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[graffias79]

HELP!

I had a friend visit me recently and as a result I inhereted an A4000D!  That now brings my collection up to:

1x A500
3x A2500
1x A3000T
1x A1200
1x A4000

I guess I'm becoming a classic Amiga foster home!  :-)

Anyway I also inhereted a Blizzard 1260 card!! (happy dance)  But my point was actually about the A4000, and the A3640 CPU card.  Is that card normally a piece of crap or what?  To me it seems incredibly slow.  I also have a Picasso II card installed.  I wanted to try speeding it up by installing my GVP Trex 4040 card in it to see if I could pull the speed out of the toilet.  Unfortunately the 4000 does not boot at all when that card is installed.  It works fine in the 3000T.  Is there an incompatibility there with jumper settings perhaps?  The Big Book of Amiga Hardware doesn't seem to have any info on jumper settings for the TRex either.  My card is a rev 4.00(S).

Well Just wondering if anyone knew the functions of the jumpers on the TRex card.

Also, is it better to use Cybergraphics v3 or Picasso 96 with the Picasso II?

Thanks
-Jamie

[adolescent]

Yes, the A3640 is crap.  Yank it out and sell it on eBay.  (If it's a rev 3.1 or 3.2 it should sell for a good chunk of change.  I sold my original 3.1 a few years back for $120!)

To get the T-Rex working you might need to set the INT/EXT jumpers (J100/J104) on the A4000 motherboard.  AFAIK, they should be set to INT when using the T-Rex, whereas the A3640 needs them set at EXT.

[adolescent]

BTW, nice collection.  I'm now stocked up with the following (all paid $$$ for unfortunately :-()

A600HD
A1200HD
A1200/060
A3000 (My oldest stopped working recently after I yanked the CSMK2 060/66MHz out and put the old Mercury 040/40MHz back in).  Hopefully just a bad connection.
A4000/060+PCI (A4000Di)
A4000/060+PCI (Mirage tower)
CD32

[X-ray]

/me adds his vote to the "A3640 is crap" campaign.

I took that festering heat-producing sloth out of my A4000T and sold it as soon as I could afford a MKII.
That 040 card may still have value as a backup or a test card though.

[x56h34]

A3640 is pretty good as a low cost upgrade, if you are happy with your 16MB or ram on the motherboard and on-board IDE (or SCSI if it's an A3000) controller.

The ultimate test card is A3630. ;-)

[Brian]

The 3640 is crappy in that it's the slowest of all 040 boards, it doesn't allow to add more fastram (hence the slow speed due to banging for motherboard ram). It have several capasitors oriented the wrong way resulting in dying cards or worse. Add to that the incompability a 040 CPU brings with it in the first place it belong to the "hall of shame". I must admit one of my A4000 have a 3640 card only because the 3630 is too damn slow and I've not yet stumbled uppon a cheap Blizzard4030 or 060 card.