It’s a cool computer, no doubt, however if you have an Amiga 1200, a PiStorm32 Lite, and Raspberry Pi 3 or 4 you’ll have a much more powerful Amiga… then there’s always virtual Amiga too (FS-UAE FTW) I have a A500 w/ a PiStorm (Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ and Caffeine OS), uses PlipBox for network access. Also have an A1200 w/ the PiStorm32 Lite (Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 8GB RAM, Caffeine OS). I know nobody asked but honestly the PiStorm is amazing, super fast and inexpensive (especially compared to the Apollo Vampire accelerators). I can use both the above Amigas for “daily driving” computing and I do. Also, if you have an old iBook or PowerBook it might be compatible with MorphOS (a Power PC Amiga-Like OS).
I'm only five minutes in, and I'm absolutely loving it! The sound of that SCSI drive is music to my hears, what a beautiful machine. Congratulations on achieving our collective dream of owning this timeless classic, and thanks for sharing your thoughts on it. People like you play a vital role in preserving our computer heritage, and I'm truly grateful for your insights and passion.
I went from Amiga 500. Did eventually flip PC a 133mhz pentium in 1994. From there on I ended up on the gaming PC badwagon building 11 gaming PCs from 1999-2024. I am still deeply passionate about the Amiga and the community !
My journey started with first pentium, so I've never had the chance to experience OS/system other than windows/x86 back in the day, I am so thankful that there are people like you, who share this exciting time in the history of personal computing.
You are lucky. I used A600 for TV broadcast the smallest budget model and later A1200 68020 at home. When I moved to Pentium I went back to 1970s, actually way more backward as sh/bash is science fiction compared to DOS. I didn't have any option that time as expansions were horribly expensive and there was a damn feeling spread as Amiga dead. If I was in Germany I would connect a ISDN and buy an 68060 /PPC expansion.
What a great video. Thank you for taking the time to share this amazing tech with the world. My first unit was the C64 and ended with the Amiga 2000. I loved growing up around the Amiga community! I was lucky enough to have connections with a local Amiga dealer in Syracuse, NY. Industrial Color Labs. I created some lightwave 3d work for their commercials.
such a beautiful machine... and to think I could've bought one from my school back in the day for 150 euros including a picasso video card and non linear video editing broadcast cards. I'm still kicking myself. Thanks for taking the time to show us this very comprehensive overview!
Just fire up UAE, and see how much you REALLY would have missed it. I used to use my Amiga all the time, it WAS on par (if not superior) to every other computer at the time save Unix workstations. Working with the system today, it's downright primitive. I used to look down on console video game systems at that time, but today, if I am going to emulate a system to run say, Speedball II, it's on a console, not an Amiga.
This is so cool! I always wanted to have an A4000T, but I went down the route and converted my Amiga 1200 into a towercase. Mediator PCI with Voodoo 3 3000, Blizzard 1260 with SCSI-IV controller, 256MB Fast Ram and many more things. Sadly I do not have it anymore. :/ EDIT: I should mention that I am now a happy owner of both a Sam460 and an AmigaONE X5000 both running AmigaOS 4.1. :)
Lucky you the X5000 is the A4000T of today under the Amiga's 😎 Still have some Amiga's myself currently my A1200 with PiStorm+Pi4 is my main Amiga and it's wicked fast for a classic.
This video is so detailed and informing. Thanks, mate :) I´ve just gotten my hands in one of these machines because an old friend gifted me one. I actually thought it was a custom tower. Im over the moon as a guy who played and tinkered with alle the cheap amigas since boyhood. I always wanted a regular 4000 but never wanted to pay the price of entry. Now I have a 4000T. It´s going to be recapped and restored soon. Thanks Forgotten Computer
Great story and thanks for sharing!!! Actually I'm almost sure I read your story somewhere while researching things for this video -- was that reddit? Or an Amiga forum? Or maybe I'm confusing yours with something different. Anyway, congrats on an amazing gift, and hope it serves you well and gives you a lot of fun :)
Thank you so much Brother! A wonderful video and an overview of our favorite and valuable CBM machines. The Amiga is now for us as a Divine being and an endangered species:( We love and respect her, it's a shame that the producers lost their assets. Great greetings and peace to all from St. Petersburg = Russia!🗺
Thats a beast comapared to my Amiga 500, still boxed and not sure what to do with it. Would be nice to have one like yours and play about with it. Great vid and i will be watching for updates.
Many thanks for watching. There are many things you can do with A500. For my A500 I really loved the Aca500+ expansion + any Amiga 1200 accelerator (they are plugged into ACA500+) + the X-Surf 500 (networking card for the Aca500+). This combo, although pricey, will give you a lot of pure joy for many winter evenings.
Yes I will be doing that. I'm working on an article on A4000T on my website, and once complete I'll add quite a few downloads, including the image of that system, first stripping it of all PII though.
Fascinating! My friend had one of these, and it was the envy of all of us Amiga enthusiasts in the early 90s. I had a 500 and 3000, but my friend's 4000 was drool-worthy. BTW, you mentioned the 4000 was the only Amiga with the ability to mix CD audio with Paula's output, but I believe that distinction was also available on the CD32. Edit: Does anyone know what the "Haynie Kludge" jumper does? Super curious about it. I was also surprised to see a physical jumper for PAL and NTSC, as this used to be software switchable.
Thank you for visiting and commenting! I did not realize CD32 had the sound mixing capability, but it totally makes sense given it was mostly CD-driven... thanks for catching this. I never fully understood the Haynie Kludge jumper, but from old comp.os.amiga.advocacy usenet postings I read it was supposed to re-configure Zorro timings, but also that it was extremely rarely used.
@@ForgottenComputer The CDDA mixing on the A4000T relies on a 3-pin connector on the audio/video board but most PCs use a 4-pin cable so you just have to make sure the correct pins are wired correctly! Everythings custom on these things! Yes, it just works on CD32 as it's all built in.
I used to have an Amiga 4000 Tower, but it wasn't an original Commodore or Amiga Technologies tower, it was a desktop A4000 in a tower from Elbox. I replaced the original Zorro daughterboard with an Elbox Mediator PCI 4000 and I had a SoundBlaster and Voodoo 3 card, a TV tuner card, and I also swapped out the 040 CPU card for a CyberStorm PPC / 060 card with 128MB RAM. I think it was a very early CSPPC since it was only 150Mhz. Of course, at that time, coming from a 25Mhz 040, 150Mhz was considered a lot.
Awesome video. I personally think the proportions of the 4000 tower are poor. When I got my first computer back in the 90’s it was a Dell P90 but remember seeing Amiga software in stores but never say any hardware here in the US. Recently I bought a Vampire V4 stand-alone and got interested in big box Amigas. Bought a Checmate 1500 black case and have Hese building me an AA3000+ motherboard together with Simons 3000 sheetmetal fitting kit for the checkmate case. Next I will have an A4000TX board built which will go into a modern Fractal Define case. Exciting times we live in. Thanks for the detailed breakdown of the system.
Yeah the towers are BIG, that's for sure. But they were designed for one purpose: expandability. And that was definitely achieved with A4T. Also... A4000TX, wow! And Hese's AA3000+ double wow!! Nice toys, I wouldn't mind enjoying these myself... Thank you for visiting!
Ive been know to have a few Amiga computers. There were 18000 total units produced, less than that sold. mainly US market. The C= version of the A4000 tower has a totally different faceplate and glassplate. there are less than 50 of them in the wild.
Yeah, the Commodore version is a holy grail for collectors these days. But I'm curious about the 18000 number you mention. This agrees with my estimates, but do you remember what the source of that information is? My numbers are mostly from archived interviews with Escom people, but I've never seen 18K mentioned specifically.
@@ForgottenComputer System production figures were not as accurate with Escom based Amiga inc machines as they were Commodore ones, i know of the 50 or so C= ones, but Escom were figures provided by Petro years ago, as with most things he said i take them lightly with no real documentation ever found on any systems, even the re packed A1200's
@@ChrisEdwardsRestoration yeah, my numbers are also from interviews with Tyschtchenko. There must be, somewhere, documentation on the actual units sold. It just needs to be uncovered.
I find it fascinating that this video is being watched on the other side of the planet! The Internet is awesome! Thank you for stopping by and commenting!!!
I am a new A4000T owner. This walk through and explanation was just what I needed to see. I hope you do a follow up on the remaining software installations you mention at the end. Thank you
That 9.1gb Seagate Elite sounded awesome, though with how incredibly clunky the head clicking sounded like makes me wonder if it was mounted/screwed in properly.
Very educative 2h that I've spent on this video that filled some gaps in my Amiga history knowledge. Thank you for this one. Few remarks: 1.You didn't explain how did you connect video output from the AV module to the laptop screen I think? 2.Please zoom in what's on the screen when doing Sysinfo and other analysis. We want to se the details of the memory and speed tests. 3.Why didn't you clean network cards and other cards before reinstalling them at 1:42:11 they are so dirty
Thank you for watching so attentively! 1. I use OSSC to convert from Amiga signal to HDMI, and then a cheap USB HDMI capture device as a source of video signal for QuickTime Player which allows me to playback and record the screen content at the same time. 2. Agreed, for future videos I will do more close-ups on the screen and details. 3. I agree these cards are very dirty. But this video (already too long) is about the Amiga only, I will do separate ones on those cards and do the cleaning as I'm explaining things.
Back in the day, I had both: the A3kT and later the A4kT. And I must say, apart from AA of course (which by that time was already obsolete anyway), the A3kT is the superior machine. When I first opened up my A4kT I was shocked how "thrown together" it looked in comparison to the 3000 Tower. For example, what was the point of designing a new motherboard and case and then putting many of the ports on tiny daughterboards? Only to introduce more SPOF. And then all the unused space, also to be seen in 4:23.
Agreed, I prefer A3kT too. However, I disagree on the motherboard design. Did you ever try repairing A3KT? It is a nightmare. And the I/O, disk, etc. daughterboards were actually _removing_ single points of failure, not adding them :)
@@ForgottenComputer You'd need to explain how putting more connectors reduces the risk of failures ;) Anyway, if you compare a generic PC tower case of the day to the A4kT case, I think it becomes pretty obvious why they took this path ...
@@Oli1974 Simple. All of the add-on modules (I/O module, drive module, audio module) have capacitors which in any 90s computers are prone to fail, and do. Burst capacitor, if not taken care of fast, pollutes and corrodes everything around. With modular design, damage is contained to that module.
I mnie to męczy... ten filmik miał być tylko o Amidze 4000T jako takiej, więc jeszcze nie zająłem się kartami rozszerzeń. Na ich temat będą osobne filmiki, i na tę okazję na pewno je wyczyszczę!
Here in the USA you could pick them up for $700 used all day off of ebay back in the late 90's on. Software hut in the usa actually sold 4000T's these new for around $2000.
great vid ! Still have my desktop A4000 today running the latest AmigaOS3.2 👍ah yes I know that whining sound oh so well! Nothing came close to a fast scsi disk back then
I'm in the process of restoring and selling my A2000 and A4000T w/CyberStormPPC. I didn't remember that the 4kt doesn't have an external floppy port. Hmmm. And after digging thru schematics trying to figure out what that other connector on the ports board was for, I figure out it's the active scsi termination. But I thought the dip switch on the drives board controlled en/disabling it? That's what the sticker says? But no. Turns out that if you want termination, all you have to do is build up a special scsi cable so you can daisy chain into that port. Somebody screwed up. But anyway, I'll be dumping a bunch of Amiga boards and computers and stuff onto the market. Toaster/Flyer+case. PhonePak. Emplant. Bridgeboard. Disk controllers. Spare a2k mobo and more. Even selling the C64 setup.
Some have said the Amiga 3000 is better than the 4000, probably because of the graphics chipset. I have never had an Amiga, so the closest I ever had with it was playing around with it in some stores. I still own Commodore 64's, I have 3 of them (but 2 of them need to be repaired), along with several peripherals, disks & paperwork.
C64s with paperwork and accessories are hard to come by these days, hold on to them! A3000 is better in some aspects, especially the built-in flicker fixer (can display image in 30kHz horizontal as opposed to all other Amigas who do 15kHz). They also have arguably better design. On the other side they don't have the more modern AGA chipset or built-in IDE support.
@@ForgottenComputer ... Yes, I have held on to my C64 stuff for nearly 40 years now, but had stopped using them altogether 25+ years ago (mid 1990's), because I had to focus on the Intel PC for school & work. But I knew that someday that I would get back to the Commodore one last time before I die of old age, heh. So are you saying the 4000 does not have flicker fixer? Why did they not just pass along all the 3000 technology to the 4000, which then adds on the newer features such as the AGA & IDE? Was not the 4000 supposed to be an continually evolving Amiga (from 1000 to 3000) or was it supposed to compete with the 3000? Anyway, it is nice that there are newer modern products coming out for Amiga & C64. I still have the TurbomasterCPU for the C64, that I bought in 1990, which made the C64 4x times faster, so I was one of a few users back then that had faster systems that could nearly compete with Classic Macs & 80286's of the time.
@@robwebnoid5763 Indeed, 3000 does have a flicker fixer, 4000 does not. My understanding as to why is that a) Commodore wanted to cut costs (A3000 was expensive), and b) Commodore was assuming that people would be buying separate video cards anyway (AGA was already becoming an outdated system when 4K were introduced). Also, I have never used TurbomasterCPU, I need to try it one day as I have a working C64 which I want to make a video on one day. Many thanks for visiting and commenting!
The A3000 had Ecs chips which are slower than the Aga chipset in the 4000t. most liked the A3000/T because it had a built in flicker fixer,fast scsi and zorro3 slots, that being said the A3000 was the first all 32bit amiga cpu,ram and bus wise.
I've been wanting to get my Hands on a A4000T for years, but I'm interested in the overhead magnifier he/ your using, Seems pretty stable and not whats found on Amazon that is cheap and nasty.
I would mostly agree but i wished they used a dedicated case and not a case from their pc line for the A4000t. If you think the Escom/Commodore A4000t is big, check out the QuikPak A4000T ,its almost 5 inches taller. Not all scsi hd's were loud and they were reliable,they were used in servers back in the day,but they are just incredibly old now-that being said most companies had their stinkers. All you need to do to copy the amiga hd is copy all clone from workbench. Its a nice machine!
Best Amiga in the world is my A1200 060/50, it's in a Power Tower with a Z4 board using a Picasso II GFX card allowing both AGA & VGA. CD & Zip drive ect, 4gig IDE harddrive and uses a real A4000 keyboard. It's all powered by Opus Magellan II and I call it the Death Star - it's the ultimate classic Amiga and spares are a lot easier to find than an A4000. 😉
I had one. Bought it in the late 90s from Ebay. With a network card and a Cybervision 64. It was around 250 €. Incredible cheap. I later sold it. Cards and Computer separatly. I thin I think sold the cards to Italy and the computer to UK. I am from Austria. I sold the thing around 3 - 4 times more than I paid. But I regret it. I was in perfect shape and nowadays it will cost a furtune to get one.
Cool system. Yet, I miss the sound of hard drives. I only got to mess with a physical Amiga 2000 in the early 90’s. I have with an Amiga 1200 on an emulator. They were just too far ahead of their time.
Dzięki za wizytę! Stopniowo dodaję polskie napisy (dopieszczone ręcznie tłumaczenie, nie automatyczne) i jak widzisz w tym filmie już do piątej chyba minuty są zrobione. Mam nadzieję, że to pomoże oglądać filmiki Polakom nieznającym angielskiego.
Totally. If you see further into the video, I plugged the case in. I was so excited with this machine that I got sloppy with grounding, in some parts of the video I forgot about the strap altogether.
Yes, the original Commodore Bridgeboard would give you a 286 I think, but there were aftermarket ones going up to 486. I have a 486 one and need to do a video on it once.
You should replace the internal speaker with a more modern 2"-3" driver perhaps butcher a moden bluetooth speaker they ofyen have reasonable drivers. Just in case you even decide to randomly decide to use it.
I... didn't know that!! That's super interesting. Do you have the source for this information? The official manual reads, on the first page, "The Amiga 4000 tower (A4000T)" with "T" in bold.
@@ForgottenComputer Ha Ha! So true. Don't worry I didn't get one. They were WAY out of reach when you were on paper boy money 😄 I had to make do with my A500+ and dream 🙂
I had the Amiga 500+ with memory upgrade, then went to the 1200 with ram upgrade and a 200mb hd if I remember rightly + CD rom, I thought it was the Bomb....
Given so much space inside the case, they should have designed it so drives could be added/removed internally, rather than needing to remove the case front. The large central drive case and bracing is reminiscent of the A3KT. It seems that the A3KT is a little easier to disassemble than the A4KT. The battery is better placed than in the A3KT, which has a barrel type at the very top center of the motherboard. When that leaks, it's gravity fed across the motherboard. The A4KT SIMMS are a welcome upgrade over the SCZIPs of the A3KT. It would have been nice if Commodore supported up to 128MB SIMMs though. Commodore did upgrade the A4K CPU slot so it could have up 256MB on a turbo card, rather than just 128MB in A3K CPU slots. Most A3000/A4000 turbo cards were 128MB only. As for the "best" unreleased Amiga, I would vote for A3000+. AGA with DSP and SCSI! For the "best" non-Commodore-Amiga of the era, I would put forth the MacroSystem DraCo NLE, released in tower and cube versions. It runs pretty much everything that is RTG friendly. It has an accelerated ZORRO-II bus and a custom DraCo bus that's faster than ZORRO-III. ruclips.net/video/0nLaEC0dpqU/видео.html
Thank you for the very interesting response. An A3KT is being shipped to me as we speak, and I will definitely do a quick 15-min comparison (people have complained my videos are too long :). I think the concept of the central disk cage is similar between A3KT and A4KT, but unfortunately the A3KT that's coming to me does not have the original disk cage anymore. Agreed that the 16-megabyte on-board SIMM support is not sufficient, and everyone started by expanding that using CPU or Zorro cards. And DraCo indeed was an amazing system; I've seen that video a few times and deeply regret not buying a DraCo when I had an opportunity to do that a few years ago...
The A3000t is harder to take apart,the front bezel plastic clips hang on well and are easy to break. The A4000 front has spring clips so it just pops off easily. The bad thing about the 4000T case is the shell wraps around so it must be laid down to open it up to get inside,where the A3000T sides come off. they both have their tradeoffs.
miałem taką z 68060 60 mhz z grafiką cyberstorm i monitorem 21" sony trinitron flat screen. Rozdzielczoćś pulpitu workbencha w natywnej rozdziałce 1600x1200 pix To robiło wrażenie na każdym w 1997/98 roku i wszystko w 24bit kolorach. Ehhh. To były czasy. AMIGA RULEZ!
I bought a used one with a cybervision 64 and a network card for only around 250 € around 2002. But later I sold it to a guy in UK and the cards to Italy, I believe, for more than I paid for it. I think around 1000 € or so. Nowadays I would not sell it. I also own two SGI computers and also Acorn Archimedes computers.
Debatable the A4000T is the best Amiga ever made? 😮 Owning both the A3000T & QuikPak A4000T, I’d say the A3000T is the best Amiga ever made! The A3000T is a thing of beauty that’s built like a tank! While the A4000T is built cheaply in a PC case! Both machines have their pros and cons! Not having AGA in the A3000T doesn’t worry me, as I have a graphic card in both machines! Love both machines but my opinion favours the A3000T
Nice video and indeed the second generation was too little too late, they didn't have the wow! factor the first generation had. Sad ending for such a cool computer as the Amiga is, I do enjoy my A1200 with PiStorm32 + pi4 @2.2Ghz on a daily basis. Once an Amigan always an Amigan 😎
I'm not jealous. I'm not jealous. I'm not jealous. I'm not jealous. I'm not jealous. I'm not jealous. Amazing to see this in detail, thanks!
Haha :D Thank you for visiting and commenting!
I was start with Amiga 500 and 600.. Amazing machine
It’s a cool computer, no doubt, however if you have an Amiga 1200, a PiStorm32 Lite, and Raspberry Pi 3 or 4 you’ll have a much more powerful Amiga… then there’s always virtual Amiga too (FS-UAE FTW)
I have a A500 w/ a PiStorm (Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ and Caffeine OS), uses PlipBox for network access.
Also have an A1200 w/ the PiStorm32 Lite (Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 8GB RAM, Caffeine OS).
I know nobody asked but honestly the PiStorm is amazing, super fast and inexpensive (especially compared to the Apollo Vampire accelerators).
I can use both the above Amigas for “daily driving” computing and I do.
Also, if you have an old iBook or PowerBook it might be compatible with MorphOS (a Power PC Amiga-Like OS).
So jealous... I have an A4000 in a tower, but it is not an A4000T...
lol
I'm only five minutes in, and I'm absolutely loving it! The sound of that SCSI drive is music to my hears, what a beautiful machine. Congratulations on achieving our collective dream of owning this timeless classic, and thanks for sharing your thoughts on it. People like you play a vital role in preserving our computer heritage, and I'm truly grateful for your insights and passion.
Thanks for visiting and commenting :)
I went from Amiga 500. Did eventually flip PC a 133mhz pentium in 1994. From there on I ended up on the gaming PC badwagon building 11 gaming PCs from 1999-2024. I am still deeply passionate about the Amiga and the community !
My journey started with first pentium, so I've never had the chance to experience OS/system other than windows/x86 back in the day, I am so thankful that there are people like you, who share this exciting time in the history of personal computing.
Big thanks for watching! Amiga was not my first computer either, myself I started with ZX Spectrum...
You are lucky. I used A600 for TV broadcast the smallest budget model and later A1200 68020 at home. When I moved to Pentium I went back to 1970s, actually way more backward as sh/bash is science fiction compared to DOS.
I didn't have any option that time as expansions were horribly expensive and there was a damn feeling spread as Amiga dead. If I was in Germany I would connect a ISDN and buy an 68060 /PPC expansion.
This is all Amigans wet dream kind of machine... I see it is in caring hands now, good! Thank you for letting us take part in this journey!
Thank you for visiting :)
What a great video. Thank you for taking the time to share this amazing tech with the world. My first unit was the C64 and ended with the Amiga 2000. I loved growing up around the Amiga community! I was lucky enough to have connections with a local Amiga dealer in Syracuse, NY. Industrial Color Labs. I created some lightwave 3d work for their commercials.
such a beautiful machine... and to think I could've bought one from my school back in the day for 150 euros including a picasso video card and non linear video editing broadcast cards. I'm still kicking myself. Thanks for taking the time to show us this very comprehensive overview!
Don't torture yourself, I'm sure most of us have passed on similar deals. Nobody knew back then that Amiga would have developed a cult-like following.
worst thing is I really wanted to buy it but as a broke student even that amount was too much...
@@warci That was a mistake! Great machines especially with a Picasso IV card!
Just fire up UAE, and see how much you REALLY would have missed it. I used to use my Amiga all the time, it WAS on par (if not superior) to every other computer at the time save Unix workstations. Working with the system today, it's downright primitive. I used to look down on console video game systems at that time, but today, if I am going to emulate a system to run say, Speedball II, it's on a console, not an Amiga.
@@fuzzywzhe Traitor!
This is so cool! I always wanted to have an A4000T, but I went down the route and converted my Amiga 1200 into a towercase. Mediator PCI with Voodoo 3 3000, Blizzard 1260 with SCSI-IV controller, 256MB Fast Ram and many more things. Sadly I do not have it anymore. :/
EDIT: I should mention that I am now a happy owner of both a Sam460 and an AmigaONE X5000 both running AmigaOS 4.1. :)
Lucky you the X5000 is the A4000T of today under the Amiga's 😎
Still have some Amiga's myself currently my A1200 with PiStorm+Pi4 is my main Amiga and it's wicked fast for a classic.
As a person who started on Amiga 500, this machine was a dream of mine all my life. Thank you, sir for this amazing video :)
Thank you for visiting and watching :)
This video is so detailed and informing. Thanks, mate :) I´ve just gotten my hands in one of these machines because an old friend gifted me one. I actually thought it was a custom tower. Im over the moon as a guy who played and tinkered with alle the cheap amigas since boyhood. I always wanted a regular 4000 but never wanted to pay the price of entry. Now I have a 4000T.
It´s going to be recapped and restored soon. Thanks Forgotten Computer
Great story and thanks for sharing!!! Actually I'm almost sure I read your story somewhere while researching things for this video -- was that reddit? Or an Amiga forum? Or maybe I'm confusing yours with something different. Anyway, congrats on an amazing gift, and hope it serves you well and gives you a lot of fun :)
Thank you so much Brother!
A wonderful video and an overview of our favorite and valuable CBM machines.
The Amiga is now for us as a Divine being and an endangered species:(
We love and respect her, it's a shame that the producers lost their assets.
Great greetings and peace to all from St. Petersburg = Russia!🗺
Thats a beast comapared to my Amiga 500, still boxed and not sure what to do with it. Would be nice to have one like yours and play about with it. Great vid and i will be watching for updates.
Many thanks for watching. There are many things you can do with A500. For my A500 I really loved the Aca500+ expansion + any Amiga 1200 accelerator (they are plugged into ACA500+) + the X-Surf 500 (networking card for the Aca500+). This combo, although pricey, will give you a lot of pure joy for many winter evenings.
@@ForgottenComputer Many thanks for your reply i will look into that.
When I retired in 1985, my neighbor introduced me to dos or disc operating system. I was running a 8088 based Intel PC for my first PC.
Nice work! Detail in this video is next level!
My passion lies with the C64, but the entire Commodore era was magic!
Despite I said my goodbyes in 1995, I never felt the same love for PC.
Cool! The ultimate Video Toaster box.
Absolute dream machine.
Will you be offering up the original disk image so we can play with an original, as-used workbench environment in WinUAE?
Yes I will be doing that. I'm working on an article on A4000T on my website, and once complete I'll add quite a few downloads, including the image of that system, first stripping it of all PII though.
That tower design is beautiful
A few minor corrections: Lisa replaces DENISE. The Cpu slot is 200PIN, zorro2/3 slots are 100pin.
Fascinating! My friend had one of these, and it was the envy of all of us Amiga enthusiasts in the early 90s. I had a 500 and 3000, but my friend's 4000 was drool-worthy. BTW, you mentioned the 4000 was the only Amiga with the ability to mix CD audio with Paula's output, but I believe that distinction was also available on the CD32.
Edit: Does anyone know what the "Haynie Kludge" jumper does? Super curious about it. I was also surprised to see a physical jumper for PAL and NTSC, as this used to be software switchable.
Thank you for visiting and commenting! I did not realize CD32 had the sound mixing capability, but it totally makes sense given it was mostly CD-driven... thanks for catching this. I never fully understood the Haynie Kludge jumper, but from old comp.os.amiga.advocacy usenet postings I read it was supposed to re-configure Zorro timings, but also that it was extremely rarely used.
@@ForgottenComputer The
CDDA mixing on the A4000T relies on a 3-pin connector on the audio/video board but most PCs use a 4-pin cable so you just have to make sure the correct pins are wired correctly! Everythings custom on these things! Yes, it just works on CD32 as it's all built in.
I used to have an Amiga 4000 Tower, but it wasn't an original Commodore or Amiga Technologies tower, it was a desktop A4000 in a tower from Elbox. I replaced the original Zorro daughterboard with an Elbox Mediator PCI 4000 and I had a SoundBlaster and Voodoo 3 card, a TV tuner card, and I also swapped out the 040 CPU card for a CyberStorm PPC / 060 card with 128MB RAM. I think it was a very early CSPPC since it was only 150Mhz. Of course, at that time, coming from a 25Mhz 040, 150Mhz was considered a lot.
Never saw one before do thanks for making this vid!
What a great vid! Thanks.
This was great. I loved the video
Thank you for watching and commenting :)
Awesome video. I personally think the proportions of the 4000 tower are poor. When I got my first computer back in the 90’s it was a Dell P90 but remember seeing Amiga software in stores but never say any hardware here in the US. Recently I bought a Vampire V4 stand-alone and got interested in big box Amigas. Bought a Checmate 1500 black case and have Hese building me an AA3000+ motherboard together with Simons 3000 sheetmetal fitting kit for the checkmate case. Next I will have an A4000TX board built which will go into a modern Fractal Define case. Exciting times we live in. Thanks for the detailed breakdown of the system.
Yeah the towers are BIG, that's for sure. But they were designed for one purpose: expandability. And that was definitely achieved with A4T. Also... A4000TX, wow! And Hese's AA3000+ double wow!! Nice toys, I wouldn't mind enjoying these myself... Thank you for visiting!
Great presentation!
Ive been know to have a few Amiga computers. There were 18000 total units produced, less than that sold. mainly US market. The C= version of the A4000 tower has a totally different faceplate and glassplate. there are less than 50 of them in the wild.
Yeah, the Commodore version is a holy grail for collectors these days. But I'm curious about the 18000 number you mention. This agrees with my estimates, but do you remember what the source of that information is? My numbers are mostly from archived interviews with Escom people, but I've never seen 18K mentioned specifically.
@@ForgottenComputer System production figures were not as accurate with Escom based Amiga inc machines as they were Commodore ones, i know of the 50 or so C= ones, but Escom were figures provided by Petro years ago, as with most things he said i take them lightly with no real documentation ever found on any systems, even the re packed A1200's
@@ChrisEdwardsRestoration yeah, my numbers are also from interviews with Tyschtchenko. There must be, somewhere, documentation on the actual units sold. It just needs to be uncovered.
I read 25.000 were ordered and "already sold" in a magazine today. (for ESCOM). I have the Commodore one.
@@stefanegger yes but they were never paid , then escom folded
I started with the Amiga 1000. This was the mother of all Amiga's. I traded it in for a PC, shame on me.
I have an A1000 too, they have such a beautiful design.
i remember dreaming of this machine when it was first reviewed in CU Amiga magazine - i think i still have that issue somewhere.. beautiful machine.
Thank you for visiting and commenting! Yes, it was the machine of my dreams back in the day too...
Greeting from Australia. Loved this !
I find it fascinating that this video is being watched on the other side of the planet! The Internet is awesome! Thank you for stopping by and commenting!!!
I am a new A4000T owner. This walk through and explanation was just what I needed to see. I hope you do a follow up on the remaining software installations you mention at the end. Thank you
Congrats on the purchase. These machines are amazing and you’re going to have a lot of fun with it. One day I’ll record that follow up video :)
How did you go about buying one? How much did you pay?
The Holy Grail of Amigas. I hope to find one some day.
I have one going on eBay soon
where are the reprints of the boxes available please.?..thank you for the video.
That 9.1gb Seagate Elite sounded awesome, though with how incredibly clunky the head clicking sounded like makes me wonder if it was mounted/screwed in properly.
Very educative 2h that I've spent on this video that filled some gaps in my Amiga history knowledge. Thank you for this one. Few remarks: 1.You didn't explain how did you connect video output from the AV module to the laptop screen I think? 2.Please zoom in what's on the screen when doing Sysinfo and other analysis. We want to se the details of the memory and speed tests. 3.Why didn't you clean network cards and other cards before reinstalling them at 1:42:11 they are so dirty
Thank you for watching so attentively! 1. I use OSSC to convert from Amiga signal to HDMI, and then a cheap USB HDMI capture device as a source of video signal for QuickTime Player which allows me to playback and record the screen content at the same time. 2. Agreed, for future videos I will do more close-ups on the screen and details. 3. I agree these cards are very dirty. But this video (already too long) is about the Amiga only, I will do separate ones on those cards and do the cleaning as I'm explaining things.
5:43 I can assure you that this running noise isn't normal. When new, they were nearly silent with the case closed. I think yours has a shot bearing.
Back in the day, I had both: the A3kT and later the A4kT. And I must say, apart from AA of course (which by that time was already obsolete anyway), the A3kT is the superior machine. When I first opened up my A4kT I was shocked how "thrown together" it looked in comparison to the 3000 Tower. For example, what was the point of designing a new motherboard and case and then putting many of the ports on tiny daughterboards? Only to introduce more SPOF. And then all the unused space, also to be seen in 4:23.
Agreed, I prefer A3kT too. However, I disagree on the motherboard design. Did you ever try repairing A3KT? It is a nightmare. And the I/O, disk, etc. daughterboards were actually _removing_ single points of failure, not adding them :)
@@ForgottenComputer You'd need to explain how putting more connectors reduces the risk of failures ;)
Anyway, if you compare a generic PC tower case of the day to the A4kT case, I think it becomes pretty obvious why they took this path ...
@@Oli1974 Simple. All of the add-on modules (I/O module, drive module, audio module) have capacitors which in any 90s computers are prone to fail, and do. Burst capacitor, if not taken care of fast, pollutes and corrodes everything around. With modular design, damage is contained to that module.
I had a 500 in the early 90's. I loved it... I wish....
Interesting article…..I have a Amiga 4000T 040 tower and the case looks a lot different?
Hejka. Czemu te zakurzone płytki włożyłeś z powrotem, i co z tym zaśniedziałym pinem? Mnie by to "męczyło"
I mnie to męczy... ten filmik miał być tylko o Amidze 4000T jako takiej, więc jeszcze nie zająłem się kartami rozszerzeń. Na ich temat będą osobne filmiki, i na tę okazję na pewno je wyczyszczę!
Fantastic video! I love the amount detail.. and even though it's a long video I watched every minute 😎👌💾
Look at this monitor and that tower. What a beauty. No need to pretend that we not jealous guys. We are and that is a good thing
To be honest, this particular monitor 1084s is not really a good fit for A4000T; a better matching one from the era would be 1942 for example.
My route is NES-A500-PS1-PC-PS3-PC. Very warm memories from A500 with 68030 turbo card❤
A damn shame it was so expensive though. It was several times more expensive than an equivalent PC at the time so it's no wonder it didn't sell.
This. I was buying my PC when this tower came out, and to me the PC was the obvious choice, unfortunately.
Here in the USA you could pick them up for $700 used all day off of ebay back in the late 90's on. Software hut in the usa actually sold 4000T's these new for around $2000.
Looks like a re-cap would be in order, tho... But THANK YOU for a nice video! This is Amiga-pr0n
Agreed! I’m already arranging having this machine recapped. Thanks for visiting and watching!
@@ForgottenComputer sounds awesome!
great vid ! Still have my desktop A4000 today running the latest AmigaOS3.2 👍ah yes I know that whining sound oh so well! Nothing came close to a fast scsi disk back then
I'm in the process of restoring and selling my A2000 and A4000T w/CyberStormPPC. I didn't remember that the 4kt doesn't have an external floppy port. Hmmm.
And after digging thru schematics trying to figure out what that other connector on the ports board was for, I figure out it's the active scsi termination.
But I thought the dip switch on the drives board controlled en/disabling it? That's what the sticker says? But no. Turns out that if you want termination, all
you have to do is build up a special scsi cable so you can daisy chain into that port. Somebody screwed up.
But anyway, I'll be dumping a bunch of Amiga boards and computers and stuff onto the market.
Toaster/Flyer+case. PhonePak. Emplant. Bridgeboard. Disk controllers. Spare a2k mobo and more. Even selling the C64 setup.
Got one.
Niezła maszyna. Ja mam gdzieś na strychu jeszcze Commodore C64 z magnetofonem. Muszę go reanimować. Pozdrowienia.
Nie zaniedbaj tego, im dłużej leży, tym trudniej może go być potem reanimować.
Some have said the Amiga 3000 is better than the 4000, probably because of the graphics chipset. I have never had an Amiga, so the closest I ever had with it was playing around with it in some stores. I still own Commodore 64's, I have 3 of them (but 2 of them need to be repaired), along with several peripherals, disks & paperwork.
C64s with paperwork and accessories are hard to come by these days, hold on to them! A3000 is better in some aspects, especially the built-in flicker fixer (can display image in 30kHz horizontal as opposed to all other Amigas who do 15kHz). They also have arguably better design. On the other side they don't have the more modern AGA chipset or built-in IDE support.
@@ForgottenComputer ... Yes, I have held on to my C64 stuff for nearly 40 years now, but had stopped using them altogether 25+ years ago (mid 1990's), because I had to focus on the Intel PC for school & work. But I knew that someday that I would get back to the Commodore one last time before I die of old age, heh. So are you saying the 4000 does not have flicker fixer? Why did they not just pass along all the 3000 technology to the 4000, which then adds on the newer features such as the AGA & IDE? Was not the 4000 supposed to be an continually evolving Amiga (from 1000 to 3000) or was it supposed to compete with the 3000? Anyway, it is nice that there are newer modern products coming out for Amiga & C64. I still have the TurbomasterCPU for the C64, that I bought in 1990, which made the C64 4x times faster, so I was one of a few users back then that had faster systems that could nearly compete with Classic Macs & 80286's of the time.
@@robwebnoid5763 Indeed, 3000 does have a flicker fixer, 4000 does not. My understanding as to why is that a) Commodore wanted to cut costs (A3000 was expensive), and b) Commodore was assuming that people would be buying separate video cards anyway (AGA was already becoming an outdated system when 4K were introduced). Also, I have never used TurbomasterCPU, I need to try it one day as I have a working C64 which I want to make a video on one day. Many thanks for visiting and commenting!
The A3000 had Ecs chips which are slower than the Aga chipset in the 4000t. most liked the A3000/T because it had a built in flicker fixer,fast scsi and zorro3 slots, that being said the A3000 was the first all 32bit amiga cpu,ram and bus wise.
Where's your case badge? Were Escom/Amiga Technologies in such trouble with that point they couldn't even stretch to printing more stickers?!
I've been wanting to get my Hands on a A4000T for years, but I'm interested in the overhead magnifier he/ your using, Seems pretty stable and not whats found on Amazon that is cheap and nasty.
I would mostly agree but i wished they used a dedicated case and not a case from their pc line for the A4000t. If you think the Escom/Commodore A4000t is big, check out the QuikPak A4000T ,its almost 5 inches taller. Not all scsi hd's were loud and they were reliable,they were used in servers back in the day,but they are just incredibly old now-that being said most companies had their stinkers. All you need to do to copy the amiga hd is copy all clone from workbench. Its a nice machine!
I have a X5000, and don't know what to do with it.
Would you buy it for 500€ ?
We can discuss. I don't see contact info on your YT channel, but you will find Website on mine and from there you'll find email. Let me know.
Wait.... you bought a 2000€ computer without knowing what you wanted it for and now you are selling it for 500€? That is beyond crazy. :D
Was there an Amiga all in one similar to the iMac with a 266mhz processor in the late 90's released in Europe?
No. A4000 was the last Commodore Amiga. Only aftermarket upgrades could give it 266 (or more) using PowerPC powerups.
Best comp ever
Brownish stuff around the capacitors is electrolite leak, please, recap soon.
Thank you and you are right. I've already arranged recapping.
1:10:14 Could it be the CE230A capacitor? R320S seems a bit corroded too.
A4000T was produced also after Escom, by Gateway.
Quikpac
Best Amiga in the world is my A1200 060/50, it's in a Power Tower with a Z4 board using a Picasso II GFX card allowing both AGA & VGA. CD & Zip drive ect, 4gig IDE harddrive and uses a real A4000 keyboard. It's all powered by Opus Magellan II and I call it the Death Star - it's the ultimate classic Amiga and spares are a lot easier to find than an A4000. 😉
What a great computer..which can actually do things which no PC architecture can do today.
I had one. Bought it in the late 90s from Ebay. With a network card and a Cybervision 64. It was around 250 €. Incredible cheap. I later sold it. Cards and Computer separatly. I thin I think sold the cards to Italy and the computer to UK. I am from Austria. I sold the thing around 3 - 4 times more than I paid. But I regret it. I was in perfect shape and nowadays it will cost a furtune to get one.
Is this the Forgotten Weapons channel but for computers?
Until now I didn't know Forgotten Weapons existed, but what the heck why not
Damm that is loud - had a SCSI Quantum Empire 80GB - think the bearings are on the way out.
Indeed it must be the bearings. I will be having a closer look at that HD, maybe even disassemble and try to replace the bearings.
Thank you
Cool system. Yet, I miss the sound of hard drives. I only got to mess with a physical Amiga 2000 in the early 90’s. I have with an Amiga 1200 on an emulator. They were just too far ahead of their time.
Piękny film!!! Zrób wersję w pl rodaku ;-)
Dzięki za wizytę! Stopniowo dodaję polskie napisy (dopieszczone ręcznie tłumaczenie, nie automatyczne) i jak widzisz w tym filmie już do piątej chyba minuty są zrobione. Mam nadzieję, że to pomoże oglądać filmiki Polakom nieznającym angielskiego.
No point in grounding yourself to the case if it's not grounded itself (plugged in)
Totally. If you see further into the video, I plugged the case in. I was so excited with this machine that I got sloppy with grounding, in some parts of the video I forgot about the strap altogether.
I have a 1200 today and I'm still wanting the 4000.. Swapsies??
😂
Grabisz sobie kolego 😉
6:23 łożyska na głowicy padły.
Hahaha :) Dzięki Kuba za wizytę.
Is a beauty.
1:10:00 NO doubt, you should recap it all, the motherboard and all the little boards. Do it asap! Cheers, M
Sounds like an Airbus,,LOL....Nice video!
Best amiga ever.
Grea work! Fantastic machine! :)
PS. Amiga rulez!
But the Amiga 3000 has a flicker fixer which the Amiga 4000T doesn't have.
Piekna!
i remember haveing a pc emulator in it , i got it 2nd hand frome some one , its was epic
Yes, the original Commodore Bridgeboard would give you a 286 I think, but there were aftermarket ones going up to 486. I have a 486 one and need to do a video on it once.
You should replace the internal speaker with a more modern 2"-3" driver perhaps butcher a moden bluetooth speaker they ofyen have reasonable drivers. Just in case you even decide to randomly decide to use it.
Actually the T stands for Amiga 4000 free sTanding. Tower was trademarked at the time...
I... didn't know that!! That's super interesting. Do you have the source for this information? The official manual reads, on the first page, "The Amiga 4000 tower (A4000T)" with "T" in bold.
@@ForgottenComputer I read it in Amiga Format, if I am remembering correctly... It does make sense that a PC manufacturer of the time owned the (TM)
your board needs an recap !!
I know! I'm recapping it in January.
i had the 500 then the 1200 but my mate had the amiga tower not sure if it was 4000t but it was better than my 1200 and in a tower
It could have been a3000t, a4000t, a towerized A4000 or a towerized A1200. No other tower options existed :)
Please....replace all the capacitors and fix the corroded leg of the chip in the audio board!
u should use a modern full range driver for the internal speaker...
I'm curious about this one -- could you clarify what full range driver you are referring to?
Was it wrong that I wanted an A4000 just so I could get better frame rates in Microprose Formula One Grand Prix?
It is wrong on many levels and you should absolutely never admit that in any public place except the comments to this video where it is OK.
@@ForgottenComputer Ha Ha! So true. Don't worry I didn't get one. They were WAY out of reach when you were on paper boy money 😄 I had to make do with my A500+ and dream 🙂
I develop for the amiga as a hobby so for now at least, UAE gives me a world to explore - at least I can get other people to test on real hardware!
Thank you for visiting and commenting. Yep, UAE makes development way easier today, but ultimately testing on the actual hardware is very satisfying!
where can I buy re-prin of A1200 box ??
I've seen them here www.retropassion.co.uk/product/amiga-1200-reproduction-box/. Quite expensive though.
I had the Amiga 500+ with memory upgrade, then went to the 1200 with ram upgrade and a 200mb hd if I remember rightly + CD rom, I thought it was the Bomb....
Given so much space inside the case, they should have designed it so drives could be added/removed internally, rather than needing to remove the case front. The large central drive case and bracing is reminiscent of the A3KT. It seems that the A3KT is a little easier to disassemble than the A4KT.
The battery is better placed than in the A3KT, which has a barrel type at the very top center of the motherboard. When that leaks, it's gravity fed across the motherboard.
The A4KT SIMMS are a welcome upgrade over the SCZIPs of the A3KT. It would have been nice if Commodore supported up to 128MB SIMMs though. Commodore did upgrade the A4K CPU slot so it could have up 256MB on a turbo card, rather than just 128MB in A3K CPU slots. Most A3000/A4000 turbo cards were 128MB only.
As for the "best" unreleased Amiga, I would vote for A3000+. AGA with DSP and SCSI!
For the "best" non-Commodore-Amiga of the era, I would put forth the MacroSystem DraCo NLE, released in tower and cube versions. It runs pretty much everything that is RTG friendly. It has an accelerated ZORRO-II bus and a custom DraCo bus that's faster than ZORRO-III.
ruclips.net/video/0nLaEC0dpqU/видео.html
Thank you for the very interesting response. An A3KT is being shipped to me as we speak, and I will definitely do a quick 15-min comparison (people have complained my videos are too long :). I think the concept of the central disk cage is similar between A3KT and A4KT, but unfortunately the A3KT that's coming to me does not have the original disk cage anymore. Agreed that the 16-megabyte on-board SIMM support is not sufficient, and everyone started by expanding that using CPU or Zorro cards. And DraCo indeed was an amazing system; I've seen that video a few times and deeply regret not buying a DraCo when I had an opportunity to do that a few years ago...
The A3000t is harder to take apart,the front bezel plastic clips hang on well and are easy to break. The A4000 front has spring clips so it just pops off easily. The bad thing about the 4000T case is the shell wraps around so it must be laid down to open it up to get inside,where the A3000T sides come off. they both have their tradeoffs.
Imagine an Amiga 5000ATX. An Amiga with a lot of X86 features
Back then it would have made sense... Today less so. The AmigaOne 5000, as much as I'd love to have one, is a superniche product
@@ForgottenComputer Definitely a niche product, but integrating modern and retro...
miałem taką z 68060 60 mhz z grafiką cyberstorm i monitorem 21" sony trinitron flat screen. Rozdzielczoćś pulpitu workbencha w natywnej rozdziałce 1600x1200 pix To robiło wrażenie na każdym w 1997/98 roku i wszystko w 24bit kolorach. Ehhh. To były czasy. AMIGA RULEZ!
I bought a used one with a cybervision 64 and a network card for only around 250 € around 2002. But later I sold it to a guy in UK and the cards to Italy, I believe, for more than I paid for it. I think around 1000 € or so. Nowadays I would not sell it. I also own two SGI computers and also Acorn Archimedes computers.
Debatable the A4000T is the best Amiga ever made? 😮
Owning both the A3000T & QuikPak A4000T, I’d say the A3000T is the best Amiga ever made!
The A3000T is a thing of beauty that’s built like a tank! While the A4000T is built cheaply in a PC case!
Both machines have their pros and cons!
Not having AGA in the A3000T doesn’t worry me, as I have a graphic card in both machines!
Love both machines but my opinion favours the A3000T
Nice video and indeed the second generation was too little too late, they didn't have the wow! factor the first generation had.
Sad ending for such a cool computer as the Amiga is, I do enjoy my A1200 with PiStorm32 + pi4 @2.2Ghz on a daily basis.
Once an Amigan always an Amigan 😎
Yeah! :D
Bomba👍
Has anyone ever done a RUclips video on an original Commodore A4000T in the original case design?
👍👍
That SCSI HDD must have bad bearings..
That hard drive sounds like what i imagined a nuclear power plant should have sounded like. When I was a kid.
A nuclear plant sounding like this means we’re in trouble
dry bearings? the hd sound was horrible