A4000T Video Toaster System.

[DutchinUSA]

Very nice dude !!

Yeah, I seen the "parts" one listed .. was not interested in that one.

If I got my hands on an MK2 or higher I would probably sell my Cyberstorm PPC, never use the PowerPC part of it anyway

[Ami_GFX]

Yeah, an O60 is more than enough for most of what I do. I've gotten some PPC software that's nice but I still use Deluxe Paint V more than anything else. Still, I'd never sell mine because it was, essentially, a gift and I'd never see another one if I let this one go. I like the way they designed the MK3 and PPC cards for speed in every detail: processor(s), ram speed and SCSI speed.

[Ami_GFX]

This is the A4000T I bought:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/261176115341?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

I'm getting into the fun stuff now. After opening it up to make sure everything was tight and nothing had come disconnected in shipping, I fired it up and it booted nicely and then hung up just after workbench started. It looked like a couple of cards had been pulled from it an I figured it was looking for hardware that was no longer there. I booted with no startup sequence and manually loaded workbench. I edited the user-startup a few times but it still hung. I pulled the Flyer out and it still hung. I pulled the Toaster out and it didn't hang anymore. After that, I pretty much completely dissassmbeled the whole thing, cleaned all the dust out and put it back together. Definitely a vintage configuration from the days when memory cost an arm and a leg. There are no simms on the mother board and 2 16mb simms on the CSMKII. The motherboard IDE isn't used either. There's a 2.1gb SCSI drive, a SCSI CD Rom and a SCSI zip drive.

Today I spend a couple of hours exploring what was on the hard drive. Lots of video software and a folder of wedding frame stores--classic, it looks like all this hardware was used to do wedding videos. So maybe there won't be anything really interesting on the video drives. I  know how many weddings I can watch--less than one. I'm not all that sure the video drives I got really went with the Flyer. They are SCSI 3 Videoraid boxes. Each has 2 40gb drives in a striped raid configuration for 80gbs total. They are rated at around 50mb/s. Overkill for a Flyer system. I opened one up today expecting to at least get some SCSI drives that could be used with the Flyer and to my surprise, they are ATA IDE drives and the raid board is also an IDE to SCSI converter. There are 4 IDE connectors total, 2 in use. I wonder if the board will work as a straight IDE to SCSI converter with just one drive connected. It's a lot bigger than the acard converters but it has a regular SCSI III cable connector.

[gertsy]

Congrats.  Sounds like a great get.

[DutchinUSA]

Very cool ! Now I am curious about that RAID scsi-> ide setup .. is it a board for each drive or one board that the drives plug into?

[desantii]

I received mine as well, was not so lucky.. arrived damaged with a cracked front and only has a 3640 on board... Still a very nice machine

[Ami_GFX]

I contacted the seller before shipping and asked him to do 2 packages with lots of packing material and ship Fedex. He did as I asked. I had the exerience of having a mint condition A2000 Toaster--one just like the one in the Newtek promotional video--arrive in pieces due to a clueless seller not knowing how to pack things. Since then, I get in touch with sellers before shipping something like this and make sure they know what they're doing.

The raid board has 4 IDE headers and one SCSI III header. Lots of jumpers. There are fairly inexpensive DOM ssd drive modules that plug right into an IDE header. 2 of those instead of the drives would make a really fast SCSI ssd drive is what I'm thinking of as an exeriment. That's a few months down the road. Right now, I'm digging through boxes of cables, hard drives, and simm modules, looking for stuff compatible with the A4000T. The biggest thing at the moment is where to put it. It's huge. I'm going to have to do a little bit of remodeling cabinets to make room for it.

[Ami_GFX]

Progress continues on this system. I got the Amiga OS system fixed and transferred to an IDE CF card. The IDE/CF module was a project for my A4000D but I could never get it working without data errors and it's working flawlsessly in the A4000T. I've got the memory maxed out and tested all my unlabled 72 pin sims on the motherboard. Most were 4mb. I needed to use 2 8mb simms to fit the Toaster in the first video slot--it overshoots the first simm socket. I found out that the description in the Amiga hardware database-- http://amiga.resource.cx/mod/a4000t.html --is incorrect regarding EDO ram. The only 8mb simms I had were EDO and one pair  works perfectly and one is recognized as  4mb simms. There were quite a few 72pin simms that didn't work--either weren't recognized at all or hung the system--but no consistent reason why they worked or didn't The MKII got 4 32mb simms salvaged from old Power Macs.

I found some female centronics internal external SCSI cable brackets in my scrap pile and a 68pin to male centronics external SCSI cable and checked out what was on the Videoraid boxes. The Flyer played back flawlessly and there were loads of weddings and one bar mitzvah and some footage of horses and festivals. Nothing exciting like some nice Lightwave animation work but at least I know the Flyer's good. The Toaster has sync issues--pretty common for the Toaster 4000 but I still managed to do a test recording from a DV camcorder.