Amiga 4000D - Recommended upgrades?

[markpaterson]

I recently acquired an Amiga 4000D 040 from eBay. It came with a CF Card adapter in one of the front floppy bays, a 3.5" floppy drive, 16MB Fast Ram and Kickstart 3.1. There is no optical drive.

Any recommendations for upgrades?

I'm currently thinking about these…

Workbench 3.5 or 3.9.
Not sure which.

X-100 Zorro Ethernet
$129.14
Seems expensive for ethernet, but i'd really like ethernet. I know Mediator PCI can support cheap ethernet cards, but it seems hard to track down old PCI ethernet cards that work with it, and the Mediator itself is quite pricey.

Rapid Road USB
$92.20
This is the add-on board for the X-100.

BigRAMPlus
$91.92
Does this count towards Fast Mem or Zorro Mem?

Indivision AGA 4000 / CD32 MK2cr
$184.52
I've heard the A1200 version has buggy software. Does the A4000 version fare any better?

I'd love to get a Zorro-based graphics card, but those I gather are quite rare and/or expensive. Do those include RGB output? I have a Microvitec M1438S for a monitor which supports all kinds of screen modes. I'm considering going the Mediator PCI route, but not sure how a PCI graphics card would be compatible with PAL/NTSC games, and probably a lack of RGB port output on the cards. I'm guessing the PCI graphics card would be VGA or DVI only. Hmm. I probably need a 2nd monitor if I want to go the PCI route.

Anything obvious I missed?

I work in motion graphics so I'm tempted to get a Video Toaster 4000 to screw around with. I have a PAL and NTSC VHS deck with S-Video input and output (although they lack computer deck control i think), and a Sony PVM monitor with BNC inputs, so it seems silly not to get a Toaster, the final piece of the jigsaw

[ajk]

You should go for 3.9, 3.5 was sort of an interim release and there are no particular benefits with it, unless you find a copy for free or something like that.

If you don't go for the X-100 and RapidRoad, you could consider looking for a Deneb USB board (no longer made and quite sought after, I know), since that would allow you to use a multitude of USB devices, including ethernet adapters.

BigRAMPlus and similar expansions are Fast memory (as opposed to Chip), but since they reside in the Zorro bus, the speed is lower than Fast RAM you have on accelerators (CPU bus). It's still nice to have the extra RAM though, especially if you want to dabble with productive software.

An accelerator is also something to consider, although going up from the 040 you already have isn't going to be inexpensive.

Indivisions are good but you should consider if you actually need one. You already have a suitable monitor, and if you want a modern one, there are LCD monitors which can display Amiga modes without extra hardware. What you would gain with an Indivision are some of the special screen modes like HighGFX.

Some (Zorro) graphics cards have either a built in scandoubler for the native modes, or an RGB passthrough, some have neither. I suggest browsing the Big Book of Amiga Hardware for details.

[Jope]

My recipe: loads of CPU, loads of RAM on the CPU card, a zorro network card.

If you can afford it, DMA scsi (preferably on the CPU card) + scside + solid state storage. If you can't, then you can go with solid state storage in the internal IDE.

A scandoubler/flickerfixer if you deem it necessary to get a picture visible. Native 15kHz/50Hz gives smoother scrollers if your monitor can display it.

But it all depends on what you want to do with it. ;-)

[fitzsteve]

Hi!

Depends on where you want to go with your project, how much money/free time you have and ultimately what you want to do on the Amiga.

If it's just to play games then it's fine pretty much as it is! If you want to use a modern display then the Indivison AGA Mk II will help with that as it provides a DVI/HDMI* output (*with adapter)

If you want to start looking at advanced Workbench setup's with millions of colours then you need RTG Graphics such as the Picasso or CyberVision Graphic Cards. These can be very expensive ranging from £150-£350

Another option is the Mediator PCI Busboard which lets you use cheaper and easier to find PCI Graphic Cards such as Radeon 92xx and Voodoo 3/S3 Virge

That would also take care of networking, Sound and USB vis PCI cards. Drivers can be a bit buggy and it's tricky to setup and get everything working. The board still has Zorro slots so you can use a combination of Zorro and PCI cards, it does not however have a Video slot so cards with built in flickerfixer like the Picasso IV will not work with it.

If you go with RTG you need some way to either pass through the native screen modes, there's quite a lot of info on this subject and I'll explain further if you're considering RTG.

Now, probably the most important thing is CPU. By a far Accelerators with local Fast Ram are the best such as your Warp Engine/CyberStorm/Apollo cards but they're extremely expensive, they do however let you upgrade your Memory by an extra 128mb (much faster then Zorro3 memory)

These come in 040 @40mhz up to 060 @66+mhz and many also have fast SCSI options to replace or use in addition to the A4000's slow IDE.

I would say, CPU first, then RTG, then other Zorro options after that. But again depending on what you want to achieve.

[SnkBitten]

Heh, it's almost like I started this thread. I just picked up an Amiga 4000 off eBay and was looking at the exact same things you were. More ram, flickerfixer, maybe a Mediator, a network card, etc... I used to own an A4000/Toaster setup so I've decided to go that route again. A4000, Videotoaster4000 and Flyer cards. I ruled out the Mediator for that reason.

Other than the above, my first purchase will most likely be the X-Surf 100 as I need network connectivity for internet access as well as exchanging files easily with my Amithlon system and PCs.

Toaster/Flyer combo eliminates a lot of options as the Toaster takes up the space of two of your Zorro slots. Add in the Flyer and you only have one more free slot AND a system that will need additional cooling.

The most desirable pieces, RTG cards and Accelerators, are by far the most expensive items out there. I'd love to have a WarpEngine4040 as that's what I had in my old Amiga 4000 years ago.

Good luck with your choices....and enjoy!

[clebin]

Originally Posted by markpaterson

Rapid Road USB
$92.20
This is the add-on board for the X-100.

I personally wouldn't risk the RapidRoad until there's a driver update. If you have the stock 040 CPU board in your machine, there's a possibility RapidRoad won't work and there's no guarantee that the issue will ever be fixed. We don't know the stats on how many machines are affected though - could be a tiny percentage, could be significant - and there's no information on the product wiki page. Have a look at the big RapidRoad thread on this site for more info. The other Individual products you mention work very nicely.

[Locutus]

Also keep in mind that those huge 128/256MB Zorro3 memory boards are not actually that useful, once your CPU has to hit them it slows down quite a bit compared to local fastmem.

[dirkies]

Most already mentioned but also:
Ide>sata adapter
Ide PIO chip upgrade
Benq monitor for 15khz modes
Romy chip for 1mb 3.9 rom
Perhaps the A3640 060 cpu adapter

[alexh]

The A3640 060 upgrade?
The A3640 speedgeek PAL upgrade - I think it adds a new 680x0 to Amiga bus bridge which increases DRAM bandwidth?
A4000 IDE PIO2 PAL upgrade? (Not needed if you're fitting a USB card and boot from USB)
Picasso IV (Real RTG card, much better than indivision)

[dirkies]

For the 040/060 adapter i thought of this
http://leblogdecosmos.blogspot.be/20...re-ii.html?m=1

I reflashed my pio2's despite having a cyberscsi so i can use an ssd as storage disk faster on the ide.

[hooverphonique]

Originally Posted by alexh

The A3640 speedgeek PAL upgrade - I think it adds a new 680x0 to Amiga bus bridge which increases DRAM bandwidth?

It gets rid of some waitstates in the 040<->030 state machine logic and thus increases overall bandwidth between A3640 and mobo.

[glenn]

Using a "modern" (hrrm) Z3 gfx card (i.e CV64, CV64/3d or PIV) with only 16M motherboard RAM is a pain in the ass. When I bought my first CV64 (1996 ?) I had an A4000/030 with 2+16M RAM, and since the RTG software make a copy of the memory in RAM it eats 4M directly, then all software you want to use eat the rest.

That was the main reason I finally took all my saved money and bought a 060-card

[markpaterson]

Thanks guys, this is all great advice!

However, I just found out it's a Rev C motherboard with a soldered Super Buster 9 chip.

Is that bad? All the Zorro cards I was looking at on Amiga Kit recommend v11 for 'stable' operation. What can I expect with v9? What if I just got the X-100 ethernet card? Their website seems quite adamant that its v11 or bust (for want of a better expression).

I guess I could find someone with a steady hand to replace it for me, but I can't say I'm not a little bummed out about it.

[ajk]

The Buster 9 can be finicky, but it can be swapped for the 11. Acill here on the forums for example can certainly help you out with that.

[SnkBitten]

The A4000 I just picked up has a dead/dying floppy drive. WinUAE to the rescue. Used an IDE to USB adapter, plugged in the 250 GB drive I had spare to my Win10 system and set it up under WinUAE as an A600/1200/4000 IDE drive.

Mine is also a Buster 9, but a revision D board.

[cmsj]

Originally Posted by markpaterson

the Mediator itself is quite pricey.

The mediator is pricey, but the PCI cards to use with it are mostly all ancient PC things that have nearly no value.

When you price out an X-Surf, a Rapid Road and a Zorro graphics card, you're way above the price of a Mediator and some old PCI cards. X-Surf + RR from amigastore.eu is 229.4€. Mediator 4000Di from amigastore.eu is 292€.

For what it's worth, there are several threads on Amibay at the moment where people are selling compatible PCI sound/ethernet/etc cards.

(It's also worth noting that all of the old Zorro graphics cards are using things like S3 Virge, or Cirrus Logic GPUs, so they are really just the guts of super ancient PCI cards. A Radeon 9200 should be significantly faster)

Take a look at: http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php...graphic-cards) - you're looking at 14€ for sound & ethernet & scsi. Then looking at eBay, I see lots of Radeon 9200 PCI boards for £20-£30. I'm not sure which of them are compatible, but if you buy your mediator from Amigastore.eu they will sell you a radeon at the same time for 50€.

[glenn]

But in reality the bottleneck is not the gfx chip, but the zorro3 bandwidth, so you don't gain much by having a more recent (or less ancient..) gfx chip.

The avantage can be that you have more memory on it maybe, but I'm not sure you gain much there either.

ALSO, several of the zorro-PCI bridges have proven to be much slower than the bandwidth of a CV64/CV643d/PIV.

[markpaterson]

So I just checked out amigastore.eu's Mediator page, and the option with Radeon 9200, Ethernet and USB is €423.99 / ~ $470. This is interesting.

http://amigastore.eu/en/488-mediator...oard-3v.html#/

Is that Mediator version one that has a much slower bandwidth? How much worse are we talking? Their website says in bold text "It is the fastest gfx card for the Classic Amiga."

There's currently CyberGraphX 64 3Ds on eBay for $450, obviously without Ethernet and USB. Curious if there's any benchmarks or comparisons anywhere?

Also, does the Mediator require Buster 11? I only have Buster 9. I was planning on having it upgraded, but it would be great not to have to upgrade if I don't have to.

[trixster]

Interesting thread. I'm currently contemplating a similar dilemma with my 'new' A4000 - mediator and pci or Picasso IV/Cybervision 64..?

What did you go for Mark?

In day to day use how does something like a Radeon 9200 compare to a Picasso IV?

[cmsj]

Originally Posted by trixster

In day to day use how does something like a Radeon 9200 compare to a Picasso IV?

One obvious difference is that the Radeon will do higher resolutions - e.g. I run my A4k in 1920x1200 at 32bit, which I don't think any Zorro graphics card can do.