Day 6 of the C-A-R retro advent calendar and today I 
recall the acquisition of the A690 as mentioned in
a post by Stephen... 

scuzz blog...  A690 CD Side Car...  Whatta a mistaka to make !!

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz68.htm

Commodore Amiga A690
The A570 prototype. 

I had been sifting through the pages of the Big Book of
Amiga Hardware, and came across a section in respect
of rare items which never really made it to the shops.
Things like the Walker and the Amiga 1200 CD sidecar.
The one item that interested me was the A690 which
in fact became the A570 CD side car. I wondered over
to this very interesting site about the CDTV and in amongst
that was this article about the A690. Kinda mouth watering
as these units were only ever handed out at shows as
prototypes. Thing is, the unit had completely the wrong
reference and was gonna totally muck up the numbering
system for the yet to be released A600... And so it was
changed to the A570. There were some minor changes
but in essence it was the same unit..

And so to the stroke of scuzz luck... I decided to do a search
on Ebay... And unbelievably a motherboard for the A690
was up for sale. I held my breath and won this for a very
very modest sum. Nobody really bid on the item... I was 
so pleased...  However there was to be even greater joy
as some weeks later a whole unit came up for sale from
a guy in Sweden... Which I won. Which was nice :-)

Anyway some further weeks later I was on the Amiga Forum
mentioning the A690 and this guy got all stroppy with me
asking me to confide in the seller of the unit, and all its
details... Very suspicious. I gotta say, I must be one of
the very few people in the world, not only to have a whole
unit, but also to have a spare motherboard...

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz68.htm

[ info from my site ]

This CD-ROM upgrade was mistakenly given the wrong
number A690, which should reflect an Amiga 600
SCSI card. As to why it was numbered wrong, nobody
really knows.

The A570 was first developed at a time when the 
A600 was not in being and for reasons known only
to the developers the A570 CD-ROM was given the
number A690. However, once the A600 was announced
it was obvious that this number would have to
change. By the time of the A600 launch a number
of these A690 prototypes were already in circulation,
as they were exhibited at Commodore shows.

The A690 was in late development at the time of its
name change and therefore not much differs between it
and the A570, particularly to the PCB and case anyway.
The main difference is the provision of a battery
which was understood to power the re-programmable
ROM, which holds the A690`s software ie. CD-ROM driver,
auto-config code, CDTV screens; useful obviously
for when the unit is switched off. Also the memory
card slot (CN2) does not have the 40 pin DIL connector.

[ end quote from site ]

[ further info ]

was then changed to avoid confusion with an unspecified 
project, that would later be revealed as the Amiga 600. 
A690 prototypes were available to CATs developers, who 
reference a built-in battery and some minor PCB changes 
as the only difference with the final model. The A690, under 
its new name, was launched in April 1992.

[ end blurb ]

The A690 is pretty well the only none computer listed in my
Amiga computer section, cus for me it is one of my most
cherished items. Push came to shove I would probably
lose most things before I gave up on the A690.

.... To collect this item I hired a private jet, parachuted to
the snowy village of Rekyurnob and travelled by sledge
to a wooden shack where I defeated several warrior bandits
using stealth and the secret and rare Welsh martial arts
skill Lap-Gosh. I spent the night hidden deep inside a 
snowy cavern, where I raided an ancient tomb and 
discovered the arc of the covenant, which was nice. 
I also had my wicked way with Lara Croft who was 
in the next cave. I then returned triumphant, having
fought my way through armed snow militia and 
Star Wars snow walkers, and was knighted by
the queen for my gallant efforts restoring retro
memorabilia to crown and country. And returned
just in time to win a pack of old CF2 3" disks off
Ebay...  What was amazing is the next week I did
the exact same thing again... 

My goodness Day 7 tomorrow.

scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

Hi

Sad that its taken me this long to realise that Ian Chapman
has decided to throw the towel in with regard to the Big
Book of Amiga Hardware. Same day that I found out that
my favourite CDTV site is no more... Booo Hoooooooo !! :-(

[ quote ]

After nearly 8 years of running the Big Book of Amiga Hardware, 
I've decided it's time for me to retire from maintaining the site. 
The reasons are many and varied, but personal. The project 
started in January 1999 and since then has grown to be what 
it is today. This wouldn't have been possible without the hundreds 
of contributors that took their time to help out, many of who sent 
hundreds of photographs over the years. 

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/

[ end quote ]

Sad that...  All the best to Ian in whatever he does.

scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

Hi

Been communicating with this retro guy about his Amiga
hobby and he has just been talking about a couple of his
projects which I have asked for further info...

[ quote ]

..................At the moment, I am just finishing off putting an a1200 
inside an a600 case and also doing a clockport mp3 player
(similar to the parallel port one but hopefully less cpu intensive). 

[ end ]

Wow !... More on this later.

scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

Hi

On that earlier post, the guy who sent me the A1200/A600
images used a RAR compression which I haven't used 
before on this Win98 machine. Anyway I just went to this
site and downloaded the utility to decompress and works
brilliantly...

http://www.7-zip.org/

er.... 

RAR, RARSOFT and RARLAB are registered trademarks 
Eugene Roshal. All other trademarks are the property 
of their respective owners.  Neither RAR binary code, 
WinRAR binary code, UnRAR source or UnRAR binary 
code may be used or reverse engineered to re-create 
the RAR compression algorithm, which is proprietary, 
without written permission of the author, Eugene Roshal. 
UNRAR 3.20 freeware Copyright (c) 1993-2003 Eugene Roshal. 

[ end bit ]

UnRARx also seems very polite in letting you download
the software...

http://www.unrarx.com/index.html

Both these about 1MB so not that large.

[ quote ]

Universal Binary version of UnRarX is now available. 
Version 2.2 includes current universal binary versions 
of unrar and par2 command line applications. UnRarX 
now includes automatic update functionality thanks to 
Sparkle Framework by Andy Matuschak. Many thanks to Andy! 

[ end quote ]

scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

Hi

The old scuzz shuttle just ventured into this
dangerous bit of Borg space and I was trapped
there for a while... ' Resistance is Futile '...
We broke tractor beam... And I strggled back
to the scuzz quadrant... That was close

[ The SourceForge Cube.... a mystery to me ]

SourceForge.net is the world's largest Open Source 
software development web site, hosting more than 
100,000 projects and over 1,000,000 registered 
users with a centralized resource for managing 
projects, issues, communications, and code. 
SourceForge.net has the largest repository of 
Open Source code and applications available 
on the Internet, and hosts more Open Source 
development products than any other site or 
network worldwide. SourceForge.net provides 
a wide variety of services to projects we host, 
and to the Open Source community.

[ end transmission ]

http://sourceforge.net/docs/about

scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

Hi

[ post from Andrew B ]

Is this a computer?!

"A fragment of the 2,100-year-old Antikythera Mechanism, 
believed to be the earliest surviving mechanical computing 
device, is seen at the National Archaeological Museum in 
Athens on Thursday."

More info here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15984363/

The box-shaped mechanism - the size of office paper and 
operated with a hand-crank - could predict an eclipse to a 
precise hour on a specific day.
"The design of the mechanism is very wonderful, making 
us realize how highly technological the ancient Greek 
civilization was. Much more so perhaps than we thought," 

[ reply ]

There was one of these on Ebay last week. Bugga :-)

[  joking ]

Interesting that... I think they came from outer space.
I think that's where we all came from... 

scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

Commodore Amiga 690

Commodore Amiga A690