From: skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Skip Sauls)
Subject: Re: A4000 case design (was Re: Top 10 reasons why ...)
Organization: University of Mississippi, Dept. of Computer Science
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 19:56:06 GMT

In article <7qn1n-_@rpi.edu> danaf@rpi.edu writes:

>Well, I'm personally interested in seeing the internal architecture. 
>Aesthetics are secondary - exteriors (backplane excluded) are boring.

It's a good thing you feel that way because the A4000 is no beauty.  :-)

>A nice shot of the (real) backplane, as up-close-and-personal as possible, 
>would be really nice. But mostly, a LOT of shots of the interior, in every
>possible level of expansion. Some ideas:

What exactly do you mean by backplane?  The back of the computer where 
the ports are or the motherboard?

>        1. An A4000 as empty as possible, with ALL daughterboards removed.
>           Maybe, if you need to take it off anyway, you could even get a 
>           shot with the power supply removed.... (maybe?)

I'll strip it as bare as possible, if the warranty is not too restrictive.

>	2. Close-ups of interesting sections of the motherboard, showing all
>           of the neat custom chips and their relations to annoying, blocking
>           things like the power supply. 
>             (translation: if you have to remove the drive bays to get to
>              all of the custom chips AGAIN, I'm going to be royally pissed.)

On the A3000, the custom chips are not the problem as much as the damn ZIPs
being in a silly place.  It is amazing how much they packed into the case,
but I'll settle for a bigger case if things aren't so hard to get to.

Other than a fuzzy photo in AC, there are no pictures of the 040 board to
give an idea of its dimensions.  If I thought it was worth the trouble I'd
plug it into the A3000, but the clearance is rumored to be a problem.

>        3. A shot with JUST the bare factory configuration - power supply,
>           CPU daughterboard, and slots daughterboard installed, and that's
>           it.

Should be easy enough.  I'm curious as to how difficult it is going to be
to remove the case.  The 4 screws in the A3000 case aren't so bad, but it
is not nearly as easy as the single screw found on other modern designs
from Apple, IBM, and others.  If the A4000 does use this sort of case, I
hope it is easier to line up than the A3000 is.

>        4. A shot with a few cards in the slots, if you plan to install any, 
>           so that we can see how well things fit together into the system.

I am definitely going to put an Ethernet card in it and could borrow an
A2320 genlock and A2086 from a co-worker to test how.  Hell, he even has
a Toaster that I would try out if I thought there was any hope of it
fitting.  Damn NewTek!

>        5. A head-on shot with the cover OFF, to get a good look at the drive
>           bays and their orientation.

Okay, I've also been asked to measure the height of the floppy drive.  It
appears taht the lower drive bay may not be tall enough for the special
drives that C= is using.

>These are just suggestions (you asked!), I don't mean to be pushy....

Hey, this is exactly the type of suggestions I am after.  I know what I
think is interesting, but really don't know what others might want.

>|> What format would be best?  The scanner is 24bit and I can use ADPro to
>|> convert it to 16 color HiRes, 256 color GIF, JPG, or whatever.
>
>GIFs would be nice, most of us can view them on UNIX systems, or with Amiga
>viewers. (I just got a new one from amiga.physik... FastGIF10 or something...

Okay, what about size?  Cropped/scaled to a standard size?

>I guess, if people bitch-and-moan, lacedHAM IFFs would be my second choice.
>But nice, high-res GIFs would be preferable.
>
>Please, if you're going to be scanning them in 24-bit color at those beautiful
>high resolutions, don't throw away all of that detail and put up 16-color HiRes
>NoLace IFFs! We can always convert down... but you can't convert up.

So true.

>Really? I hadn't realized they went down that far!!! Jeez... I stopped getting
>Amiga Sentry long before that... my reference is from the first issue (yes,
>that's right, the black-and-white one...) to number thirtysomething. I never
>saw the A3000 review. They were great before that... I got all of my info on
>GVP products from the first few issues of AS, and they never steered me wrong.
>
>(PS: Stylish? No. But AmigaWorld is stylish... and regularly 3 months behind.)

It wasn't actually a review, more like a hoax preview.  It had an 030 and
a few new custom chips much like the real A3000 did, but in terms of audio
and video it blew it away.  1280x800 256 colors is still not quite possible
using stock Amiga hardware, but what the hell.

>/////////////////////////[[[[[[[[[[]]]]]]]]]]\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
>(718)             (212)                        (516)             (518)
>=======Amiuser============Frank R. Dana, Jr.============Doc Ami=======     
>--------My opinions rarely reflect those of any sane person,----------
>	   living, dead, or undead... that's gonna CHANGE.

Skip Sauls, Amiga Advocate
skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu



Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy