Amiga A2000CR Build

[mjnurney]

Hi guy, is anyone building one ?

im going to shoot some vids during the assembly

 

https://youtu.be/98gihoLqYVY

 

cheers
mike

[+save2600]

Oh great, another bare (or near bare board) for the Amiga. Because there's not enough of *them* floating around.  

 

Are these things being sold yet as full kits, complete with all components - to which all you have to do is solder everything up? If not... how about at least, a packing list of components with part numbers and locations clearly labeled for placement on the mobo? 

 

Has this particular product been fully populated and proven to work by anyone? First I'm hearing of it.

 

Tell me the CR designation is about implementing a proper CR2032 battery instead of NiCad...  ?

[Daedalus2097]

Providing ready-to-go kits is a little tricky for a couple of reasons. First off, these are often open-source projects, and even the ones that aren't, are generally produced by volunteers. The up-front cost of buying all the parts needed would be huge, not to mention the vast amount of time needed to sort all the bulk parts into kits, test build a kit and administer such a scheme. The BoMs for these boards are usually readily available, typically with part numbers for the major suppliers. So by all means feel free to put some kits together for the benefit of people who want to buy a complete kit and fill that hole you can see.

 

Second, custom chips are in finite supply, so there's no way to produce a large number of kits. Typically, these boards are used to transplant the custom chips from a damaged board, effectively becoming a spare part, rather than a basis for a run of brand new computers. Kits excluding the custom chips would be a decent middle ground that I'm sure many people would appreciate, should you wish to go ahead and put them together.

 

It doesn't usually take long for these boards to be used by someone to build a machine and sort out the niggles with them. So if you're worried about there being issues, perhaps leave it until a completed setup pops up. It shouldn't be more than a couple of weeks...

 

Naming a motherboard because of a simple battery swap seems a little extreme, especially when such a swap is trivial to do on the original motherboard and therefore doesn't even need any layout changes. It's more likely a recreation of the Amiga 2000-CR model, where CR stands for Cost Reduced, as with revisions of other Amiga models, and indeed other Commodore machines. This version is also referred to as the B2000, and was designed to be cheaper to manufacture than the original German-designed A2000 by significantly reducing the parts count.

[+save2600]

'Cost Reduced' was the first thing that popped into mind of course, but anecdotally that doesn't really make sense considering the scope of project here. By the time you end up cobbling one of these (any bare CPU board) together, you're liable to have the most expensive Amiga 2000 around - in parts *and* time.  

 

Agree about the 'middle ground' of kits excluding the custom chips. Just as the original Australian Phoenix boards allowed, which is the concept I was really thinking of when I said "all" components.   

 

I've got 4 spare original A2000 mobo's sitting here that need some attention. This A2000CR build has inspired me to look into them and see what is what. May be able to provide some custom chip kits, or for the ones I get up and running, could list as a "CTA" to these... that would be 'cost and time alternative'.