Resurrected A4000

[slayer]

Okay, so I decided to increase the size of the existing Amiga community by one yesterday, and I dug out my A4000 (with a Toaster), found my connectors (minus a keyboard adapter), and fired her up. I about a half hour later, my screen went dark, and I determined that I have a bad fast RAM SIMM.

So, I have to purchase some memory, a keyboard adapter, and probably a bunch of other stuff to get this thing ready for prime time. I have 3.0 kickstart ROMs, so I am sure that has to go, but I kinda want to make this thing ready for AOS 4.1.

Just a few questions:

1. What should I plan on buying?

A CyberStorm 604 233Mhz 060 and AmigaOS4 for classic machines

2. What hardware do I need for an appropriate accelerator? Where can I find one that isn't prohibitively expensive?

See above and I can't say where you'd get one cheap, maybe a lower spec one

Join http://www.amibay.com a site that buys and sells Amiga gear.

3. Do I need a ZorRAM card, or how much memory is appropriate for OS4?

If you have 128 Megs on the Cyberstorm this is plenty of ram for everything
you will need to run. The only thing I can think of that would benefit is if you
wish to run the m68k OWB web browser and if you want to push the limits
of any ray tracing package... although I do quite extensive scenes with Imagine
and never ran out of memory...

4. Can I just plug any old IDE CDROM drive in, or is there anything I need to be aw
are of?

As long as the plug fits there shouldn't be anything to consider

5. What should I get for network connectivity?

I use the Ariadne II card

Thanks for your help. I am really looking forward to using this again, but I honestly don't have much A4000 experience. I used to use an A2000 regularly, but that was a long time ago.

No worries

good luck

[slayer]

You may need a graphics card too

CyberVisionPPC
PicassoIV
Cybervision64/3D
Cybervision64
etc etc...

[slayer]

I don't need anything special to use a CyberStorm, do I? Does it just plug into a ZORRO III slot?

It plugs into your CPU slot not the A4000 daughter board. I think I recognise you
bidding on a CS at the moment. The only thing you might need to do is change
a few jumpers on your board to Ext. Ask the seller about this. (of course, if
you have an 040 CPU installed it would have already been done.

I'll have to look for this one, since I'm unfamiliar with it. Thanks for all your advice!

It worked well in my A4000 towerised Setup running OS4

[slayer]

Check out these sites to read up a bit about your bits and pieces

http://amiga.resource.cx/

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/ and/or http://www.bboah.com/

I do have a spare 604e but I'm not sure what config it is and I'm not likely to know for quite some time... so good luck!

[slayer]

I dont know why no one else said this, but seriously, if its OS4 you want to run you should get a SAM board, the A4000 wont even run the latest OS4 version and to get it up to speed i can see you using more cash on it then a SAM and it will be much slower in useage. If it were me, id just keep the A4000 for retro things and get a SAM board asap.

Now come on, there's no reason why he can't have both!

OS4 on the PPC is very nice... I used it for a long time before I got my first SAM...

We've been talking across boards and I actually recommended on Amibay that he skip SAMep and SAMFlex and go right for a SAM460

But when he first posted here he seemed pretty determined to get his A4000 up to spec (although he does single out OS4 as a goal) If it had been someone else and someone recommended them going to a SAM instead the response probably would have been, I know about the NG Amigas I'm not interested in going there :crazy:

in any case it all seems to be working out nicely :juggler:

[slayer]

are there components that I should replace no matter what at this point just because they're old, likely to fail, or just good ideas?

Not really as long as it's been stored well... I mean lets face it if its been too damp things just might not work as they should anymore...

Depending on how far you want to go in supping up your A4000 (in light of the SAM revelation) due to incompatiabilities between expansion boards you might want to check that your Buster Chip is revision 11... but sometimes this is hit and miss anyway so perhaps only explore this is you get it altogether and there are quirks in areas once operational...

Now it may all sound problemactic but I assure you anything is easy 1 step at a time :hammer:

As for battery leaking it does seem to be a problem especially for people storing there stuff vertically (acid can run down the MB) but the drier its been the more likely your battery will be okay... in my very vast collection of hardware I've only ever encountered one leaky battery and that was on a A3000 Desktop I'd only just picked up in a recent auction...