Advice on Upgrading A4000

[alexh]

Dr_Righteous wrote:
If you got one to work, I'd love to know where you got it and what makes it different. There've been plenty of complaints about it shutting down any additional drives on IDE channel. I know I haven't been able to get it to work.

I've tried two, one internal. One back panel "external", both work.

Of course you cannot remove the card while hot but that is normal.

Where are these threads?

Dr_Righteous wrote:
If you don't mind using software that can't be registered and times out, then it works great.

There are lots of alternatives which do not require registering or timeout, and the one you are referring to can still be registered or easily coerced not to time out with only 30 seconds worth of Googling ;-)

But requiring software still doesn't explain your words "safer" and "not intended"?

Dr_Righteous wrote:
The goal here is cheap upgrades, not going out and blowing a wad of cash on expensive accelerators.

I understand, but IMHO having performed this operation the difference in speed between a 25MHz A3640 and a 31MHz one is almost imperceptible. Operating System software speedups such as SystemPatch give a better sense of a more speedier system.

[Dr_Righteous]

alexh wrote:
I've tried two, one internal. One back panel "external", both work.

Cool, I'll have to try that one. I'd love to be able to put a CF card back in my A4k ad still have access to my hard drive.

Of course you cannot remove the card while hot but that is normal.

Where are these threads?

Most recently...
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=37837

And no, you don't want to try hot swapping the card. That would be bad.

There are lots of alternatives which do not require registering or timeout, and the one you are referring to can still be registered or easily coerced not to time out with only 30 seconds worth of Googling ;-)

Ahh I stand corrected. Someone finally came out with a working version. Cool.

But requiring software still doesn't explain your words "safer" and "not intended"?

Not intended:
Amiga 4000 with IDE (ATA-1) - 1992
ATA-2/EIDE - 1996
ATAPI - 1998

Safer:
Look, my A4K has jumped up and slapped me once or twice. Don't make Amigas angry!

I understand, but IMHO having performed this operation the difference in speed between a 25MHz A3640 and a 31MHz one is almost imperceptible. Operating System software speedups such as SystemPatch give a better sense of a more speedier system.

I've got mine clocked to 33.3MHz (66.666MHz osc.), and an increase of 8.3MHz seems a speedier to me. Sysinfo thinks so too. I tried pushing it to 37.5MHz (75MHz osc.), but it wasn't stable. 40MHz wouldn't boot at all. I'd like to try it with a 33MHz rated 040 sometime, just to see what happens.

[davideo]

This is the item I purchased a while ago after Alexh answered a post of mine on here. It works perfectly on the internal IDE. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280241484986

Dave G  8-)

[A1260]

the most cost effective and least expensive upgrade, would be to just buy the sam440

[alexh]

Dr_Righteous wrote:
Not intended:
Amiga 4000 with IDE (ATA-1) - 1992
ATA-2/EIDE - 1996
ATAPI - 1998

A4000 IDE is actually pre ATA (sometimes referred to as ATA-0)

All of those dates are bogus. I think they are just dates of later specifications. IDE CD-ROM's date back to *I think* about 1989-1990 and the word ATAPI comes up in newsgroup posts between 1992 and 1993

Look at this post from 1992 before A4000 has been launched.

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/comp.sys.amiga.advocacy/msg/f82cd645b980b3e9?hl=en&dmode=source

"There are IDE CD-ROMs available"

http://www.recycledgoods.com/zoom.aspx?productID=9717

2x IDE CD-ROM dated 1994

[alexh]

A1260 wrote:
the most cost effective and least expensive upgrade, would be to just buy the sam440

I know that is a joke, but the SAM440 is a P.O.S.

[da9000]

Dr_Righteous wrote:
I've got mine clocked to 33.3MHz (66.666MHz osc.), and an increase of 8.3MHz seems a speedier to me. Sysinfo thinks so too. I tried pushing it to 37.5MHz (75MHz osc.), but it wasn't stable. 40MHz wouldn't boot at all. I'd like to try it with a 33MHz rated 040 sometime, just to see what happens.

Nothing will happen. As a matter of fact, and contrary to some previous posts in this thread, the problem is not with the CPU getting too hot. A 25Mhz '040 will clock to 33Mhz without a problem (but will require active cooling else it will crash eventually).

The real problems with overclocking the A3640 are two:

1) Everything runs hot on the card. That can eventually damage it as well as dry out the crappy SMD caps which are also placed backwards from the factory (unless you've swapped them)

2) Everything runs hot. Not on just the card, but also the motherboard. What you're actually doing by changing the crystal is overclocking the non-classic chips. This actually does give a much needed performance boost. At 36Mhz Doom is nothing like at 25Mhz. It's actually playable! However, I HIGHLY recommend you either actively cool the Amiga chips (SuperBuster, Ramsey, Alice, etc.) or at least ad some small heatsinks with the proper heatsink compound. Otherwise your Amiga will die a quicker death. And unlike the '040, those chips aren't usually socketed!

Right now I've been able to achieve 36Mhz (with active cooling since I'm using a 25Mhz '040) which I believe is the highest A3640 stable overclock ever (*) (without a Peltier and other fancy stuff), but I believe I can push it a little more. 40Mhz won't happen (of course I tried with a 40Mhz '040 just to eliminate any CPU overheating issues) - the custom chips can't handle it. Once I max it out I'll post a little hint on how to get a more stable overclock, as well as some benchmarks.

Last note: all this overclocking should be done after you've had a good software setup (patches and things like Oxyron/CyberPatch/HSMathLib* installed, otherwise you're still wasting cycles).


(*) correction: I now know of two claims of A3640s running at 40Mhz, however I've not seen it myself. But I still believe it's possible but will depend on their motherboard revision, custom chips and the A3640s themselves. At least that's my belief right now.

[hamtronix]

cv643d wrote:
If your 040 board is the C=, save up to a CyberStorm 060, its going to cost a bit but is well worth it if you are serious about classics, ~250-350 euro.

As much as I love Amiga and have very fond childhood, teen, adult memories of my time with Commodore it would take a windfall for me to spend that kind of cash on a single card. Or at least until the US dollar has value again.

[RMK305]

I know that is a joke, but the SAM440 is a P.O.S.

Why do you say that? I don't know much about the SAM440 and am currious about your comment as I started to take notice of it after OS4.1 was announced for it.

Thanks,

Robert