Ranking the Commodore Amiga models Worst to Best - The 12 Days of Amigas - Part 10 Amiga 4000/4000T

[@pnvgordinho]

A friend of mine had and still has one Amiga 4000 T. It was the first time I saw a read/write CD player. He bought it in second hand at the time the Amiga was fading out and he manage to buy it at a decent price. My friend had a big "room" just for the Amiga and all the closest friends used to hang out there playing sensible soccer. Great times.

[@DoubleSupercool]

Sensible Soccer is still my gold standard for any soccer game :)

[@pnvgordinho]

@@DoubleSupercool Football game. :)

[@nneeerrrd]

​@@DoubleSupercool *football

[@DoubleSupercool]

@@pnvgordinho It ain't called Sensible Football! ;)

[@vix_in_japan]

I say Soccer, you say Football, I'm sure we can all be friends :) I'm a Brit in Japan that has to call football "soccer" class to my kids so I'm not at all precious about these things!

[@nneeerrrd]

I enjoy your detailed recall about retro tech. Glad to see you're in a sunny mood!

[@vix_in_japan]

Thanks Franko! Yes it was a bright afternoon, which doesn't make for the best video quality but hey ho, I don't have thousands to spend on a studio :)

[@nneeerrrd]

@@vix_in_japan :) I mean you've got a sunny spirit, as well as the weather :) No complain on video quality at all :)

[@10MARC]

Big fan of the A3000 and A4000. In some important ways the A4000 fixed some issues - the A3000 just can't run its own SCSI with an accelerator reliably. The IDE while it was frustrating in 92, is kind of nice now as it is so easy and cheap to get a CF card solution (much cheaper than SCSI2SD). Adding an Indivision MK3 upscaler/flickerfixer opens up AGA so much for me - being able to easily access the AGA 1024 x 768, 1280 x 720 and 1280x1024 in HAM8 makes it feels like a new machine. I could happily survive with just my A4000 as my only Amiga... Well, and my A3000... Oh! I need my A1000 too! And maybe my A1200... And I do love my A600.... Oh mercy no wonder I am always broke!

[@vix_in_japan]

Well... you answered your own predicament at the end! The A4000 can indeed be fickle with SCSI, especially the pre-A4000 Commodore SCSI cards but also the DKB/Commodore A4091 can be funny. I think it's a mixture of CPU, Super Buster and weirdness inbetween. I think this is why Phase 5's Cyberstorm Mk II and IIIs became popular due to their excellent onboard SCSI. But yeah it's things like IDE->SD/CF vs SCSI to SD that make me put the A4000 above the A3000 these days. In 1992 I would have had a different opinion entirely; but times move on and I'm ranking in large part on what I recommend these days and if you really need a big box Amiga, might as well get an A4000 if you can only have one.

[@Leofwine]

Oh I wouldn't give away my Frankenstein-A500, either. But I'd gladly adopt an A2000 (even a case with battle scars would suffice) or an A1200 (for that sweet SimCity 2000 music).

[@mervynstent1578]

Will never get rid of my genuine Quikpak A4000T & A4000 desktop!

[@janwiersma1449]

yeah. V-Lab motion. I've got an A4000 here on the attic somewhere, with a vlab motion and a tocatta and a 060 PPC loaded in it. never really got the V-lab motion part working, as I mostly was used to the easy use of the Cassablanca of macrosystems. which i also have. purchased a few years ago to the collection. i think this is an 040 version. not sure. it has firewire in though. have to light that up ones again for nostalgic moments. ;) they also made the DRACO which was something special.

[@vix_in_japan]

When you ad-lib everything trying to pull 20-30+ year old knowledge out of your head it can be a struggle! Sounds like a very nice A4000! I've never used a Casablanca or DraCo but they were very much big news in 1995 onwards. Still don't really understand how the DraCo works but I guess they patched the AmigaOS real good to get it to boot minus the custom chips!

[@mervynstent1578]

Hope that Varta is out

[@spudliet]

Nice vid as always! CAn't argue with anything you say,. A4000T always seemed to be unobtainium. if I recall correctly A4000/030s were coming in at about £999 towards the backend of their commercial life and it was rather tempting, but compared with a PC at the time, complete no brainer to move on to something new.

[@vix_in_japan]

See this is it, the A4000/30 was eventually at a good price point (it was what you say), but unless you were perhaps doing multimedia (read: SCALA) in 1994 it made so much more sense to have a 486 PC for similar money. An A4000T was never going to be on the cards for me, and never will be, so it's just as well I don't want one either, way too big!

[@BloodRayneUK]

Hiya Vicky ☺️ and another one off the list and a great video! Did Amiga have anything planned past the 4000? like a 5000 etc or that was the last one before the axe fell? Also did Amiga ever venture into laptops or had plans to do so? 🤔 Love these uploads and l look forward to the final two of the series 👍🏼

[@vix_in_japan]

Yes, they did, the AAA chipset I mentioned briefly in this video was meant to be the proper replacement for the original Amiga chipset and also the last, beyond that the plan was to migrate to PA RISC (Hewlett Packard's RISC architecture). The AAA would almost certainly have gone in something called an A5000, it was intended to be a high end chipset and not suitable initially for low cost systems like the A1200 and CD32, it's vastly superior to AGA, and never finished and only exists now I believe in a non functioning beta state but prototypes do exist. There was also talk of a quick follow up to AGA as seen in the A1200/4000/CD32 which was called AA+ (AGA's original name was AA, codename Pandora, hope you're still following... ;)), but this was only ever a paper spec thing. This was intended for lower end Amigas in lieu of AAA being too expensive for those in say an A1400 which was oft-rumored. The thing is, AGA was meant to be out by 1991, and given all the buggering around Commodore did in the meantime it's a miracle anything came out by late 1992.

[@BloodRayneUK]

@@vix_in_japan Ah ha…yup that all makes sense Vicky. Just such a shame that the Amiga brand got effectively caught up and surpassed by the rest of the computer world and the things it did better soon was available on other systems that became the go to standard. Reminds me very much of how the U.K. micro computer scene in the 80’s dominated and then got overtaken. Classic tale of mis-managing and not reading the needs and wants as the landscape rapidly changed 🤔

[@herdarkshadow834]

I was at University when the 1200 and 4000 hit the stores. Would have loved a 4000 but just couldn’t afford it so opted for a 1200. By the time I could afford one Commodore was in the bankruptcy spiral and the PC just made more sense. Cheaper to buy, cheaper upgrades and a broader choice of software including Doom. The Amiga that got away really. Always loved the look but not enough to buy one at today’s inflated price point.

[@vix_in_japan]

Same here, but then I don't want an A4000 either so that makes my life much easier! By 1994, really it did make much more sense to invest in a PC. Certainly it didn't take much to age them back then, 3 years for a PC was a good run, but that's the pace of advancement and Doom was such a killer app. One of the first games I bought for the Playstation!

[@herdarkshadow834]

@@vix_in_japan Battle Arena Toshinden was the first game I bought on the PlayStation launch day swiftly followed by Ridge Racer. I still play Ridge Racer till this day. To be fair PC obsolescence wasn’t as bad as the early 8 Bit days when a year seemed to be the lifespan of my first machines. Least with the PCs you could throw in a new motherboard and a 3dfx Voodoo card and life was good. No need to replace whole machines anymore… least not till the AIO’s and laptops arrived.

[@vix_in_japan]

I still play Ridge Racer to this day as well. Banger of a game!

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

John Cameron used the AMIGA A4000 on the set of the Movie TITANIC.

[@bigd5090]

I am one of those that thinks the A4000 desktop and A4000T tower machines should have a separate category. The C= A4000T is an absolute gem and it is scandalous that they only made about 200 of those rare original curved bezel door machines! I know that the Escom machines were electronically the same but there is a parallel dimension where the A3000 was bigger, had AGA and a DSP and hence the A4000 with its surplus PC type case was not required and instead the C= A4000T was released in 1993! The inbuilt SCSI in the A4000T is a massive boost over the IDE only A4000 and the extra video slot allows a VideoToaster PLUS a RTG Graphics Card! There is ample space for airflow and there is even an inbuilt mono speaker in the tower! This is the difference between a bodged stop-gap product and a professional video editing machine that could keep the Amiga's nose in the market!

[@vix_in_japan]

As I say, anyone is free to make more videos splitting them out, 12 has been enough for me (well the last 2 are pending, but they have been recorded) but I do take your point. The A4000T is indeed a much better realization of the A4000 machine, but I just wish AGA was stronger, it gets quite slow in 256 colors on a 31KHz screen in 640x480. A DSP would have been a good idea to patch up some Amiga weaknesses (by 1994 in a machine of the 4000T's price) such as sound, and maybe adding networking capability. It was the VideoToaster for sure that ensured the 4000T had a life well beyond what you'd expect, which is why I keep banging on about it.

[@andreafluffkitten]

Always wanted an A4000 but never could (and still can't) afford one.

[@vix_in_japan]

Snap! It would be wasted on me anyway!

[@ksio81]

Isn’t the Amiga 1200 also AGA?

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

I have all the models exept the 3000UX. it took me only 54 years to acquire them and massive debt.

[@vix_in_japan]

Yeah that 3000UX is hard to come by. I think I’ll sell much of my Amiga stuff one day, as I only need an Amiga 600 and I’ll never have the space for all of it. I don’t have anything rare mind just a nice condition A500 and an immaculate A1200.

[@airjuri]

I had A4000/040 from -93 to -98. Sadly i had to sell it.

[@vix_in_japan]

That's a shame :( But having been in the position of having to sell things myself -- I know how that feels. Bit like the A3000 I sold in early 2001 for about £125 because I had to pay for the PC I bought somehow....

[@chrisatye]

I was always a bit disappointed with the 4000. In some ways it took a backward step for the 3000, even if it did have better graphics capabilities. But I couldn’t afford one anyway, so it didn’t matter!! And lets face it, the 1200 was perfectly adequate for most of us :-)

[@vix_in_japan]

Yeah, I agree. You will see there is a reason why I have yet to talk about two very important Amigas more than adequate for most of us, which includes me!

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

Did it not have AT&T's UNIX System V as AMIX

[@phantominterrogative]

I owned two desktop A4000s and one Quickpack A4000T. The desktop models would die after about a year or two of usage. The 4000T did not fare much better, lasting only 5 years before it had chip failure. Otherwise, they were very expandable and powerful beasts.

[@vix_in_japan]

I think in the desktop machine's case the thermals have a role to play in that as it's a very busy machine when upgraded and that A3640 has poor airflow. I have a feeling Commodore even fitted some A4000s with the fan on the PSU backwards blowing the hot air back inside the machine! It's the higher likelihood of failure amongst many things that means I will never ever buy one, just as well I don't want one then!

[@phantominterrogative]

@@vix_in_japan My second desktop A4000 had small holes drilled in the side (like Macs of the time) to allow more airflow to the 3640.

[@d_vibe-swe]

Before watching, I think this is my rank: 1. A3000 2. A1200 3. A500 4. A1000 5. A4000 6. A2000 7. A600 8. A500+ 9. CDTV 10. CD32 Did I miss any? :D

[@vix_in_japan]

Well, you can split hairs like I did by including the A1500 and A2500 but that was contrived to fit with the 12 days of Christmas/12 days of Amigas theme, which I thoroughly ballsed up. ;) But seems a good list. I only put the A4000 head of the 3000 on the basis if you're gonna splash the big cash, and you need such a system, might as well go all in. Because I am ranking heavily based on what I'd recommend buying in 2023, not just on what they were at launch, if I was doing the latter, the A4000 would go way down my ranking.

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

With the AMIGA 4000 you get UNIX System V.