A4000D -> Tower Project

[mfletcher]

Hi,

Im considering taking my A4000D and putting it into a tower. I think the pros/cons of this are as follows:

PROs:
Much more space to work with components - A4000D case gets very cramped
Able to use ATX PSU's

CONs:
Possible for CPU card to fall out?
A4000 Indivision fall out?

Any other thoughts about pros and cons?

[thomas]

Possible for CPU card to fall out?

This would only happen if you shake and kick it. And even then you could use screws instead of the spacers to fixate it in place. I had two different towers over the past 15 years and it never happened to me.

A4000 Indivision fall out?

Never saw one, but I don't think so, either.

[alexh]

Cons :

• Most official A4000D tower cases are crap and overpriced
• A generic ATX case will need a lot of metal working to get the motherboard ports to work.
• A generic ATX case will need the motherboard plate drilling (and possibly welding) to align with A4000D mountings
• You'll need a bus board to turn the slots 90' DAMN expensive.
• If you dont get a bus board you'll have to live with wonky zorro cards which do not align with the case slots.
• You'll convert an Iconic A4000D into a soul-less unrecognisable PC.
• You'll need an ATX to A4000D PSU adapter.

Pros :

• Better heat dissipation.
• Less noisy and arguably more reliable PSU
• Screwless PCI/Zorro & screwless hard drive mounts
• Front facing USB ports (if you have a Deneb)

[mfletcher]

What is really prompting this is that Im currently having issues with my A4060 accelerator in my A4000. Basically since Ive got it, its already crapped out one A4000 PSU, and Im beginning to think the second PSU is at its limit. The A4060 is over at AmigaCenter France and JJB cant find anything wrong with it.

Its not the mobo either, as the mobo has already been looked at by JJB. So Im wondering if the PSU is crapping out. Symptoms that Im seeing include:

Here are some of the symptoms I was seeing when using the card with my system.
1) Power on system. Indivision AGA splash screen appears. Then blank screen. System freezes, as caps lock light stays on even when I try to turn caps lock off on keyboard.
2) After 5 minutes of using Ctrl Amiga-Amiga to reset A4000, system finally boots to workbench.
3) But if I power off system again and then try to power on, back to 1) again.
4) Overtime, the interval from initial power up and resetting to getting workbench increases (starts at 5 minutes, eventually was 30 minutes)
5) System hard locks up on Workbench and running demos. This symptom appeared last before I sent the card to JJB.

So maybe getting a proper PSU might be the answer. But If Im going down that route, might I just be better off sinking the extra money and towerizing it anyway?

[alexh]

Scrap your optical drive and hard drive and get an IDE->CF back panel adapter and a CF card. That should reduce your power supply load by over 30%, not to mention making it much easier to transfer files from the PC to Amiga and cost under $10

Might be worth checking the ROM on your A4060. Maybe it is corrupt, an older version or the wrong speed EPROM. Same for motherboard EPROM. Try some new RAM SIMMS.

Might also be worth checking your MACH chips, if they are all MACH130 chips they are more likely to suffer from timing problems.

The solution for that is perhaps to under-clock your board, try some different SIMMS, if you have EDO try FPM, try to get 50ns capable.

You could try and run your RAM and CPU asynchronously. This is usually used for overclocking the A4060 but it might help.

[chiark]

ATX converter cables are £15 at amigakit.com... That'd get my vote rather than changing anything awkward like the case.

As alex says, moving to CF is a revolution, and a powersaver too...

[mfletcher]

I have deneb - I could scrap the CD ROM I suppose... would definitely make things less congested...

[mfletcher]

Although these problems were still manifesting themselves on a bare bones system... no HD, CD Rom or other zorro boards installed.

[chiark]

PSU. And PSU. Then check your PSU.
(and RAM )