ide cable ports and a tower

[Will-i-am]

(Dang fat fingers, I just wrote this all out and then hit several of the wrong keys and lost all I wrote. poo.) I am planning on using my A4000 parts machine as the basis of a new project for me to try. Yes, I am retired and a little bored. I have 5 working Amigas and this parts box. I thought I would put the A4K in a tower. Looking over what I would gain, besides the 'fun' of doing it, I figure additional drives would be the main thing. But the IDE cable only has ends for two devices. I read that the machine can take up to 4 IDE drives, but how does one attach them? I went to the local computer chop shop and their box of cables all have 2 ports for drives on them. Is there an extension for the thing, or a splitter? I have several smallish HDs and a few CD drives but how would I get two HDs and a CD drive into a towerized A4000? Lastly, can a GVT-1000 scan upconverter allow my A4000 to hook up to a multisynch monitor and use most if not all the software I have on hand? How about the TVone AVT-3340? Google me this one, Batman!

[Will-i-am]

orange wrote:
4?, are you sure, maybe it requires some kind of buffered ide thingy?
I thought that one IDE 'channel' can control only two of them: master and slave..

At my age I'm not 100% sure of anything... but, for instance, my A4000T manual says it can support up to 7 devices internally. If I could locate my manual for the desktop model I'm reasonably sure that it said "up to 4 devices internally" I've been carrying that number around since I bought the thing and I am pretty sure that given the space inside the box the number is correct. Except for the part about finding how to get the cable figured out and, as mentioned above, what about the "master-slave" thing? I don't see why you couldn't have more than one slave, but I haven't seen it done. So naturally I went to the one place I knew I could ask such a question and not be laughed at. 8-) Now somebody tell me about these scan converters....

[Will-i-am]

Well I have no idea what was the real model number of that GVT-1000 that I listed. Haven't a clue and didn't take notes. Still, I understood that the Amiga output composite and the scan doublers I was looking into allowed for composite input. I took that to mean that since they doubled the H-scan rate from 15.7 to 31 (plus or minus) I could use that to hook up a monitor. Soooo the Amiga only puts out a decent RGB signal and the only way to use anything other than the original monitor is to buy a device that is as rare as hens teeth? oh pooh. I presume then that the incredibly expensive projectors that have h-scan rates of 15.7 are also somehow useless? I'm getting pretty depressed about now. I own 3 Toasters and two supergens and can't do anything to use my tower except to unplug all the cables from the desktop model 4K and lug the old NEC 3D over to the tower and then plug the cables back in.... that sucks for a disabled guy with degenerative vertebrae. I tried a Belkin KVM switch and that was a waste of money as well. As I see it my devotion to the hardware I bought thru the years was beautiful but kinda wasted. It's like my 8 pen plotter I have for doing CADD work (which I can't do any longer thanks to the old back). It draws beautiful curves and looks better than any inkjet I could afford, but essentially it's a fossil worth pretty much nothing. sigh. Why would a scart cable hooked to an LCD TV not need any kind of additional hardware? Ah well. Thanks for the info. Back to square one.

[Will-i-am]

I believe that Grandtec company makes the something like-GVT-1000 I mentioned before. I found this fairly cheap device which gets me closer, I think:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=30782&&source=14&doy=search
If it converts to s-video and composite then all you'd need is that device that converts from s-video to vga, right? I mean it would cost close to $200 to pull it off but since I have 5 monitors sitting here looking for an Amiga to hook up to it might be worth it. The Microvitec monitors are great finds, but we're still looking at a little 14" screen... Part of the reason I wanted a PC monitor was I can get nice big clear monitors for $80 and one aspect of these converters is that I have 3 19" Intergraph monitors that the Dept. of Transportation here tossed out because they were connected to Intergraph unix Cadd workstations. I got a couple of those workstations, too. The monitors are nice but the connectors are problematic and, of course, the h-scan rate is not right for the Amiga. So maybe all is not lost yet...

[Will-i-am]

I concede that whatever it was that I thought was a "GVT-1000" may or may not exist in this universe. 8-) Something to do with my meds, I suppose. But if I want to get my Amiga output into a PC monitor I can use the relatively inexpensive Video to PC device plugged into my Supergen? What about the Toaster? Would it be posible, if silly, to use a Toaster to convert a signal into something a Video to PC device could then get into a PC monitor? Daisy chaining cuts back on quality doesn't it?