Finally! Amitopia is back after many weeks of sleeping a bit. This has to do with me having too much work to do, but I aiming at giving 2023 a much better reputation for Amitopia Amiga Magazine.
After the Amiga38 in Germany, things became quite intense but now I am finally putting things behind me. The positive news is that my new Amiga 2000 is now fully working after Claude from the PiStorm team managed to get it working using the last of their Firmware! Yes, my Amiga 2000 is one of the rare ones that were produced in West Germany (1986), using the Amiga 1000 motherboard.
Now it is working, but I feared that it wouldn’t because many on Discord and IRC claimed I was doomed, but they were all wrong,.. including myself…
I’m not a coder or Hardware maker!
As you see in the image above. That is my Amiga 2000 Rev. 4 motherboard made in Germany. After talking with Claude on Discord, I finally decided that since I was going with my car for a road trip. I wouldn’t lose anything by bringing my Amiga 2000 to Amiga38 event. It would go smoothly or not, I took that chance.
So, then my road trip began. But just a few days before my departure. Mudslide crack damaged the E6 road that I was going to drive on. But luckily the road signs to avoid it wasn’t too long.
Poor roads and houses. Burger King restaurant was also hit by the mudslide. Huge forces. Well, after 2 days of driving from Norway, through Sweden, and Denmark, and finally reaching my destination in Germany. It was time to set up the stand for Amitopia.
I met mcdope and alb42 there and so we managed to invade Amiga38 as we should.
You can see that in the early times, my Amiga 2000 wasn’t put up yet. I met up with Amedia Computer France at the event. They gave me the PiStorm Classic and the Raspberry Pi A3+ quite early on Friday evening when we came. However, I didn’t know anything about the PiStorm team. I didn’t know if they had arrived yet at the event or not. But almost out of the blue Claude came and helped me out.
Amiga38 was going to be held on Saturday, but all of the vendors were allowed to come on Friday evening. We had time to set up our Amiga computers and later we would get some food to eat. Claude found time to fix my Amiga 2000 so it would work.
Amiga 2000 Rev Demands a Different Firmware for PiStorm
At first, it seemed not too promising. When turning on my Amiga 2000, only a blank screen appeared. However, Claude didn’t give up.
In this image above, you can see how Amitopia stand at Amiga38 looked before Claude got it to work. You can see that the PiStorm Classic accelerator with Raspberry Pi A3+ is installed and that HDMI is connected to the monitor behind.
Claude never gave up, even after testing several Firmware versions that didn’t work.
So, in the end, he used the last Firmware version which is named the longer Firmware that they’ve made. This was the last Firmware named “longer” that made my Amiga 2000 finally boot! It was a huge relief for me!!! It was worth taking the Amiga 2000 from Oslo to Germany to get it working.
Later, when I got home. I found out that the Zorro II slots on my Amiga 2000 Rev 4 working fine as I got an Ethernet connection working using Roadshow after installing the XSurf Ethernet Zorro II card that I got at Amiga38.
So, now I am a very happy owner of an Amiga 2000 Rev 4 with PiStorm 68040 that is 800MHz or so. Quake getting over 91FPS, Death Rally plays really well and MPEG videos play without issues also. My trip to Amiga38 with my Amiga 2000 was truly worth it. Also, it warms my Amiga heart to see how passionate other Amiga users are about keeping Amiga alive.
Thanks to the PiStorm Team and More!…
Including giving a big thanks to Claude for devoting his time on Friday before Amiga38 to help me. I also want to give a big shout-out to Amedia Computer France for bringing me PiStorm Classic, with Raspberry Pi A3+, and for setting up my PiStorm MicroSD card.
Also thanks to mcdope and alb42 for supporting and believing in Amitopia so that Amitopia Dev Team is now giving tons of software that makes a PC or a Mac less important when using an Amiga home computer.
Different signals on Amiga 2000 Rev 4
Including fixing my Amiga 2000 with PiStorm to work, I was also told at Amiga38 that my Amiga 2000 is so rare that the entire motherboard uses the signals from the 68k CPU. It means that the entire motherboard runs on what the 68k CPU speed runs on.
After Amiga 2000A Rev 4 release, a new Amiga 2000 came out in 1987, named Amiga 2000B.
I hope that you learned something here. Never give up or surrender even if things get complicated. Living the life to experience that things aren’t as what rumours are thought is for me important. So, yes! Amiga 2000 Rev 4 works with PiStorm Classic accelerators.
