Amiga 4000D / 040 find..

[SvladJelly]

To keep? Or not to keep.. that is the question!

Hello AmiBay. I did a little intro over in the appropriate section, but I had a few questions, and I was wondering if anyone could help out with an opinion or three..
(Skip down to the end past the dashes for my actual questions if you don't care to read my background.)

First a little about me and how I use my Amiga, besides the great games..

My first Amiga was a 2000HD when I was about 16 years old, purchased new for around $800, gotten as a gift. I dragged it around for years before finally upgrading to an Amiga 1200, with a new Blizzard 060 board and 32 gb of ram. It was amazing. In a state of poverty years ago, I sold it to an idiot who told me "his roommate threw the a1200 away, and he sold the 060 on ebay." I was totally heartbroken to say the least.

Recently.. I stumbled on a fantastic deal at a garage sale. An Amiga 4000d / 040 with Video Toaster and Flyer card, 2002 monitor, and get this.. A Tekmagic 060 accelerator for the Amiga 2000. And let's just say that the price was incredibly incredibly LOW. I couldn't believe my luck. So..

I made some Retr0brite today, and cleaned up my old Commodore 64, taking apart the whole unit, key by key. This one isn't my original, the first computer I had as a child.. and I don't have a power supply or disc drive for it, but I'm working on that.. it's all cleaned up and ready to go. (Found this one at a junk shop in Portland.) The C64 still has my favorite keyboard of all time. Ahh.. clack clack..!

Did the same teardown / whitening / cleanup with the recent Amiga 4000 / 040 with Video Toaster and Flyer card that I lucked out on at a garage sale the other day. Removed years of icky yellow, grime and spiderwebs. Hit the power button when all clean and it booted up immediately. W00t!

So, years ago, I did my first commercial animation on the Amiga 4000, working for a mentor of mine in Portland Oregon. He would sit and make these textural 256 color paintings in Deluxe Paint 4 or 5, and save one a day. I always thought they were fantastic. Imagine my surprise when I loaded this Amiga up, ran Deluxe Paint, and found out that DPaint was registered to someone I knew over 20 years ago in Portland! He was the "Amiga tech" for one of my animation mentor! My mentor / teacher / boss must have rented or borrowed this machine at one time, and saved a few images to it. I probably actually did some of my animation work on this very machine. Small world!

I did about six animations for Sesame Street on the Amiga, all in Deluxe Paint, at a time where neither the Mac or the Pc could display full screen 720x480 animation in real time. The Amiga could! It was incredible to play around with back in the early 90's. I posted some of them here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TeeV2wFMck

All were done in Dpaint / Brilliance, with images / video having been grabbed a frame at a time (in black and white 16 or 32 colors) then colorized in the Amiga and white using a GVP external framegrabber with s-video in..

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So now I have a fantastic machine sitting here on my desk, all cleaned up and working beautifully. And man, it feels good to be an Amigan again!

1) Wiggle the chips.
Sometimes I have to open the case...and push the ram down a little bit, to make the contacts all work and have the thing start, after it sits for a little while. Dirty contacts? Not sure how I can fix that since some of the plastic rails are broken off on one side or another, that hold the ram chips in place.) Maybe a general cleanup of the thing would help greatly with that. Anyone have experience with this?

2) Scandoubled..
Upgrade wise, it has the a3640 / 040 in it, with 16 mb of ram on the main board.
I would love to get an indivision internal scandoubler, but it seems that they are no longer being sold.

3: Mediator / Radeon as flicker fixer?
Should I buy a mediator board and put a nice graphics card in it? This should allow me to view my desktop on my LCD monitor, through picasso 96 software / Elbox latest Radeon driver?

What about displaying games? Would ECS or AGA games still display through to the LCD using the Mediator and a Radeon card?
Wifi cards are NOT supported by the Mediator for the A4000d, correct?

4: Eventually I would like to drop the cash necessary to have a proper 060 / PPC card and explore that whole world. Should I sell the A4000 and 060 2000 accelerator in favor of going all in on an Amiga 1200 build? I like the portability of the 1200, but remember the hassles of installing peripheral devices and cards.. but they certainly are cheaper and more available.

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to help, oh great AmiBay Oracle!
Yo!
C

 

[ajk]

For something to show up on RTG, it has to be operating system friendly, which most games are not. They will just use the custom chipset directly and any graphics card drivers are bypassed.

Generally speaking to get the native graphics output to show up on a modern monitor, you will need a scandoubler such as the Indivision or a graphics card that has one integrated, like the Picasso IV. No PCI card is going to have an integrated one. Some (multisync/tv) monitors will accept the Amiga RGB video output directly through VGA, though. It's the same type of signal but the frequencies are not within the usual VGA spec.

If your main use of the Amiga will be games and old software, get an Indivision AGA rather than any kind of RTG system, regardless of whether you keep the A4000 or get an A1200.

 

[SvladJelly]

So the Picasso IV does both? Switches seamlessly between RTG and AGA / OCS screenmodes?

 

[McVenco]

So the Picasso IV does both? Switches seamlessly between RTG and AGA / OCS screenmodes?

Yep, it does (depending on what you think is seamlessly ). You can run a 1280x1024 Workbench screen, and if you start a WHDLoad game with a standard 15KHz PAL/NTSC screenmode it automatically switches to the right output. And since it has a scandoubler/flickerfixer you can just use about any standard VGA screen.

 

[ajk]

@SvladJelly

Yep. Another option is a separate scandoubler and a graphics card, and switch between them. Some graphics cards have that capability ("pass-through") or you can use a separate switch. Here is a video of my A4000 demonstrating RTG/AGA switching.

 

[SvladJelly]

Absolutely gorgeous 4000 you have there. Did you paint the case?
Awesome. My mind is set. Picasso IV it is.

Out of curiosity, what software did you use to do the video capture?
Fantastic at 1080p on that youtube video!

Great stuff!

Thanks!

 

[ElectroBlaster]

If this was me! Then I would take it as a sign from on-high that it was ment to fall in your lap lol.

Keep it, retrobrite the front, get the top case re-sprayed by a pro. Get the ram slots swapped out and possibly have the board recapped.

I would sell my nuts for an A4000 lol. I watched one go for £xxx gbp and I came very close to bidding as I had a crazy idea of selling every single amiga I had just to keep the missus happy.

I really like those animations you did back in the day, still amazes me how the Amiga allowed people with creative flair to just get on and do the job

 

[AndyLandy]

If you want a fully pimped-to-the-max Amiga, cost-wise it's about the same if you start from an A1200 or an A4000. If you don't want card slots, and want a portable wedge case, the A1200 is the only way to go.

But if you'll want expansion cards and the like, stick with the A4000. A4ks are great machines and they'll go as far as your budget will let them.

 

[ajk]

Absolutely gorgeous 4000 you have there. Did you paint the case?

I retrobrighted the front, but the case is otherwise original. It's got a few dents and scratches if you look close, but I don't mind

Awesome. My mind is set. Picasso IV it is.

That setup in the video is actually a CyberVisionPPC + Indivision, but I also have a Picasso IV and the results are pretty much the same either way.

Out of curiosity, what software did you use to do the video capture?

Fantastic at 1080p on that youtube video!!

Actually I'm not sure, it was probably VirtualDub or maybe something that came bundled with the capture card. It shouldn't make much difference in the end.

 

[ColourWheel64]

What a lovely A4000 in a lovely looking study. Nice one SVLadJelly

 

[Turranius]

1) Wiggle the chips.
Sometimes I have to open the case...and push the ram down a little bit, to make the contacts all work and have the thing start, after it sits for a little while. Dirty contacts? Not sure how I can fix that since some of the plastic rails are broken off on one side or another, that hold the ram chips in place.) Maybe a general cleanup of the thing would help greatly with that. Anyone have experience with this?
C

Yepp. You have several options here.

1: If/When you send the motherboard away to get new caps, ask them to also solder in new memory holders. There are some sold here on amibay, last time I looked.

2: Buy some isopropanol and clean the connections in the simm sockets with it, using a toothbrush. Do the same on the simms but with a cotton swab or something.

3: Make another solution for holding the chips in position. Some have used toothpicks, wedged into the sides to press the plastic harder onto the chips.
I went for this solution, screwing something down with the 2 motherboard screws. No new holes in the motherboard of course, just existing screws: http://eab.abime.net/hardware-pics/68326-too-lazy-solder-new-memory-sockets-a4000.html
I would go for something less conductive and thin though. Even see those blue lights when opening velcro? That is not good for the memory but I was only informed/reminded of this afterwards.

If you make it too high, you can have problems fitting a zorro card in the slot at the bottom.

1)2) Scandoubled..
Upgrade wise, it has the a3640 / 040 in it, with 16 mb of ram on the main board.
I would love to get an indivision internal scandoubler, but it seems that they are no longer being sold.
C

This is entirely up to you what you prefer. The easiest solution, hardware wise, is to get an indivision AGA MKII for A4000/CD32. You will most likely have to fiddle half a day with it to understand its config tool and get a perfect image, but I think its worth it.
I have a Cybervision 64 and the Indivision in my A4000. The Cybervision has a passthrough connection so I use Cybervision 64 in WB and whenever I run something else, the Indivision kicks in instead.
A bit of an overkill, I know. You can do just fine with just the Indivision, but I wanted a slightly faster workbench in 1024x768 (and a lot more colors) then what the Indivision can provide.
They are still being sold, although seems they have run out. There are still places to find them though, like GGS data here in Sweden.
http://www.ggsdata.se/index.php?page=Datorer/amiga-expansion.php

I'm sure they'll be back in stock at the amigakit, vesalia etc, soon...

Also, if you haven't already, take a look at the battery next to the simm sockets. If it shows signs of leakage, remove it. No soldering skills? Snip the legs of for now. That thing leaks onto your motherboard and the repair cost skyrockets =(
Only thing you lose without it is the ability to remember the time between shutdown/startup.

If it already have started leaking (you'll see it on the battery and motherboard), there are other threads that tell you how to clean it up before it does any harm. If it has leaked onto the motherboard and you do nothing about it, it will keep on eating through the motherboard if you only remove the battery. (Edit: yes I know it does not eat through the motherboard, but it sounds cooler. It eats up the tracks on the motherboard)

 

[TjLaZer]

Nice A4000. I would keep it and replace the SIMM slots. You can get a CyberVision 64/3-D, Picasso IV or a Spectrum ZIII video card. The Picasso 4 is the best one, but good luck finding one and be prepared to pay a pretty penny for it.

A4000's are expensive to get, you are looking at about 5X the price of an A2000 for a working one. An A2000 is dirt cheap so you can pick one up on CL or eBay easily.

 

[Ed.D]

Hey Bert.