A3640 questions

[melott]

The way I solved the heat problem of the A3640 card is ..
I added a heatsinc on the CPU then I took a 486 CPU fan
and mounted it on an 'L' bracket that drops down thru the
slot behind the floppy drive and pointed it toward the
68040 & heatsinc. The floppy drive holds the bracket in
place. I ran it in my A3k this way for about a year until
I got my WarpEngine. Now its in my wife's A3k/16mhz and
still working fine. (No case hacking required)

[icbrkr]

This is close to what I was thinking of doing but I wasn't sure where the CPU would be when it was installed.  Great!  I'll try that.  

[KThunder]

you can also take the drive bay stuff out and drill a pattern of holes right over were the 040 sits that will help the air rise and disspate better

[icbrkr]

Which drive bay does it end up residing under?  I currently have a HD in the rightmost drive but I'm wondering if I can "doublestack it" on top of the 3.5" SCSI drive in the back...

[KThunder]

i think it is under the back of the right drive.

[patrik]

@icbrkr:

The drives will probably get very hot and fail much sooner than they are supposed to if you doublestack them. Reasonably sized drives are cheap - consider replacing them both with just one.


/Patrik

[TjLaZer]

@icebrkr

Dude you got an awesome wife!  She also tracked down ZIP chips?  Holy crap man that is one awesome wife!!!!  Tell her she is a KEEPER!!!

[icbrkr]

TjLaZer wrote:
@icebrkr

Due you got an awesome wife!  She also tracked down ZIP chips?  Holy crap man that is one awesome wife!!!!  Tell her she is a KEEPER!!!

Yeah, I think I'll keep her around awhile  

@patrik

I've been doublestacking drives for years without issue  I've yet to lose a drive to heat (and if you think that's scarey, I have a couple of PC's that run in a small, enclosed, ventless closet that run 24/7).  I will probably replace it with just one drive when I grab a Budda controller or similar.  Right now I need to have the SCSI+IDE setup since the Xsurf's IDE is non bootable.  I also have a 20GB 2.5" IDE here I might put in instead (very little heat issues then

[patrik]

@icbrkr:

The closet thing doesnt scare me, I have one like that too and there is no real problem in keeping the temperatures. The doublestacking scares me as much as when people consider a normal idle harddrive temperature to be 55C - both generally ends up in a rather short life for the harddrives. Even if you havent had any issues, stuff generally lasts much longer if you keep it at sensible temperatures.

Btw, a tip for speed - get yourself a reasonable sized scsi harddrive instead. The A3000 scsi controller uses dma and as such loads the cpu very little plus it also gives higher transferrates than any Zorro2 controller. If you are hellbent on ide - then buy one of those Acard ide-to-scsi bridges and enjoy the benefits of the A3000 scsi controller whilst still using ide.


/Patrik

[icbrkr]

I'm only hellbent on using IDE due to the fact I have a ton of them lying around.  Currently there's a 4.3GB SCSI and a 12GB IDE in the machine.  I've got the 12GB in there as I wasn't sure how much space would be taken up once I transferred all my games over to it (seems to be about 2.5GB worth of games).   I might see how it goes once I'm done loading it up with whatever I need.

[patrik]

@icbrkr:

Btw, I forgot to mention that the Acard ide-to-scsi bridge only costs 5 EUR more compared to the Buddha at vesalia.de. Sure, you can only use one harddrive with the Acard bridge, but you should honestly not need more than one harddrive given the price and size of ide harddrives nowadays.


/Patrik

[TjLaZer]

@icebrkr

How do you have a IDE in a A3000?  

My 20GB IDE in my A4000 screams compared to my 18GB SCSI 2 HD.

[icbrkr]

I've got it hooked up to an Xsurf3 card.

The A3640 came in today - dead :/  I threw it into the 3000 and was greeted with a nice black screen.  Though I asked for a 3.1 card, I might have gotten a 3.0.  3.0 is silkscreened on the card, and there is a "3.0" sticker on the back.  In one little type written sticker it states "3.1" on the front.  I'm asking for an exchange...

[Dr_Righteous]

Since we're on the topic of A3640's, does anyone have the little feet that go on this thing? Spare ones I mean. Mine lacks the feet and has a tendancy to wiggle loose from time to time.

[dnelsonfl]

The 3.0 3640 might have been reworked to a 3.1 or 3.2 revision. Here's some information on what to look for to see if it's been reworked. It also has info on the jumper settings for the motherboard: A3640 info page

[Edit]
Oops those jumpers were for the 4000. The Big Book of Amiga Hardware has good info here: A3640 info

The A3640 came in today - dead :/  I threw it into the 3000 and was greeted with a nice black screen.  Though I asked for a 3.1 card, I might have gotten a 3.0.  3.0 is silkscreened on the card, and there is a "3.0" sticker on the back.  In one little type written sticker it states "3.1" on the front.  I'm asking for an exchange...

[icbrkr]

Looks like it was reworked - I took a look at the solder points and a chip was replaced and the caps were put back in the correct way.  However, one cap wasn't soldered down properly so it's not connected.  I'm sending it back :/