Amiga 4000 CH01: The Rescue & The Hoard

In March 2022 I made a dash from London, to Worcester in the British midlands, to collect, or maybe even "rescue" an Amiga 4000. I last owned an A4000 for a brief few months in the early 1990s, so getting an Amiga 4000 was something of a grail machine for me.
The machine was just a small part of a bundle of items, that had been used in the 90s at a commercial TV station in that area. I was told the A4000 did not work, just a black screen... Was the usual battery damage that so many 4000s fall foul of at play here. Watch on and enjoy the journey of the Amiga 4000 rescue.
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[@RetronautTech]

Retronaut now has a dedicated Amiga Discord channel, discord.gg/8uxJa6QX where you can chat with like minded Amiga nuts (such as me). For those who JOIN my channel (hit the JOIN button above). There are exclusive Channels on the Discord where you can chat directly with me and other members. So why not jump in today and join the Amiga Discord!

[@boydpukalo8980]

It is amazing that today people are making replacement 4000 sheetmetal cases, there are replica motherboards and daughterboards, and people have 3D printed and machined out of billet aluminum the front fascia, and you can still get NOS AGA chipsets, so you can build brand new Amigas. The 1 things not really avaliable are keyboards and key caps. Even the color matched screws for the case are avaliable at times!

[@RetronautTech]

Yeah, I have also seen totally new Amiga 1000's, well, I assume most of the chipset is original, maybe made from salvaged A500's mostly? Cant see why anyone would cut up an original A1000, as they don't really suffer from battery damage. Now, A4000's battery damage is VERY common, and sometimes its terminal. Also, I have seen machines where the fascia, or the chassis has bought the farm. So I think these modern replacements are very much welcome. I've not seen the machines fascia's. Do you know of the project name, Id like to see what they look like :)

[@profpep]

The yellowing is due to the fire retardant in the plastic, which has a bromide compound in it. Some plastics have more or less, which is why some do not go yellow. In some plastics, like Apple PowerPC cases and HP printers, it cases embrittlement of the plastic too, as it ages. The proccess is accellerated by UV, rather like film developing.

[@RetronautTech]

My experience is its more heat that UV. I think the UV imparts heat effectively. I think this, as I left a retrobrited machine next to a radiator, in a box, closed, no light at all, and it yellowed again. So, keep them a way from light and heat, or indeed flame throwers or run-away nuclear reactors.

[@Lucretia9000]

Far too much text on screen which takes attention away from the video, and far too long. You repeat yourself in the text far too much and you don't leave it up long enough to read, especially when it's a full screen width of multiple lines. Reduce that text, it's mostly not required.

[@ChrisThomas-lt8jd]

Noted, Ill be trying to address your comments in future videos, Ill try and increase the display duration. Not sure I want to reduce amount of text, as its meant to be suplimentary, however, if it IS repeating what I am saying verbatim, then Ill try and prune, but sometimes you need to add some duplication or the text does not make sense, as its own thing, if you get me 😁

[@DrDavesDiversions]

Hi Chris! I found your channel by the Facebook posts re: the latest vid. Looks like a really interesting find here. I run an '040 Amiga 2000 (1990) with Fusion Forty (1991) that I bought new back then, but am curious to see what Commodore did themselves with the 4000, which I never really paid attention to back in the day. :) Cheers.

[@RetronautTech]

Check out this video kzbin.info/www/bejne/jV6yZ6CkedCBr6M. I also had an A2000 (in A1500 guise) back in 1991-93. It was my machine through years 2-3 of Uni and I used it for a mixture of gaming (of course) 3D rendering and also graphic design, which I was doing in college. It had a 68030 card in it, maybe 8mb of RAM, as I recall. Though, TBH I find it hard to remember EXACTLY what I had in that machine. But it did also have an A-Max Apple Mac emulator card. I KNOW that as I recall using it at home for course work. Quite a boon at the time. BTW, I found your video on your A2000, I'll give it a watch :)

[@DrDavesDiversions]

@@RetronautTech Nice - fun to find people with shared experiences; I'll catch up on some of your library of content. It you visit my channel, perhaps my Amiga video "The Fastest Mac Plus Ever?" would be of more interest, given your experience. :) Peace.

[@RetronautTech]

I will, thanks. Now, with this A4000 my unfinished business, is trying to get its G2 Image Engine card working. It was a pretty epic card back in the day. But I just cant find the software for it...@@DrDavesDiversions

[@gnustep]

Gouging, Amiga HW on ebay!? Say it aint so! ;) Amiga HW has been AGRESSIVELY overpriced on ebay for years. The Amiga community refuses to recognize the depreciation of Amiga hardware. It isn't rate, it isn't as collectable as some other (more rare) hardware, it should not retain its value like ebayers seem to want to pretend. Excellent video. :)

[@RetronautTech]

Yeah, certainly its a thing now, that if you want a matching keyboard WITH your Amiga 2000, 3000, 4000, then you MUST get it when you buy the machine itself. Otherwise, you end up paying £200+ JUST for the keyboard. I know, I did it for my Amiga 2000 keyboard. My Amiga 1000 came with its keyboard, and that these days is so... rare. Anyway, the next video is queuing up, premiering it shortly...

[@kjellmesch8060]

Wow, great find. Cool stuff, even if much of it may not be of much use today. Would be fun to see it all work again. 🙂

[@RetronautTech]

Indeed, well, if you watch the Fastlane Z3 video, you'll see it working, buuut soon after it developed a fault in its video, which was gradually getting worse as I filmed that video. Anyway, I have a new video coming soon, where I fix that issue. But yeah, at some point I really need to show the machine doing its thing. I have a video capture device now, so I can now capture its screen in much higher quality. Something to feature soon :)

[@kjellmesch8060]

@@RetronautTech Cool, I'm in the process of fixing my A3000 and planning to build a z3660 accelerator for it once I'we sourced all the components. Hopefully the A3000 scsi will not cause any problems with the combo. From what I´we seen it can be problematic.

[@ChrisThomas-lt8jd]

@@kjellmesch8060 Can I ask, why do you feel the need for a 68060? What does your A4000 have in it now? Also, in terms of SCSI, I think the onboard SCSI can be disabled on the A3000, allowing you to use its SD to SCSI system. Should be a screamer.

[@kjellmesch8060]

@@ChrisThomas-lt8jd I'm probably not going to use a 68060 on the board as they are so expensive. The z3660 can use a z-turn board that can simulate the CPU at greater speed than a 68060@100Mhz. Making it sort of a PiStorm for the big box Amiga. The scsi chip on the A3000 is a picky one and adding a board with scsi can be a problem. Adding a sd2scsi thing however works just fine. I have a BlueSCSI v2 in the machine now. The "why", because I feel like it 🙂