A4000D Mirage Pro Re-build

[fitzsteve]

Hi Folks!

I thought I'd share some pics of the re-build of my A4000 Mirage Pro Tower.

Some might have read that I got a CSPPC recently and it wasn't running well in the tower, it turned out the Capacitors were going bad and I sent the motherboard away to mjnurney for re-cap, you'll be pleased to know the procedure went well and I now have her back

As you can see she is a RevD A4000 with built in 030 CPU which is fully functional as you can see in Mikes photo's on his re-capping thread:

https://www.amibay.com/showpost.php?p=438882&postcount=88

Great job by MJ as always

Here are some close up shot of the Motherboard, first the Ram area:

As you can see socketed Buster -11 and coin battery as standard on this RevD. Chip Ram is soldered to the Motherboard, the Simms are just for Motherboard fast Ram.

Here is the sound/AV area, nice shiny new Caps

Next the 68030 CPU & 68882 FPU which of course will not be used once the CSPPC is installed!

Lastly the forth corner if the Motherboard, floppy/IDE ports and Power Connector here.

Next my pride and joy CSPPC, 68060 @ 50mhz, 128mb Ram, UW SCSI and upgraded with 330mhz PPC

A close up of the two akasa coolers I have fitted to keep this baby ice cool!

Graphics will be dealt with by a Voodoo 3 PCI:

Sound and network will be taken care of by an FM801 PCI Sound Card and Realtek 8139 LAN Card.

I'll also have a Realtek 8029AS for OS4.1 Classic:

If there's enough slots I'll be installing a PCI SATA card to use SATA HDD's in OS4.1 Classic and of course no A4000 project is complete without the awesome Deneb USB

Just in case 128mb CPU Ram + 16mb Motherboard Ram isn't enough I'll plumb in 2x 128mb ZorRam's for a total 400mb Ram

Will all live happily in this Mirage Pro Tower. The Mediator 4000D is inside and I'll share the pics as I do the build later this evening :bounceBoingBall:

Thanks for looking

 

[Deling]

great stuff

 

[johnim]

so just powerful enough for superfrog

 

[Deling]

so just powerful enough for superfrog

hahahaah

 

[fitzsteve]

He he thanks guys, I think it might just cope with Superfrog

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

That board looks almost brand new! Very nice indeed!

 

[fitzsteve]

That board looks almost brand new! Very nice indeed!

Cheers!

Mikes done an amazing job, big kudos to his skills!

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

That board looks almost brand new! Very nice indeed!

Cheers!

Mikes done an amazing job, big kudos to his skills!

Im hoping I can be the recipient of some of those skills in the not too distant future

 

[fitzsteve]

Hey guys!

I finished the rebuild this morning. I'm gutted to say that the system is still highly unstable even after the motherboard has been re-capped

I've checked the jumper settings and tried the usual such as different Ram and re-seating the CSPPC but it just locks up after a few minutes or shortly after I load an PPC software.

I've also pulled the ZorRam's and before I tested another PSU so unless the Mediator has a fault or the CSPPC just don't like this A4000 I'm out of idea's!

However as promised I'm still going to share the pics of the build.

So this is inside the Mirage Pro Tower:

Everything fits really well such as PCI cards, it's very well built. The Motherboard mounting tray can be completely removed which makes installation much easier.

Here's where the magic happens, the PCI bridge/logic board...

So this is the empty Motherboard Tray ready to fit my newly re-capped A4000 Motherboard:

Motherboard carefully secured and mounting posts for Mediator fitted.

Power Adapter and both Floppy/IDE terminated, wont be needing those

Another couple of Motherboard shots, can't post too many pics can ya eh...

CSPPC fitted in place:

Nice and level on the CPU stands

Nice mess of wires! UW SCSI is connected to an ACard UW SCSI-IDE bridge which is driving a 20gb IDE HDD.

Some Zorro Cards installed

And some PCI cards

Overview of everything installed:

I had high hopes when she booted first time:

Quickly realised there might be some kind of problem coming when half the Ram didn't show up...

Reseated the ZorRam's and Simms then all seemed to be fine... for a while...

I even had a chance to enjoy the new Fans

Time to enjoy a Timedemo of Quake II:

[m]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUEGq1PQ7C0[/m]

Well not for long

---------- Post added at 11:47 ---------- Previous post was at 11:26 ----------

Hmm. Well I have done 2 things.

I've pulled the Deneb, this removes all the custom Rom & Libs, Mediator isn't used in this config so booting in AGA.

Changed the stands of the CSPPC to slightly taller ones, card isn't flat now but booting more reliable.

And so far (10 mins of Quake WOS in AGA no crashing...)

:dry:

 

[roy_bates]

it might be the connector on the cpu card going south,not an easy fix.

nice system steve,you can never have anough leds.

 

[fitzsteve]

Hey Roy, well I might have stumbled on the problem. My Voodoo card isn't working now, maybe it was on it's last legs? It's detected in PCI Info but not available in Picasso96 Mode.

I'm going to try another Voodoo I have in my A1200T and report back...

Explains why it would crash in Warp3D stuff and not in AGA stuff

---------- Post added at 12:37 ---------- Previous post was at 12:17 ----------

Well after testing with my other Voodoo 3 it still wasn't detected at first until I reseated a couple of time. I'll give the slots a clean later but Warp3D & PPC still crashing so I'm going to start with a clean install from scratch which is a shame as this installation was working before but maybe something has become corrupt in one of the lockups, etc.

Right now it's happily playing ADoomWOS(PPC) through the Voodoo in Software Rendering.

I have an UW SCSI drive here was OS4.1 Classic so I'm going to take that for a blast and see what stability is like...

Watch this space

 

[fitzsteve]

Well I think I've established the Mediator is the problem, it acts the same even with fresh drivers installed. Only randomly detecting the PCI cards.

I've cleaned all the slots to no avail.

On the plus side I've done several hours of work in AGA and the CSPPC has been flawless, it's only when you try to access a Video Card on the Mediator that it sh*t's it's pants... PCIInfo is reporting some weird stuff like randomly the same card 17 times...

I don't really feel like spending any more money on this project, it's already cost me an absolute fortune so I think it's time to give up.

The last test will be to try another Turbo board just incase the CSPPC invokes some kind of timing issue...

I've put it all back together now and put it away

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

Your so close to having it all working perfect Steve, dont give up on her now!

opcorn:

 

[roy_bates]

if you think its the mediator,try to re-seat all the machs on the card

ive actually had the problem where the gfx card couldnt be seen at all in the os in the end,(it gradually got worse) after the reseat it all worked again.even though all the cards could be seen in pciinfo

i ended up fitting the machs with heatsinks as they where getting hot to touch,maybe with me it was down to expantion and contraction i dont know, but i havent had the problem since then again.

 

[fitzsteve]

Thanks Roy, I'll try re-seating the Machs

 

[mjnurney]

Re seat / clean all the socket chips on the meditator Steve , check your psu also if its getting on a bit

IPA is the wonder cleaner ..

Mike

 

[fitzsteve]

Hey Mike.

I tested another PSU and the issues were still there so I've ruled that out and the system runs perfect in AGA even with the Mediator plugged in.

I've ordered a PLCC chip extractor and will try cleaning and re-seating the machs and sockets

Cheers!

 

[Atreus]

Congrats fitzsteve. I'm little jealous...
I know this wallpaper. I have it but with Tarja Turunen I found it somewhere on the web...

 

[fitzsteve]

Got my PLCC chip extractor today, just a few squids from eBay and was real easy to use:

All ready for the cleaning now, wish me luck!

---------- Post added at 14:55 ---------- Previous post was at 14:54 ----------

Congrats fitzsteve. I'm little jealous...
I know this wallpaper. I have it but with Tarja Turunen I found it somewhere on the web...

Thanks for the kind words

 

[Chinners]

Got my PLCC chip extractor today, just a few squids from eBay and was real easy to use:

All ready for the cleaning now, wish me luck!

Good luck!
And, just my little 2p's worth of info, the contacts on the edge connector look like they could use a bit of IPA lovin' too

I use these things for edge connectors.