A4000D Rev D

[Ami_GFX]

Here are some pictures of my newly acquired A4000D with a Rev D motherboard. The pictures were taken just after I took it out of the shipping box. It is in good condition overall and the only issues are two 4.7uF 25v caps that leaked. One was in the audio circuitry and one audio channel isn't working. The other is close to the the battery and doesn't look like it's done much damage. The 030 processor looks like it was added after the MB was manufactured and there is a label next to it saying "Coverted to 030" and the flux from soldering it on was never removed.

The A4000 came with a VLab Y/C card and nothing else. After I checked it out I started it up and the software on it was for a municipal government. This is the first Amiga I've ever seen that was used by a local government. It boots to a blue screen that has the Bellvue software on it. It required a password to leave it and go to the workbench. No game playing on city time unless you were clever enough to bring a floppy and reboot the Amiga.

This Amiga also came with a power supply that was labeled 220v 50hz but when I checked it out, it worked on 120v 60hz.

After checking it out, I moved my Cyberstorm PPC, Cybervision 64, Flicker Magic, and CF adapter to it from my non working A4000D. I've got caps and a quieter fan on order and will replace the bad caps check the MB further when they arrive.

[dirkies]

Nice! What exact quiet replacement fan do you suggest for a standard A4000D psu?

[Franchute13]

Very nice!!!

[Ami_GFX]

Originally Posted by dirkies

Nice! What exact quiet replacement fan do you suggest for a standard A4000D psu?

The one I use is a Yate Loon D80SM-12A. The fit is exact and it is lower RPM and quieter than the original A4000D fan. I don't know the CFM rating of the original fan but the replacement is 2200 rpm, 27 CFM. I would assume the factory fan has an rpm over 3000 and a rating in the 30s by the sound--it howls like a banshee compared to the Yate Loon. Yate Loon also has an 80mm fan with a higher rpm and CFM rating that would be closer to the specs of the original fan. I want quieter. I don't have a lot of power draw on the power suppy, only 2 zorro cards which brings the power draw to around 84 watts. If I was using the power supply at closer to its full 145w capacity, I would go for the more powerful fan.

[dirkies]

I checked a bit and will order the Noctua NF-A8 PWM

Compared with the original fan (I have the Skynet PSU):

old: 2,500rpm / 31.0 CFM = 52.6 m3/h @ 29.0 dB(A)
new: 2,200rpm / 32.6 CFM = 55.5 m3/h @ 17.7 dB(A)

Talk about evolution !!

(new one will run at full speed due to lack of PWM support in Amiga)

[Ami_GFX]

Yeah, the quieter fan makes a big difference. I've replaced a lot of noisy fans in all kinds of different equipment. It is a very cheap and easy upgrade. A lot of times I've found that there is no overheating issue even with the fan disabled and a very low RPM quiet fan is more than enough.

[Ami_GFX]

@dirkies

Well this is interesting. The seller sent me the wrong fan. I got one with four wires instead of two. It was close but a different model number. I looked for the fan you mentioned but it is almost impossible to buy in the US and too expensive to import from Europe so I looked at other fans and found a two wire 12V 80x25mm fan that has a CFM rating of 57 at an RPM of 2700. Really good. The DBA rating is 25 which is not as good as the Noctua fan but still much better than the stock A4000D fan. It is the GDT 8025. I am going to get one of these and put it in my new A4000D instead of the Yate Loon.

[emufan]

what version of infochannel is it, EZ!IC ? sort of re-branded infochannel? can you give some more information

[jbenam]

In my A4000's PSU I have a fan with a small variable resistor "controller" attached to it (they sell it like that). I've set it to a level which doesn't hurt my ears but still gives the PSU plenty of air.

Too bad I have no way to get the model right now (fan is in the A4000 at home) Anyway, it's a really elegant solution, especially if you put the small variable resistor outside the case, so that you can easily change the fan speed even without opening the case.

I can't even remember the brand, actually! It was one of the major brands, though...

[Ami_GFX]

Here is the fan I found, two diffferent links with slightly different specs.

http://sishardware.com/unt/10539-h_q...ooler_fan.html

http://www.ebay.com/itm/291121398199...84.m1497.l2649

I bought the one on eBay and checked several different sites for more information.

I'm very happy with this new A4000. I've been playing with the Vlab Y/C card that came with it. Works horribly with the Vlab software but works great with VHI studio. The real time preview in VHI caused a PPC crash. I'm not sure whether it was a software bug or it worked the processor so hard it overheated but it was one of the things that made me consider a high CFM fan. The A4000D is not well designed for air flow--especially with a lot add on cards and accelerators. I've had a couple of times where the PPC processor overheated in the A4000D chassis. This never happened when I had my A4000D in a High Flyer. That had two fans, more vent holes and a lot more room for hot air to rise and move around.

[Ami_GFX]

I put some more time into it this week. Replaced the bad caps and some that looked like they could be going. I tried a soldering iron technique I saw on Youtube where you aternately heat each side of the cap and lift it bit by bit. It worked but the first three came out sloppy and then I got the technique down better. At the end I was doing pretty neat work but I think I'll just buy a hot air station the next time I need to recap and Amiga. The soldering iron technique is hard on the pads.

Replaced the fan. The new fan is quieter and does move a lot of air. I tested both of them side by side on a 12v power supply when I had the old one removed. They both moved a lot of air but the GDT fan was much smoother in operation and had a much lower RPM.

I found a $10 4.3gb wide SCSI drive and it worked with the Cyberstorm SCSI. I've tried several other 68 pin SCSI III drives on it and this is the first one that has worked. I had a 4gb CF card but it wouldn't work with the Atapi DVD drive I have. Very weird because it worked fine with a regular IDE drive. My Atapi DVD drive is only 7 inches long which is ideal for not blocking the air flow from the fan and I haven't found any SCSI CD or DVD drives that short. The SCSI hard drive is much faster than the CF card and works with the Atapi DVD. I found it is much better to have it in slave mode because if the DVD drive is set to master, the Amiga pauses quite a while figuring out that it can't boot from it before it boots from the SCSI drive. In slave mode, the Amiga IDE controller doesn't try to boot from it and the Amiga boot sequence goes straight to the SCSI drive. OS4 doesn't recognize the DVD in this configuration but OS3.1 and 3.9 have no problem at all with it.

[FOL]

The best rev has to be the rev D in my opinion. Alot closer to a 4000T.
Even though its CR, stuff was learnt from earlier crappy revs.

I love the onboard cpu, .

[Damion]

. It worked but the first three came out sloppy and then I got the technique down better. At the end I was doing pretty neat work but I think I'll just buy a hot air station the next time I need to recap and Amiga. The soldering iron technique is hard on the pads.

IMHO ChipQuik is the way to go without hot air, and the easiest way overall if the old solder and/or pads are eaten by electrolyte. Temperature can be kept very low, practically no risk whatsoever of damaging anything.

[Ami_GFX]

After the A4000D I recapped an A3640 that I had tried to recap with through hole electrolytics. This time it came out well. I even managed to make a solder bridge where I had pulled a pad on a capacitor. I used spare 47uF capacitors from the A4000D recap instead of the 22uF caps I pulled from the board. The larger size actually made doing the solder bridge possible. I just scraped the lacquer away from the through hole the pad was connected to and put a blob of solder in it. Then I tinned the leads of the cap, positioned it so the lead touched the hole and touched it with the iron. I added more solder after I had soldered the other side to the pad. The only problem I had was little protusions of solder that were left when I pulled away the iron. I'll add more flux next time. I'd been using a rosin core solder that had a lot of flux in it and I recently changed to a solder that has much less and it makes for a much cleaner job but it doesn't do well if you reheat and reflow the solder joint.

I'm using a solder/desolder station that is made for plated through work. I do things like relay control boards that carry a lot of current--solder connections that can carry up to 15 amps. It is also good for almost any through hole pcb work like replacing chips, capacitors, and resistors. Doing delicate SMD work takes some getting used to. I have some very fine tips for both soldering and desoldering which helps.