Back in 1984, I was blessed to finally get my hands on my own Commodore 64 home computer. I still have it, and I still use it to have a trip down memory lane once in a while. The same goes for the Amiga. I got my first Amiga 500 in 1989, and since then I was addicted to that machine.
I upgraded to the Amiga 1200, and a few years later I got a special deal directly from Commodore Scandinavia in Denmark to get myself a beautiful Amiga 4000/EC030.
Today I still own my old computers, and added a few extras which I missed out owning in my youth.
The flagship is still my Amiga 4000, which was however upgraded back in the 90’ies with a Micronik tower, Cyberstorm 060, CyberSCSI MKII, Cybervision 64, ArXon Scandoubler, Ariadne NIC. Back then it was also equipped with a MAC/PC Emplant card (which I sold, since the PC part was not really fast for anything else than plain DOS, and the MAC part did not seem any faster than Shapeshifter emulation) and a MultiFaceCard III.
The MultiFaceCard III enabled the use of faster serial ports when using my 56K modems, and also the parallel port was way faster than the onboard Amiga port.
In the early 2K century, thanks to EBAY, I got my hands on some expansions I could never afford to buy just to play around with before – such as a A2386SX Bridgeboard, VLAB Motion, Toccata Soundcard.
Today, as of 2019, my Amiga 4000 is equipped with these expansionss:
Motherboard was serviced and recapped in 2017 – and has 8MB RAM
A2386SX Bridgeboard with a 5 1/4″ FDD and a 3 1/2″ FDD
VLAB Motion
Toccata Soundcard
Cybervision 64 Graphicscard
Cyberstorm 060 Accelerator with 16MB RAM
Cyberstorm MKII Fast-SCSI II Controller
The ArXon Scandoubler stopped working, but I got myself a BenQ BL702A monitor which supports 15Hz. I am using the Commodore 23pin RGB to VGA adapter to loop-through the 15Hz signal to the Cybervision 64; works perfect, since my monitor is compatible with the signal and hence doesn’t need a scandoubler.
I started to write this page as I am now giving some time and love to my Amiga’s again, after being too busy for the last decade to really do something about it. Last time I upgraded the A4000 was with a Kickstart 3.1 and Workbench 3.9 – but now I have just upgraded to Kickstart 3.1.4 and I am in the process of re-installing the system with OS 3.1.4.1.
Since I need to refresh how all this way done, I am trying to do the installation on the actual system as much as possible, from scratch, without the help of any of the many pre-installed emulation packages. I do stumble across different issues, which I try to solve one by one.. and I am going to make a post for each of the issues I bumped into and solved here; maybe they will be of help for someone else out there 🙂
Have fun!