prototype board question

[Will-i-am]

Yeah, ATL stands for atlantis or some such thing. I have tons of Atlantis files in the HD. I suppose my buddy knows the whole story behind the company...ultrasound, not sonograms, that's sounds familiar. The movie files are babies inside. Larry is some kind of an engineer but I forget what kind. I always think of him as "Mr. Wizard" because he can reel off facts on cars, music, cameras, old bits and pieces of just about everything. The kind of guy who would buy two packed Amigas and then give them away to someone who would love them. Trouble is he didn't work in that area of the business. He just noticed the Amigas going up for sale. I expected them to be cleaned up so I was happy to get Scala and DP IV and a few other progs I didn't already have. I should stop speculating and fire up the tower and read more of the files. Most of their proprietary software is gone so I only have the videos and some hints based on the startup how their LAN was working. The board is marked "ATL s/n 00M4J2" under the bar code. The small floppy-ish port has 50 pins. The larger one has 60 pins. The small hand-marked chips are about 1/2 inch across.. one is "1934- 01 LL 7DF5 L18" the other two are similar numbers.. not much help. Two have maybe 7 pins to a side, the third seems to have 7 on two sides and 9 on the other two. There's a dinky socketed chip maybe 1/4 inch, 5 pins on a side, marked simply "7C F8" The ram slots have some chips soldered on the back and there are a few resistors or something soldered across points on the back as well. Nothing spooky or anything. When I first looked at it I thought it was a regular A4000 mobo, so cool I had a spare but then I saw that there was no place for the daughter board and the length was wrong. You guys having fun yet? This weekend I think I'll open the tower and replace the Cyberstorm with this thing and see what happens. I have ram for the slots and a spare HD or two....Oooooo the mysterious computer. When I was a kid I used to fantasize about something like this, ya know, a radio that talks to Mars or something. :-P

[Will-i-am]

and I finally tracked down a note from Larry about the mystery board:
"Bill, today I mailed the Amiga Mouse I was using, an adaptor that I was using to connect a Windows type PC keyboard the Tower, the video adapter so you can hook up a VGA monitor to the tower and the ATL designed CPU PCB that was in the tower before I put in the Cyberstorm PCB. You can use it instead of the Cyberstorm PCB as long as you don't have to run any software that requires the Power PC.   The clock speed of its 68060 processor is 50MHz and I think the IDE connector works as well.  We never used the IDE interface on the product we sold, we used the SCSI HD interface instead.  It should arrive by Wednesday and there are no packing beads in the box, just lots of wrapping paper.
As I remember, the A4000T motherboard was the final version made by Commadore. It was the top of the line.  I believe it will handle Zorro II and Zorro III type PCBs.  The ATL CPU PCB was designed around the GVP design.  In fact it identifies as a GVP PCB on bootup.  I think we purchased the design rights so we could make our own version.  It will handle 16Mbyte and smaller RAM, so its maximum is 64Mbytes.  Some place at work I have a real A4000T CPU PCB.  I will try to find it and send it along as well."
So that's all the information he sent me. Kinda interesting, do you think? So I can reasonably replace the Cyberstorm in the tower with this other board and put the Cyberstorm into my desktop which is currently using a Gforce '040. That means the Gforce board is either a spare or I could sell it used. Maybe. I still need to replace my psu from the A4KD that blew out. Somebody said a standard AT PSU should work. I want to towerize one of my A2000 or the spare A4000 with the blown PSU. So many options.

[JetFireDX]

ATL stands for "Advanced Technologies Laboratories" and Atlantis was a group within the company that built Ultrasound devices (model HDI-1000) out of Amiga 4000's. (I know, I worked there before they were bought by Phillips Medical.) They are still right down the street from me.

When I was working there they had their machines powered by custom built 060 boards for the 4000's. That picture is one of them. Underneath the ultrasound software you see on an HDI-1000 Workbench 3.1 (at the time) was running alive and well. Their keyboards have been redesigned to make finding the Amiga keys along with the "real" ctrl key difficult. But Should you figure out the key set, you can control it just like any other Amiga and get the mouse pointer to let you scroll the screen down and go to Workbench.

They were working on an custom in house PPC card to make their HDI-1000's faster when I quit (bad bad management) and it was apparently using tech licensed from Phase5. (I can't confirm that one though) I do know that ATL and the Atlantis group built their A4000 motherboards in house and had Commodores approval to even make the custom chips. When I was there they were having to do talks with Gateway when they bought the Amiga IP to make sure they would be in the free and clear to continue their business with it.

I was wondering when I would see one of those cards show up after one of the company "garage sale". I don't know if you will be able to get it to work or work well. I think they had a custom 060 library that you would have to swipe off one of the ultrasound machines. Anybody know a doctor?

(Oh yeah, they had a custom daughterboard for special DSP's for the ultrasound equipment that looked like nothing else out there. A huge thing that only fits inside an Ultrasound machine)

[Will-i-am]

Well, I'll be jiggered. Any chance you knew a guy named Larry Meek? He lives in Everett now, which is real ironic since we lived together in Phoenix and prior to that I spent a year in the Seattle/Everett area. I went to high school in Everett when my dad was surveying the 747 plant. Sooo yer saying this board might not work? Larry indicated in his note that it was usable when he swapped a Cyberstorm into it. Could be fun.

[JetFireDX]

Can't say for sure now if I knew him. This was in 1998 and I had a pretty bad taste in my mouth from that place when I quit so I have pretty much put it all behind me. If I remember right the board will probably boot up but have serious stability issues. However, don't hold me to that because I was testing all kinds of "unknown" hardware of theirs when I was there to find out what worked and what didn't. Litterally dozens of different 060 boards, 040's and 030's from A4000's both original and towers. Nobody seemed to know what worked and what didn't as it was all just stacked in giant drawers, on static free workbenches, and in closets.(There were stacks of A4000(d)'s in closets like people wouldn't believe!) I do recall it being indicated to me though that their boards needed their special 060 and 040 libs to run right though but this could have been specifically for debug purposes. Nothing you can do but plug her in and see what happens though!  :-D I hope it works! I always wanted one for my A4k at home when I worked there. (No chance it would fit in a desktop though unmodified.)

[Will-i-am]

Well, that's how Larry described the place. One of the desktops was being used as a doorstop. He wrote me and asked me if I could use a Cyberstorm which was just hanging around as a paperweight. When I got all excited he proceeded to obtain the whole mess of stuff, including the '060. He's a hell of a nice guy and real good with fixing things. Came up here for a visit and immediately figured out why the BMW my daughter was fixing up didn't start. But if I fire this '060 up and it works, assuming the tower can run it...and that's where it was so I suppose it will, would you have any idea if os 3.9 will like it? It was running, I think, 3.1 when I got it. I started thinking about Linux and loaded that onto an old Sony Vaio and then thought maybe a dual boot tower would be fun...just horsing around. I know there were weirdnesses with the '060 libs when I was working on the Cyberstorm but I believe there were "special" libs in some of the netboot discs that came with it. Larry said the boys that used these things did a lot of customizing but figured I could always just replace the HD and start fresh. That's what I did with the desktop.

[JetFireDX]

I have no idea if 3.9 would run on it, but if it boots and runs fine under 3.1 its certainly worth the shot. When I was working there only 3.1 was out. There was certainly a lot of seriously custom hardware there. I wish I could have seen the end results of their PPC based systems. Oh well. Wonder they have any of that hardware still hanging around in that place? I'd love to get another A4000 again. I hope it works out for you.

[Framiga]

fantastic thread :-)

It's incredible how many Amigas are around in some basements and we are bidding-purchasing A4000s and CS at shameless prices!?!

Thanks to both for the rare and usefull infos :-)

[X-ray]

@ Will

Can you get more of those boards? I am also curious as to what other custom hardware ATL had. Can you get more info?

[Will-i-am]

Well, see, here's the thing with me. My boy, currently 29 yrs old, was tossed thru a windshield four years ago at 30 mph. We got him from AZ to here upstate NY and he's in a brain injury facility, mostly unresponsive, about 100 miles south. I was trying to be self-employed as a cadd guy at the time because my back is degenerating and I can't work full time. Larry is a life-long buddy, bounced Jon on his knee and all that. Comes up from WA for Thanksgiving, helps me whenever he can...gave me these Amigas to play with...Hell of a nice guy. If there is anything there that would make my day a little brighter you can bet he'll send it up. I wrote him just now telling him how much fun I'm having with these machines and this board and he'll look around and see if maybe there might be something for me. So if he does I will certainly let you folks know! In the mean time, I was wondering if somebody here might point me to some information I need on connecting a 4065 ethernet card in an A4K running os 3.9 to a cable modem thru a router. That's where I've bottomed out. I haven't been able to get the BB1 or 2 downloaded, I'm trying to deal with a lot of pain from my back injuries, taking pills that make you stupid and clumsy....and this is my retreat, if you will, from an otherwise kinda crappy life. Not looking for any sympathy, mind you, but just so you know that I am an artist, a sculptor who fell in love with the Amiga and I'd like to do things with it because there just isn't any machine I have ever worked on that had such great potential. I am not trained in computers. I buy the books, I have a "rom kernel manual" and all that, for what it's worth. I even got my wife to change into a computer programmer from a microbiologist but she works in Windoze and has no interest in Amigas except to play games.... So I'll share whatever information I get and it would be great if someone who knows how to solve this modem problem could drop me a line and kinda walk me thru it, bearing in mind that I am a novice. How's that? Hell, I'd be willing to trade a Toaster off in exchange for getting my tower hooked up to the web! It's that important to me.

[Will-i-am]

well crap oh dear. My budy Larry came to spend Thanksgiving with us all and I figured he would help with this project and wouldn't it be nice to be able to tell y'll about how this board works. Larry said it was installed and working when he bought them. Well, This Monday morning Larry collapsed in our bathroom while shaving. We took him to the ER gasping for breath and with a heart just flittering all over the place. About an hour later he died. My best friend, the guy who would listen for hours and help you figure out any problem you had, personal and mechanical... is gone. So I got two machines working and was going to show him, but now I can't and now I don't know if he could have helped me get one of them to work with this card. I guess I'll figure it out myself. Be well, all, and if you guys are overweight and not paying attention, let me tell you: gasping for breath on the bathroom floor, pissing your pants and trying to talk is a real lousy way to go and real lousy thing to put your friends through. Try harder to be good to yourself.

[jj]

Dude, I am really sorry to hear about that....

Loosing your best friend sucks the big one..

I hope your son make a good recovery after all this

[seer]

@Will-i-am

My condolences to you, your family and Larry's family.

Take care.

[TjLaZer]

@JetFireDX

Dude!  I wonder if we can get some Amiga gear from this place for cheap?  ATL Ultrasound.  I am local, in Tacoma, WA.

@Will-i-am
Sorry to hear about your friend.  He sounded like a great person to know.  

[whabang]

@ Will-I-am
Sorry to hear that, dude! :-(

[Morley]

@will-i-am

When I saw your post, I didn't know what to say... loosing your friend is one thing, but seeing him pass away in such a state is something I never could have handled.

Sorry to hear about your loss, condolances from Norway to you...