The following article is an account of observations and solutions to problems which arose during the build of a Micro AmigaOne computer. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Any similiarity to your real life experience is purely coincidental. All information in this document is believed to be accurate. The author accepts no responsibility for how you use it.

To begin: Things to watch out for:

The connections on the board are not as "standard" as you might think. But the serial port is actually wired as you see in this document . Great photos of the micro Amiga pinouts are available online at: http://amigairc.amigarevolution.com/micro.html

Wiring configurations for USB ports are mostly standard these days, but you should check that your case doesn't use an odd pin configuration before connecting them to the motherboard.

My uA1-C has a header like this

VCC GND
3- 4+
3+ 4-
GND VCC

My Antec Sonata case came wired like this

VCC VCC
3- 4-
3+ 4+
GND GND
Key GND

The VCCs were all tied together, as were the GNDs. Plugging this in without changing it first would have been bad. I swapped 4- with 4+, swapped the VCC and GND on the same side, and left the extra GND and Key hanging off unplugged.

On the uA1-C, there is a header on the board for a serial port. It has been said that the uA1-I will have two ports on headers. What you need for access is a breakout cable to go from the header
to a serial port connector (usually a DB-9). You can bring the port out to a drive bay on the front of your computer with parts from FrontX.com.

You can bring the connectors out to a PCI slot cover on the back with a simpler connector. There are two "standard" pinouts for this connector. These are sometimes called "Intel" and "Everex". The documents with the uA1 show the Everex wiring, but in fact the Intel wiring is correct (Thanks to KGrach for figuring this out). Showing the complete cable may be the clearest way to describe this.

This diagram shows the header from above the motherboard, and the DB-9 connector from the BACK, as you would see as you solder the wires. There should be pin numbers on the DB9 connector to verify this.

OK, so if you don't want to make your own, for the front ports, try the FrontX.com web store internal ports, serial 9 pin internal V2. For a rear mounted port on a PCI slot cover, there are

many vendors. The cheapest I've seen is a1netusa.com, who offer the serial breakout as "9M-W" for $1.20 each, less in quantity. For uA1-I users, they offer the "9M9M-IO" for two bucks, with connectors and cables for both serial ports. Some vendors describe the two standards as "straight" or "crossover".

Another problem I had was the clearance for the connector.. The ten pins for the serial port are on the same header as the audio connections for line in/out and microphone. I can plug my serial

cable in, but the bottom two pins of the audio connections left in and left out?) are then unreachable. If you're not using front audio ports this should not be a problem, otherwise I'm working out an adapter to cover the difference.

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