Amiga 4000 Hard Drive Issue

[Managarm]

I bought this off Ebay last week...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260221679368

I got it home and it wouldn't power on. After pulling and poking a lot of things I found the daughtherboard had come loose from the motherboard. However, when I plugged in the hardrive I was think in my excitement I put it in upside down as a little puff of smoke came up from the adapter.

Can I replace the 3.5" to 2.5" adapter and still use it or have I destroyed the poor thing?

If it's good news I saw this on Amigakit.com...

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=42&products_id=68&osCsid=95c5279e709ba2a43e27341b2e074dc3

Do I have to use this or will any adapter from say, Maplin work?

[doctorq]

It will work alright, but there are a variety of these adapters around, for instance on ebay. But why not put a 3.5" hdd in the machine?

Anyway, for testing the computer, power it up with no harddrive installed, and if you get a purple screen after half a minute, the computer is working. However, that's not meaning you haven't broken anything, but at least it's powering on, and you can go from there.

[Managarm]

Thanks for that. With the hard drive disconnected it loads up fine, the purple screen with the disk animation comes up. I've loaded a few floppies and they boot up fine (Well actually it was just Breathless over and over again.). I might go out now and buy a 3.5" drive. Am I right in thinking I'm limited to 4 gigs? I'm running Workbench 3.1 on 3.0 ROMs.

[Thomas]

Am I right in thinking I'm limited to 4 gigs? I'm running Workbench 3.1 on 3.0 ROMs.

Yes, but this is a software limit only. You can buy a drive up to 128 gig. As long as you create partitions only in the first 4GB of the drive, you are fine. Software to use the rest of the drive can be installed later.

However, with Kick 3.0 you should be prepared that the HDD is not found after power-on (either sometimes or always, depending on the drive and the weather). You might have to press Ctrl-A-A once in order to boot from HDD.

Bye,
Thomas

[doctorq]

Yes, but this is a software limit only. You can buy a drive up to 128 gig.

Thomas knows more about this than me, but the above statement can be misunderstood. You can install a harddrive bigger than 128 GB, but you will only be able to use 128 GB of the drive. For instance, you can install a 160 GB drive, but you can only make use of 128 GB of the drive. Buying a drive bigger than 130 GB will therefore be pointless.

[Managarm]

It worked!!! The new adapter fixed it. Now to spend the next week downloading Workbench enhancements and WHDLoad. Thanks everyone for your replies.