Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: A4000_Mad on February 13, 2008, 05:05:30 PM
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Hi all,
About 7 years ago I spent quite a few enjoyable hours getting an A4000 to work for a great friend of mine. Basically I fitted and partitioned a 2GB HDD, installed OS3.9 and put in the Cybervision64/3D that I had bought off of Amibench for him. Andy tragically caught that awful CJD and died 5 years ago :-( I didn't expect to ever see it again as his brothers were asked to sort out all his computer stuff. Then last night his widow let me know that his A4000 was still there and that I could have it as it would only be going to the dump.
Before I do anything with it I thought I'd take some pix, tell its story to you guys and ask a question or two :-)
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/A4000-H1.jpg)
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/A4000-H2.jpg)
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/A4000-H3.jpg)
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/A4000-H4.jpg)
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/A4000-H5.jpg)
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/A4000-H6.jpg)
I know that battery must be removed and some cleaning done, but do you think it would be ok to switch it on just the once to see if it still alive? Or could switching it on as it is cause any chance of it surviving to be lost?
Thanks
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I would definately remove and clean first before switching it on.
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The battery, THE BATTERY!!! :-o :-o :-o
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the battery!
you have to remove the battery ASAP!!!!!
dont replace it,just remove it.
clean the surface with alchohol,and post some high res pics in here .it seems to be in a bad condition....
as for the extras,there seems to be a wrapengine ,with onboard scsi ,which you should use,and some that bridge card,which is useless.
have fun mate,that what your friend would want.
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Ok, I'll begin by removing the battery, thanks :-)
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what happened to the warp engine ?
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The battery says 3.6v in the picture. 10mah 018 Mempac 591-477.
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Nice to see you still have the latch cover thingy on the bottom on monitor as I have seen so many with it broken off.
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:lol: Sorry about that. It's a loverly story and it's nice to see it has a new home. :-)
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ChuckT wrote:
The battery says 3.6v in the picture. 10mah 018 Mempac 591-477.
110 mAh.
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tokyoracer wrote:
It's a loverly story and it's nice to see it has a new home. :-)
Many thanks. I feel sure that Andy would have wanted me to have it :-)
countzero wrote:
what happened to the warp engine ?
I don't quite understand your question. It worked perfectly and was extremely fast the last time it was here. Does it look faulty or like something is missing to you mate?
ChuckT wrote:
The battery says 3.6v in the picture. 10mah 018 Mempac 591-477
Yes, it's not the standard type. Andy had it prefessionally fitted. He changed the ROMS to 3.1 but didn't want to mess around with the mobo battery. I can't say I enjoy doing it either :nervous:
theformula wrote:
Nice to see you still have the latch cover thingy on the bottom on monitor as I have seen so many with it broken off.
Yes, it's in pretty good condition. I tried it on my Picasso II today. It displayed 640x 480 16bit ok along with Hi Res and Hi Res Laced. Anyone know what the maximum is for the Commodore 1942 as I don't want to push it too hard and break it?
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sorry, there seems to be a white dust or specle between the NCR chip and the SCSI port.
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A4000_Mad wrote:...
countzero wrote:
what happened to the warp engine ?
I don't quite understand your question. It worked perfectly and was extremely fast the last time it was here. Does it look faulty or like something is missing to you mate?...
Look closely at the top of the NCR chip, is that dust on the circuitboard or is it corroded??
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A4000_Mad wrote:
Anyone know what the maximum is for the Commodore 1942 as I don't want to push it too hard and break it?
Odds are that it will take most standard and doubled Amiga modes at full overscan.
http://amigahardware.mariomisic.de/cgi-bin/showhardware_en.cgi?HARDID=854
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I see what you mean by the photo above. Just looked at the real Warp Engine and it is spotless. Wierd! Mind you, the top 3 pix were taken with a Nokia N95 and the bottom 3 were just grabbed to the memory stick of my old a Sony DCR TRV-320E camcorder.
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meega wrote:
A4000_Mad wrote:
Anyone know what the maximum is for the Commodore 1942 as I don't want to push it too hard and break it?
Odds are that it will take most standard and doubled Amiga modes at full overscan.
http://amigahardware.mariomisic.de/cgi-bin/showhardware_en.cgi?HARDID=854
That's a great link thanks meega :-)
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A4000_Mad wrote:
I see what you mean by the photo above. Just looked at the real Warp Engine and it is spotless. Wierd! Mind you, the top 3 pix were taken with a Nokia N95 and the bottom 3 were just grabbed to the memory stick of my old a Sony DCR TRV-320E camcorder.
Pfew, except for the battery leakage she's flawless then :-D
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Krusher wrote:
A4000_Mad wrote:
I see what you mean by the photo above. Just looked at the real Warp Engine and it is spotless. Wierd! Mind you, the top 3 pix were taken with a Nokia N95 and the bottom 3 were just grabbed to the memory stick of my old a Sony DCR TRV-320E camcorder.
Pfew, except for the battery leakage she's flawless then :-D
:lol: Hey! Prehaps the battery leakage is just another bad photo as well :-D
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A4000_Mad wrote:
...
:lol: Hey! Prehaps the battery leakage is just another bad photo as well :-D
There is no battery
:lol: :-P
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that desk looks very inviting!
ps. sorry to hear about your freind.
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How many A4k's now? 15? 20? :crazy:
What's this one then? 030, 040? :-?
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monami wrote:
that desk looks very inviting!
ps. sorry to hear about your freind.
Thank you monami :-)
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tokyoracer wrote:
How many A4k's now? 15? 20? :crazy:
What's this one then? 030, 040? :-?
I'm not that greedy :lol: I did have 7 but sold one to an A.Org member who desperately wanted one. Now I'm back up to 7 again :-) :-) :-)
It's an 040 at 40Mhz. Not that far behind a Cyberstorm 060/50. I'll post a SysInfo screengrab showing its speed (assuming it still works :-D)
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my condolences about your friend too. didn't know what CJD is. Just looked it up, it sounds terrible. my prayers for him and his wife ...
by the way, that looks like a cute bridgeboard too (if you won't make use of it wink wink ;))
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countzero wrote:
my condolences about your friend too. didn't know what CJD is. Just looked it up, it sounds terrible. my prayers for him and his wife ...
Thank you countzero. Yes, it's the human form of mad-cow disease. I've watched loved ones die from cancer, but I was not prepared to see anything like what this dreadful disease does to a person. Apperently only 200 people have died from it in the UK. Andy sure was unlucky :-(
by the way, that looks like a cute bridgeboard too (if you won't make use of it wink wink ;))
Actually, I'm curious about this bridgeboard having never seen one. Didn't keropi post pix of his A4000 running PC games with a bridgeboard, or was that something else?
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A4000_Mad wrote:
It's an 040 at 40Mhz. Not that far behind a Cyberstorm 060/50. I'll post a SysInfo screengrab showing its speed
According to Sysinfo my Cyberstorm MK3 (060/50) is actually an 040 at 392MHz!!
That means your Warpengine is miles behind! :lol:
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Wow, was OS3.9 really 7 years ago?!
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The 1942 will take 800x600 from a graphics card, but doesn't like 1024x768 or higher, unfortunately.
Sorry to hear about your friend: that's an awful disease and a horrible way to go for everyone involved :(
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"Wow, was OS3.9 really 7 years ago?!"
when you start to look like your avatar worry! ;-)
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AmiJIm wrote:
the battery!
you have to remove the battery ASAP!!!!!
dont replace it,just remove it.
clean the surface with alchohol,and post some high res pics in here .it seems to be in a bad condition....
as for the extras,there seems to be a wrapengine ,with onboard scsi ,which you should use,and some that bridge card,which is useless.
have fun mate,that what your friend would want.
Thank you AmiJim :pint:
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/A4000-H7.jpg)
Well she's all stripped down and ready for me to remove that battery and do some cleaning :-)
I'll also be able to test the HDD, CV64/3D and Warp Engine in another A4000. I'm curious to know whether the bridgeboard can still do its thing. Does anyone have any idea how I would go about testing it?
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Big up to your friend in the sky, but doesn't it feel strange to use that Amiga? I mean, he used it, there must be files from him there..
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Krusher wrote:
Big up to your friend in the sky, but doesn't it feel strange to use that Amiga? I mean, he used it, there must be files from him there..
No, I don't feel that there's anything strange or spooky about using this A4000. My very first and mostly used A4000 came from Andy too (the one in my avatar), and I happily remember him whenever I use it and the other Amigas and PC's I bought off of him. In fact, had I been told that it had been dumped instead of that it was still there, I think I would have felt extremely sad and that I had let him down in some kind of way.
EDIT - My posts just don't look complete to me without at least one smilie :-D
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@ krusher & countzero
Your spotting something in my first pic of the Warp Engine has been playing on my mind :nervous: So I decided to put checking it out to the top of the list. Here's a better photo of it taken with a Nokia N95 in natural daylight.
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/WarpEngine-H.jpg)
I ran it for an hour today in a different A4000 and it is perfectly fine :-) I was surprised to find that it had 64MB of onboard memory, as I thought it only had about half that amount. It's pretty fast as you can see from these SysInfo speed comparisons :-
040/25
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/040.jpg)
Warp Engine 040/40
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/WarpEngine-Sys.jpg)
Cyberstorm 060/50
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/060.jpg)
Note:- SysInfo cannot identify an 060 CPU.
:pint:
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Nice :-D
But.. 7 A4000's?? WOW :-o
I thought I was bad, to collect more than one Amiga.. But when I have finished re-building the house (upstairs) there will be a whole room for them to be setup. Instead of having to clean up the living room when I have a visit :lol:
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yup, warp engine is an awesome board, I know because I own one :) (in my A3000) wait until you use its SCSI.
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taunusand wrote:
But.. 7 A4000's?? WOW :-o
There's a member here (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=29797) with 8 A4000's. The greedy #%&*%$ :lol:
countzero wrote:
wait until you use its SCSI.
I look forward to doing that 8-) I don't have any software for the Warp Engine, so I guess I might need to get some? My 50 pin SCSI HDD's are 'oktagon.device' on Oktagon SCSI cards at the moment. Will a SCSI HDD on the Warp Engine be a 'warp.device', 'scsi.device' or something else?
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Well I put the 2GB Maxtor hard drive and CyberVision64/3D into another A4000 and it booted straight into this Workbench screen :-)
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/Andybench.jpg)
I tested the CyberVision64/3D up to screenmode CV64/3D 16Bit 1152 x 900 :-)
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Hey A4000_Mad:
As for the WarpEngine software, check here (http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/warpengine)
Second, you don't really need it to use the SCSI interface,
AFAIK... my Zip drive was recognized straight away.
:-D
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That bridge board must be quite rare. I have never seen this one and neither BBoAH nor AHD have it listed.
Does it say somwhere on the PCB who made it ?
A closeup of the board would be interesting too.
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Lemmink wrote:
That bridge board must be quite rare. I have never seen this one and neither BBoAH nor AHD have it listed.
Does it say somwhere on the PCB who made it ?
A closeup of the board would be interesting too.
Isn't it just a regular A2088?
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marcfrick2112 wrote:
Hey A4000_Mad:
As for the WarpEngine software, check here (http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/warpengine)
Second, you don't really need it to use the SCSI interface,
AFAIK... my Zip drive was recognized straight away.
:-D
Hi marc
Thanks for the link :-) I've downloaded 'WarpEngine.dms' and 'WarpEngine.pdf' to have a look at. So your Zip showed up as a normal 'scsi.device' 8-)
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Lemmink wrote:
That bridge board must be quite rare. I have never seen this one and neither BBoAH nor AHD have it listed.
Does it say somwhere on the PCB who made it ?
A closeup of the board would be interesting too.
Hi lemmink
It's a Commodore A2386SX. I just searched and found it at BBOAH:-
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/a2386sx.jpg)
""Emulates: PC
Processor: Intel 386sx@16Mhz, Intel 386sx@20Mhz or Intel 386sx@25Mhz, optional 387 FPU (PLCC)
RAM: 1MB (Expandable to 8MB with ZIPs, 16MB with a ZIP to SIMM converter)
Graphics Emulation: MDA
CGA
(can use real ISA graphics cards)
Sound Emulation: Real PC speaker
(can use real ISA sound cards)
A full length Zorro II card which emulates a PC at the full speed of a 386. It was available with three different speeds of 386, from 16Mhz to 25Mhz. The card plugs into both a Zorro II slot and an ISA slot and was capable of using real ISA cards. This bridgeboard could use your existing Amiga's floppy drives or dedicated floppy drives. Although the bridgeboard does not allow you to use ISA cards from the Amiga side, there is a special driver available from Aminet that does let you use NE2000 network cards from the Amiga.""
The one I've got doesn't have a battery fitted at the moment as in the pic from BBOAH (thank goodness :-)), but it does have a chip 'Cyrix FastMath CX83S87 -25 -JP' fitted in the empty socket above and to the left of the blue battery.
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Very sorry to hear about your friend there buddy. I hope his family is recovering well and finding positive ways to deal with the loss of their loved one. I really hope that everytime you turn on that miggy that you remember him and his family.
Cheers!!!!
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I will thank you amigakid :pint:
AmiJIm wrote:
post some high res pics in here
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/A4000-H8.jpg)
I won't be fitting a new battery, but I'm going to paint something over that exposed bit of copper tracking :-)
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Well I couldn't stand to wait any longer to try the motherboard. So I screwed the mobo back to the chassis and connected just the PSU, RAM and Warp Engine. Then I plugged on an external SD/FF, grabbed a PC monitor and switched her on :nervous:
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/A4000-H9.jpg)
I HAVE AN INSERT DISK PROMPT SCREEN GUYS :banana:
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WOW, that 040 card back there is much nicer then mine. =(
You are one lucky (and possibly rich) person. :-P
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tokyoracer wrote:
WOW, that 040 card back there is much nicer then mine. =(
You are one lucky (and possibly rich) person. :-P
I do indeed feel very lucky to have this particular 040 :-)
Unfortunately I'm not lucky enough to be rich as well :bigcry:
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Well she's all back together and working perfectly :banana:
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/A4000-H10.jpg)
I'm really happy about this and would like to thank you all for your views, help and kind words :-)
@ Andy
I hope you are looking down with a smile on your face my friend :pint:
:cheers: