Amiga 4000 CompactFlash Modification
Yet another not-so-difficult
modification of an Amiga. This time I am adding a CompactFlash card to a SCSI-based Amiga 4000. In this picture
you can see the SCSI CD-ROM, Zip drive, and the upside-down Seagate 18GB hard drive in the rear-middle. The cable
has been flopped around and folded to fit neatly and service all three SCSI devices. The heart of the system is
a WarpEngine 4040, hosting a 40MHz 68040 and 128MB of low-profile
72-pin SIMM memory. (The picture shows the WarpEngine's NCR 53C710 SCSI controller, 50-pin SCSI header, part of the
heatsink and fan for the 68040, and the thin 32MB SIMMs. Also viewable is a blue and white wire pair which
connect to the drive activity lead on the Seagate hard drive as the WarpEngine does not provide activity indication.)
Originally for this project I was using the CF-to-Motherboard-IDE adapter from
Mach5 Products, but ran into a couple of problems with space.
As you can see, the card stands straight up under the hard drive, which actually presses down on the whole thing
when screwed into place -- not good. Aside from that, the card is not easily accessible in this position, making
upgrades or changes difficult. (FYI, the hard drive is mounted upside-down to help with power cabling clearance due to
the length of the CD-ROM drive.)
To make the whole assembly more accessible I decided to use a the standard
3.5" CF-to-IDE adapter instead of the motherboard-mount. I was able to run the IDE ribbon cable from the IDE
header below the SCSI drive to make the whole thing nice and tidy. The adapter is attached to the under-side
mounting screw-holes of the hard drive, and a thick piece of card paper is placed between the drive and the adapter
to prevent unwanted touching and potentially deadly shorts. A very important thing to note is that the mounting
holes for the adapter DO NOT perfectly align with the 3.5" mounting holes, otherwise I would have secured it with
two screws instead of one. I ran into the same problem with the 2.5" SFF adapter used in the
1200 project.
It works!
Yes, good ol' HDToolBox recognizes the card as having 488.7MB available, a SanDisk SDCFB-512 revision HDX. The drive is installed,
paritioned, made bootable, and formatted with FFS v45.13.
The System:
Amiga 4000 Desktop
WarpEngine 4040 40MHz 68040 w/128MB RAM
Seagate 18GB, 24X CD-ROM, Zip drive (all SCSI)
HD Internal Floppy
X-Surf Network Card
Picasso IV Video Card
A note on ventilation and cooling of this unit: After installing the Picasso IV, I found that the system ran very hot.
I successfully resolved this issue by putting a slot's space between the X-Surf and the PIV, and using the grill-plate
of a siezed slot exhaust fan in the vacant slot. See here. I also bypassed the resistor in the
power supply which cuts the voltage to the fan so the fan runs at full speed. These changes have helped keep this desktop
unit at a tolerable warm rather than hot-to-the-touch.
Yet another not-so-difficult
modification of an Amiga. This time I am adding a CompactFlash card to a SCSI-based Amiga 4000. In this picture
you can see the SCSI CD-ROM, Zip drive, and the upside-down Seagate 18GB hard drive in the rear-middle. The cable
has been flopped around and folded to fit neatly and service all three SCSI devices. The heart of the system is
a WarpEngine 4040, hosting a 40MHz 68040 and 128MB of low-profile
72-pin SIMM memory. (The picture shows the WarpEngine's NCR 53C710 SCSI controller, 50-pin SCSI header, part of the
heatsink and fan for the 68040, and the thin 32MB SIMMs. Also viewable is a blue and white wire pair which
connect to the drive activity lead on the Seagate hard drive as the WarpEngine does not provide activity indication.)
