Amiga 4000 find

[silent]

Hey gang. I'm new here but have made a couple of posts already to introduce myself. I received my Amiga 4000/040 today. It came with the keyboard, mouse, a bunch of original software and this was from a guy on craigslist up in Michigan who used it years ago for designing t-shirts. He's had a stroke and recovering and decided to just sell off everything. The power button suffered a little mishap in shipping but other than that, a little glue will fix it and I'm good to go. Lots of little surprises in this one. The KS Roms are 3.0, the battery has leaked and corroded but no destroyed traces. It's pretty tight inside there, but I pulled out a 1991 Dataflyer SCSI adapter that was running a SCSI drive, a 160mb IDE drive, an Opalvision board minus the effects chip, all the ram slots were full but I haven't looked to see how much ram was actually in it, and the A3640 C= accelerator card. Now I'll have to do some work on the power switch (I'll just machine metal backing plate and glue it on) and start working on neutralizing the battery acid and replacing the battery. Price for this unit? $xxxx and he packed it up for me. I haven't even begun to go through all the software and books, but all-in-all a great deal because the parts could be sold for some serious cash. He did indicate it was a working unit. I guess I'll find out. Just for all the extra goodies I think I was worth it.

So now to hunt down that retro guy who does motherboard rejuvinations. I'll keep you all posted.

Erin

 

[SkydivinGirl]

Hi Erin,

It sounds like a great little system. I have a couple A4000 systems that I really enjoy.

I had to edit the prices out of your post. AmiBay has a strict policy against discussing prices because it can be used for price driving. Please feel free to share your finds, just don't mention or discuss prices. Please take a moment to go through the rules again.

Also, do a quick search for A4000D mods here. You'll find some great projects from our very talented users.

Heather

 

[silent]

Thanks for being forgiving with me about the rules. I've never been on a forum where you couldn't mention the prices. Let's just say it was a darn good price. Now to get that battery desoldered and get to work!

 

[TjLaZer]

Yeah this is the only one in the world. Lol

 

[silent]

I tore into this A4000/040 tonight and completely disassembled everything in it. The battery had leaked all down the side of the mobo and even caused corrosion on the mouse/joy ports. So I did some extra reading outside of the Amiga fold on how to combat and clean this corrosion. What I did was desoldered the old battery and did the vinegar/toothbrush treatment followed by isopropyl alcohol. I still had a fair bit of greenish corrosion on the parts and read about using baking soda to neutralize the acid as well as act as a mild polishing agent to shine up the traces on the chips and mobo that were affected. It turned out pretty good. I didn't feel like to scrubbing the joy ports so I removed the plate and threw the little hex bolts and plate into straight muriatic acid. It fizzed for 5 seconds and was instantly decorroded. Then I carefully held the mobo while using a toothbrush in muriatic acid and shined up the shielding and pins around the joy ports. I thoroughly rinsed with water and blew it out with compressed air held at a distance. I emptied a can of QD Electronic Circuit cleaner on the mobo while concentrating on the battery area. So now to read up and figure out the best replacement for the battery.

I was scared about the traces on the mobo but after a good polishing with the baking soda, I think I'm gonna be okay. I've ordered some KS 3.1 roms and a CF card preformatted with some version of the OS which I can't remember. I finished with a thorough rinse of 91% isopropyl which is as good as I can find around these parts.

Tomorrow will be gluing the busted piece of plastic back on the power switch.

BTW: Did C= include a powerful enough power supply in the 4000 to handle whatever cards you loaded it up with?

Erin

 

[fitzsteve]

Hi Erin, welcome to Amibay

It sounds like you're giving this A4000 lots if tlc, it would be great to see some pics if you've taken any.

I've just realised you bought the cf card from me, I'm sure it will serve you well, but any issues just drop me a line here or at ebay. I installed classic workbench full, it is great for those returning to the scene as it's pre loaded with lots of useful applications and support for all common file formats built in.

Unless you're going to fully load the A4000 with every conceivable upgrade the psu should be fine, for example my A4000 has a warpengine 040, cybervision64/3D, deneb usb, toccata sound card and dkb3128 running fine with the stock psu.

Some people change the noisy fan however.

Anyway, good luck with your project

Steve.
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.5; en-gb; HTC_DesireHD Build/GRJ90) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1

 

[SkydivinGirl]

I've never been on a forum where you couldn't mention the prices.

Yep! We're a little different here. Having seen the price before I moderated it, it looked like a good buy. Great job on the clean-up of the system. Hopefully everything is OK with the traces. I've got one A4000D that I picked up earlier this year that had some battery leakage. I've cleaned it and removed the old battery but I still want to do more before powering it up!

The stock A4000D PSU works great for most applications. I found an old, dead A4000 PSU from another AmiBay member that I gutted then fit an ATX PSU into it. It turned out great and fits it the system just like the original PSU.

Heather

 

[silent]

Thanks for the CF card Steve! Can't wait for it to show up. I know if I don't get to cracking on this A4000, it might sit long enough that I forget how it all goes together.

The latest thing I'm debating on is what to do with the backup battery. The Amiga may get stored again and I don't want to worry so much about the old leaky nicad or nimh pack. In searching around, I found that Radio Shack carries a rechargeable lithium battery located here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tadiran-3-6...-/161040189397?pt=PCA_UPS&hash=item257ebe47d5

I could solder this into the old location and have the advantage of lithium and rechargeability. I've never had a lithium cell leak - they just sit there and eventually go dead. The last resort is to solder some leads onto the mobo and then sticky tape the cell into the front cover.

I'd appreciate thoughts and suggestions about this rat shack cell. Also, I can take some photos of what I have now...I didn't before because I was freaked out enough about the potential battery problems, I tore right into it immediately!

Thanks gang.

Erin

 

[SkydivinGirl]

Erin,

There are multiple sellers who make coin battery kits for the A4000. For example, here's AmigaKit's:

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1093

Good luck whatever you decide.

Heather

 

[hooverphonique]

I've put one of these into my A4k.. It fits directly into the mobo holes.. They are available from various electronics resellers (I didn't get mine from amigakit)..

 

[edd_jedi]

I can highly recommend upgrading the PSU fan, mine made such a racket when I got it, it's almost silent now. Definitely the best mod I've done regarding the user experience.

 

[RichyV]

I can highly recommend upgrading the PSU fan, mine made such a racket when I got it, it's almost silent now. Definitely the best mod I've done regarding the user experience.

Yes, now I have a spare (bought here from TroelsDK ) I can take a look at modding the fan on my original PSU.

Scale of 1-10. how difficult, would you say..?