The Amiga CD32 - Adding the finishing touches....
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17-01-2025 05:26PM#1
Well, two and a half years after Part 1 of my Amiga CD32 thread, here we are now at Part 2. Time flies! I left the CD32 fully recapped, and deep cleaned. Now though, it's time to hotrod this thing and give it some muscle. Enter, some upgrades….
^^ Back out of storage, still looking nice and clean. It's a nice looking console in all honesty, very 90's.
^^ A brand new Keelog CD32 Power Supply. This is the one with the little OLED screen that shows you various voltages etc. The original PSU's in these are more or less fine I believe, but they can give issues when you start adding expansion boards etc in, so this should provide all the clean power that this CD32 will need.
^^ An IDE2SD adapter. This came from Sordan, and like many of my past experiences with Sordan, there's a sloppy quality control issue shown in this picture, which I didn't spot until quite a while and after a lot of head scratching. I seem to invariably have issues with his products.
^^ A nice long RGB scart cable…
^^ A Trumouse adapter. Pricey little thing, but well worth it. No faffing about with anything other than a nice, simple, USB Mouse.
^^ The Imperator Riser, again from Sordan, and again, unless I'm mistaken, there's a quality control issue with the soldering in the first pic of this. You can see two pins bridged. It does offer native USB Keyboard support which is nice though.
^^ You can see the bridging here on the top row. I was able to just pick it away without having to break out the soldering iron thankfully.
^^ An audio jack to phono adapter, this will give me stereo output directly from the Riser, rather than using the RCA's at the back of the CD32 itself.
^^ And the upgrade at the heart of it all, the Terrible Fire 330 (TF330.) This gives the CD32 an 030 CPU, instead of the stock 020, this one comes with 64MB of ram (I really didn't think the 128Mb one justified the additional cost, given all I want to do is play original Amiga games and not more modern stuff.)
^^ Oh, and a little 32GB SD Card to hold all the 90's Amiga goodness within. A 16GB card is sufficient for these mods, but this was all I had to hand.
^^ Well, let's get to work! The Expansion Bay door is removed, allowing access to the Expansion Port.
^^ I clean the SD Card using Diskpart in Windows, this removes all partitions and the MBR.
^^ I then use Balena Etcher to burn the latest AmigaVision hdf to the card….
^^ Cool, validated and completed. This can now simply be placed into the SD Card adapter and booted…
^^ SD Card inserted into the IDE2SD adapter, and the IDE2SD Adapter connected to the TF330. All that's left is to plug the TF330 into the CD32 and play some games…
^^ All boards inserted, and pushed home.
^^ The TruMouse adapter uses the existing ports, and gives you a USB HID port instead…
^^ Scart and Audio now connected….
^^ The Keelog PSU doing its job nicely, clean 12v and 5v being fed to the CD32…
AAANNNNDDDD…..
Nothing, black screen. Power light and CD access light stuck on. Great, one of 'these' jobs. Where to begin?
Well, I burn various different hdf images to the SD card, I clean all the connectors on the CD32 AND the Riser etc, I scour some older forums etc….nothing really adding up. After yet another disassemble, I see it, I see the stupid issue. The Sordan IDE2SD adapter has its IDE cable backwards (it came out of the packet like this), and the red stripe on Pin 1 was NOT going to Pin 1 on the board. A quick reversal, and things might look better?
^^ Ok this time the power light only comes on, and the CD Access light flickers, indicating hdd activity….this could be it….
^^ Sorry for the pics going forward, those of the screen anyway. Naturally, the sun bursts out and causes a huge reflection when doing these thread, and this one was no different.
Regards the message above, MegaAGS.hdf contains all the games, launcher, workbench, etc. Saves.hdf is contains all your save games etc, and in its absence (given I'm only using a single drive here), all the saves will instead be written to SYS:Saves, and I'll need to manually back them up before upgrading to any newer MegaAGS releases. Not a problem, this can all be done very very easily using WinUAE and the PC and an SD Card Adapter.
^^ AmigaVision automatically starts up, and a wonderful list of curated games, lists, etc, appears. All controllable with the keyboard and a gamepad too.
^^ Well its one thing browsing games, but do they actually play??
^^ They do indeed, and in very nice RGB quality too. The loading is super fast too.
^^ One thing that has bothered me for a while, is the CD32 controller has a broken membrane on the D-pad. This makes a direction feel very flat and numb.
^^ I figured a Snes style membrane might just fit? The white one is a used one from a Super Famicom controller. Works fine, I just replaced a bunch of them a while ago to freshen them up, and this one isn't torn or anything.
^^ It fits, not 100%, but enough to work relatively well anyway. I'll use it until I find 1:1 replacements, if they're even made??
^^ I placed the ISE2SD adapter inside a small plastic bag, this will protect it from shorts on the TF330 and the metal shielding inside the CD32.
^^ I also installed SysInfo, previously using WinUAE and the SD Card mounted as a drive for a virtual Amiga. Amazing how well that works.
^^ SysInfo boots fine, but what can it tell us?
^^ Well, considering the CD32 is essentially a custom 1200 and CD Drive, the results as a result of the upgrade are transformative…a huge boost in speed.
^^ The 030 CPU is detected, replacing the stock 020.
^^ And all 64MB of ram is detected too, sweet.
^^ One final blast, just to hear that music, before I pack it all away….
^^ The Logitech wired USB keyboard and Mouse set compliment the looks of the CD32 perfectly, and thanks to the TruMouse adapter, and Imperator Riser, they also work perfectly too. That's it for the CD32, all consolised and happy!
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