Sorry, but you don't know what your talking about here. I have a half dozen 4000d's (and T's also)and they never miss a beat,my main one is towered with mediator and csppc. it was a desktop from 1994 and has run 24/7 since then-the case and psu are still going with another board in it.. i have owned and repaired MANY 3000's. the only garbage components i can think of on the 4000 is maybe the battery simm connectors, and caps.The simm connectors are fragile but most the time get mistreated by users not installing simms/removing simms correctly.the 3000's zip sockets have caused alot of grief with bad contact and tarnishing.
Other than that its no different than a A3000 other than it doesn't have problems with tarnishing old sockets (short of roms and buster maybe).The 3000 is a good machine,but its prone to connection problems on its sockets.
You forget most 3000's didn't come with the latest chips, you were lucky to get buster 9,dmac2 and ramsey4.. And boy did we love the early rev 7 boards that needed a rom tower to upgrade the roms(yep,now know theres roms for that pinout w/o the tower but not in 89')most came with buster 7 or less which means zorro3 is not working.
Its hard to find a decent fitting accelerator for a 3000 desktop(warpengine 3040 comes to mind as fitting well but was limited to 64MB).the 3000 neeeds a INT2 mod for accelerating with scsi. most other accelerators require the 3000 to be cut.Most had the buggy proto4 scsi chip.its 030/25 stock on its best day while the a4000 can be had with 040/25 quite a decent difference comparing stock machines.
the 4000 has aga. i prefer rtg,but i'll take aga over ecs any day! And i did back in the day before picasso IV's came out in 95? :)aga may be slow,but ecs is slower
the 4000 has more powerfull power supply.
the 4000 case cools slightly better than the 3000 and is easier to disassemble.
the 4000 can fit a cdrom internally(if most you people out there realize there ARE right angle power connector pigtails and shorter cdrw/dvdrw's etc_ they fit fine.
i can't count the boards i've fixed bad A3000 chip ram on.this causes random seemingly hard to find crashes.
zips.. expensive ram. the 3000 does address ram faster off the motherboard,but when u accelerate both machines with fast ram on the accelerator this becomes moot.
the 3000 has the scan doubler,this is handy.
Using a video toaster 4000 is a 3000 cripples it on colors iirc.
the 040 in the 4000's A3640 doesn't come with a fan,its only got a heatsink which works just fine,and 040's don't run much hotter than some 030/50's(revisions depending here).power consumption on the 040 is slightly more,but still trivial-its not like it will tax the psu! ...have you even owned one?
cramped case? you must be kidding,the 3000 is terrible compared to the 3000.
you get what you pay for.
mike
@magneto:
All I'm saying is that I bet there are or will be more A3000's in use years from now than A4000's. And I bet you're right about the number of A3000 machines you've serviced/upgraded than I, but I am no stranger to board repair - 25 years in electronics repair that is. I know a better, more serviceable design when I see it and the A4000 is not a "better" design by any stretch. Short term maybe. And only 20 years ago. But crap components and shit materials are used throughout. Legacy A4000 and AGA in general will nigh be a shit stain in computing terms, let alone PC history. My impressions are all I'm projecting here
...and this talk about "cramped" case design, I agree with C=John. Hardly. A3000 has plenty of space for reasonable upgradability. Screw 040 cards w/ their large power consumption and fan reliance... who's gonna bother with that shit? If they're so inclined, I bet they know how or would be willing to cut themselves through some sheet metal for better airflow. lmao 3.3v 060 cards, no problem. No cut, no fuss, no muss! :lol:
