The Ultimate Amiga 2000 Upgrade?: MNT Research's ZZ9000

[@proteque]

The display looks great through the flicker fixer. A2000 is such a nice machine. My last Amiga before jumping the ship for some years was an A2000 with 040/40, 128mb ram, RTG, NIC and even a soundcard. Dream machine. Wish I had one now that all the new cards like this is out!

[@hackbuildrestore]

Glad you enjoyed the video! and that sounds like a very nice spec 2000! 🙂

[@envoycdx]

Nice fixes and general modifications made. solutions to issues encountered.

[@podmaninoff]

I really want to get an Amiga 2000 again now. I managed to fit an internal SCSI Zip drive into one of the 3.5" bays in mine after one of the floppy drives failed. I also added a SCSI Panasonic PD drive into the 5.25" Bay. They had 650mb cartridges rather than the 11mb ones that Zip drives had at the time. I regret getting rid of it.

[@hackbuildrestore]

Glad you got something out of the video :) I was recently gifted a ZIP 100 SCSI external drive, will be connecting that up as well as exploring parallel zip 100 operation on the Amiga 500.

[@MichaelMavracic]

Not sure you need the zorro ram expansion card as the ZZ9000 comes with extra ram. 8:01

[@hackbuildrestore]

The 1GB RAM on the ZZ9000 is unfortunately only accessible by the ARM processors, it wouldn't be addressable over Zorro II anyway there is only space for 8MB but this is reduced by 2MB by the ZZ9000 for video RAM addressing. The 16MB on the GVP accelerator is addressed directly by the processor on its local 32-bit address bus, the ZII only uses the 24-bit address space as used by the original 68000 architecture. My only option for more RAM is a change to or replacement of the accelerator. There are uses like MP3 decompression, image compression, video playback that can make use of the 1GB RAM and the ARM Cores 😉

[@MichaelMavracic]

@hackbuildrestore well that's interesting. Still, some use of ram is better than none. Are you able to beef up the gvp I know that can take 64mb. Curious what would you use the extra ram for?

[@hackbuildrestore]

I'm looking to explore / rediscover music production and Lightwave 3D as well as web browsing all of which can use more than a few MB of RAM ☺️

[@anakondase]

Been looking at this for my A4000 since it seems my CV64/3D have died. Can't figure out what's wrong with it.

[@hackbuildrestore]

I guess the ZZs suitability will depend on what you're using it for?.. What are the symptoms of your existing CV64? With no info my guess would be video ram or caps (and or electronic corrosion) any of these would be very possibly fixable! Happy to answer any questions on the ZZ9000 I can 😄

[@anakondase]

@@hackbuildrestore With the card installed it shows as working in the board diagnostics. However, as soon as I try to activate the card with the driver the computer crashes. It might be a fault on the 4000 motherboard of course but all other zorro-cards are working just fine. Are you suggesting there are limitations with the ZZ-card in comparison to the CV64/3D?

[@hackbuildrestore]

@@anakondase not at all, the ZZ is a very capable product, but they are not a cheap option, especially if your outside of the EU... I would guess the issue with your current card is likely video ram, depending on the type used may not be an easy fix... What do you use RTG for? The ZZ doesn't have any 3D acceleration (at present) with an A4000 you do have options to go PCI if you have or can find a riser card, which opens up 3DFX voodo so on...

[@anakondase]

@@hackbuildrestore RTG is for Workbench mainly and games that support RTG. I don't have the scandoubler that was made for the CV-card and the scandoubler I have has no flickerfixer. The non-flickering higher res AGA screenmodes aren't all that great so after getting spoiled with RTG for 20+ years it's hard not to have. The CV64/3D has no 3D acceleration usable by the Amiga so in that regard the ZZ is no different. Been considering getting the PCI daughterboard but not decided on it yet. I'll see if there's a way to test the RAM on the card and see if that's the cause.

[@hackbuildrestore]

@@anakondase In that case the ZZ will not disappoint, and gives you network and USB Drive support (not hot swap) as a bonus. I have heard there were NTSC support issues with the flicker fixer this may have been addressed in the latest revision. Good luck with your RAM testing, hope you're back up and running soon!

[@marcusdamberger]

Great video! I noticed your A2000 mother board, seems to have the 16bit extensions on the ISA slots for all four slots. My original A2000 only had two with the 16bit and two with 8bit. I modified it to have 16bit ISA on all four slots many many years ago (I used them with the PC bridgeboard I have) when I noticed it had the traces for the ISA extension, but Commodore didn't use them. Did the Rev.6 motherboard always come with all four slots with 16bit ISA? I must have a Rev.4 or similar. I have a CyberVision 64 RTG in my A4000. I never got a flicker fixer for my A2000. Maybe this is the solution (ZZ9000), I also have that 8UP! mem board. Nice to hear I can fully populate it now! Subscribed now. ;)

[@hackbuildrestore]

Glad you liked the video and thank you for subscribing. The Rev 6 is the same, comes with just 8bit ISA in the last two positions. I added the 2 ISA 16bit extension slots, you can see the board as it came in the first video in the series 😉 my hope is to get something in them in the future...

[@drphilxr]

Have one (ZZ9k) on an A3K. Elegant but the arm runs very hot on its miniboard, and would not recomment for an A3K without many fans (ive added 5!) as temps get well over 100 deg F easily (around 56 deg C, and my a3k crashes prior to fans). USB driver was wonky, newer one i believe hot swaps. My A3660 accel board autoconfigs fine. My mainboard jumper config was done by a pro though lol

[@hackbuildrestore]

If your Arm is running hot you could have an un-modded early revision ZZ9000 where there is an overvoltage power connection to the daughter board. In an A3000 you don't have the 8MB fast RAM limit of Zorro II, which would make config much easier. The USB is an auto boot capable device mounted at power on it doesn't do hot swap, in the same way you can't hot swap compact flash or SD card, this is true even on the latest firmware, as far as I'm aware. This may be something that gets added in a future update, I don't know.

[@drphilxr]

yes good point- but i have later revision without the overvolt issue.@@hackbuildrestore

[@hackbuildrestore]

I'll keep an eye on the temp, not aware of it getting hot so far...

[@hackbuildrestore]

I ran the 2k with ZZ for just over 8h, removed the case lid and the ZZ is not hot at all, not even warm!..

[@TheAussieRepairGuy]

When the add-on card is way faster than the host machine lol

[@hackbuildrestore]

Today that is true when you add a new graphics card to any PC over 12 month old lol, just with most vintage machines there is more processing power in the average washing machine. There is just something, in the Amiga's DNA, that's worth preserving :)

[@TheAussieRepairGuy]

@@hackbuildrestore i had a 1000, 2000, and a huge pile of rare parts, i got abused so badly on youtube for daring to attempt to repair them that I shot holes in the 2000 to demonstrate what the community did to my state of mind. I passed on everything else to someone that would care for them. They belonged to a very close mate that passed away, so once the data was recovered, i decided the stress was too much.

[@hackbuildrestore]

I'm sorry to hear you have suffered because of the opinions of others. I hope you find the Amiga community today a safer, more accepting place.

[@TheAussieRepairGuy]

@@hackbuildrestore it wasn't all that long ago. I'm happy to watch but no longer participate nowdays, I have plenty of other things to do with my time. Won't be long and I'll have 1400 videos public.

[@hackbuildrestore]

@@TheAussieRepairGuy good for you 😁

[@giuseppelavecchia775]

Hai un ottimo A2000,lo apprezzo molto!

[@hackbuildrestore]

Thank you, I'm glad you like it!

[@boydpukalo8980]

The ZZ is a really nice, modern, car still avaliable new. Most Amigas inside are a mess and poorly designed. Servicing/upgrading them is a pain.

[@hackbuildrestore]

I agree the ZZ9000 is a nice card and also still holds more potential for enhancement. I would also say the poorly designed, mess of cards is true of any computer of similar vintage :)

[@Lucretia9000]

I had a Zip drive on my A1200.

[@hackbuildrestore]

PCMCIA?