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[milesunder]

Hi All

I currently have a A4000D 040 25mhz (with Quaddoubler) which is pretty standard. i.e. 2mb chip ram, 16mb fast ram running OS3.9. A mediator DI is due to turn up in the next couple of days for it, which a Voodoo Banshee, SB128 and network card will be filling it's brand spanking new PCI slots. I have a couple of questions regarding various upgrades?

What is the best CPU to upgrade to? i.e cyberstorm PPC, 68060 or the new Dragon when it is released from Elbox?

With the voodoo banshee (it is in the same family as the voodoo 3 range and is compatible with the mediator) can I litterally throw out my old philips RGB monitor in favour of my shiny new 17", TFT never having to connect the Amiga monitor port up again?

I also have a DCE internal scanmagic which used to work, the cables joining the two PCB's came unsoldered and the device hasn't seemed to work since. I have tried it in my A1200 and it didn't seem to work there either am I doing some thing wrong or is the scan magic dead.

If it is dead does anyone know somebody who might be able to repair it?

All help and advice gratefully received.

Milesunder

[samanosuke]

Might sound a bit obvious but when you soldered the boards back together maybe the wires were the wrong way around?

[Brian]

About CPU uppgrade... the best one available is the CSPPC233 w. 060/60. If we're talking future possibilities with might never arrive there's the Shark/Shark+ from Elbox, no Dragon for the A4000 have been mentioned yet afaik, there's also been rumours about a new G4 PPC card in the making for the A4000.

I'd strongly suggest you get a real Voodoo3 2000/3000 card as the Banshee is missing the 3D capabilities and thus Warp3D won't work with it. And unless you get a scandoubler working for it and have a switchbox (or device) to switch between gfx card and scandubler you still need 2 monitors.

[alexh]

A4000D 040 25mhz (with Quaddoubler)

Interesting, I had never heard of these.... do they offer any real performance increase over a standard A3640?

What speed rating processor do they need?

[Ronmor]

Hi milesunder,
If you send me the scandoubler I can try to fix it. I have repaired a 4000 mobo with battery damage and I'm looking for another dead 4000 mobo with battery damage to try to repair it (to sharpen my skills). So if someone on amiga.org that has a dead mobo because of battery damage I'm willing to fix it for just postage (both ways). :-D

[glitch]

Hi AlexH,

The Sonnet QuadDoubler was a cool product indeed. Their website www.sonnettech.com doesn't appear to show them anymore, but I'm sure you can find info about them around the web. I have heard of several people using them successfully in Amigas now.

-G

[Brian]

@alexh

As far as I know the one you need runs at 50Mhz so you'll need a 040/40 with some good cooling.

I can't imagine it increasing the speed significantly though as it still lacks direct fastram access for the CPU.

[adolescent]

Brian wrote:
@alexh

As far as I know the one you need runs at 50Mhz so you'll need a 040/40 with some good cooling.

I can't imagine it increasing the speed significantly though as it still lacks direct fastram access for the CPU.

They come with the needed CPU and cooling. For $100 or so, probably cheaper now, it's a good upgrade for an 3640. It won't fix A3640 design problems but you do get a much faster processor.

[PaSha]

I'd strongly suggest you get a real Voodoo3 2000/3000 card as the Banshee is missing the 3D capabilities and thus Warp3D won't work with it. And unless you get a scandoubler working for it and have a switchbox (or device) to switch between gfx card and scandubler you still need 2 monitors.

Huh? IIRC the Banshee is the combined 2d/3d version of the Voodoo2 card. The Voodoo2 was a 3d-only addon card, and you needed a 2d gfx card in addition for normal 2d stuff (ie windows).
The Voodoo2 and Banshee would be from somewhere around 1998/1999, I think.

-Paul

[Brian]

Perhaps... as far as I recall I was told warp3d wouldn't work with the card so presumed the 3d capabilities wasn't there? Looking it up it does in deed have 3d capabilities so perhaps the way it's implemented in the card differes from other V3 cards and that's why wapr3d wont work with it? Someone with some personal experience are welcome to jump in on this one. :-)

[Argus]

@Glitch

Those Sonnet Quadoublers are difficult to come by. I've been looking for a while and haven't seen any for sale anywhere. Any old Mac resellers out there?