Amstrad PPC640 | Hard Drive and soundcard Upgrade!

[@StevenJPiper]

This video was cool, it reminded me of the one my dad had, he still has this PPC 640 to this day, (I used to call it the "bag" PC when I was a kid, on account of the long bag it came in), and my Dad told me, that he actually hacked in a hard drive, apparently soldered it directly to the bus somehow, maybe the hacky way you mentioned, (and a backlight - that made me think these all had one). Will have to look one day, you also have my sub :)

[@GouldFishOnGames]

That sounds likes a really nicely upgraded machine!

[@StevenJPiper]

@@GouldFishOnGames Yeah, it's in the loft, I might get him to get it down, I have another KZbin channel, (not this one), and it would nice to have a look over it on there

[@TheBasementChannel]

Wow, what an epic mod! Not sure I have the skills to attempt this. Seems a shame the expansion board wasn’t designed to fit in the modem space from the get-go. Nice TTD music by the way 😂

[@GouldFishOnGames]

Thanks! it was a fun mod to do and for most of it I wasn't sure if I had the skills to pull it off. I know there was talk of designing a board to go into that space, with there possibly being one that would have the hard drive and audio parts built in. But not heard anything about that for a little while. And you can't go wrong with a bit of TTD music!

[@pferreira1983]

A lot of detailed work involved for a screen that's not any better than a Game Boy. Restoring though was important so kudos for doing that. It's an interesting machine for sure. 👍

[@daspec]

Since the project is open source, maybe you could ask someone from the community to re-design the board and shrink it just enough to fit inside the case where the modem sits. In fact it shouldn't even need an XT-IDE, it could just have the space for its circuits right on the board and eliminate the need for a slot.

[@GouldFishOnGames]

There was a plan to design a board to fit inside, with the XTIDE built in and I think they were hoping to had audio as well. I've not heard anything about it in a while, so not sure how its going.

[@NiTye357]

Excellent video. I hope to try this now too. Thank you!

[@GouldFishOnGames]

Best of luck and I hope it goes smoothly!

[@PondersRetroGoodness]

Nicely bodged in there sir! :D Nice theatrical tension point on the sound too ;)

[@dddutch7335]

What a nice upgrade! Great sound capabilities for this Amstrad. Well worth your investment I think. Keep up the good work!

[@GouldFishOnGames]

Yeah the sound upgrade is great, there aren't a huge number of 8088/86 games that have adlib sound and play decently. but enough that its fun to have in there.

[@K.F-R]

Great project. Thanks for sharing. PPC640's were ahead of their time in many respects. I modernised one for kicks too - put a Pi and a new display in it whilst keeping all the original hardware (except display and modem natch). Added a LiPo battery to keep it portable. I missed a lot of your audio trickery though, so I might revisit - thanks for the tips! With the redundant modem and battery bays these machines seem to be crying out for this kind of project.

[@GouldFishOnGames]

that sounds like a nice upgrades, I've seen a video that did something similar and it looked really interesting. There is a surprising about of space inside if you go looking :)

[@nicholsliwilson]

Outstanding work & I love the results but please, please tell me you wore a mask cutting that at PCB? Love the video dude, thanks.

[@GouldFishOnGames]

Was really happy with the results, it went so much better then I expected. and I did not, not wear a mask while cutting the board 😉 I did have a basic cloth one, as I didn't have anything better on hand.

[@nicholsliwilson]

@@GouldFishOnGames even a basic mask should be enough to help keep you from the potential horrors that result from breathing G10 dust.

[@TechMadeEasyUK]

What a great project. I've been playing with my own PPC512 lately and I've basically got the same capabilities of yours but I've kept all mine external. I love that you shoehorned your mods inside, aside from the screen you've now got an awesome IBM PC gaming setup

[@GouldFishOnGames]

the screen is the only thing that lets it down (well that and needing batteries to keep the clock running). but I've seen both of those modded in the past. its a fun machine and I really enjoyed doing that project. Thanks for watching.

[@Fezzler61]

@@GouldFishOnGames I put a RTC in my PPC640.

[@GouldFishOnGames]

@@Fezzler61 Nice work, I've seen the mod done, just never got around to it. I thought of unsoldering that chip put me off at the time.

[@Fezzler61]

@@GouldFishOnGames I am the worst desolderer and solderer. I just took my time. Used lots of flux to remove chip. Installed low profile socket first. If I can do it you can. I have a replacement screen on the way. I haven't decided yet if I will replace.

[@johnbrown3155]

Great video, and great add on for the PPC really want todo this my self at some point. I love you picked this for the title.

[@GouldFishOnGames]

Figured a mix of the serious and the fun would work well :)

[@NCommander]

Honestly stumbled upon this by chance, and this was interesting. As a word of advice from one KZbinr to another, you might want to look at a better mic or more post processing. You have a lot of noise and you're hard to hear at points. That being said, you managed to keep my attention throughout. It may be worth (at least with the Amstrad) to haave an external display hooked up and visible in shot, so that LCD is entirely rubbish on camera.

[@GouldFishOnGames]

I think the noise was when I had the audio from the camera mixed in. I didn't have my decent mic plugged into the camera at the time, so the quality wasn't great (and when I tried to clear it up I lost part of what I wanted to be heard). All the voice over is done via a Blue Yeti X and I do apply a number of post processes to it that typically make it sound fine. Connecting an external monitor to the ppc is possible, but you have to jump though 2 devices that end up being external (I covered it in my last video). but as this was meant to be about making something that looked stock I figured showing off the LCD would be better.

[@NCommander]

​@@GouldFishOnGames For scenes where you're not visible on camera, you might want to overdub yourself. It can make a staggering difference in quality. That being said, keep up the good work overall :)

[@GouldFishOnGames]

All the off camera stuff's audio is recorded separately, and processed on its own. The noise might have come from the camera where I was wanting the sound of what was being worked on as well.

[@RetroTheory]

Awesome, thanks for the shoutout

[@GouldFishOnGames]

No problem, it was your work that made my video possible. So thanks for designing and releasing the board!

[@WhatHoSnorkers]

Good work sir!

[@opless]

Fabulous work dude! It takes me back to the mid 90s when I had a PPC512 And 640 😊😊😊

[@opless]

Also... FIRST!

[@GouldFishOnGames]

Happy you enjoyed it mate, didn't realize you had one of these back in the day. What did you use it for?

[@opless]

@@GouldFishOnGames I was given them both, I ended taking them to uni with me, folk used to borrow them to write up their coursework before jumping into the public access PCs and importing the text files into word. 😂

[@opless]

I did get them both running turbo c 1.0 on their 720k drives. But the LCDs were just not up to scratch for a daily driver, even then.

[@GouldFishOnGames]

Lugging that thing into uni and filled with batteries must have been quite the work out!

[@bowendesign]

Did you ever hook this up to a CGA monitor? That's how we used to play - the LCD was completely pointless outside of writing, and even then it wasn't good for that either.

[@GouldFishOnGames]

The only CGA monitor I have seems to be PAL only, and has issues with the PPC640. I did build a CGA to VGA converter in a previous video (way back at the start of the channel) that was much nicer then using the screen. but for this video I wanted to just focus on the PPC and these internal mods.

[@delenter1391]

I wonder if you could use the modem sockets to reduce all that soldering?

[@GouldFishOnGames]

you could reduce some of the soldering, but you would need to do some based on looking at the service manual. As it looks like those pins don't have everything you need for an ISA bus. If I'm reading it correctly (and there is a good chance that I'm not), it only has IRQ3 exposed, I also don't think it has all the address pins. its on page 28 of this manual, if you want to take a look archive.org/details/amstrad-ppc-512-s512d-ppc-54064-0D-ppc-service-manual/page/n27/mode/2up

[@grahamprout2843]

where did you get the right angled connectors from?

[@GouldFishOnGames]

I got mine from AliExpress, if you search for "Right Angle Edge Card Connector Slot" then you should be able to find places selling them in a range of sizes / lengths. pick the one with the right number of pins (can't remember off the top of my head).

[@grahamprout2843]

@@GouldFishOnGames thanks i found them, and ive found the opl3 but im buggered if i can find that smul xt-cf lite card any where

[@mistavia]

Any ideas where I can find the compact flash HDD?

[@GouldFishOnGames]

I bought mine from eBay from the seller "blue_lava_systems", I was just looking for XT CF or some combination of it and XT IDE when I found that one at a reasonable price.

[@mistavia]

@@GouldFishOnGames brill thanks