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Upgrades on Upgrades

12/05/2019 0 Comments

Apollo-1260-64mb-2
Apollo-1260-64mb-3

I’ve taken a little timeout this weekend to play with my Amiga 1200 Tower. Recently I got a very cool Apollo 1260 Accelerator card with a 80Mhz clocked Freescale 68060 CPU. One downside to the A1260 over the Blizzard line of cards was that they only shipped with a single RAM socket, limiting memory to just 32mb. This is still fine for most setups, but I always like to extract the max potential when possible.

Apollo-1260-64mb-4
Apollo-1260-64mb-5

The reason for this limitation was to allow the card to fit correctly in the original A1200 wedge case. A mounting point is present on the card for an additional 72 pin SIMM socket. After I tracked one down with the help of a fellow Amibay member, it was very easy to install. Now I have 64mb of ram with a pair of matching 32mb simms.

Elbox-FastATA-MKV-2
Elbox-FastATA-MKV-1

I also got to install the Elbox FastATA MkV controller that arrived recently. Replacing my original MK1 16bit version gives a big speed increase to HDD access. I’ll do some benchmarks later..
More to come soon.

Amiga, Projects

USB-GDROM board

22/11/2018 0 Comments

I’ve managed to get more time to play with my USB-GDRom. Its a great device and well worth the cost at the moment. Its replaced my Dreamshell setup as by default Dreamcast system.

USB-GDROM_installation (2)
USB-GDrom-Menu

Click here, or the images above to read my full findings. Now i’m just hoping for a bit of time to enjoy this before my PSIO arrives.

Projects, Review

PS2 HDD IDE to SATA Upgrade

14/03/2018 0 Comments

And now for something a bit different. After finding a few problems with the old IDE HDD in my PS2, I decided to install and new SATA drive. To do this I upgraded the existing IDE+LAN adapter with a SATA controller kit from eBay.

PS2_HDD_adapter2
PS2_HDD_ (10)

Click here or on the images above to see how it went. I’ve also included information on how to format and prep a blank drive for installing games with OPL.

Console, Projects

PC Engine Duo full service and modifications

25/05/2017 0 Comments

Finished with my latest commission work. A PC Engine Duo was sent in for a full service, board re-cap, RGB Amp and dual region mod. Take a look how it turned out.

PCE_Duo_CD-fixed (4)

Click the image or here.

PC Engine Duo (first version) can suffer from bad caps after so many years resulting in audio and CD problems. I always recommend changing them. RGB modification is also a must. Its hard to believe NEC didn’t include RGB output on most PC Engine consoles

If you have any console that needs repairs, capacitor replacement or upgrades, please get in contact here.

Console, Projects

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