Picked up my old A4000

[Revolution]

Hey,

I recently picked up my family's old A4000 from the depths of our back storage room However it doesn't work It won't even turn on; but there are a lot of chips and ribbons in the case which aren't mounted (as well as a CD drive). Since I'm not sure where everything goes, would someone be able to tell me if there's some sort of guide on the internals of the A4000 which I could use to get mine up and running. If needed I could take some photos and link them to here to show what a mess the inside looks like (I hope I can still fix it!)

Revolution

Edit: Also it's a standard A4000/40, not an A4000T or anything.

[X-ray]

Oh, you gotta resurrect her, man! Don't leave her there with her guts in disarray.
Someone please help him! (I would but mine is an A4KT).
Welcome back to the land of Amiga!

[odin]

GET THE BATTERY OUT. NOW!

'Cos most likely it is rotting and the copper traces on the PCB are now also rotting due to the acid from the bugger. There are numerous threads on a.org about batteries and acid and A4k's. Just do a little search in the box on the topright on the frontpage.

Oh and for good measure do take some pics (especially close-ups from around the battery).

And......GET IT OUT...NOW.
:-).

For a comprehensive guide on the A4k point your favourite interweb view thingy here.

[Revolution]

X-ray: Thanks for your support

odin: Ok, I will get the battery out first thing tomorrow (it's getting late here and I have packed away the A4000 in the corner of my working table). Thanks for the help and the link to the A4k site - it's quite interesting.

Also, I will mention that I have made some (slight) progress earlier tonight with the A4k:

1. I got the A4k going (fan runs and power light comes on), and the hard drive comes on (I can hear it spin) by fiddling with some small connectors which I can join together (but there are some of these connectors which I don't know what to do with - there are several of them altogether).

Anyway, the computer turns on, but nothing else happens - I have my old Commodore monitor (which I know works as I use it with my A2k) connected to the A4k, but nothing comes on the monitor.

2. I found another hard drive in the storage room, which my father told me was a spare which the Amiga techician used when he was trying to repair the computer many years ago (obviously a failed attempt which I am  hoping to better). This drive works (spins up), as does the internal one which is mounted in the A4k.

3. I also found a CD drive which fits in the bay above the disk drive, but I can't make it (the CD drive) do anything except for the green "on" light come on - it won't eject the tray or anything. Some other things I found also an "OpalVision" card which I have no idea what does - any ideas? and also an Emplant card of some sort (I'll try and get specific names of all these things in the morning)

^ I know some of the above points are probably hard to understand, so I'll take some pics in the morning of the setup, and I'll post 'em here in this thread so you get a better idea of the situation

[odin]

#3: Opalvision info:
'Although the OpalVision board is not an RTG graphics card, it is possible to use this card with many other pieces of software which support it. An example is using it with the Apple Macintosh emulator board Emplant to displays the Macs output.'

Emplant info:
'Normally provides Apple Macintosh emulation but a 586 module is available to emulate PC compatible software. The Emplant is a Zorro-II board that, in combination with the appropriate software, makes it possible to emulate other computers on the Amiga system.'

(BTW bookmark the Big Book of Amiga Hardware, it's a Miggy HW info goldmine :-)).

About the CD drive, can you eject the tray if you only attach the (four wired) power cable? I.e. without connecting the IDE flatcable.

However it's not a big problem should the drive be dead, you can put about any IDE/ATAPI cd drive in there. The only problem is that the A4kD case is very cramped. A long(ish) CD-ROM drive will be a pain in the arse to stuff in there, it'll very quickly start to argue with the PSU over space to put it's attached cables :-).

[Lemonty]

Another great resource for Amiga 4000 information can be found here:

http://wonkity.com/~wblock/a4000hard/main.html

Do check that battery first! Your 4000 can easily do without. Leaking batteries will destroy your computer in time (I know). Then check for memory. Your 4000 should at least have some chip memory, which is the SIMM in the right-most memory bank (seen from the front of the computer).
You mentioned some missing chips? I hope you mean the memory SIMMS missing
Remember that your 'bare' Amiga (i.e. no HD or CD-ROM) should work okay when it can display the 'insert disk' animation. Use it as a test.

[Revolution]

Thanks for that other info odin, and also thanks Lemonty for that link and help, I'll try that "insert disk" test right now

For reference I've uploaded several photos of my A4k setup here (1.2MB zip file):

http://www.polarhome.com:713/~magicpotion/images.zip

Hopefully those will be of help in getting my A4k working

[odin]

Your unknown card. Which might explain why the CD-ROM drive doesn't function if you connect it to the motherboard IDE port: is the CD-ROM drive a Mitsumi? (The pic of the CD-ROM drive is too blurry to tell).

You also have a DKB RapidFire memory/SCSI(not sure wether it's SCSI or IDE) card in there (the card with the HD on it).

PLUS, you have a CyberVision 64 graphics card hanging loose in the A4k, I suggest you fasten the metal backplate with a screw to relieve the stress the card has to endure now. The CV64 is still a very usefull card (and I think quite valuable on EBay). You have the 2MB version, however it can be upgraded to 4MB if you find the right RAM chips.

I'd say you have a very nice collection of Zorro cards there :-).

Also I noticed that there is a hint of bright green smudge near the battery (the big bright red barrel near the SIMM sockets), this is a sign that the battery is leaking :-/.