2 CF cards and CD rom?

[giZmo350]

Yes, that's what you need to expand the single IDE port of the A4000. However, IMO the expanded IDE interface coupled with one of the TrueIDE modules would make it real easy to have two operating systems on the same IDE bus. http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=42&products_id=1203 and some info here about the TrueIDE http://wiki.icomp.de/wiki/TrueIDE. You can then use the other 4 device IDE port for your optical drive. Just a suggestion.

[giZmo350]

Oh, ok that looks interesting. does it have two slots for two CF cards?

Yes, that's the beauty of it! And it can be mounted horizontally or vertically. You can order the 2 CF cards in the options drop down when you order the TrueIDE from AmigaKit too. Switching between two operating systems is real easy...

"If TrueIDE is equipped with two CF-cards, master and slave can be  swapped by pressing and holding the reset button for more than three  seconds. This way you can build a hardware-multiboot system without  having to install a boot manager. The second system may for example be a  rescue-system that allows remote maintenance. To undo the card swap,  just press and hold reset again for more than three seconds, or  power-cycle the system"

[giZmo350]

I understand, but I like the option of being able to have a backup CF card handy and this makes the process of making that copy very easy.

Plus, If you install two 8GB CF cards, you could partition into two 4GB partitions on both 8GB CF cards and use backup.lha from AmiNet to create automatic incremental backups from both CF cards to the other (like mirroring both CF cards) while still having two operating systems since both CF cards are always "online". Kinda cool....