towering an a4KD- mouse and joystick placement

[Will-i-am]

Like the subject says... what do you do with the joystick and mouse ports when you towerize an A4000D? I'm wrestling with this dang desktop and the easiest solution to my problem would be if the PSU wasn't in the way of the long cased CD drive I want to install. I keep looking at inexpensive towers, hell, you can buy an older tower for $15 at a chop shop, toss out the guts and modify the crap out of the mounts...all of which I can do, but the mouse and joystick ports are attached to the mobo. HOw do you end up with them on the back or some other convenient location? I do NOT have $400 to buy a special tower case for the beast. I can scrape up maybe $30. Hell to be an Amiga freak and not have a lot of cash.

[TheMagicM]

buy 'extension' cables for the mouse/kb port..modify a rear plate to mount them on..and viola..done.

[Will-i-am]

okay, not trying to be REAL stupid here... the ports are soldered to the mobo, right? I'm looking at them now. Are you attaching these extensions to the wires on the mobo, or plugging them into the ports themselves? The other end of the extension cable would have what? A second pair of ports? If so, where would you get them? If you mean cut the ports from the board and wire up extensions to carry the ports over to the back plate of the tower, where is the best place to cut them free? I had thought about taking my other desktop apart for a second pair of ports and sort of cobbing up some extensions from old joysticks and mice, but was hoping for a more "elegant" solution. On the other hand, if I'm talking about hacking an old Gateway tower or a cheapo CompUSA model, I suppose "elegant" is out...Here's an off the wall point I was wondering about as well. I'm REALLY interested in carving a tower out of some black walnut/butternut wood and making a computer that looks like an Art Nouveau cabinet. Can you think of a problem with a roomy but wooden box to place a computer into? It might look a bit like a vanity only with the monitor taking the place of the mirror.

[doctorq]

Just get a cable with a 9-pin male connector on one end and a 9-pin female connector on the other end. Plug this extension to your existing mouse or joystick port, and put the other end where you want it on the backplate of the tower.

[patrik]

@Will-i-am:

Why not just buy a new short CD-ROM drive like the Lite-On 529S which works fine in the A4000D and is just 17cm deep, leaving 4.5cm of clearance between it and the powersupply. This is a very easy solution to your problem and it shouldnt set you back more than somewhere between $15 to $20.

As another plus you will also be able to keep the A4000D in its original Amiga-looking case .


/Patrik

[Will-i-am]

patrik wrote:
@Will-i-am:

Why not just buy a new short CD-ROM drive like the Lite-On 529S which works fine in the A4000D and is just 17cm deep, leaving 4.5cm of clearance between it and the powersupply. This is a very easy solution to your problem and it shouldnt set you back more than somewhere between $15 to $20.

As another plus you will also be able to keep the A4000D in its original Amiga-looking case .


/Patrik

Well, the basic reason I guess is that I didn't know about it..8-) AND the second reason, which could be the main reason, is that I have been trying to figure out why the short CD drive I already bought doesn't seem to want to work on the desktop model even though it works just great on the tower model I have. So I figured maybe I could leave the short drive in the tower and put the long one in the desktop and everything works fine except for the part about the long drive sticking out of the front of the desktop model. So a tower case (cheap) became an option except I couldn't find info on what to do about the placement of the joystick and mouse ports. It looked to me like they'd end up on the bottom of the tower or somewhere inside. $20 eh? I could live with that if the dang thing actually worked on THIS particular Amiga, currently known as the Beast. It's amazing how many articles you can find on towerizing an A1200 and how few you can find on towerizing an A4000. I even sent out an email to a guy selling CD drives to find out if it would fit a 4000D and got a snotty reply back that the A4000 was a piece of "crap" and he wouldn't even answer the question! Sheesh. I kinda like my 4000's....I have 3 of them. I like the way they do my CADD stuff and the animations are nice. Except this damn CD drive doesn't FIT!. Okay..extension cords for the ports. Got it.

[TheMagicM]

I'm surprised you're having problems w/a CDROM drive.. I have a old 32x IDE CDROM and it fits just fine.  I didnt even measure..just plugged it in and it fit.  Dont tower the A4kD just because of a CDROM drive..just go to your PC shop and find a "shorter" one.  Take yours with you to compare.

[doctorq]

@Will-i-am

I'm sorry to say it, but you must be doing something wrong when connecting the CD drive, because to my knowledge it's not possible that a CD drive that works on one Amiga doesn't work on a different one. I have swapped more than 10 CD drives from one Amiga to other without any problems, both from A4000 to A1200 and the other way around, even with a A600 all drives worked.

Are you sure that the interfaces are the same kind? AFAIK the A4000 Tower has a built in scsi interface, so if you are using this on the tower A4k, it won't work in the A4k desktop as it only has an IDE interface.

I'm just asking, because I have heard of people connecting a CD drive to their floppy cable, even though the socket and cable doesn't match. You should think that it would get people to think twice if they have done something wrong, but it didn't. Surprise, surprise, the motherboard broke.

[patrik]

@Will-i-am:

Have you tried the exact same setup that works in your A4000T (the same harddrive, short CD-ROM and maybe even IDE-cable)? This as some IDE-harddrives, very common amongst older ones can be a real arse if they have to share the IDE-cable with another device, making one of the devices just disappear.


/Patrik

[Will-i-am]

Hey, I'm perfectly capable of plugging in the drive to the wrong cable and all that. But I have been very methodical in this. It's a brand new out of the box Sony CD drive. It works fine on the IDE cable plugged into the IDE interface on the tower. No problem. I even installed os 3.9 using it. BUT when I plug it into the IDE cable on the desktop model the thing won't even boot from a floppy. I plug the IDE CD drive which works fine on the Tower into the exact same cable (the tower has both ide and scsi) and it boots just fine. The ide drive in the tower, the longer cased drive, is an older one bought at a chop shop. It works on both machines. I know I can buy a short case that works on the desktop, sure. You can spend anywhere from $120 to $35 as far as I can tell, BUT it is a problem with, so far, no solution. And like many Amigans, a problem like this drives me freakin' crazy!! WHY won't the blankety blank SOB BOOT even from a floppy. It acts like there's some kind of a short, or the floppy drive isn't plugged in. I tell ya, I have been very careful. I have to think there is some difference here that we are missing. Geez, I got two threads on the same subject! Well, look, the tower-joystick port question is solved. I will babble on about the CD drive on the CD drive thread, okay? But I'm serious... it is a real skull cracher....

[patrik]

@Will-i-am:

Is the short CD-ROM the only unit on the IDE-cable in the A4000D?

Is the short CD-ROM jumpered as master or slave?

When it doesnt even want to boot from a floppy, does the harddrive-light on the A4000D stay lit forever?


/Patrik

[Brian]

It could sound like IDE conflicts. If you've jumpered the IDE devices to cableselect try hardjumper them master and slave.

[Will-i-am]

patrik wrote:
@Will-i-am:

Is the short CD-ROM the only unit on the IDE-cable in the A4000D?

Is the short CD-ROM jumpered as master or slave?

When it doesnt even want to boot from a floppy, does the harddrive-light on the A4000D stay lit forever?


/Patrik

Some of this I covered in the other thread...but I have tried all configurations of HD, CD and jumpers for master and slave. Bottom line is that when the short case is plugged into the desktop, it won't boot. Same drive plugged into the tower boots just fine. Long case CD plugged into the desktop at the same point and the same settings boots just fine. Makes no sense, does it? So either I forget having a CD drive in the desktop, or I buy another one with a short case and hope this one works, or I put the long case in the desktop and have it stick out over the floppy drive 1". I'm ready to give up. There's a difference but I can't find it. Must be the meds.

[patrik]

@Will-i-am:

Have you tried this?
1. Remove the IDE-harddrive completely from the A4000D.
2. Jumper the short CD-ROM as master.
3. Connect one of the outer end connectors of the IDE-cable to the A4000D IDE-connector.
4. Connect the other outer end connector of the IDE-cable to the short CD-ROM.

Then see if it boots from a Workbench-floppy.


/Patrik

[Will-i-am]

patrik wrote:
@Will-i-am:

Have you tried this?
1. Remove the IDE-harddrive completely from the A4000D.
2. Jumper the short CD-ROM as master.
3. Connect one of the outer end connectors of the IDE-cable to the A4000D IDE-connector.
4. Connect the other outer end connector of the IDE-cable to the short CD-ROM.

Then see if it boots from a Workbench-floppy.


/Patrik

yes, all of the above. The quandry is illustrated like this. You take two CD/RW drives, one with a short case, one with a long case. Set both of them to "slave" and the HD to "master" Plug the long case into the ide cable. The computer boots and the drive is usable. Now unplug the drive and plug in the short cased drive. Turn on the power. The HD lights up then the CD drive light flashes, the HD light goes out and the machine sits there with not a flicker on the monitor. Normally this would say the short cased drive is busted, right? Now turn to the tower a4000 with the cyberstorm cpu. Plug in the long cased drive, the thing boots just fine. Unplug it and plug in the short cased drive. The thing boots just fine. Try the desktop machine with the CD drive(s) as master, as slave, as the sole drive in the machine booting from floppy...whatever I try, if the short case is plugged in, nothing will make the desktop boot. Makes not a lick of sense! I was hoping someone would tell me that the short case Sony drives have some kind of setting internally that the tower can override or something but the desktop can't handle. No such luck. Nobody can explain it. It could very well be something I'm doing, but it would have to be something I have consistantly done a couple of dozen times and I find that hard to believe. I mean, plugging-unplugging...check the pins, check the jumpers.... it's not rocket science, it's not like configuring a cable modem....which I can't do. But Since nobody can figure it out, then I say to hell with it. I'll leave the drive out of the desktop model, use it in the tower and have a tower with two working cd/rw drives. Now I have to figure out why the tower won't install Boingbag 1. It was supposed to help the other strange things the tower exhibits but only goes to 40% and then hangs up. The tower works well on some things, but screws up on others. But it will run all the CD drives I can plug in, short and long....