D.I.Y. Kickstart Adaptor

[EzdineG]

I've recently acquired an Amiga 1000 and really like the look and feel of it. I grew up with the 500 (and have a few of those too) but much prefer the look of an Amiga 1000 paired with a 1080/1084 monitor.

One issue I had right away was that my MKL 8MB + IDE68K socket adaptors didn't quite fit with the floppy in place. The other problem was that I can't be bothered to put in a Kickstart disk every time I turn it on; I really really really don't like that part so something had to be done.

Two nights of watching videos, reading the KiCad documentation and wayback machine'ing old Kickstart modification pages later, I've managed to create a circuit board to both shift the socket forward+left and accept a 512K ROM to replace the Kickstart disk. I've successfully tested the resulting circuit board and it indeed accomplishes both requirements.

Be warned, I'm no electrical engineer and won't be held responsible for any damage you do to your system. If you can't do this yourself, ask someone who can. Otherwise, enjoy the read

Note: The following three steps are to be performed on the daughter board.

STEP 1:
You're supposed to cut the track on pin 17 of U6J, but who wants to permanently destroy a track on their beautiful Amiga 1000?

A better solution is to remove the chip, socket it and just pull pin 17.

STEP 2:
Solder a 4.7Kohm resistor between pins 1 and 20 on U4K.

STEP 3:
Connect J1 from my board to pin 13 U6L (DAUGEN). Instead of soldering directly to the chip, I just used the nearest via and put a Dupont connector on the other end.

Continued on the next post...

[EzdineG]

STEP 4:
You need to remove the existing Kickstart ROMs at U5N and U5P. On my motherboard, these were socketed so it was a no brainer.

STEP 5:
Disconnect your CPU, plug it and a Kickstart ROM in to the circuit board in its place (gerbers and picture below) and wire the lead from step 3 to witness the beauty of booting your Amiga 1000 sans Kickstart disk.

You can now use socket accelerators, socket RAM expansions, etc. in your A1000, hopefully without needing to remove your floppy drive. Some of these didn't used to work without a Kickstart ROM (shown is a is a burned TF530 accelerator for sizing.)

[EzdineG]

Here is a picture of a Stephen Leary's TF530 Rev. 3 68030 Accelerator running on an Amiga 1000 at 50mhz:

Here's the card I made in KiCad. I have a few boards left if some of you nearby would like something to solder on.

Here's the gerber files so you can have as many as you'd like made:

gerbers.zip

(18.83 KiB)

I'm no expert with KiCad and can already see several ways I could have made the circuit even better. It is what it is, the result of someone getting up off their butt and creating something to solve a problem

I'd like to thank Stephen Leary at EAB for doing what he does and sharing it with everyone. A little over a year ago I could hardly even solder, much less design a PCB.

Enjoy

[intric8]

I am SO intrigued by this approach. Did you come up with it? I don't completely follow some of the jargon you're using, but I wonder if a friend of mine here (mattsoft) fully gets it?

This would be a really cool non-destructive mod to try. If I could get the kickstart ROM working, I'd be a happy camper.

My MKL RAM fits just fine under the FDD, by the way. But I run 1.3 and never went for the IDE bit.

Here's what I'd like to do, I think.

Use the MKL RAM. Use your board and instructions for the KS ROM. That right there alone would be a bad assed and nearly 100% complete A1000. The only piece it lacks is the auto-booting HDD, but I'm personally OK with that. It's what makes the A1000 its own weird little machine. Do you think the MKL RAM and your board would work together?

If so - man - I'd love to raise my hand for one of your boards. I'd be happy to pay for it and shipping, which we could do over PM. I might not do the project tomorrow (I need to understand things better) but I'd be down for going for it at some stage later this year I'm pretty sure. This is amazing!

[intric8]

By the way, Stephen is a member here under his moniker terriblefire, and shows up from time to time to add his expertise and experiences to the mix. An amazing guy - super cool and very kind and helpful. We're lucky to have him.

[intric8]

Also are you able to put the original floppy back in place? Or will you need to make additional modifications there? In my Phoenix I had to get a "new" A500 drive from Amigastore.eu for similar clearance reasons. The original FDD's are tanks but take up a ton of vertical height in the case.

[EzdineG]

I am SO intrigued by this approach. Did you come up with it?

I designed the board myself. I pieced together the wiring from the archived article I linked above and some more modern posts on wire wrapping a solution on A1k.org which were, unfortunately for me, in German.

My MKL RAM fits just fine under the FDD, by the way. But I run 1.3 and never went for the IDE bit. Do you think the MKL RAM and your board would work together?

Yes, the MKL 8MB RAM fits without this adapter, but with this adapter you can use both the MKL RAM and the MKL IDE68K without disrupting the floppy. They're pushed far enough away to leave it in as is. It looks like the TF530 even (barely) fits without disrupting the floppy. The "behold" image is actually showing the MKL 8MB adapter plugged in to the socket and working. I just can't upload more than 3 pictures at a time so I couldn't elaborate more
[Edit] There's a patch on Aminet that allows you to create a 1.3 Kickstart ROM from a regular 1.3 Kickstart image. Now THAT would make for a great set up that sticks with the original 1000 feel.

I'd love to raise my hand for one of your boards. I might not do the project tomorrow (I need to understand things better) but I'd be down for going for it at some stage later this year I'm pretty sure. This is amazing!

Send me a PM with your address and a board is yours. If you want to send me the daughterboard for your machine I'd be happy to do the mod for you. It's the least I can do since I linked to this page on your server from the TF530 WIKI, EAB and Amibay boards

[intric8]

My god - I don't think I can type fast enough! I'm on it. Thank you, my brother! I don't have the words!

[EzdineG]

Also are you able to put the original floppy back in place? Or will you need to make additional modifications there? In my Phoenix I had to get a "new" A500 drive from Amigastore.eu for similar clearance reasons. The original FDD's are tanks but take up a ton of vertical height in the case.

Part of my goal with this design was to avoid having to remove or modify the floppy drive. Thus far it looks like I've succeeded, but I need to do more testing with the TF530 because I cut it really really close.

[leighb2282]

So I get what part of that is doing - its moving the 68k CPU back and to the left inside the case (and i'm guessing if I wanted to initially I could literally just use the circuit board so I can get one of the 8Mb boards and mount the RAM and CPU on this to avoid clearance issues?)

the second chip socket is for the kickstart ROM? does someone NEED to add and utilize the Kickstart stuff or can I just use this to move my CPU & RAM slightly away from the FDD?

Also I see you mentioned an IDE interface with this board, where would that plug in?

Thanks!

-A1000 noobie!