A4000T owners group

[Buzzfuzz]

Hello!

Now that we're all here

How are you guys connecting modern drives to your A4000T SCSI port?

Anyone ever get one of those Acard adapters working?

I used SCA80 server drives, these work very good and some are 15000 rpm, so quite fast.
Modern drives are more like SSD's or SD cards with adapters, these should work, most work on my 1200 and the IDE is quite capable of of handeling them with kickstart 3.2.2, and the 1200 IDE is identical to the 4000T except the 4000T has bufferd IDE, but add this to the 1200 and it becomes the same

 

[Milesunder]

Count me in the club. I have a AT A4000T with a CyberstormPPC with a few other goodies inside.

 

[samaron]

Greetings everyone. I am exploring the idea of buying a 4000T main board. My concern is that I have been told by others that these had problems even with official Commodore expansions. Is this true? How compatible is the T-model with expansions in practice?

 

[Buzzfuzz]

Greetings everyone. I am exploring the idea of buying a 4000T main board. My concern is that I have been told by others that these had problems even with official Commodore expansions. Is this true? How compatible is the T-model with expansions in practice?

I've ran about everything on the T, from Cyberstorm MK III and PPC to Warp 4040, Z3 Fastlane, Picasso IV, Deneb and so on, all worked

 

[bozzerbigd]

Greetings everyone. I am exploring the idea of buying a 4000T main board. My concern is that I have been told by others that these had problems even with official Commodore expansions. Is this true? How compatible is the T-model with expansions in practice?

I had issues with the Phase5 Fastlane Zorro Memory board. Everything else has been OK.

 

[JHanna]

Greetings everyone. I am exploring the idea of buying a 4000T main board. My concern is that I have been told by others that these had problems even with official Commodore expansions. Is this true? How compatible is the T-model with expansions in practice?

I got Matze's Z3 bus active termination fix done on mine by CRG off YouTube. Basically at 100MHz the top two Z3 slots can get a bit tempermental. It's not essential, but I thought it best to do anyway.

Also, onboard SCSI gets flaky with CD drives when running at 100MHz too. Still not sure why, and nobody is able to explain it.

 

[bozzerbigd]

I got Matze's Z3 bus active termination fix done on mine by CRG off YouTube. Basically at 100MHz the top two Z3 slots can get a bit tempermental. It's not essential, but I thought it best to do anyway.

Also, onboard SCSI gets flaky with CD drives when running at 100MHz too. Still not sure why, and nobody is able to explain it.

Hmm... the ease of having an inbuilt IDE AND SCSI functionality is most of the joy of the A4000T. I don't see why you'd make that unstable for a few extra MHz?!

 

[JHanna]

Hmm... the ease of having an inbuilt IDE AND SCSI functionality is most of the joy of the A4000T. I don't see why you'd male that unstable for a few extra MHz?!

It's only SCSI CD drives affected (tried 8 different drives), and only if MMUlib is installed.

NOBODY knows why.

Extremely frustrating.

 

[Buzzfuzz]

It's only SCSI CD drives affected (tried 8 different drives), and only if MMUlib is installed.

NOBODY knows why.

Extremely frustrating.

Busspeed is simply to high for the scsi, this also happens when you overclock a Cyberstorm PPC, that would be my guess.
Besides, why use scsi cdrom drives ? The IDE bus is a lot faster and you can have DVD drives in there, that would allow you to use 4.7 or 8.5 GB discs if the drive reads dual layer.
You might even be able to add a Bluray drive now that kickstart 3.2.2 has large drive support

 

[bozzerbigd]

Busspeed is simply to high for the scsi, this also happens when you overclock a Cyberstorm PPC, that would be my guess.
Besides, why use scsi cdrom drives ? The IDE bus is a lot faster and you can have DVD drives in there, that would allow you to use 4.7 or 8.5 GB discs if the drive reads dual layer.
You might even be able to add a Bluray drive now that kickstart 3.2.2 has large drive support

Fine, if you can find an MMC compatible IDE model but surely the SCSI bus is better to use and it doesn't need CPU cycles to drive it?

 

[JHanna]

Busspeed is simply to high for the scsi, this also happens when you overclock a Cyberstorm PPC, that would be my guess.
Besides, why use scsi cdrom drives ? The IDE bus is a lot faster and you can have DVD drives in there, that would allow you to use 4.7 or 8.5 GB discs if the drive reads dual layer.
You might even be able to add a Bluray drive now that kickstart 3.2.2 has large drive support

It's not a hardware thing as it works fine until MMUlibs is installed.

 

[bdb]

Busspeed is simply to high for the scsi, this also happens when you overclock a Cyberstorm PPC, that would be my guess.
Besides, why use scsi cdrom drives ? The IDE bus is a lot faster and you can have DVD drives in there, that would allow you to use 4.7 or 8.5 GB discs if the drive reads dual layer.
You might even be able to add a Bluray drive now that kickstart 3.2.2 has large drive support

I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by the bus speed being too high. The transfer of data on the SCSI bus is set by the SCSI II bus chip, not the CPU. While the original PIO 0 gal has a speed of up to 3 MB/s, the SCSI II bus can reach 5-7, and the effect on a CD/DVD/BR drive transfer speed is more based on the read speed of the drive, than the speed of the data bus; I must not understand what is being discussed.

 

[bdb]

Fine, if you can find an MMC compatible IDE model but surely the SCSI bus is better to use and it doesn't need CPU cycles to drive it?

Even with DMA, once the data is in RAM it requires the CPU to do something with it, assuming that data moved to a drive is subsequently there for storage. The Super Buster arbitrates the DMA of the SCSI II, but some CPU cycles are involved. The PIO mode 0 of the IDE uses the CPU and transfers appear to be faster with more advanced CPUs and faster clock speed, or is this a misunderstanding on my part?

 

[bozzerbigd]

I've found out a key part of making my Cyberstorm equipped A4000T stable. The latest Cyberstorm CPU libraries from 1999! It made a word of difference to booting Workbench stably with crashes and Guru Meditation errors! I should have checked this sooner! I'd always blamed my old spinning hard drive for the instability previously!

 

[YouKnowWho]

Looks like you guys have a new member.

Sold - Amiga A4000T 68060

Up for sale is my much loved A4000T, I do have more than one but this is hands down the finest and best condition I have and I will be sad to see it go. This is a factory 060 machine with the A4000T-060 card which is similar to the T-Rex II 4060 and uses EDO Ram, This is regarded as a very fast...

www.amibay.com

Hey @cluterone, let us know when you get it, set it up and start selling admission so that some of us can perhaps come over and oooh and aaah at it in person.

I'd also like to ask some questions as I continue to admire these beauties.
1) Seems like towers just dwarf monitors. I feel like a tower needs a nice CRT. Something 19" or better yet 21". Something maybe aperture grille like a Mitsubishi or a Sony. Anyone rocking an Amiga 4000 Tower out there with a large CRT? Can we see what a 4000 Tower next to a large CRT looks like?
2) Turbo button does nothing, right? Anyone repurpose it for something cool?
3) Who is using both video slots these 4000 Towers exclusively offer? What cards have you got in there?
3a) Mega bonus points for someone who's using an Indivision to not waste the video slot for a flickerfixer AND has both video slots occupied with video hardware. If this is you, what's your config? What cards have you got in those two video slots that isn't a flickerfixer?

 

[cluterone]

Looks like you guys have a new member.

Sold - Amiga A4000T 68060

Up for sale is my much loved A4000T, I do have more than one but this is hands down the finest and best condition I have and I will be sad to see it go. This is a factory 060 machine with the A4000T-060 card which is similar to the T-Rex II 4060 and uses EDO Ram, This is regarded as a very fast...

www.amibay.com

Hey @cluterone, let us know when you get it, set it up and start selling admission so that some of us can perhaps come over and oooh and aaah at it in person.

I'd also like to ask some questions as I continue to admire these beauties.
1) Seems like towers just dwarf monitors. I feel like a tower needs a nice CRT. Something 19" or better yet 21". Something maybe aperture grille like a Mitsubishi or a Sony. Anyone rocking an Amiga 4000 Tower out there with a large CRT? Can we see what a 4000 Tower next to a large CRT looks like?
2) Turbo button does nothing, right? Anyone repurpose it for something cool?
3) Who is using both video slots these 4000 Towers exclusively offer? What cards have you got in there?
3a) Mega bonus points for someone who's using an Indivision to not waste the video slot for a flickerfixer AND has both video slots occupied with video hardware. If this is you, what's your config? What cards have you got in those two video slots that isn't a flickerfixer?

Thanks for the referral to this chat - I didn't know it existed. I am going to get the machine up and running right beside my 3000T. I have a Z9000 and X-Surf card ready for the machine when it arrives. I also have a 4000 Toaster that I could put in it as well. If I don't put in the Z9000, I have an indivision and Cybervision 64 card I could put in instead - but I haven't yet decided. I'll take it one step at a time - hope the machine arrives safe and sound.

Just so I'm clear - is the current project to re-produce the front plastic cover for the 4000T, or is the metal enclosure?

Thanks!
Bryan

 

[bozzerbigd]

Thanks for the referral to this chat - I didn't know it existed. I am going to get the machine up and running right beside my 3000T. I have a Z9000 and X-Surf card ready for the machine when it arrives. I also have a 4000 Toaster that I could put in it as well. If I don't put in the Z9000, I have an indivision and Cybervision 64 card I could put in instead - but I haven't yet decided. I'll take it one step at a time - hope the machine arrives safe and sound.

Just so I'm clear - is the current project to re-produce the front plastic cover for the 4000T, or is the metal enclosure?

Thanks!
Bryan

It's both! A new reimaging of the metal Enlight AT case probably with some modern fixings and drive rails etc. Plus some strengthened original C= design bezel/door plastics (which were much nicer than the Escom design but very rare and fragile)!

 

[The Gonz]

Happy to say the ZZ9000 I ordered on Feb 2nd shipped out yesterday from Germany and is expected to arrive next week!
Once installed and verified operational I will be one step closer to putting my 4000T completely back together.

 

[qz3fwd]

Just don’t put the cover back on as it will likely come back off quickly, and a pain to remove.

 

[The Gonz]

... you are probably correct.