There is so much going on in our Amiga world. Both in the software and hardware area. Amitopia Amiga Magazine tries to follow up but it’s hard at times. Amiga 1200+ one of those projects that should have gotten much bigger attention but haven’t. This is a re-implementation of the Amiga 1200 board started from the schematics. Jeroen Vandezande is really doing something great now.
Jeroen which is the person behind it made some changes and enhancements to the original schematics. But that’s not all! He has released it as an Open Source project which means that lots of people can follow up or even help him.
Features of the New Amiga 1200+
- All Original AA chips are needed and can be put into the sockets. These include Lisa, Paula, Alice, The two CIA chips and the Keyboard controller.
- Gayle, Budgie and the DRAM have been removed and the functionality has been moved to a daughterboard. This board can also contain a CPU.
- Video output has been moved to a separate output board. This board get all Lisa output signals and also all the typical Zorro signals. This means that an RTG card can be developed.
- The PCMCIA slot has been removed and in the free space a power switch, boot selector switch (DF0:/DF1:) and a uSD card slot have been added.
- A single supply universal power input has been added. (15V – 36V) From this the following voltages are created:
- 5 Volts: main power rail 5 Amp capable
- 12 Volts: 1 Amp capable
- 3.3 Volts: 0.5 Amp capable (for daughter boards)
- 1.2 Volts: 0.5 Amp capable (for daughter boards)
- two PC standard 3 Pin fan headers are added to the board.
- Terrible Fire compatible SPI port for network chip
- Extension board connector for mouse/joystick. (one is in development that has USB Mouse and two classic DB-9 connectors and auto switches when the fire button is pressed)
This project is Open Source: more on Bitbucket
People outside of the Amiga community is shocked!
In the early years of personal computing, there was a slew of serious contenders. A PC, a Mac, an Atari ST, an Amiga, and several more that all demanded serious consideration on the general-purpose desktop computer market. Of all these platforms, the Amiga somehow stubbornly refuses to die. The Amiga 1200+from [Jeroen Vandezande] is the latest in a long procession of post-Commodore Amigas, and as its name suggests it provides an upgrade for the popular early-1990s all-in-one Amiga model.
It takes the form of a well-executed open-source PCB that’s a drop-in replacement for the original A1200 motherboard. CPU, RAM, and video are broken out onto daughterboards, with PCMCIA replaced by an SD card slot. The catch: it does require all the custom Amiga chips from a donor board.
The original Amiga 1200 was a significant upgrade to the architecture of the 1980s originals, and this certainly provides a much-needed enhancement to its underwhelming 68EC020 processor. It’s fair to say that this is the Amiga upgrade we’d all have loved to see in about 1996 rather than waiting until 2019. It’s still a delight for a retro-gaming enthusiast; many of those who keep it alive remember the Amiga was the best multimedia platform that could be had for a few glorious years.
It is really great to see that sites such as Hackaday snaps up Amiga projects such as Amiga 1200+ and writes about it for the world so they know. When will the world outside of Amiga finally realize that Amiga will never die? Our community is creative both in software and hardware. It will never die because of projects like this. There is also an Amiga 3000 and an Amiga 4000 project going on too.
We will follow up this new Amiga 1200+ motherboard. It’s so interesting to see that 3rd party people give so much of their time to move the Amiga dream forward either it’s commercially done or thru Open Source projects like this. Also, it is great to see that the Amiga Club in Belgium shares all the info about Amiga 1200+ too!
Source: Hackaday.com – Photosource: Amigaclub.be
