4. Planning the case
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the best looking Amiga of all time was the A3000, launched in 1990. This was the third of the ‘big box’ Amigas and really was the first model to be released that represented a genuine step forward in terms of speed and capability over the original A1000. For these reasons it generally holds a special place in the heart of Amiga fans: even those of us who only ever owned the low-end machines.
The lineage of the A3000 is obvious in the Checkmate cases. The original A1500+ case is big, designed as it is to accommodate the motherboards of a number of original machines. The A1500 Mini takes an ITX factor motherboard, and is very close in size to the A3000 itself. Some of the videos surrounding the Kickstarter launch noted the prototype was ever so slightly smaller: I’ll have to wait until I get my hands on one to confirm.
Of all the computers I have owned over the years, the one that holds the special place in my heart is the Amiga. This is why this case is exciting to me: it provides the opportunity to build a new Amiga which can evoke the feelings of those old machines. Similarly with the MiSTer project, I’m primarily interested in it because of its wonderful, accurate Amiga core. The fact that I can change it into a variety of other machines is just gravy.
So let’s take a look at the image of the A1500 mini front plate, above. The main features are the power button, power and disk LEDs, and a standard 5.25 inch drive bay, with a cover plate the carries on the A3000-inspired indentation along the front of the case. So the big question on my mind is, what to do with that drive bay?
Option 1 is to do nothing, and just put a blank plate in there. That seems like a bit of a waste of potential. Three other plates are available which are moulded to match the case front. There is a plate for a slot mounted CD/DVD drive (as pictured above), a plate for an Amiga floppy drive (like the original A3000), and a plate the convert the 5.25 inch bay to a 3.5 inch bay. Alternatively of course the plate can be removed entirely and a 5.25 inch drive mounted in the slot.
My priority here is not to spoil the clean look of the case. My system should unmistakably be an Amiga and maintain those lines. That implies either the blank plate or either of the disc drive plates. However, CD-ROM and floppy disk drives make no sense in a MiSTer world. There is discussion on the forums about bring old drive compatibility to MiSTer, but it’s not there yet, and in a world where I can simulate any disk with an image file on a hard drive it only makes sense if I have a stack of original media around, which I don’t.
If I put anything in this bay I want it to be useful. Front mounted USB port and SD card slots are useful. However, while there are a myriad 5.25 inch and 3.5 inch drop=in options available, like the one example below, there is no way I’m going to find one which matches the off-white of the case, and even if I did it would ruin the ‘Amiga-ness’ look.
What’s even more useful than front mounted USB ports is replicating the functionality of the MiSTer IO board. The board features three buttons and three lights. The buttons reboot the MiSTer, bring up the menu and reset the current core, and while this can all be replicated via the keyboard, based on my usage so far I am convinced the buttons are a worthwhile quality-of-life improvement. I would like to accommodate this functionality into my case.
I take as my inspiration two MiSTer case builds, both of which use the larger Checkmate A1500+ case. The first can be found in the ‘Show us your MiSTer case’ thread on the official forums. The second can be seen in this video, another one from the RMC – The Cave channel. The build is visible at the beginning of this video, immediately after the adverts. Both of these cases incorporate the MiSTer functionality that I’m after, and I particularly like the one from the forum, which uses a custom 3D printed plate to fit the panel in with the sweeping lines of the Checkmate case. It’s not what I want though: I want the purity of the Amiga frontage to be maintained in a way that this doesn’t So my plan is to build this functionality into a panel: the MiSTer lights, buttons and even some USB ports, but have it hidden by a blank plate. I will therefore have the clean, outward appearance of a modern, reimagined Amiga, but then I can remove the panel and reveal the MiSTer functionality within. That’s the vision anyway, and in a future post I will discuss how I plan to realise it.