intric8 writes on the amigalove forums that, along with joethezombie, they have been working on duplicating the Amiga Rejuvenator board. The previous status:
- Milestone #1: Successful Installation into an A1000.
- Run a 1MB Chip RAM Demo on the Rejuve’d 1000.
- Hiccup: Company to build the board for us pulled out due to financial concerns
- Receive blessing/permission from both the original designer to reverse engineer the board, Greg Tibbs, and manufacturer, Expert Services.
- As a team of passionate volunteers, we decided we should try to prototype the Rejuvenator ourselves at this stage rather than rely on a third party – at least a proof of concept.
- Milestone #2: Successfully upgrade my working Rejuvenator to 2MB using the hard-to-find Amiga 3000 Agnus 8372b, thanks to team member Christian based here in Seattle.
Additional updates at this point:
- Joe recreated the schematics for the Rejuvenator by hand and has since printed 6 prototype home-brew boards.
- Joe has actually taken one of the prints and begun the exciting process of populating it with chip sockets and other necessary components. Folks – look at this thing!
- intric8 happened to be so lucky to find and source another Rejuvenator, thanks to one of the members on the Rejuvenator Team, Adrian, who is based in Springfield, MO.
- With a new Kickstarter ROM, the board came to life, so they have a second working board!
Next steps
intric8 has shipped the working Rejuve2 to Joe. He’s going to pop the socketed chips off the working board and put them on his new home-brew. Then he’s going to install it to his own A1000 and flip the switch. And before that, he’s going to try and read this board’s PALs. There’s a chance they won’t be protected. And as Joe told me today, “It would be a moon-landing stroke of luck if they’re readable.” Because if they are readable, we’re virtually home free.
But assuming Joe’s board works (oh my god you guys, we’re so close!) and the PALs are protected, we will officially be down to the final step: recreating the calculations in the PALs ourselves. And we’ve already gotten a head start on that as well.
See the video below and more on the project update page.
