Holy crap, that GVP card, that's ages ago that I sent you that. Must have been my first donation ever, I was having your Amiga 2000 in mind. Happy to see it partially works.
They are very nice cases! The first generation that I bought did not line up with my NTSC Rev 5 A500 board perfectly, but I made it work. I also had issues getting a standard STX power supply to line up properly. I think he fixed all those issues. Mine has a Vampire V2 in it and works wonderfully. It works with most Zorro cards I have tried, but with the Vampire there are few cards I need to use.
Beautiful case and good review, however I don't recall if you mentioned that everything shown here is not included in the bundle. The case without the extras and there is a lot, currently retails for £214.80 Inc VAT. And if you want all those extras, it's going to cost around £469.14 😱 Some of the extras like the zorro2 interface, case risers, and the 2 extra bays you can get by without, this would shave off around £112.80, and you could pick them up at a later time, if you wanted them, but the rest of the extras are going to be required. 👍
Great video Jan. Really love the case. Love the fact you scored an 8MB memory upgrade from the "parts" GVP board. Some sticky backed felt strategically placed would give the thin keyboard metal some support. I'm not really a fan of the screws at the front of the keyboard. Some tabs or posts on the inside would have been nicer: I guess you could use flat head recessed screws with a sticker cap.
Shipping my exact identical case to Canada from the UK was very expensive as well. However, unlike you, I have not opened my original box yet. I even picked up a PAL 500 board for better compatibility compared to my various NTSC mother boards. I originally ordered this case for my ACA500+ card in the zorro slot, but found out during the manufacturing stage that this one card will not work...oh well.
@Counter Air Greetings, I also have some other internal upgrades as well...when I get to it, I will do some tinkering. Perhaps the card you have works because of a bios update? Cheers.
Personally I would go with a black case, an A500 board, ditch the 500 keyboard altogether for a PS2/USB mod with a black keyboard with custom amiga keys, some kind of IDE interface which allows for a flash- or SD card and CD or DVD drives, a Gotek floppy emulator and finally a PiStorm CPU upgrade.
Excellent choices! I like the black version a lot, too. Maybe I’ll eventually get another one in black for a different system. My build was supposed to be kind of old school but obviously there’s a plethora of options!
@@JanBeta I love both schools of thought, giving the old hardware a nice new (non-yellow) place to live, AND all the sweet new options to build an oldschool race monster 😁 if I had the money I would do both 👍
One thing that I would suggest for the keyboard enclosure is to countersink the mounting holes and use countersunk flat headed screws to get rid of the protrusions, but I personally don't really see a problem like some other commenters seemingly have. To fix the wonkiness of the upper shell, it would probably be best to tack a thin piece of angle iron in between the main part of the keys and the "F" keys. That would add some rigidity to the structure. Furthermore, for a hard drive solution, I suggest a (*NOT sponsored!*) BlueSCSI as long as you can replace the BIOS chip on that GVP card. As far as I know, it has yet to be tested in an Amiga computer. It has been thoroughly tested with all sorts of Macintosh computers with a very high success rate.
Doesn't the PSU have that power connector for the floppy drive? It's called a Berg connector i believe. If it doesn't you can probably easily find a Molex/SAtA-Power to Berg adapter.
@@Nukle0n IIRC the Amiga floppy power connector is slightly different from standard PC ones. I think it's the same connector as the 4-pin header normally used to connect a PC speaker to the motherboard. What you're suggesting would work fine for a PC drive modified to work with the Amiga though, or you could modify the "Berg" adapter.
@@JeremyLevi It's the same connector, it's the "standard" for 3.5" floppy drives. PCs also use the same standard but with some modifications for the data connection, but it's more or less the "Shugart" interface. You can modify many PC floppy drives to be Amiga compatible by cutting some traces and bridging some pins. Usually just need to fix the drive number selector from 1 to 0, and restore the missing "disk inserted" signal, which was removed for IBM compatible drives for some reason.
I love amiga recasing. I'm keeping an eye out for an A1200 board to make a towermiga out of. I think you should install the gotek drive in this thing too and put a CF card adapter in instead of a hard drive
As an owner of a A1000, A3000, and A500, I agree that the case looks very much like the A3000 case. It's rather disappointing though that they didn't design the rails that lift it off the desk to be wide enough to fit their OWN keyboard case. It would have been a very nice touch to be able to slide the keyboard under the system like my A1000 does. But nice to see that it is a high quality item instead of sourcing the lowest quality chinesium possible.....
I went to purchase this and it would be super cool if they had distributors in USA, like Amiga On the Lake or Retro Rewind as the shipping to USA is very expensive.
rather than no fan, why not add an 90mm fan? might have to print an adaptor for the mounting points that are accessible to have some level of mounting. Also thank you very much for talking about UK import issues after brexit, first time I've ever seen anyone talk about it and the experience. As per the other poster the IOSS system makes it even easier for a retailer.
The dual bay is perfect for placing a gotek in one slot, a floppy in the other slot, and start backing up the hundreds of floppies that usually lays off in boxes.
The vat system depends on the county where you live. The Netherlands postoffice is calculating high prices for handling if tax needs to be collected above the tax you need to pay. The UK sellers could also use the IOSS system to prevent this in Europa
No, this works for all values. Local postoffices can calculate whatever they want when there is no pre payed tax on the pakkage, because they need to investigate if tax is needed. With the IOSS, they cant calculate that, and its then back to the tax office.
The Future was 8 bit prepays the taxes for you. That is great, because you don’t have delays and extra fees (DHL requests 6€ for processing the taxes).
Another fine video! I intend purchasing the case myself for my ++A500 build. More importantly... WHERE did you get that t-shirt? "I beat the sword master?"
Have met Stephen Jones personally and his products are great :) I wonder what he's got in mind for the ps/2 converter... hopefully noting too over priced as many things are in Amiga land ! I could probably do something like the Keyrah solution for an A1200 keyboard, but using the DIN connector output instead...
Wow, I love that case even though it is out of my budget. I would put a pistorm and have powerful cpu, lots of memory, harddrive and hdmi out (i think with the baremetal version).
I used nylon screws in the brass standoffs to support the center of my keyboard because I felt it was bent too much and flexed too much in there. In general, I’m super happy with this case and keyboard case. I have an Amiga 500 with a Vampire, an ASDG Dual Serial board in the Zorro slot and a Gotek in mind.
The keyboard would be better with countersunk screws I think. The metal keyboard case was obviously for cost reasons but I don’t like the way it bends between the keys.
Case is well considered, but the keyboard looks and feels like a prototype. I think Stephen should do a kickstarter to make a properly plastic case in the design of the 3000 keyboard!
But as a power supply tester, I have to say that the part is also very old. Switch for 115/230V, so not even active PFC, that's also stuck in the 90s. So the Amigas are not so power hungry, you can also take a modern SFX with 100W on 3.3/5V should also be more than enough.
@@wayland7150 Small series are expensive, but had they probably found the right partners who also respond to customer requests, then what would be significantly better installed.
@@tweakpc It's been a long time since PSUs needed such a switch. The seller ought to set the voltage for the buyers country. I think this one was set to the correct voltage for EU, 230vac.
@@tweakpc Maybe better if they just said what power supply format it uses. These old computers are either worthless junk or very special sentimental value at this time. Obvoiusly the latter if you're re-casing them.
Great video Jan as you took your time with the assembly which I really liked. Thank you very much for the video as I really enjoyed it. I have a question about the pass through for the ACA 500 from Jens at Individual Computers. Does that pass through pass through all the lines from the side expansion port on an Amiga 500? Could I connect for example an a590 'board" to this but obviously turned upside down? Keep up the good work please.
Congrats on yet another good video. 🙂 Perhaps the FDD button would have been better placed if you had installed the FDD on the right side of the box. 👍🏻
I think the placement of the pre-drilled mounting holes is the same for both slots. The larger cutout is to accommodate for different types of drives (the A1200 disk drives have the button placed on the other side for example).
I'm not speaking for Jan, but as him, I have this LUST of owning an A3000, and on the 3000 is much more common to have a single floppy drive in the centre, rather than on the right. It's weird, but if if you look at pictures, and publicity photos of the A3000, the floppy is usually at the centre :-D
Hi Jan, great video. Just wondered why you did not power the floppy drive from SFX PSU rather than having to extend your existing cable? One less cable and all...
I have ordered a 3000 fitting kit from Simon for the 1500+ case (black) I ordered 2 years ago now. Fitting kit should be here in another month or 2. I think only the mini has the option of RPI, reAmiga, Vampire, MiSTiX boards. I also ordered a mini in black with the MiSTeR mATX board from Stephen plus keycaps. His cases are built like tanks.
the case looks amazing and i'm sure it feels great (knocks-on-metal) not sure i like the angular design of the keyb tho, and it feels like the keys should protrude a bit more? i would probably configure it with the internal floppy,cdrom and hd (or an sd card if there's no space). and then having an external gotek on top nice review!
the keyboard leds are still not lined up properly and..... on the front, under the floppy bay there is a tiny slot with a cover at the bottom. this is for sd and cf card readers :) .
UNOBTANIUM!!!! AAahghghagghg! I sold all my amiga animation pencil test stuff a few years ago, more than one A3000, and a 4000k, did NOT get the current prices on ebay. $1500 and above, holy moley. Great to see the old Amiga scene still kicking.
Looks great Jan...dunno how much these retail at but by the comments it may be couple of hundred Pounds or Euros...reason I comment is I built in 2006 mATX Athlon XP socket 462 (SocketA) into a desktop InWin case in beige about the same size as this or very similar but with built in Bays inside..that was nearly 100 pounds back then...and it was very sturdy like this...cover went on and locked into place without screws...better quality than the tower cases I've had since...obviously no long line of Amiga port slots at the back...just the usual PC slots at one end...if I had the space and an Amiga spare this would be on my to buy list...
One of these cases with an A500+ board and a 68040 accelerator should be about the same experience as an A3000. On the other side of it going the same road with an A1200 board and an accelerator sould be similar to an A4000. What was built here would be more similar to an A2000. To my mind this kind of system really needs some kind of hard drive and possibly an accelerator. Something like one of the Terrible Fire designs would probably go well although going with the more modern Raspberry Pi expansions would also be a great fit with this case would be a great fit here since you wouldn't be having to mess around with the original A500 case design. With that hard drive controller a SCSI to SD adaptor makes a lot of sense.
@@JanBeta yep, by the looks of it, SFX-L could be used too. But older SFX ones probably won't fit. Though I wouldn't trust the PSU further than I can throw it, due to the Voltage Selection switch. That's not good.
Interesting that the fan on the SFX power supply is spinning. The fan in the SFX one I put into my A4000 doesn't, it doesn't get enough load to start. So, interested in finding out where I can find that PSU.
Steve Jones (Imica Ltd) got them specifically for his cases and he looked far and wide before he found them. I think you can order them on his Checkmate A1500 Plus website. They are specified as 200 watt and that is plenty for any a500, a600 and a1200 or some smaller pc builds. Probably also plenty for Unamiga, Raspberry Pi, Mister and Vampire SA.
You’ll be surprised what you can fit inside this case. I built a mega A1200 build with this case. Keeps things like CD/DVD drives as well as Floppy and Gotek neat and tidy. I even fitted a BPPC card with a GREX PCI assortment. 👍🏻
If the DIN 5 connector is not compatible with the Amiga connectors of a similar type, is it compatible with the PC connector with the DIN 5 connector, perhaps? Or is it another standard entirely?
I was actually going to buy a PC. It can be a pain. But I couldn't find anything I was happy with. So I built it again! lol I've never bought a desktop PC that was already in one piece. I built it last year and it's amazing. Putting one into a case with a floppy hole would seem odd though. lol Hell mine doesn't even have an optical slot.
I wish there were other beige retro style cases around. I got my beige unicomp model M, beige clearly superior trackball, and beige okidata printer. But I only have a solid black case and there's nothing matching. It low-key bothers me that there's nothing but black cases with glass windows and silly disco lights available
This is a very nice case, I've thought of buying one for a long time - then they announced the even nicer Mini version and the waiting continued. Nevertheless I'm still hesitant to order one. Simply because I think desktop cases are out of place w/o the need for CRTs and furthermore I would use it to build a secondary PC that wouldn't be used much. Perhaps at the end of the year when AMD will ship their new Ryzen generation.
yeah, nicer but where I live.. unless the shop pays the VAT in advance you get at least a ~20£ handling charge in addition to the VAT... so.. I bought a lot of stuff from the UK while they where in the EU.. not so much anymore
Hello Jan, I currently have the same problem, the front leds of the checkmate do not light up when I press the power button....I have watched a lot of videos, to see what cables and in what position they put them but I have never seen a still image and specific to the correct position of the cables so that the front LEDs light up, and I have other cables left over, one with 2 pins and the other with 3 pins...I don't know if they are loose or have to be connected somewhere... and right when you fixed it (33:15) there was nothing to show because I saw you messing with something but the camera wouldn't point to that place where you plugged and unplugged cables (this is frustrating for me😒😒), and I never really figured out how you fixed it, and my english is horrible..could you send some picture of the correct position or what did you do to make the front leds turn on? Thanks in advance😀😀😄
3:52 my dear friend, here in Serbia we pay that crazy tax from every single EU country, and yes randomly :(. Be happy to live in such a great country as Germany. I dont pay tax only for Amiga Adict magazine
Was there a problem with two mounting stud locations being misaligned so that the two screws near the front left could not be used to secure the PCB in that area? I had that problem, I noticed it in someone else's video too but it was not mentioned. I was pretty annoyed about this but just had to proceed anyway and used the Zorro card adapter to secure the overall PCB assembly. Apart from that issue I like the case.
The PCB fit the stud locations perfectly for me. I think it was a problem with a previous version of the Checkmate case that got addressed in this newer one. Heard that from a couple of commenters but I didn’t have any problems (I would have mentioned it in the video,too!), everything fits as intended.
@@JanBeta Thats good then. At least the case is sturdy enough so hopefully there won't be any flexing its moved. I got a Buddha in one of the Zorro slots and got an internal CF which I use for my own files and some software, I put a Vampire in mine so the vampire CF is taken to one of the back expansion slots and I use a CF adapter mounted to a metal plate so I can upgrade the CoffinOS or ApolloOS without having to open the case. And to transfer files and backup I have a microSD extension taken to the lower front panel of the case and secured with hot melt glue, similar to what RMC did. On the other expansion slot I have HDMI and USB for a keyboard, and another HDMI from the vampire. Im very pleased with it and use it for some development in addition to everything else. I could not get the Checkmate recommended DVD drive to work with the Buddha yet although the system does recognize it as being there. Maybe it has to be manually mounted? Perhaps you know about this?
Better yet, go for the ZuluSCSI, because it's dead simple to set up and only costs $60 right from the maker. I'm using one with my CDTV currently and it's excellent.
@@RasVoja I'm in the States. Still, prices seem much higher than supply should dictate, but folks keep paying big bucks, so they stay expensive. I got into old electronics because it was inexpensive before the craze hit, and I'm pretty good at mod and repair, but its been getting less and less accessible.....
Checkmate case looks great. I wonder if you could use a CD32 motherboard and make use of CDROM from pc and I already have id44 expansion cf card but could you also use a small ssd
Oh, that would be an interesting idea. Technically it should work if you find a compatible CD ROM drive. You would probably have to modify the mounting posts a bit for a good fit but I don’t see why that would not be possible.
@@JanBeta unfortunately I have never found a post based on this idea. I enjoy watching your videos especially about ZX Spectrum, A2000, CD32. I also have ZX81 and QL. I'm liking your recent video about Atari 65E 320 kb expansion and look forward to your solutions. After writing this above I've discovered the second part to the Atari 65E
Holy crap, that GVP card, that's ages ago that I sent you that. Must have been my first donation ever, I was having your Amiga 2000 in mind. Happy to see it partially works.
Have to love a thick spiral bound manual 🙂
Oh yes indeed! :D
They are very nice cases! The first generation that I bought did not line up with my NTSC Rev 5 A500 board perfectly, but I made it work. I also had issues getting a standard STX power supply to line up properly. I think he fixed all those issues.
Mine has a Vampire V2 in it and works wonderfully. It works with most Zorro cards I have tried, but with the Vampire there are few cards I need to use.
IMPORTANT: It is not an ATX power supply, it is an SFX power supply which is smaller than a standard ATX PSU.
Electrically the output is the same though, but yeah in terms of form factor
Beautiful case and good review, however I don't recall if you mentioned that everything shown here is not included in the bundle.
The case without the extras and there is a lot, currently retails for £214.80 Inc VAT. And if you want all those extras, it's going to cost around £469.14 😱
Some of the extras like the zorro2 interface, case risers, and the 2 extra bays you can get by without, this would shave off around £112.80, and you could pick them up at a later time, if you wanted them, but the rest of the extras are going to be required. 👍
I like the Star Trek reference on the "This plant has worked without incident" sign 🙂
Hey, you’re the first person to catch that! :D
Ah, I've spotted the sign multiple times in videos, but couldn't make the connection to Star Trek. Which movie/series was it?
The sign is changing from time to time, it’s now referencing the registration numbers of the Voyager and the Defiant. ;)
@@JanBeta I know that numbers in sleep because I name my ZFS Pools on my TrueNAS always after Enterprise, Voyager, Defiant, Excelsior and Discovery.
I was hoping others had noticed. It stood out a mile away to me.
Just ordered one - in black... looking SO much forward to it! 🙂
Great video Jan. Really love the case. Love the fact you scored an 8MB memory upgrade from the "parts" GVP board. Some sticky backed felt strategically placed would give the thin keyboard metal some support. I'm not really a fan of the screws at the front of the keyboard. Some tabs or posts on the inside would have been nicer: I guess you could use flat head recessed screws with a sticker cap.
My thoughts too with the flexing keyboard, and keyboard front screws... 🙂
Same not fan of the screws at the front of keyboard
I always love it when I see people rip open plastic to get something out while the bottom of the bag is just open 🙂
Or cut open a cardboard envelope while holding on to the tear strip?
@@ianide2480 Yeah that too 🙂
Shipping my exact identical case to Canada from the UK was very expensive as well. However, unlike you, I have not opened my original box yet. I even picked up a PAL 500 board for better compatibility compared to my various NTSC mother boards. I originally ordered this case for my ACA500+ card in the zorro slot, but found out during the manufacturing stage that this one card will not work...oh well.
@Counter Air Greetings, I also have some other internal upgrades as well...when I get to it, I will do some tinkering. Perhaps the card you have works because of a bios update? Cheers.
I probably just use the ACA with my A1000(backwards of course) and replace the 68000 socket with the 030 upgrades I have purchased since.
Personally I would go with a black case, an A500 board, ditch the 500 keyboard altogether for a PS2/USB mod with a black keyboard with custom amiga keys, some kind of IDE interface which allows for a flash- or SD card and CD or DVD drives, a Gotek floppy emulator and finally a PiStorm CPU upgrade.
Excellent choices! I like the black version a lot, too. Maybe I’ll eventually get another one in black for a different system. My build was supposed to be kind of old school but obviously there’s a plethora of options!
@@JanBeta I love both schools of thought, giving the old hardware a nice new (non-yellow) place to live, AND all the sweet new options to build an oldschool race monster 😁 if I had the money I would do both 👍
Definitely a must have for the avid Amiga tinkerer. It's obvious a lot of thought and care has gone into the design and layout. 👍
There were several revisions before molds were actually made?
One thing that I would suggest for the keyboard enclosure is to countersink the mounting holes and use countersunk flat headed screws to get rid of the protrusions, but I personally don't really see a problem like some other commenters seemingly have. To fix the wonkiness of the upper shell, it would probably be best to tack a thin piece of angle iron in between the main part of the keys and the "F" keys. That would add some rigidity to the structure.
Furthermore, for a hard drive solution, I suggest a (*NOT sponsored!*) BlueSCSI as long as you can replace the BIOS chip on that GVP card. As far as I know, it has yet to be tested in an Amiga computer. It has been thoroughly tested with all sorts of Macintosh computers with a very high success rate.
Doesn't the PSU have that power connector for the floppy drive? It's called a Berg connector i believe. If it doesn't you can probably easily find a Molex/SAtA-Power to Berg adapter.
This PSU doesn’t have the correct connector but you are right, would be easy to fit an adapter and source the power for the disk drive from that!
Yeah you can go this route if you’re using a Gotek like I am. Works great.
@@robdaemon What route? I'm talking about powering the floppy drive from the PSU instead of using the connector from the board.
@@Nukle0n IIRC the Amiga floppy power connector is slightly different from standard PC ones. I think it's the same connector as the 4-pin header normally used to connect a PC speaker to the motherboard. What you're suggesting would work fine for a PC drive modified to work with the Amiga though, or you could modify the "Berg" adapter.
@@JeremyLevi It's the same connector, it's the "standard" for 3.5" floppy drives. PCs also use the same standard but with some modifications for the data connection, but it's more or less the "Shugart" interface. You can modify many PC floppy drives to be Amiga compatible by cutting some traces and bridging some pins. Usually just need to fix the drive number selector from 1 to 0, and restore the missing "disk inserted" signal, which was removed for IBM compatible drives for some reason.
Great project, Jan!
Thanks! I love how this turned out and am going to expand on it eventually!
I love amiga recasing. I'm keeping an eye out for an A1200 board to make a towermiga out of. I think you should install the gotek drive in this thing too and put a CF card adapter in instead of a hard drive
The A1200 has bad electrolytic capacitors. The A600 too.
@@jensschroder8214 im aware, thank you.
It would be awesome if the keyboard case was rounded and beveled the same as the A500. This smooth design must remain.
As an owner of a A1000, A3000, and A500, I agree that the case looks very much like the A3000 case. It's rather disappointing though that they didn't design the rails that lift it off the desk to be wide enough to fit their OWN keyboard case. It would have been a very nice touch to be able to slide the keyboard under the system like my A1000 does. But nice to see that it is a high quality item instead of sourcing the lowest quality chinesium possible.....
I went to purchase this and it would be super cool if they had distributors in USA, like Amiga On the Lake or Retro Rewind as the shipping to USA is very expensive.
rather than no fan, why not add an 90mm fan? might have to print an adaptor for the mounting points that are accessible to have some level of mounting. Also thank you very much for talking about UK import issues after brexit, first time I've ever seen anyone talk about it and the experience. As per the other poster the IOSS system makes it even easier for a retailer.
I think I’m going to populate the fan cutouts in the back of the case at some point. As I said, there are many ways to customize. :)
IOSS only works up to £150
@@JanBeta Does the power supply create a noticeable air flow through the case?
surely the atx power supply has power connectors for the floppy drive.
The dual bay is perfect for placing a gotek in one slot, a floppy in the other slot, and start backing up the hundreds of floppies that usually lays off in boxes.
Just wanted to comment that an ACA500Plus card bought in 02/2021 works fine here in this case.
The vat system depends on the county where you live. The Netherlands postoffice is calculating high prices for handling if tax needs to be collected above the tax you need to pay. The UK sellers could also use the IOSS system to prevent this in Europa
This only works with values up to £150
Yeah, and I can simply not be bothered with making declarations etc.. Want to sell in the EU? Make a distribution agreement with EU stores.
@@huhummmmmmm :-) Hopefully coming soon
No, this works for all values. Local postoffices can calculate whatever they want when there is no pre payed tax on the pakkage, because they need to investigate if tax is needed. With the IOSS, they cant calculate that, and its then back to the tax office.
@@huhummmmmmm why oh why did we leave 🤦♀️
Hey Jan. We in the UK also have to pay import tax on orders from EU. Someone somewhere is just making a profit from all of us
The Future was 8 bit prepays the taxes for you. That is great, because you don’t have delays and extra fees (DHL requests 6€ for processing the taxes).
Oh, that’s a nice workaround, too!
It was an investment for sure, but I'm so glad I bought one of these. It's just a lovely piece of work.
Another fine video! I intend purchasing the case myself for my ++A500 build. More importantly... WHERE did you get that t-shirt? "I beat the sword master?"
I love how the YT video automatically goes to 240p and it suddenly looks like an old retro video!
Fantastic rev!!
Have met Stephen Jones personally and his products are great :) I wonder what he's got in mind for the ps/2 converter... hopefully noting too over priced as many things are in Amiga land ! I could probably do something like the Keyrah solution for an A1200 keyboard, but using the DIN connector output instead...
I make a kit to fit an Amiga 3000 in the Checkmate Case. Amiga 4000 version coming soon!
I love watching your videos Jan and always thinking "Wow, Jurgen Klopp really is a multi-talented person". :D
Wow, I love that case even though it is out of my budget. I would put a pistorm and have powerful cpu, lots of memory, harddrive and hdmi out (i think with the baremetal version).
it seams you have Agnus 8372a installed. if thats correct, you can change JP2. it should convert your slowRAM to 1 Mb Chipram :)
That’s true! I could also populate the empty RAM footprints to achieve that, maybe a project for a future video! ;)
@@JanBeta
thats maybe even a better solution! :)
Pretty neat cases, a useful setup for Amiga boards that have damaged cases and need a new home... :)
I used nylon screws in the brass standoffs to support the center of my keyboard because I felt it was bent too much and flexed too much in there.
In general, I’m super happy with this case and keyboard case.
I have an Amiga 500 with a Vampire, an ASDG Dual Serial board in the Zorro slot and a Gotek in mind.
The keyboard would be better with countersunk screws I think. The metal keyboard case was obviously for cost reasons but I don’t like the way it bends between the keys.
Ottimo AMIGA Jan,lavoro favoloso.il case replica A3000 e' stupendo
So in love with the shirt
Case is well considered, but the keyboard looks and feels like a prototype. I think Stephen should do a kickstarter to make a properly plastic case in the design of the 3000 keyboard!
Exactly what I needed :)
But as a power supply tester, I have to say that the part is also very old. Switch for 115/230V, so not even active PFC, that's also stuck in the 90s.
So the Amigas are not so power hungry, you can also take a modern SFX with 100W on 3.3/5V should also be more than enough.
Yes very disappointing to see a mains voltage selector switch.
@@wayland7150
Small series are expensive, but had they probably found the right partners who also respond to customer requests, then what would be significantly better installed.
@@tweakpc It's been a long time since PSUs needed such a switch. The seller ought to set the voltage for the buyers country. I think this one was set to the correct voltage for EU, 230vac.
@@wayland7150 oh yes very Long, this PSU ist retro too.
I would not entrust such expensive hardware to such strange power supply from unknown source
@@tweakpc Maybe better if they just said what power supply format it uses. These old computers are either worthless junk or very special sentimental value at this time. Obvoiusly the latter if you're re-casing them.
Great video Jan as you took your time with the assembly which I really liked. Thank you very much for the video as I really enjoyed it.
I have a question about the pass through for the ACA 500 from Jens at Individual Computers.
Does that pass through pass through all the lines from the side expansion port on an Amiga 500? Could I connect for example an a590 'board" to this but obviously turned upside down? Keep up the good work please.
@Counter Air Thanks for the reply and I also have a GVP HD + 8 as well as an a590 so can try either
Nice Defiant/Voyager reference - well hidden Sir. 👌
Congrats on yet another good video. 🙂
Perhaps the FDD button would have been better placed if you had installed the FDD on the right side of the box. 👍🏻
I think the placement of the pre-drilled mounting holes is the same for both slots. The larger cutout is to accommodate for different types of drives (the A1200 disk drives have the button placed on the other side for example).
I'm not speaking for Jan, but as him, I have this LUST of owning an A3000, and on the 3000 is much more common to have a single floppy drive in the centre, rather than on the right. It's weird, but if if you look at pictures, and publicity photos of the A3000, the floppy is usually at the centre :-D
Hi Jan, great video. Just wondered why you did not power the floppy drive from SFX PSU rather than having to extend your existing cable? One less cable and all...
I have ordered a 3000 fitting kit from Simon for the 1500+ case (black) I ordered 2 years ago now. Fitting kit should be here in another month or 2. I think only the mini has the option of RPI, reAmiga, Vampire, MiSTiX boards. I also ordered a mini in black with the MiSTeR mATX board from Stephen plus keycaps. His cases are built like tanks.
the case looks amazing and i'm sure it feels great (knocks-on-metal)
not sure i like the angular design of the keyb tho, and it feels like the keys should protrude a bit more?
i would probably configure it with the internal floppy,cdrom and hd (or an sd card if there's no space). and then having an external gotek on top
nice review!
Another little gripe I can find is that the colors of the power and drive LEDs are backwards... Amiga power is always red not green..
Oh, the later models all had green power LEDs actually. And orange for the drive LEDs. So it's accurate to those models.
the keyboard leds are still not lined up properly and..... on the front, under the floppy bay there is a tiny slot with a cover at the bottom. this is for sd and cf card readers :) .
Such a nicely made product!
Pre-holed drills! damn, I gonna keep that one. ;) nice case btw.
UNOBTANIUM!!!! AAahghghagghg! I sold all my amiga animation pencil test stuff a few years ago, more than one A3000, and a 4000k, did NOT get the current prices on ebay. $1500 and above, holy moley. Great to see the old Amiga scene still kicking.
Very cool. First time I regret selling my Amiga 500…
Quite a nice project, Jan.
Looks great Jan...dunno how much these retail at but by the comments it may be couple of hundred Pounds or Euros...reason I comment is I built in 2006 mATX Athlon XP socket 462 (SocketA) into a desktop InWin case in beige about the same size as this or very similar but with built in Bays inside..that was nearly 100 pounds back then...and it was very sturdy like this...cover went on and locked into place without screws...better quality than the tower cases I've had since...obviously no long line of Amiga port slots at the back...just the usual PC slots at one end...if I had the space and an Amiga spare this would be on my to buy list...
I have a Mini with a MiSTix motherboard, very nice case
One of these cases with an A500+ board and a 68040 accelerator should be about the same experience as an A3000. On the other side of it going the same road with an A1200 board and an accelerator sould be similar to an A4000. What was built here would be more similar to an A2000.
To my mind this kind of system really needs some kind of hard drive and possibly an accelerator. Something like one of the Terrible Fire designs would probably go well although going with the more modern Raspberry Pi expansions would also be a great fit with this case would be a great fit here since you wouldn't be having to mess around with the original A500 case design. With that hard drive controller a SCSI to SD adaptor makes a lot of sense.
Get the guru rom for the controller. Then install a scsi2sd or one of the other options out there.
Small correction It's not a normal PSU it's a SFX sized one.
A normal SFX one, then! ;P Sorry, I'm not very good with modern PC terminology... :D
@@JanBeta yep, by the looks of it, SFX-L could be used too.
But older SFX ones probably won't fit.
Though I wouldn't trust the PSU further than I can throw it, due to the Voltage Selection switch. That's not good.
Interesting that the fan on the SFX power supply is spinning. The fan in the SFX one I put into my A4000 doesn't, it doesn't get enough load to start. So, interested in finding out where I can find that PSU.
Steve Jones (Imica Ltd) got them specifically for his cases and he looked far and wide before he found them. I think you can order them on his Checkmate A1500 Plus website. They are specified as 200 watt and that is plenty for any a500, a600 and a1200 or some smaller pc builds. Probably also plenty for Unamiga, Raspberry Pi, Mister and Vampire SA.
@@alanhaynes4576 Might just modify the one I have to make the fan spin instead.
Wouldn't use it for an A500, 600 or 1200 since I love the look of those machines and this is a bit generic/PC-ish, but it's cool for other stuff.
You’ll be surprised what you can fit inside this case. I built a mega A1200 build with this case. Keeps things like CD/DVD drives as well as Floppy and Gotek neat and tidy. I even fitted a BPPC card with a GREX PCI assortment. 👍🏻
It was inspired by the A3000 case.
I'm from Glasgow, Scotland Jan. Originally from Lämmerspiel. Leave a light on sir, we're coming home
This makes me want to buy one and convert one of my 500’s
Doing same with A600 now
Jan do you know much about the Creative Micro Designs hardware, mainly the FD-2000 that upgraded the 1581?
If the DIN 5 connector is not compatible with the Amiga connectors of a similar type, is it compatible with the PC connector with the DIN 5 connector, perhaps? Or is it another standard entirely?
I was actually going to buy a PC. It can be a pain. But I couldn't find anything I was happy with. So I built it again! lol I've never bought a desktop PC that was already in one piece. I built it last year and it's amazing. Putting one into a case with a floppy hole would seem odd though. lol Hell mine doesn't even have an optical slot.
I wish there were other beige retro style cases around. I got my beige unicomp model M, beige clearly superior trackball, and beige okidata printer. But I only have a solid black case and there's nothing matching. It low-key bothers me that there's nothing but black cases with glass windows and silly disco lights available
Maybe burn the Kickstart to an EEPROM. If you take a larger EEPROM you can switch the ROM version with the remaining address lines.
This is a very nice case, I've thought of buying one for a long time - then they announced the even nicer Mini version and the waiting continued. Nevertheless I'm still hesitant to order one. Simply because I think desktop cases are out of place w/o the need for CRTs and furthermore I would use it to build a secondary PC that wouldn't be used much. Perhaps at the end of the year when AMD will ship their new Ryzen generation.
Put in a ZZ9000 :) Nice one Jan
yeah, nicer but where I live.. unless the shop pays the VAT in advance you get at least a ~20£ handling charge in addition to the VAT... so.. I bought a lot of stuff from the UK while they where in the EU.. not so much anymore
The world has already buried old computers, while the wonderful antiques live as if nothing had happened :-)
I was waiting for the hot glue ;)
Add in the plastic cased 128D motherboard but can that be made to fit in that case?
Hello Jan,
I currently have the same problem, the front leds of the checkmate do not light up when I press the power button....I have watched a lot of videos, to see what cables and in what position they put them but I have never seen a still image and specific to the correct position of the cables so that the front LEDs light up, and I have other cables left over, one with 2 pins and the other with 3 pins...I don't know if they are loose or have to be connected somewhere... and right when you fixed it (33:15) there was nothing to show because I saw you messing with something but the camera wouldn't point to that place where you plugged and unplugged cables (this is frustrating for me😒😒), and I never really figured out how you fixed it, and my english is horrible..could you send some picture of the correct position or what did you do to make the front leds turn on? Thanks in advance😀😀😄
Jan, did you get the 3d printed Atari logo (the red one) from Jurgen VR?
Nice content and nice job!
Awesome tee shirt, once again. :)
That's nuts!
Yes!
Gutenmorgen Jan ;)
Guten Morgen!
moin moin
It's a bit dodgy using a PSU with a voltage switch. Asking for trouble.
Wish someone could demo an RTG card in that slot...
3:52 my dear friend, here in Serbia we pay that crazy tax from every single EU country, and yes randomly :(. Be happy to live in such a great country as Germany. I dont pay tax only for Amiga Adict magazine
Me too, tj da naravno. EU spoiled them, back to reality :)
Wow, sieht wirklich klasse aus!!!!
This case is so hitech that it even has pre-holed drills!! XD
Man, this case actually makes me consider getting an A500. Do you think there's enough room for an internal PI Storm and not block the ZORRO slots?
Was there a problem with two mounting stud locations being misaligned so that the two screws near the front left could not be used to secure the PCB in that area? I had that problem, I noticed it in someone else's video too but it was not mentioned. I was pretty annoyed about this but just had to proceed anyway and used the Zorro card adapter to secure the overall PCB assembly. Apart from that issue I like the case.
The PCB fit the stud locations perfectly for me. I think it was a problem with a previous version of the Checkmate case that got addressed in this newer one. Heard that from a couple of commenters but I didn’t have any problems (I would have mentioned it in the video,too!), everything fits as intended.
@@JanBeta Thats good then. At least the case is sturdy enough so hopefully there won't be any flexing its moved. I got a Buddha in one of the Zorro slots and got an internal CF which I use for my own files and some software, I put a Vampire in mine so the vampire CF is taken to one of the back expansion slots and I use a CF adapter mounted to a metal plate so I can upgrade the CoffinOS or ApolloOS without having to open the case. And to transfer files and backup I have a microSD extension taken to the lower front panel of the case and secured with hot melt glue, similar to what RMC did. On the other expansion slot I have HDMI and USB for a keyboard, and another HDMI from the vampire. Im very pleased with it and use it for some development in addition to everything else. I could not get the Checkmate recommended DVD drive to work with the Buddha yet although the system does recognize it as being there. Maybe it has to be manually mounted? Perhaps you know about this?
Jan, what pin header type is that card I may have a SCSI disk to work?
Kinda strange that the keyboard case they give you doesn’t fit…
please push the ram expansion all the way on the connector...... there should be no visible gap.......
look for the triangle on the housing.... pin 1 positive..
You can just get a SCSI-SD adaptor if you don't want to shell out for an actual parallel SCSI drive.
Better yet, go for the ZuluSCSI, because it's dead simple to set up and only costs $60 right from the maker. I'm using one with my CDTV currently and it's excellent.
Can you find those cases in the United States?
it reminded me of the the A1000 and for some reason a compaq deskpro lol ?? dont know why that is lol
i'd love to get an amiga set up, but they're so expensive now, i doubt i'l ever be able to justify it
See Retro Passion UK, they are NOT that expensive, cheaper then back then
@@RasVoja I'm in the States. Still, prices seem much higher than supply should dictate, but folks keep paying big bucks, so they stay expensive. I got into old electronics because it was inexpensive before the craze hit, and I'm pretty good at mod and repair, but its been getting less and less accessible.....
Checkmate case looks great. I wonder if you could use a CD32 motherboard and make use of CDROM from pc and I already have id44 expansion cf card but could you also use a small ssd
Oh, that would be an interesting idea. Technically it should work if you find a compatible CD ROM drive. You would probably have to modify the mounting posts a bit for a good fit but I don’t see why that would not be possible.
@@JanBeta unfortunately I have never found a post based on this idea. I enjoy watching your videos especially about ZX Spectrum, A2000, CD32. I also have ZX81 and QL. I'm liking your recent video about Atari 65E 320 kb expansion and look forward to your solutions. After writing this above I've discovered the second part to the Atari 65E
What is the Zorro slot for?
Expansions, like PCI slot