User avatar
SnkBitten
South Carolina

Posted Wed Aug 30, 2017 7:36 pm

Thought I'd share a little on my prized Amiga, the Amiga 4000T.

It's an Amiga Technologies A4000T, 68040 @ 25 MHz system that's been upgraded a little :)

Starting with the system itself, it is of course 3.1 ROM with AmigaOS 3.9. It has the standard 2 MB chip and 16 MB ram. I have ready to install a ROMY 1 MB Kickstart adapter and PIO2 Mode update gals for the IDE controller (stock is PIO0).

For storage the A4000T has five 5.25" front accessible racks, (3) horizontal slots and (2) vertical slots.
In the top horzontal slot I have a 5.25" bracket that holds a Slim slot loading DVD-RW optical drive and a 3.5" IDE CF-Card reader with a 4 GB card for my boot drive. These are connected to the internal IDE connector.
In the slot below that I have a 5.25" bracket that holds (2) 2.5" drives and (1) 3.5" front accessible device. This holds a 128 GB IDE SSD drive connected the WarpEngine's SCSI controller (with an ACard IDE>SCSI adapter), and will eventually hold a 2.5" SSD drive for the Flyer's Audio drive (using an ACard IDE>SCSI adapter). The 3.5" slot of this bracket holds a multi-format USB reader that is connected to the RapidRoadUSB. The bottom horizontal slot holds the same bracket as above and will house (2) SSD drives for the Flyer's VideoA and VideoB drives (also using ACard adapters) and the 3.5" slot holds an Amiga HD disk drive.

A WarpEngine 4040 (68040 @ 40 MHz) with 128 MB of RAM replaces the A3640 card, and as mentioned above has my primary storage drive connected to it. I have a revision 6 mask full 68060 CPU and adapter ready to install which will bring the system up to a 68060 @ 80 MHz). This will require a custom ROM so I'm waiting to do a recap and motherboard upgrades (ROMY and PIO2 mod).

Inside filling the available slots I the Toaster 4000 occupying the first video slot and covering one of the SIMM sockets, requirng me to use two 8 MB SIMMs instead of the normal four 4 MB ones.
I have a CyberVision 64/3D w/ScanDoubler card, occupying a Zorro III and second Video slot, this providing RTG graphics and 30 khz frequencies for Amiga screenmodes.
Next is an X-Surf 100 w/RapidRoadUSB, giving me network/internet access and USB connectivity.
Below that is a YCP-100 which allows for S-Video connections for the Toaster/Flyer, giving slightly higher resolution in/out versus the composite/BNC input/output connections they have.
Finally I have a Video Flyer occupying the last slot, ready for the ACard's I have to adapt IDE (and/or SATA with inexpensive SATA>IDE adapters) to the three onboard SCSI controllers it has for Audio, VideoA and VideoB drives. Basically a completely self-contained Video Toaster/Flyer system. I have six TBC's in rackmounts (3) so I'm covered for syncing all the inputs :)

The system is open as I've been experimenting with some old SCSI drives and some 2.5" laptop drives for the Flyer but I'm waiting on picking up some SSD drives. Plus I need to get the motherboard recapped and upgraded.

My favorite has been getting the front facing accessible components though. The CF-Card, the Multi-Card USB reader, the Slim optical drive, etc...

Here's a small video of ejecting a disc, since it's a slot load drive and not tray loaded I thought it looked a little cleaner as I had previously a Slim tray-load drive.

http://amithlon.snkbitten.com/files/Vid ... ad-dvd.mp4

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Wed Aug 30, 2017 8:35 pm

Holy crap that machine is a monster! Wow!

User avatar
SnkBitten
South Carolina

Posted Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:45 am

Thanks. I've spent more money than I should have but you only live once...and as a younger person I dreamed of having this system. I have a lot of little leftovers too, like different 5.25" brackets I tried before finding the ones I am using, a few Slim IDE DVD-RW drives (tray load) and one Slim SATA DVD-RW drive (also tray loading) before I found the slot load one (which was cheaper than the others....). Numerous adapters for the Slim IDE drive to standard 40 pin until I found one allowing Slave/Master settings, a few IDE 2.5" drives and such.

I have the same 5.25" drive bracket in my A4000D with the same Slim slot loading DVD drive, but I have an 80 GB 2.5" IDE drive in the 3.5" spot of the bracket with the front cover not snapped off (since I don't need to access it).

Once I get the Flyer setup I'll try to create something worth watching.

User avatar
SnkBitten
South Carolina

Posted Fri Feb 09, 2018 1:16 pm

I treated myself to (3) 2.5" 128 GB Sata SSD drives that will be going in the A4000T as Flyer drives. It'll be a weird setup, SATA drive to IDE adapter to IDE>SCSI ACard to Flyer SCSI controller. Audio, Video1 and Video2 drives. Just need to spend the time pulling the trays out and installing the drives and putting it all back together (as well as the cabling nightmare).

On the Windows side I upgraded my Lightwave 2015.3 to Lighwave 2018 and have been spending a lot more time doing little animations than anything else lately.

Here are some test, all very basic as I read/watch a little bit of using LW then try to do something similar.... I'm going to need to start reading some manuals/guides to get a better understanding, especially when it comes to lighting the scenes.

All models downloaded and trying to figure out hypervoxels (blaster fire and explosions) in LW 2015.3

http://www.tomcrews.com/LW-Test/Trek-phaser720p.mp4
http://www.tomcrews.com/LW-Test/Modded-trench_run.mp4
http://www.tomcrews.com/LW-Test/Falcon-run2.mp4
http://www.tomcrews.com/LW-Test/BS-Flyby3.mp4

User avatar
McTrinsic

Posted Fri Feb 09, 2018 1:29 pm

A4k's are dream machine.
Wonderful unit.
Congrats!!!

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Fri Feb 09, 2018 1:42 pm

OK the Galactica stuff is frakkin' cool. :)

User avatar
SnkBitten
South Carolina

Posted Fri Feb 09, 2018 3:07 pm

intric8 wrote:OK the Galactica stuff is frakkin' cool. :)
Thanks, I have a few more Galactica animations, just haven't converted them to a web displayable format.

here you go
http://www.tomcrews.com/LW-Test/BattleS ... ica-c3.mp4

User avatar
Crazyeights

Posted Fri Apr 20, 2018 7:51 pm

Awesome 4000T! My A4000T Toaster/Flyer is pretty much stock. This makes me want to start working on it again! I really liked the Lightwave files too :D





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