First Amiga Ever!

[bd1308]

Hello. Just bought my first Amiga (A4000 Desktop with Video Toaster/Flyer cards and the S-Video Card )

I just received this thing, and even without turning it on or booting it up, i'm very impressed and hooked !

I'm 22 years old--never used any Amiga systems until High School--my broadcast journalism teacher has a 4000T with the Video Toaster! That's when I was hooked--seeing animations come to life on a 25Mhz 68040 is something that still amazes me.

I am unable to use the system, as I have no way to connect my monitor. I'll be posting some monitor wanted ads, but just wanted to introduce myself.

I'm wanting to get some vintage technology so these old computers never die out. I have over 13 computers, and only 2 of them are 'new'. I also have a Macintosh Portable and a Quadra 660AV--the mac little cousin to the Amiga (the amiga is by far more powerful)

I am also interested in using OS 4 on this machine (or buying  a Micro A1) and actually using my 4000.



B

[trekiej]

Welcome to Amiga.org

[Phantom]

I just received this thing, and even without turning it on or booting it up, i'm very impressed and hooked !

Just looking at the A4000 is enough, right? ;-)

I am unable to use the system, as I have no way to connect my monitor. I'll be posting some monitor wanted ads, but just wanted to introduce myself.

If you will find a Commodore monitor you will need the cable to connect it via RGB output. But it's better to find a ZorroIII GFX card (PicassoIV, CyberVision64/3D etc), to have bigger and better resolutions with the Amiga. With a GFX Card you can connect any LCD monitor with your A4000. ;-)

I am also interested in using OS 4 on this machine (or buying a Micro A1) and actually using my 4000.

If you want to use AmigaOS 4.0 Classic then you need definetely a PPC card (CyberStormPPC). Without a PPC card you can't run AmigaOS 4.0, just only AmigaOS 3.9. AmigaOne or a MicroA1 you will not find new to buy, as they don't exist (they are not in production some years ago), only second-handed, if you are quite lucky.

[DBAlex]

Welcome to a.org... and, nice find.

Lucky g*t! :-P

:-D

[J-Golden]

bd1308 wrote:

I am unable to use the system, as I have no way to connect my monitor. I'll be posting some monitor wanted ads, but just wanted to introduce myself.


B

PM sent on the monitor... :-)

[bd1308]

PM sent.

[bd1308]

By the way,

I work as a C++ programmer full time for a large pizza company, as well as designing software on my own time using C++/PHP and HTML

I bought my Toaster 4000 as a first-leap into Amiga. Sadly, I missed the high-point (parents/father was a PC/DOS person) and I didn't learn about macintosh and 68k things until grade school, and didn't collect computers until just around five years ago....I have lots of catching up to do.

Any information, Guidance would be greatly appreciated, as I try to encourage others to collect vintage computers, and try to broaden horizons of friends and family--and myself on these unique and very powerful machines.

[SamuraiCrow]

Most code for the Amiga is written in C since it predates C++ and unfortunately most of the documentation you'd need to program it is out of print.

The stuff that is available and most desirable is on the Amiga Developer CD 2.1 .  It comes with a non-commercial license version of Storm C++ 3.0 but that version is quite buggy so you'll probably want to use GCC or VBCC.

[Ami_GFX]

After owning an Amiga 2500 for years, last year, I finally bought an A4000 Toaster. First thing you want to do is open the case and check the hardware. Toaster/Flyer systems are pretty specialized and you should check all the cables and connections--especially if you had it shipped to you. Then and most important is to check the battery. You might be able to look at it a bit without removing the Toaster card and if you can see it and if there is any sign of green or white fuzz on the battery, you will have to remove it immediatly and check the motherboard for damage. You will have to remove the Toaster card at least to do this and probably all the cards. If there is no battery damage, then you have a treasure to play with and the cool thing about A4000s is that you can easily upgrade them with a variety of inexpensive modern hardware. 4mb 72 pin simms are cheap if the MB memory isn't already maxed out. Vintage A4000s usually came with a 100-250mb ide drive which can easily be replaced by a 3-4gb drive which is also dirt cheap or if you are more ambitious, you can get an ide to compact flash adaptor and use a CF card as your hard drive. I use a 3.2gb ide laptop drive and a Norcent DVD burner in my A4000 and they work beautifully. I can't burn DVDs but I can certainly read data DVDs and also rewritable CDs which is handy for passing stuff from my PC or Mac to my Amiga.

There was a post recently about a 19 inch LCD monitor that syncs down to 15khz and sold on Ebay for $159. LCD monitors do wonders for Amigas and there are a few threads on Amiga.org about different monitors and ways of making them work with Amigas.  :-)

[bd1308]

Battery was actually removed some time ago--I bought this as a re-conditioned and inspected machine. I believe this machine works, however I have been unable to locate a Amiga->PC video adapter for me to actually double-check the machine's working state.

I am currently bidding on an octopus cable for my 4000, as I plan to house several SCSI hard-drives in an old mini-tower PC case. What is the maximum size of partitions or drives, so I can use this to judge what quantity of drives I will need...

[Ami_GFX]

For the system drive, around 4gb. For the Flyer drives, I think that you can use up to a 36gb drive at least and problably much bigger drives. The Flyer was pretty advanced for it's times.

I have 3 18 gb 68 pin SCSI drives that I was planning to use as Flyer drives but I have given up on the Flyer--I'm not so into video right now. I would let them go for something like $20+ shipping for the lot. You will need 68 to 50 pin SCSI adaptors for them. PM me if you're interested.

[Nostalgiac]

It comes with a non-commercial license version of Storm C++ 3.0 ...

just curious now. I used to have (stil have) a licenced Lattice/SAS-C package (bought 5.0... upgraded to 6.5)

Is this abandon-ware now ? Or in other words... can I give copies away ?

ta
Tom UK

[niklasni1]

just curious now. I used to have (stil have) a licenced Lattice/SAS-C package (bought 5.0... upgraded to 6.5)

Is this abandon-ware now ? Or in other words... can I give copies away ?

"Abandonware" is not a legal definition of anything (will, copyrights expire, but anything created after Mickey Mouse seems likely to remain under copyright in the short term at least).

You are of course /able/ to give copies away. Copying software is very easy to do

The question is most likely to be one of conscience (how dearly do you love the law?)... and possibly, though unlikely, whether SAS will come after you (they still sell compilers, though not for Amiga)..

[NovaCoder]

bd1308 wrote:
Hello. Just bought my first Amiga (A4000 Desktop with Video Toaster/Flyer cards and the S-Video Card )

I am unable to use the system, as I have no way to connect my monitor. I'll be posting some monitor wanted ads, but just wanted to introduce myself.


B

Something like this external TV box should give you a decent enough picture with a modern monitor.

[Pyromania]

@bd1308

If your a programmer you might want to dig into the Amiga Video Toaster Flyer source code.

www.openvideotoaster.org