A3000 <-> A4000

[sdesros]

Keeping an A4000 or an A3000 is a tough choice.

I have both.  The A3000 is very solidly built, has built in scsi, flicker-fixer.  It's biggest problem is ECS, not a big issue now if you get a graphics card.  Oh and you'll need to mod your board if you want to use the UWSCSI on a CyberStorm Mk3.

The A4000 has IDE (although perhaps not the best IDE implementation) and AGA.  You'll need a scandoubler/flicker fixer, but you can kind of get buy without a GFX card for a little bit...

If you manage to use the C=3640 in your A3000, you'll need to get a daughtercard for your A4000.   You might be able to pick up another daughter 3640 of the 030 one that came with the 4000/30.

[sdesros]

You can't switch the "daughterboards".  The A3000 has the CPU and FPU soldered onto the motherboard directly.  AFAIK, only some of the A3000T's and the prototype (A3000's that had the DSP and AGA on them) didn't have the CPU on the motherboard.  Although you might have to check it out for yourself.

The one big problem with the A3000 is that you need to take the whole thing apart to get to the ram, cpu slot, buster, ROM chips.

The A3000 also uses ZIP chips for ram, the A4000 has SIMM slots.  ZIPs are a pain to find, a pain to put in.  Both systems top up at 16 megs fast so you'll need to look at an accelerator board with SIMM slots on them if you want more.  (The 3640 houses only the CPU, nothing else.)

[sdesros]

Sorry, need to reword this. I know that the A3000 and A4000 share the same CPU slot (save for one missing connection required for the CSMKIII/PPC SCSI controller).  I've used both, and have swapped several accelerators between both.  It's just that an A3000 running with the default 030 configuration usually has it's CPU on the motherboard so there is no daughterboard that can be swapped out.

Mendark will need to get another daughterboard for his A4000.  After hearing horror stories with trying to fit A3640's in A3000D's, I would recommend that Mendark try and get his hand on another accelerator board for his A3000.  Possibly with the money he gets from selling his A4000.