Amiga 1000- The godfather of the man cave in pieces !

Man Cave NG :-)

Absolutely LOVE IT when my kids want to play in the man cave and drop their tablets and DS's for a while...

New custom keyboard covers for my C64, Amiga 1000 & Amiga 1200 !

Got tired of using an old battered keyboard cover for my C64, a very large generic plastic PC cover for my Amiga 1200 and a few pieces of paper taped together for my very unique Amiga 1000 keyboard so when I bumped into a recent thread over at amibay.com for custom made fabric covers by Retro-Protect I sent them a message, found out they allowed custom colours and decals of your choice to be placed on the covers and placed my order.

Yesterday they made their way over to my man cave and here's what all 3 of them look like out of the package along with care instructions :-) (for those interested: cover to be hand washed only, do not tumble dry, iron on inside of cover on a warm setting, do not iron the logo directly, shrinkage may occur)

C64 cover:

Amiga 1200 cover:

Amiga 1000 cover:

I'm very happy with quality of the cotton fabric covers and more importantly the proper fit for all my keyboards.  Customer service was great and I was thrilled to have the choice of choosing my own colours and decals. 

As usual and unfortunately I have too many little projects to talk about here but alas spare time is yet again my enemy so I leave you with the now traditional view of what my man cave looks like today.

Getting my X1000 quieter & cooler !

Been a while since I started a thread over at amigans/ amigaworld.net over concerns of CPU temp and noisy CPU fan that came standard with my X1000 but luckily mainly due to a new great custom solution for our X1K's from Marcus Computer called MagmaBreath my problems have been solved :-)

The installation is clear and straight forward as noted below. You'll need 45 minutes, basic tools and a clear workspace:

The payment and delivery from Marcus Computer was pain free and the CPU heatsink and fan came safely bundled in a well protected package.

 View of package & contenets when open

Case panel off and view of Nemo's top face (since I had the case open already lol my old Radeon HD 6750 was removed so I can install a newer Radeon HD7750 single slot card to enjoy the new Warp3D driver update BUT that's another post for another day :-)

To start I removed the fan above the heatsink with a small philips screw driver.

4 screws fully loosened & power connector disconnected from Nemo (aka motherboard)

Fan removed and view of top of heatsink

Now time to remove underside case cover to access plastic screws securing heatsink to CPU

close up view

After almost scratching Nemo with a longer flat head screw driver I dug up a smaller screw driver which gave me much more control and precision while holding the CPU steady on the top side with my right hand and remove the plastic screws with my left hand.

The small plastic screws are quite slippery so attention is needed to slowly apply pressure without the screw driver head slipping and possibly damaging Nemo (aka DON'T RUSH lol)

OK all screws removed with no surprises and heatsink easily removed with my right hand making sure to not drop it onto Nemo.

Voila the top side of the infamous PA6T ! The heatsink came off clean with no residue at all from the thermal paste/sticker which left me quite surprised based on my mnay other experiences with thermal pads/tapes etc.

although pratctically like new I  wipe clean the top of the PA6T with the included alcohol wipe to make sure all is prestine for the new heatsink application (note my anti static wrist strap)

As per the instructions on the Marcus Computer website you have a choice of which orientation you would like to mount the new heatsink/fan combo.  I chose to install it with the heatsink fins facing towards the two separate 2GB ram modules for maximum cooling on CPU & ram sticks.

don't forget to remove the protective plastic over the thermal pad!

TRICKY PART! with my right hand lining up the MagmaBreath and my left hand lining up one of the included screws (don't forget to add the enclosed lock tight washer!) I carefully line up/insert the first screw and immediately the second one diagaonally opposite from the first.

It goes without saying that we're dealing with very delicate substrates SO be gentle with the torque on the small philips screw heads and don't exceed the 0.82N.m torque as per the instructions.

Tricky part over the remaining 2 screws go in efforelessly & voila you can plug in the power connector to the fan and enjoy the view from the top side :-)

Conclusion:

I'm very happy with the reduction in sound from the stock heatsink/fan combo as it's quite the difference and for the effectiveness of MagmaBreath the numbers from X1Temp docky speak for themselves!

Prior to the upgrade after 48 hours of constant use numbers were:
CPU-  47 deg.C
Core1-52
Core2-50

with MagmaBreath installed after 48 hrs I was pleased to see a significant decrease:

CPU-  38 deg.C
Core1-43
Core2-40

Clean up time before Spring gets here !

Well this is what the mancave looks like after a long winter and glad I got a few projects that were in pieces back up n running before the nice weather come along- my 1200T & 1200 wedge!

Getting my Radeon9250 with 256Mb video ram working happily with Picasso96 and my Mediator 1200 LT4 was slightlly short of agonizing but alas it was a defective Mediator that was the majority of the problem and luckily Elbox is still around to do the necessary repairs (actually a big thanks to Drewlio77 from amigaworld.net  for selling me his spare board while Elbox carried out the repiars).  So far my Apollo 060@50 with 32MB Ram, Elbox Fast ATA Mk2, SB128, and Spider2 USB with modded front face plate on my Infitiv case is working nicely with the exception of the usual amigan fiddling to get Workbench feeling  just right :-)

My 1200 wedge has a basic 3.1 install with Magic Workbench, Indivision AGA Mkcr2, M-Tec 030@50 with 32MB, and Subway USB working nicely for a very stable WHDLoad machine.  More fiddling as usual

Alas there's more to do and talk about but not enough spare time so I leave you with yet another snapshot of the mancave cave and wish everyone a great start to the spring season!

Amiga OS4.1 FE is here !!!

Just a quick post to celebrate the fact that I just received in the mail from Amigakit the newly released Amiga OS4.1 FE which neatly closes out 4.1 for my favourite OS in one physical CD 'full' install package before the much awaited 4.2 comes along to give us multi-core & full 3D (for our Radeon HD cards) support.

I'm just happy that my favourite OS is still alive & kickin with new updates and programs being developed for it today in 2015! Many thanks to Hyperion, A-Eon Technology, ACube Systems, and all parties involved that help to keep the party going :-) 

+1 if you agree !