The A4000 that came back :-)

[A4000_Mad]

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 :-)














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

[A4000_Mad]

Ok, I'll begin by removing the battery, thanks :-)

[A4000_Mad]

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?

[A4000_Mad]

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.

[A4000_Mad]

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 :-)

[A4000_Mad]

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

[A4000_Mad]

monami wrote:

that desk looks very inviting!

ps. sorry to hear about your freind.

Thank you monami :-)

[A4000_Mad]

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)

[A4000_Mad]

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?

[A4000_Mad]

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:




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?

[A4000_Mad]

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

[A4000_Mad]

 @ 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.




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




Warp Engine 040/40




Cyberstorm 060/50



Note:- SysInfo cannot identify an 060 CPU.

:pint:

[A4000_Mad]

taunusand wrote:

But.. 7 A4000's?? WOW :-o

There's a member here 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?

[A4000_Mad]

Well I put the 2GB Maxtor hard drive and CyberVision64/3D into another A4000 and it booted straight into this Workbench screen :-)



I tested the CyberVision64/3D up to screenmode CV64/3D 16Bit 1152 x 900 :-)

[A4000_Mad]

marcfrick2112 wrote:
Hey A4000_Mad:

As for the WarpEngine software, check here

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-)