in the closet. I had forgotten about the battery and one day I decided I needed to get all my disks backed up and moved to my server and various storage cards for preservation so I pulled out the A2000HD a few years back put it on a table and broke it down for a clean and there it was the Battery and it had no leaked but it came off and I replaced it with a coin cell. I like having a RTC so why not. Thats when the Retro Bug bit me and man it bit me hard. I got that A2000HD on my network (can you say slow yea 10mbps) but I was happy about it I later sped that up with X-Surf100, an A2630 which I had to slow down to work with the BIG RAM Board. I put OS3.1.4, then I played with BUDDA Boards and I have a USB board to plug into the X-Surf 100 that I have still not gotten to get around to. I did install an Indivision Scan Doubler and to save space I got some adapters so I could use a PS2 Keyboard and Mouse which allowed me to connect it to my KVM Switch which in turn allowed me to slide the A2000HD into my server rack thus eliminating my space issue. The A2000HD is now out of the rack because I keep opening it up to play with the internals and after I am done it will go back into my server rack but as you know once you start playing with these things its hard to stop, I do suspect I may have an issue with the Zorro Bus Card Slots so I need to either clean them up or replace them all together. I say this because sometimes after removing a card I may have to reseat it a couple times to get it to work properly so after my bench is cleared off I will put my A2000HD mother board on it and go through the entire Zorro Bus to determine whats going on there and I will test the caps as well but I may recap it because all the caps are original but I won't make that determination until I test them. I may even plug in the DIAG ROM just to see what if anything it might show because I simply don't want to handle this old motherboard too much because of its age and how fragile they can be. When I saw this video it just brought back all the memories of things working then no working then working again. One thing we you need to have while working on these old computers is a lot of patience. Thanks for sharing your A2000 Adventure because it clearly demonstrates issues you might run into along the way when working with this old friends. Oh yea I did manage to get 95% of my disk library backed up for preservation, disks don't last forever but I misplaced my Amiga Vision Disks which I moved out of the Amiga Vision Binder and so I have been looking at all the hiding places I may have moved them too but hey $30 and I can have a new set of disks and I spend more than that looking for them. Watch I will purchase a new set and find my originals.

[@10MARC]

Great story! Buy some Electronics Contact Cleaner and an old toothbrush to clean up those ZorroII slots for sure. They are truly great machines, although at the moment getting my Thylacine USB card working in there is driving me crazy...

[@stephenbruce8320]

@@10MARC I know how crazy these things can make you. What'd driving me crazy right now is getting the microSD slot on my Vampire v2 to work in an A600. It see's the card but I am missing something so today I am going to add in a microSD to SD cable extender so I can swap out cards without having to open up the A600. I had done that with the AMSider and you know sometimes its just the card. Its funny how some cards will work on some Amiga's but not on others. I am trying to get away from CF cards as SD and micro SD Cards are easier to get.

[@mark12358]

Really Hot stuffs over there, very nice!

[@geekwithsocialskills]

Nice Amiga 2000. Extra nice that you got the original box and packing with it too. After watching the video I'm so happy to see the seller removed the VARTA and put in a coin cell battery. Obviously the original owner cared for this machine a lot. Remember, only the Amiga makes it possible :-)

[@10MARC]

I was quite pleased that it came in the original box! Bonus!

[@geekwithsocialskills]

I no longer own a A2000, however out of the various Amiga models I've owned over the years, my personal favorite and "keeper" Amiga is my complete in box Amiga 1000. I love it so much!

[@honx4amiga]

if you keep expanding, watch out for that 8mb limit on zorro II bus!

[@10MARC]

No issues - I use the memory on my GVP 040 Combo card. It does not care about the 8 MB ZORROII limit.

[@MauroSanna]

Great, great video! I am glad that you sorted everything out in the end! The happy dance and the Atari/Windows joke was hilarious! :-D Keep up the good work Doug! Thank you!

[@10MARC]

I have to have a bit of fun in my life! I am glad you enjoyed the video.

[@Error42_]

Sometimes when you look back at things, you end up being grateful for those little problems that help you fix the bigger problems :-D

[@10MARC]

That is the truth!

[@chainq68k]

Shameless plug: with the upcoming CBM 386sx bridgeboard card you can also use "Viaduct", which will let you use the PC board's internal emulated CGA/MDA output on an RTG screen, or even in a Workbench window. Of course it's nowhere as fast or versatile as using an external video card, but it's probably a lot better for your config than the old CBM PCWindow (under icons PC Mono & PC Color) software, which will only work properly with the Amiga chipset, with all its limitations. You can find Viaduct on Aminet. Oh, and it's by yours truly. :)

[@10MARC]

I have tried Viaduct and it seems like it will be awesome - But I appear to have damaged my 386SX Bridgeboard with a repair gone wrong!

[@chainq68k]

@@10MARC Oh, too bad. Yeah, the cards are sadly notoriously fragile. I have three 386sx cards at my place right now, but only one of them works properly. And because it is a 4 layer PCB, if something breaks inside, it is very likely to be gone forever, and battery leaks tend to leak inside the PCB too, thanks to some badly placed via... :( So everything is together for the perfect storm.

[@paulb4uk]

Great that its all good now i used to have a uk amiga 1500 its just an amiga 2000 with out a hard drive and two floppy drives

[@10MARC]

Such expandable machines! It would be nice if a modern accelerator was available like we have for the A500 and A1200's - and by "Modern" I mean made today using like an '030, not a modern CPU! 😂😉

[@CityXen]

Save some tank mouses for the rest of us sheesh! Just kiddin lulz

[@10MARC]

Nope. All you Mouses are belong to us.

[@bobrandale4864]

@@10MARC Mouse trap! :)

[@thefonzkiss]

Man you could do a mean Casey Kasem/Shaggy impersonation.

[@10MARC]

That is the second time someone said I sounded like him! 😂😂🤣🤣

[@amigadude6409]

Very nice......i had a A2000 back in the day.....😟

[@10MARC]

They are bulky and unwieldy beasts, but oh boy can you expand the heck out of them!

[@daw7563]

I would stick with the v1.3 ROM to maintain compatibility with software and games supported by that hardware. Or perhaps a chip-selector to get the best of both worlds.

[@10MARC]

I don't disagree that this would be helpful for many people, but I rarely play games on my Amiga, and almost never would on this Amiga. My goal is to upgrade my Amiga's as much as I can - that's just what I do!

[@TheGuruMeditation]

I danced to this!

[@10MARC]

I think the "I dream of Jeannie" music fit your awesome dance moves just perfect.

[@DomedagsPoeten]

You sure did! I saw it 😃

[@mraudio]

Great video! Any chance you could share the brand/model # of that VGA combo card you mentioned? Of course since your bridgeboard isn't working, you could always send me yours! ;-)

[@10MARC]

I will fix my Bridgeboard for sure. I will look up the model number tomorrow and post it here

[@Krslaurent]

I always dreamed of having 2 mo chip on my 2000

[@Krslaurent]

for over 14 years my 2000 broken down has been in a corner of my closet with cards that many people dreamed of or still dream of having inside ^^

[@10MARC]

Well good news then! Jens from individual Computers announced Saturday at AmiWest that a new 2 MB CHIP RAM solution is coming out soon! - and you should get that A2000 fixed!

[@garyhart6421]

I don't like those chip pullers --- to easy to damage the pins.

[@KarlHamilton]

A2000HD? In the UK all A2000s had hard disks, and the A1500 had 2 floppy and no hard disk. Of course, being Commodore, they also sold an A1500 with a hard drive, and they probably sold A2000s with no hard disk haha.

[@a500]

Karl Hamilton - whilst I had the 1500 with two floppy drives, that was only a UK thing in response to Ceckmates unofficial 1500 case mod. There were B2000s sold without a hard drive; they only had a single floppy drive as standard though. I have one in my work shop that I need to repair, they did not have HD on the label.

[@10MARC]

They started selling in the USA in 1987, several years before they were popular in the UK. By 1989 or 1990 most A2000's had hard drives.

[@a500]

Ps. Sorry if I sounded like a know it all. Not my intention, but I do realise having read my post that I come across as such.

[@10MARC]

@@a500 I did not notice anything. I love hearing about how the Commodores sold in different countries!

[@KarlHamilton]

@@a500 That's why I started my post with "In the UK" :)