T H E  T O W E R  E X P E R I E N C E

                             by: WiseGuy/Giants


I  just bought myself a tower for the A1200.  Perhaps its madness to cough up
for  a tower in these days, but with all the new space it's worth it.  (E)IDE
hard  drives and cdrom's isn't that expensive these days.  So buying "idefix"
is  likely  too  be  the  next  step.   Then  you  can add  more units to the
internal IDE  controller on the motherboard. Best of all, with a tower system
you  can easily add one of those new blizzard PPC cards from phase 5.  If you
can  afford one is another tale.  I guess a lot of you guy's doesn't like the
idea of spending heaps for a tower, however there are possible to pick up one
of  these  cheap  PC  towers.  You have to modify it a bit so you can fit the
motherboard  into  it.   If  you are one of these that breaks everything they
open's,  then  don't  think of this!  When you have installed the motherboard
into  the tower you need to add one of this keyboard interfaces that will let
you use (yuck) whatsoever PC keyboard.  I guess it all wont come to less than
100£, dependable on where you pick up the parts.

I  soon  found out that It would take some time before my touch had caught up
with the layout of the key's.  The space bar had shrink, the amiga keys where
gone,  replaced  with  some window's keys, I hit caps lock whenever I'm after




the  control  key.   The  control key doesn't want to work whenever I want it
too,  but  beside this, the windows keyboard isn't that bad writing on, but I
will  gladly  change  it in for a amiga keyboard any day.  Then again I would
have done that with my old keyboard too, because it where WORN OUT!

I  did  realise  that  it  where  no  chance  in  hell, that I could fit that
surfsquirrel  into  the  pcmcia  slot  (sob  sob  sob).  Now I had this fancy
looking  tower  but  couldn't  use  my scsi hard disk, or my cdrom.  I had to
cough  up for a pcmcia bender (adapter).  that where easy, the hard thing was
to install it.  I didn't care much to check if it worked before I put he hood
back  on the tower.  Mostly because they had forget to make a hole big enough
to  put  cables out of!  I had to saw a little opening in the hood, just so I
could  slip the cable's trough.  However, sawing in steel isn't that easy, my
little  saw  did  jerk  and  something  red  started  to  flow from my finger
(yikes!).  So some very nice blessings and a little hole later the hood where
back  on.   All  ready to go I thought, but It didn't find anything, the hood
off (again), unplugged the pcmcia bender, and the surfsquirrel from it.  What
did  I see?  One of he pins in it where bent!  I found a needle, and for half
an hour or so, I tried to straight it out again.  Tried again, this time with
the  motherboard  just  lying  on  the desk.  Again it didn't find any of the
devices!   My  motto  is;  when  all  else fails, use brute force!  So I did!
Pushed the bender as hard as I could into the pcmcia slot on the motherboard,
I  thought  it  should snap and break any second.  It was almost dead silence
when  a  loud "KLICK" came from the motherboard.  As I where reaching for the




power  switch  to try again, one of  my fingers  graced the PSU in the tower,
and  it  where  fried  (joke,  it  where only a small sting!), but be careful
around  open  towers  fully  powered.   Well,  now it all worked great.  In a
second  it was all back together again (well, I lost the tray with the screws
on the floor, so it took a bit longer than a second).

The  boot  sequence seemed like forever, but there they where.  I went on IRC
meanwhile  I  where picking up mail & news.  Some guy asked me for a file.  I
had  on  CD,  so  I  put  it  in the drive, but what happens.  The whole shit
freeze, a second later the screen blinks
 red (the accelrator card did crash).
I  reboot  and  think  it where just accedentaly that it happened, but NO!  I
almost  started  to believe there where a gremlin in the tower.  Then It came
to  my mind, perhaps the scsi chain wasn't right, and it wasn't.  So remember
that scsi chains have to have a termination on the last unit in the chain, if
not it wont work correct, or work at all.

Perhaps  this wasn't that fun to read, but then again perhaps you could avoid
some of the mistakes I did, when you are assembling your own tower.