Excited today. Purchased my A4000T.

It is bare bones 040 with 18MB Ram and I will need to scope out a CD ROM and Hard Drive for it. So, for those that own the A4000T, what model hard drive and CD Rom/burner do you all recommend? Coming with OS 3.1.

Am I correct any SCSI drive will due? Same for CD ROM/Burner, standard SCSI?

Or is the CD ROM/burner need to be IDE?

Any size limits?

As a side note, I also found a Cyberstorm 68060/PPC board and working on getting a Cybervision Video card to connect to it. Those will come later so for now, I need to get items to get the system booted 1st. Will be a couple weeks before I see it so want to buy the Cd and HDD now.

Thanks, tj

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@MacSociety

Lucky you

Last edited by Caveman on 29-Jan-2010 at 07:54 AM.

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@MacSociety

There's no standard SCSI-controller in the A4000.
So I figure you have to go for IDE.

Br,
D

@Cav

But did'nt the A4000T have scsi interface built in? I had the Desktop version,and i know it just had ide(stupid C=)

@MacSociety

You might need a SCSI 2 card to use SCSI 2 HD's. Can't remember which one i had. Anyway,check the battery for any leak.

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@MacSociety

I think you'll want to use the SCSI interface on the Cyberstorm, which is Ultra Wide SCSI, 68-pin. You can temporarily use Ultra Wide SCSI devices on the built-in Fast SCSI interface with appropriate adapters.

Refurbished Seagate Barracudas could make good disks. Most low voltage differential (LVD) SCSI disks should be backwards compatible as well.

If you can find one, the Plextor UltraPleX Wide is an excellent CD-ROM drive; otherwise, the CD-ROM drive will slow down your entire SCSI bus.

If you mix single-ended (SE) and LVD disks on the same bus, be mindful of the varying termination requirements. You need to be mindful of cable lengths and termination in any case.

Outside that, play around. See what works best for you.

You might also want one of these:

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=832

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Sam440ep-flex 733 MHz/1 GB RAM/Radeon 9250/AmigaOS4.1 Update 2
borked A1200/Blizzard1260+SCSI-IV/Z4+MediatorZIV/Deneb/Voodoo3/CatweaselMk3
more borked A1200/MBX1200z/Indivision
A500/clockport/RRNet
A600/A603

@MacSociety

The Cyberstorm 060 (first edition) was a modular design that could accept both a ram espansion and a fast SCSI-II controller card (check it out here: http://amiga.resource.cx/ they also have floppy images of Drivers and PDFs of manuals!).

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SamFlex Complete 800Mhz System + AmigaOS 4.1 Update 4
Amiga 2000 DKB 2MB ChipRam GVP G-Force040 Picasso 2 OS3.9 BB2
AmigaCD 32

@MacSociety

As far as I know, the A4k has IDE in it, so go an buy, or dig out, a cheap standard IDE harddisk (below 130GB if you like to stay out of trouble!!) and CD-ROM/RW. If it is a CD writer, make sure it has burn-proof or you might be making a lot of coasters with it on the IDE controller..

I don't know about SCSI on the A4kTower. If it does have SCSI I believe it would be faster and less CPU intense, but could be more hazzle getting up and running with termination and all that. I don't know, never had SCSI, only IDE which is very plug'n'play or AutoConfig as it's called in the Amiga

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- Don't get fooled by my avatar, I'm not like that (anymore, mostly... maybe only sometimes)
> Amiga Classic and OS4 developer for OnyxSoft.

@MacSociety

Talking as an A4000T owner, the inbuilt SCSI works well, although it was setup when I bought it so I couldn't give you any help on SCSI terminations etc. other than taking a digital picture or scanning a diagram of how it's hooked up! Glad you found a Cyberstorm PPC as well!

I had problems with the HD floppy drive that the previous user had installed. I had it checked out but it seemed it also needed a new Floppy Cable to read HD disks (DD worked fine)!

I also had the sound module repaired with the 'Amiga Center in France' as the left speaker was giving broken sound (a common capacitor problem). Amigakit gave the cabling a once over and found it was dropping volts to one of the harddrives and that the fan had a fault and helped me install a new Vodoo exhaust fan.

There's plenty of help and experience still left in the Amiga community We're here if you need us!

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"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@Cav
Quote:

There's no standard SCSI-controller in the A4000.

The A4000T has a different motherboard, which has both IDE and SCSI-II controllers integrated, making it unique among Amigas. It also has ROM 3.1, five Zorro slots and two video slots, along with four ISA slots (inactive, as usual). And it's a single-board one, no slots-daughterboard like for A4000 desktops. See here.

The SCSI-II controller is one of the best, fastest and most stable controllers ever made into an Amiga, it beats every other SCSI-II controllers i had in my Amiga single handedly, even the ones on CPU cards. I highly recommend to use it when possible.

The IDE controller on the contrary, has some issues... Especially with v40.70 ROMs. (Gurus, deadlocks on boot.) But still can be used quite OKish with some care.

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MorphOS, classic Amiga, demoscene, and stuff
"When a bridge is not enough, build a Viaduct!"
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@Chain-Q

Quote:

The IDE controller on the contrary, has some issues... Especially with v40.70 ROMs. (Gurus, deadlocks on boot.) But still can be used quite OKish with some care.

It works ok for my internal 250Mb Zip drive

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@Chain-Q

That's not a motherboard, that's a BEAST! :D

@BigD
Quote:

It works ok for my internal 250Mb Zip drive

Usually it works. However, depending on your drive type, master/slave configuration, RDB configuration, and a few other factors, during boot you may experience GURUs and/or deadlocks. Especially on cold boots. Since your ZIP drive is not mounted on boot (i mean very early, during ROM init) i suppose, you may not be affected.

I had this problem previously, when i had a 4000T. It's even documented somewhere, but i'm too lazy to google for it now. A4000s had the same problems with 40.70 ROMs, so the 40.70 ROM for A4000s were withdrawn. But as there's no other ROM version for the 4000T, you're stuck with it. Fortunately, the 4000T has the SCSI controller, so it doesn't hurt that much...

Last edited by Chain-Q on 29-Jan-2010 at 10:54 AM.

_________________
MorphOS, classic Amiga, demoscene, and stuff
"When a bridge is not enough, build a Viaduct!"
"Strip the Amiga community of speculation and we can fit every forum on a 720k floppy" (by resle)

@DAX

Quote:

DAX wrote: @MacSociety The Cyberstorm 060 (first edition) was a modular design that could accept both a ram espansion and a fast SCSI-II controller card (check it out here: http://amiga.resource.cx/ they also have floppy images of Drivers and PDFs of manuals!).

I bought one of the first CyberstormPPC boards Phase5 ever sold - on the Amiga fair in November 1997 here in Cologne - the very first day they were publically sold.

They were NOT modular designed.

Or are you talking about those 060 Cyberstorms WITHOUT PPC?

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Ciao

Dandy
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If someone enjoys marching to military music, then I already despise him.
He got his brain accidently - the bone marrow in his back would have been sufficient for him!
(Albert Einstein)

@Dandy

The clue is in what Dax actually said:

Quote:

The Cyberstorm 060 (first edition)

See, no mention of Cyberstorm PPC. He was talking about the Cyberstorm 060 Mk1, designed and produced circa 1995!

Strangely, the Mk1 was faster than the MkII and still just as fast as the MKIII, which coincidentally had exactly the same PCB layout as the Cyberstorm PPC (although obviously the PPC version had the capability of boosting performance and running AOS4.0 Classic)!!

Last edited by BigD on 29-Jan-2010 at 12:13 PM.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@Dandy
Quote:

Or are you talking about those 060 Cyberstorms WITHOUT PPC?

Yes, i suppose he talks about the original phase5 Cyberstorm, later known as MK I, which was indeed a modular design. And also, the SCSI was only an "add-on" for even the MK II modell. (Man, that's a great card, i loved it.)

_________________
MorphOS, classic Amiga, demoscene, and stuff
"When a bridge is not enough, build a Viaduct!"
"Strip the Amiga community of speculation and we can fit every forum on a 720k floppy" (by resle)

@MacSociety

You lucky, lucky fellow.

I came from the world of Mac and PC before I purchased my first Amiga, an A4000T QuikPak model with their 68060 accelerator, in 1997. Although it was a stormy relationship at first -- AmigaOS is not as easy for newbies as Mac 7.5.x and Win95 were -- once I finally had my Cybervision 64 3D and got a little miggy experience under my belt, the A4000T became my most-loved computer of all time. I used this 57Mhz monster as my main computer until 2003, when an Athlon 550 machine finally took over, but only because I went to cable internet and I was too broke to buy an ethernet card for the miggy. Such a card would have added another 2 years to its run as my main machine.

I hope you are as fortunate as I was, insofar as my A4KT was very stable. Only OS X Macs exceeded its uptime once the 'kernel panic' OS X era ended in 2003.

My A4KT was repurposed as a Toaster/Flyer box, which, alas caused its demise. I sent the machine across country to be set up by a renowned Toaster outfit, and it was never the same again. It just died one piece at a time. This is not to discourage you from going the Toaster/Flyer route, I was just unlucky. Well, I hope the German fellow who bought the carcass from me has brought it back to life.

I'd love to have another A4KT with an '060, or a real Commodore A4KT, but those are VERY hard to find. I'm sure you'll enjoy yours.

Last edited by EmperorLongo on 29-Jan-2010 at 12:39 PM.

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A4000/040 18MB
AmiKit
Mac Mini G4 1.5Ghz, OS X 10.4.11 and MorphOS 2.4

I would recommend starting with standard IDE/EIDE ATAPI CD/DVD drive and IDE/EIDE Hard Disk. Make system partition below 2Gb address space.

Most likely you never use gigabytes of data on classic amigas, so you could also find IDE solution with FlashMemory drive (perhaps a SD to ide adapter), instead traditional hard disk.


Later you can try SCSI, experiment big partitions, etc...

IMO: Classic Amigas are better when not expanded to the max.
(I'm downgrading my A4k, to make it even easier to maintain, etc.)

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- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@MacSociety

WOW ..1st an A1000 and now the rarest of the rare A4000T!! congrats ... now all you have to do is get rid of the first 3 letters of your name and all is well

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c64-2sids, A1000, A1200T-060@50(finally working!),A4000-CSMKIII
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X1000 I BELIEVE

@klx300r

Quite rare if it's original: Quote:

The tower version of Amiga 4000 was ment to be released in 1994, but around this time Commodore went bankrupt and only about 200 units were manufactured.

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@Chain-Q

I had the CS Mk II with the SCSI module and it worked really well, I loved that card too. Now I got the CSPPC in my A4kD but have never used the SCSI controller on that one.

I'm surpriced that you where the only one knowing that the a4kT got both an IDE and a SCSI controller ... come on people, you call yourself amigans!