A4000 desktop questions. . . .

[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

[Edpon]

@Thomas
  Thanks man, I got the board off, without any problems. 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?

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. I keep hearing about a certain model Toshiba, but no one lists the specific model.

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

One last thing; 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?

Thanks.

Ed
 :-D

[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

[Edpon]

Ok, some more problems are coming up as I go deeper and deeper into the upgrade of my A4000. . .

1-I found a good sized CD-RW for the A4000, an A-Open. It's only about 5" long so I have plenty of space between it and the Power supply, but now I can't attach the IDE cable because it's too far from the HD. Any suggestions?

2-I want to buy a Cyberstorm MK-II, and I was worried about something that will deal with my next question. If you go to the Big Book of Amiga Hardware, it shows the MK-II with a CPU connector on it's right side, going vertical. Looking at my A4000, the only way to attach the MK-II would be, if you're looking at the front of the AMiga then down into it, from the CPU connection to over the memory modules. Is that right? If so....

3-I want to also buy the Mediator PCI 4000 Di. If the Cyberstorm MK-II goes all the way from the CPU connection, to over the memory modules, how am I going to install this board?

4-The Mediator recommends getting a group of things that would make it operate much better in your A4000. Why would I need a '060 accelerator AND a PPC? Wouldn't the PPC far outpace the '060 anyway?

Thanks, and like I say many times, please bear with me, I'm still re-learning the Amiga.

Ed
  :-D

[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