denbeste@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM (Steven Den Beste) (08/07/87)
Someone else talked about their woes with a memory expansion, so I thought
I would publish a happy story about one - the "Insider".
It is a board which goes inside the Amiga, sitting between the 68000 and the
mother board.
The installation procedure is somewhat elaborate because you have to take the
Amiga apart. The store I bought it from offered to install it for $25, but I
said "I'm an engineer, I can handle this..."
The instructions for installation are clear and extremely well written. It
took about an hour and a half, and worked perfectly the first time, and has
been working perfectly ever since. I have absolutely no complaints about this
- for $350 (plus $17.50 for Governer Dukakis) I consider it a bargain.
The only warning I would make is: Both the Insider and the Amiga are loaded
with CMOS. Do the installation on a humid day, and touch something grounded
just before you touch either of them.
Oddly enough, the 68000 itself is NMOS, and isn't very sensitive - this is a
good thing, because you have to pull this chip for the installation.
The only thing I had trouble with was a grounding lead they require between
the Amiga mother board and daughter board. I remember rumors of the early
Insiders having problems with noise - this is evidently the solution. It
requires hooking onto a resistor on the underside of the daughter board, and I
COULD NOT get it to hook on. I ultimately soldered a wire onto the pad where
the correct end of the resistor was, and hooked onto that wire. This isn't the
fault of the people who designed the Insider - they are correcting an Amiga
problem, and in my case the lead of the resistor was snugged down so far that
the clip simply wouldn't fit.
To close on a positive note, I repeat that the product seems to be a good one,
and the extra space is really nice. Now I can run Draw/plus without being told
how little memory I have every ten seconds!
--
Steven C. Den Beste
Bolt Beranek & Newman, Cambridge MA
denbeste@bbn.com (ARPA or CSNET or UUCP)
harvard!bbn.com!denbeste (UUCP)daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) (08/11/87)
in article <167@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM>, denbeste@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM (Steven Den Beste) says: > The only warning I would make is: Both the Insider and the Amiga are loaded > with CMOS. Do the installation on a humid day, and touch something grounded > just before you touch either of them. > > Oddly enough, the 68000 itself is NMOS, and isn't very sensitive - this is a > good thing, because you have to pull this chip for the installation. If the Insider uses lots of CMOS, that's good. At least it'll be putting less of a DC load on the expansion bus, though you should know that anything that's fit inside on the main (68000-local) bus in combination with any external expansion device will very likely exceed the specified bus loading. Just a note of caution I though I'd pass along. Also, the Amiga isn't filled with CMOS; the big chips and DRAM are NMOS, the little chips are mainly Bipolar TTL. That's why folks don't carry around Amigas strapped to battery packs unless they first study body building for a year or two to carry that car battery they'll need.... > Steven C. Den Beste > Bolt Beranek & Newman, Cambridge MA -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga Usenet: {ihnp4|caip|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh "The A2000 Guy" PLINK : D-DAVE H BIX : hazy "Catch a wave and you're sittin' on top of the world" -Beach Boys