A4000 tower build from scratch

[rossi46]

I have all the required bits (and more) and was wondering if someone could point me in the direction of a step-by-step guide to building my A4000 from the ground up, please.

Thanks

Paul

[Tahoe]

Wow. That's a hard one. Are you building a real A4000 tower or are you using an aftermarket tower kit with a desktop board?

Building the machine shouldn't be too much of a problem, unless you are using a regular case in which you want to hack and saw the board in.

List your parts, maybe we can help.

[rossi46]

I have two towers. 1 Ateos with a A4000 Rev B in it and a A4000T in a tower that has had the top hacked off it and is missing front panels. I'd like to take all the bits out and make one Uber Amiga out of the two. The bits and pieces I have include 2 x Cyberstorm 060/50, 2 x Cybervision PPCs, 2 x Cybervision 64/3Ds and so on. I have two boxes of parts, components and ribbon cable and not much clue what goes where.

 :idea:

[Bazzaq]

Is it that they are all in bits and you are not sure how to connect them up??

Or are you just wondering which bits are best to use?

Its sounds like you have some nice kit, and would get some good info on here if you list all the bits. Maybe with photos of stuff you are not sure of.

Starting off with the minumum required bits.

Case
Motherboard desktop or T version
Zorro board of some sort if its a desktop mobo
Processor board, CStorm with cvppc graphics.
Suitable Powersupply
Drives / hd/floppy/cd/ ide/scsi
 
You could probably find a trade on here for a nice elbox tower for all your surplus parts..


"edit"
Ah, just noticed you are not sure what goes where..

ID all the bits via www.amiga-hardware.com or photo em all up and post links here.. im sure they will be id'd in minutes..

[rossi46]

I posted this over at Amiga world: It's the stuff I aqquired:



This is the tower I want to use:


This is the donor tower with the top cut off:

[Bazzaq]

Looks like some nice gear.. Shame about the 4000T that would have been the nicer option in my opinion.

I spy a Cyberstorm ppc card.. very dusty.. would be nice if that works.. Also an external scandoubler, that will be very handy.

Check the battery for leakage, it needs removing and replacing if possible..

locate:
CLK 90 Clock Source J100 1-2 Internal (020/030)
  2-3 External (040)
CPU Clock Source J104 1-2 Internal
  2-3 External

these need setting up depending upon cpu. Looks like you have more in the box..

install a cpu and connect floppy drive to motherboard..
That should be enough to test boot it.

The scandoubler will let you hook a pc monitor up for testing. Then you can use it for native resolution once you have a graphics card going.
 

[tonyvdb]

For a case the best thing for you to get is a full sized tower case this involves the least amount of hacking and cutting. Ideally getting one that has a slide out tray that the MB attaches to makes the job very easy. Usually you will need to drill new holes for the MB to be secured to the backplate and the slide out ones make that easy.

[Tripitaka]

 :-D  LEGO  :-D

[rossi46]

This is posted on another forum, so sorry to anyone who's had to suffer this more than once:

Right.. I tried my luck tonight and blasted ahead. I hooked up the floppy drive, found the power plug and the ribbon cable. Plugged them in to the mother board and grabbed the CD-Rom unit from the pile of stuff. I attached that in the same way as the floppy, plugged the EZ-VGA scan-doubler in the rear port, then inserted the mouse in the appropriate hole. I thought about hitting the power switch there and then, but I spotted the CPU, and , because I was on a roll, I stuck that in too, along with the Cybervision PPC card. Rummaging through the pile of stuff, I found what looked like 2 hard disks, one SCSI and the other IDE (I think). I found the Guru Rom SCSI adapter board and somehow managed to squeeze that in beside the other cards, hooked up the hard disk and power and hit the switch. Nothing happened for a while, then the hard disk started to click and whirr then stopped. I sat looking at the blank screen for a second then it changed to the classic 'insert floppy' screen. I rummaged some more and found a floppy with Work Bench 3.0 on and stuck that in. This is where we are now:



It's more progress than I expected, but I wonder if I maybe should have taken a bit more time

The CD-Rom drawer opens and closes, but nothing else happens and nothing is listed for the hard disk, though I'm assuming that because it clicked and whirred, the Amiga 'sees' it, therefore it's a good thing. Would that be right? I did find a floppy with 'GVP Faaaastinstall' on the front, but the error message said something about not having permission to write something or other. What next, guys?
Thanks for looking
cheers

Paul

[Bazzaq]

All looks promising.. Looks like your accelerator is 128mb, 16mb on board, and probs 6/8 on the scsi controller..

Which accelerator did you end up using??

Connect up harddisk, ide to the motherboard, or scsi to the scsi card.. if you used the cyberstormppc then scsi to that.. dependant on termination and cables you have.. easiest setup would be ide to the motherboard.

You will need set of workbench disks, including install disk. Boot the install disk and run hdtoolbox to partition the drive, the gvp hd can be used to format if you go scsi.

Once you format the hdisk, boot install and run the hard disk install, this will install workbench to the hd and make it bootable..

You will need to install the cyberstorm 060 libs onto the harddisk too. into the libs folder. If you cant find the disk then you can download the libs>  http://phase5.a1k.org/
Install pc0 device to be able to read pc floppy disks, doubler density only if you have not got the HD version of the 4000 floppy.

Once you have workbench running ok via the scandoubler then you can try and get the cvppc working http://phase5.a1k.org/index.php?id=3 for the drivers. cgx3. cgx4 would be better if you have it.

You will need a cd file system to get the cdrom going, depends on how it's connected, ide drive via the motherboard can be enabled using idefix97 demo on aminet,
scsi cdrom may be a little more fiddly, amicdfs or similar may be more suitbale.

This should sort of point you in the right direction.

Grab whichamiga to run and identify system specs.

[rossi46]

Hi the list of stuff went something like this:

Cyberstorm 060/50
Cybervision PPC
Guru Rom SCSI thing
Sony CD-Rom IDE
Seagate HD SCSI
EZ-VGA into Dell monitor

I filled all the empty ram slots I could see with ram modules from the other machine, then I noticed more empty slots on the  Guru Rom board - are they for ram too?

One more thing - I have a second IDE hard disk, but it didn't click or whirr when I connected it, though the LED on the unit still lit up. Will I be able to use this do you think?

[Bazzaq]

You now have the basics of a top spec miggy..

I assume the scsi board is a gvp of some sort, the gururom is the eprom installed on it.. gvp boards usually take 30 pin simms upto 8mb. I don't know if the scsi performance will be any quicker with ram installed, but the ram on the cyberstorm will be much quicker.

A lot of people suggest to run with just 2mb chipram in the motherboard and remove the fastram. I run with it installed works fine.

Plug the harddisk into a power cable and not into the ribbon, if it does not spin up then its broken.

[Tahoe]

Best thing would be to use your A4000T as a base. This would be easiest to build into a nice clean machine.

Go to some sort of auction site and pick yourself a nice AT tower case. Be sure it's not ATX. The A4000T board should fit right in and also have the right power connector.