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RogerWilco486
Boyertown, PA USA

Posted Tue Jan 21, 2020 11:35 am

I've been slowly progressing on this build but figured I might as well share it.

This is Hese's recreation of the coveted A3000+. It's an AGA Amiga 3000 motherboard with a couple of additional goodies such as an Amberless flicker fixer, multi-input auto video switching, AT&T DSP support, and a backplane with built in Prometheus PCI bridge board.

Beautiful matte black solder mask with ENIG (gold) plated pads...JLCPCB made and typical fine quality I've come to expect from them. Hese's routing looks great too, the L/R audio circuity layout is symmetrical, nice evenly spaced traces and vias that all appear to be properly snapped to a grid, ground pours placed everywhere that was practical... it's all very pleasing to see for my mild OCD.

I forgot to take pictures before starting, so here's one I took after mounting the chip RAM.

IMG_6370.jpg

And here it is as of last night. Except for the poly caps, all of the passives are installed and most of the logic is done. I always wait to the the larger caps last so they're not in the way. Tonight the logic should be finished and I'll be moving on to installing PLCC sockets next. I absolutely loathe installing SMD PLCC sockets by hand, but I loathe the idea of soldering the hard to find custom chips more... especially the DMAC-04/RAMSEY-07 I'll be using.

IMG_6529.jpg

I've already got a spare 3000 chassis that I received in a trade, it's in somewhat crusty condition but except for a missing hard drive sled and 2nd FDD sled it's complete. Fortunately the front bezel is still really nice. I'll be dropping it off to have it media blasted and powder coated soon.

I've already got the entire BOM here, so I'm certainly looking forward to getting this finished!
Last edited by RogerWilco486 on Tue Feb 04, 2020 10:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Jan 21, 2020 12:45 pm

I'll be dropping it off to have it media blasted and powder coated soon.
Definitely take before/after pictures of that. Wow!

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Beska

Posted Tue Jan 21, 2020 1:44 pm

Wow that thing is gorgeous! I would love to get a populated and fully working one. I don't know if I have the skill to make one of my own.

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A10001986
1986

Posted Wed Jan 22, 2020 3:21 am

Good idea not to solder the custom chips onto the board.

I reverted back from SDMAC04/RAMSEY07 to 02/04 after my CS Mk2 caused a lot of issues with the "newer" versions (SCSI lockups, graphics failures, etc).

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RogerWilco486
Boyertown, PA USA

Posted Sat Jan 25, 2020 5:51 pm

Progress!

95% complete...I accidentally ordered the wrong field memory for the flicker fixer so I'm waiting for the correct stuff to show up, and I also accidentally ordered the wrong DB25 for the serial port--it doesn't have the solder ground lugs that fasten it solidly to the PCB, so I'm also waiting for that to.

But otherwise it's complete and working great. I've even got it going with a PCI S3 graphics card.

Except for Lisa, the custom chips, GALs, CPU, and FPU are all socketed. I soldered Lisa directly to the board so I can pop an Indivision AGA on it if I ever feel the need.

With DMAC04/RAMSEY07 WhichAmiga thinks it's an A4000. So far it seems just fine with that combo but if it ever gives me any trouble I have a DMAC02/RAMSEY04 if I need it.
IMG_6550.jpg
IMG_6551.jpg

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obitus1990
USA

Posted Sat Jan 25, 2020 10:23 pm

Gorgeous! Were any of the ICs hard to get a hold of, like the DSP?

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Bulletdust

Posted Sun Jan 26, 2020 4:44 am

Fantastic!

I so need to upgrade to AmigaOS 3.1.4, it looks amazing compared to my 3.1 install.

So is this an A3000 with the AGA chipset?

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RogerWilco486
Boyertown, PA USA

Posted Sun Jan 26, 2020 7:54 am

obitus1990 wrote:
Sat Jan 25, 2020 10:23 pm
Gorgeous! Were any of the ICs hard to get a hold of, like the DSP?
Hese provided the DSP, RTC chip, and chip RAM ICs as a paid option I elected to take. I don't think any of those would be difficult to source from the usual places like AliExpress, UT Source, eBay etc.

The hardest chips to get for me were (besides the custom chips of course) the flicker fixer's field memory and the Altera PLDs for the daughter board Prometheus functionality...just the NOS pair of those PLDs set me back $50 USD.

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obitus1990
USA

Posted Mon Jan 27, 2020 8:54 am

Will it work with a standard daughter board if you elect to not build the Prometheus?

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RogerWilco486
Boyertown, PA USA

Posted Mon Jan 27, 2020 11:37 am

obitus1990 wrote:
Mon Jan 27, 2020 8:54 am
Will it work with a standard daughter board if you elect to not build the Prometheus?
Nope, it uses the slightly different 3000+ daughter board format with 2x 100-pin sockets instead the 3000's 100-pin and smaller socket (I don't remember the pin count) for the video slot portion of the daughter board. You could certainly choose to not bother with the CPLDs though, and use it as a passive daughter board instead.





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