A4000 desktop questions. . . .

[Thomas]

0- try to do a warm start. If the HDDs are recognised then, they are just too slow on power-up. Also boot with the Install disk and run HDToolbox to check if the HDDs are still recognised.

1- the ROM chips are below the processor board, next to the front.

2- the A4000 has the most recent chipset (AGA). The only chip worth looking at is the Buster who controls Zorro3 DMA. Check the clock battery. Cut it off if it is leaking.

3- the IDE controller can take two IDE devices (one master an one slave). As you already have two HDDs, there is no way to connect a CD-ROM drive without additional hardware. You could either use a 4-way adapter which allows you to connect another two IDE drives to the motherboard (at the same limited speed) or an additional IDE controller like the Buddha or the FastATA4000 (= PowerflyerGold).

4- try WHDLoad from www.whdload.de. It allows you to install most games on HDD and run it on AGA machines.

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

I dont see an easy way to remove this without breaking the board, since it's sitting on top of 4 plastic posts and connected on the right side like a PCI board.

You should be able to just pull it out. It's meant to be removable. The plug on the right is in fact the interface where other processor boards can be plugged in (once you've removed the original). The white plastic sticks are only spacers which prevent the board from breaking when the computer is moved. They stick between the motherboard and the processor board, but should not hold back the processor board (as long as they have not been replaced by screws or similar).

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

But am not sure where the battery is located either

The battery is on the left side of the board next to the Fast-RAM sockets.

Look at the pictures at http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=30
There is one picture "A4000 Rev B Motherboard, Front" which is like mine. It is turned 90 degrees to the left, so the "left side" I am talking about is in the bottom. The battery has been removed on the picture but you still see the white square labelled "BT176".

If you scroll to the top you see the two Kickstart chips. You also see the processor slot and that two of the white spacers are still sticking there.

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

And the battery you mentioned was already removed; the previous owner did that for me. Does it impact the A4000 if you DON'T have it?

Without the battery the Amiga does not remember the current time if you switch if off. It does not impact its function, though. You just have to get the time from anywhere else (e.g. an internet time server).

[qoute]
I still need to know what CD-RW I can use with the A4000, that won't interfere with the power supply and will work with all programs for the Amiga.
[/quote]

You can use any IDE drive. But the internal IDE bus might not allow writing faster than 2x or at max. 4x.

The modern LiteOn drives are quite short.

After I install the new Kickstarts, do I have to do anything special to make the A4000 "notice" them?

No. The Kickstart is like the BIOS on PCs. Either it works at once or it does not work at all, then the Amiga does not boot.

I have a IDE Hard Drive in the A4000 already, a Maxtor 4.1 GB. Can I replace it with something much larger, say a 20-200GB Hard Drive?

Yes, you can. But AmigaOS up to version 3.1 cannot access more than the first 4GB of the drive. There are free drivers available to overcome the limit, but it is a pain to install them. You should rather go for AmigaOS 3.5 or 3.9, they come with the needed drivers and install them automatically.

However, the boot partition (which contains the new drivers) always has to reside inside the first 4GB of the drive. Because after power-on only the Kickstart (3.1) is active and the drivers have to be loaded using the drivers in the Kickstart which can only access the first 4GB.

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

1- Just buy a longer IDE cable.

2- The MK2 fits between the CD-ROM drive and the doughter board. It takes up all the space, but it will fit. Note that the motherboard connector of the MK2 is on the bottom of the card, it is not visible on the photos. The connector you see on the photos is for the CyberSCSI MK2 module.

3- the Mediator replaces the original doughter board. As I said, the MK2 will not be in its way.

4- You don't need a PPC for the Mediator. It's only that the 060 on the CyberstormPPC (and also the MK3) is faster than the MK2 because of its 64bit memory interface.

The PPC does outrun the 060 many times, but it is only used by software especially written for the PPC. It does not speed up 68k software. None of the Mediator drivers is for PPC, so you don't need a PPC for the Mediator.

For the other recommendations:

128 MB RAM - this is the maximum you can have on an A4000 accelerator. The more RAM the better, but you don't really need it. RAM on the accelerator is much faster than RAM on the motherboard, so you should go for it.

SharkPPC - this does not yet exist. And it will not help you running 68k software.

Voodoo graphics card - You need a graphics card in the Mediator in order to be able to use some other PCI cards. The graphics memory is used for DMA. You need it for example for a 100MBit ethernet card. So if you decide to get a graphics card, you should take a Voodoo (and I recommend to get one, it's amazing to see Workbench in 1024x768x24 or even higher).

Note that the Voodoo needs a VGA monitor and programs not using the Voodoo (like most old games) still display on the Amiga video output. So you need either two monitors or a scandoubler and a monitor switch.

Bye,
Thomas