I got an AmigaOne XE G4

[Stephen Coates]

I always fancied an AmigaOne of some kind. So, a few months ago, I bidded on one which came up on eBay, and won it for about £100 :). It included the XE G4 motherboard, a graphics card, an IDE card, and a copy of AmigaOS 4.1.

I haven't built it up into a working system yet (due to lack of components), but I did pinch the PSU from my main PC just to test it, and confirm that it does indeed work.

After sitting around for a bit, I finally managed to get an ATX case for it. I was looking for something quite small, so I eventually settled on a Powercool 3060, which is quite small for a full ATX case. It got it for about £20. Its clearly not as well built as my main PC's Lian Li case, but it's still quite nice.

Now I just need to get a PSU and an IDE hard drive (or maybe I should use compact flash/SSD?). I can probably recycle a CD/DVD drive and a floppy drive from my spare parts collection.

I reckon I'll be having plenty of fun with this :amiga:

Here's the Powercool case (which can be used either as a desktop or tower):

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Rear of the case with the motherboard fitted:

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Motherboard inside the case (but with no processor):

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The CPU card:

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G4!

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[Harrison]

Yoy got that for a nice price. Definitely use a SSD if you can.

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[Kin Hell]

Well done fella. You got yourself a bit of a bargin there. :thumbs:

[Stephen Coates]

I was surprised I managed to get it at a good price, as I have seen them go for much more in the past. Do they tend to sell for much these days? Now that there are newer/more modern AmigaOne models, I'd expect these to loose their value. Also, these G3/G4s do have a reputation for being a bit unreliable, although the seller did say that this one had been very stable.

Funny to think that these are now 13 years old :o.

Don't suppose anyone has a spare ATX PSU that they don't want?

Is there much available in terms of IDE SSDs? Can't say I pay much attention to SSDs as I use hard disks pretty much everywhere.

[Harrison]

An alternative is an ide to sata adapter.

http://r.ebay.com/RTyyF9

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[Kin Hell]

<snip>

Funny to think that these are now 13 years old :o.

<snip>

Not so funny when I think back to buying my Amiga 3000D 26 years ago @ the tender age of 28.... :blink:


I do have an ATX kicking about if you're interested? - Antec True 550P (http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/305/antec_truepower_550watt_power_supply_review/index.html) <----click me!

There is a 5.25" drive bay that comes with it. The PSU has a small plugged wire array that goes to this drive bay. On the front right corner, you can adjust the 12, 5 & 3.3V rails with a little pull out tool in the front panel. you can also fit a 3.5" device (Floppy, card reader) into the drive bay.

It's heavy (Quality kit back in the day) but I don't have the original box for it, sry. - I'll find out the shipping costs for you if you PM me your delivery address details. :)

**Edit**

Bah! - I just tried my PSU tester on it & it's failed. It was okay when it went into store. I tried another 600W Corsair I have & that passes, so it isn't my tester at fault. Really sorry fella. :(

[Stephen Coates]

Time for an update.

I bought some parts for it a while back and got it all fitted in the case. I opted for a cheap refurbished IDE HDD in the end, and I got a Corsair PSU (can't remember the model off the top of my head).

I had a play with the OS 4.1 which came with it, but I also recently bought a copy of OS 4.1 Final Edition from AmigaKit. It was nice and easy to install.

Unfortunately, I'm having difficulty with it. When it boots up, it gets stuck on a blank Workbench Screen. Fortunately You can hold the mouse buttons down on boot up to get the option of booting without a startup-sequence, like you can on a classic Amiga.

After commenting various things out in the startup-sequence, I narrowed it down to a problem with LoadMonDrvs, which is something to do with the graphics card drivers. I expect I'll be able to sort it out, but I haven't had chance to play with it any more yet.

Meanwhile, here's a few pictures.

This is the blank Workbench Screen which it gets stuck at on boot up.

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Here's the early startup control:

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This is the Kickstart screen which displays if no boot device is selected:

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AmigaOS 4.1 FE booted with no startup-sequence:

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Editing the startup-sequence in Ed:

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[Stephen Coates]

I still haven't found out why it boots to the blank screen. All I can say is that its some sort of issue with the Radeon 7000 driver.

I tried a PCI VooDoo 3 3000 card and put the VooDoo driver into Devs:Monitors/ and it works perfectly. Had to have a little fiddle to get it to recognise my monitor's 1920x1200 resolution, but it seems to work fine.

No idea what's wrong with the Radeon driver.

I think the next thing to do will be to find a better heatsink for the processor. The tiny fan that is mounted on it is far too noisy.

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[Harrison]

Strange. Are you sure the graphics card is ok? At least you can get it working witg the other one.

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[Stephen Coates]

Don't know if the graphics card is OK or not. It obviously works to an extent though. I'll try the card in a PC sometime and test it.

I think I might see about getting a more powerful AGP graphics card.

[J T]

Are you pleased with it Steve?

Going back to the SSD question - what's the boot time like (from power on to full responsiveness) with the current set up?

I don't think I could go back to having my everyday pooter booting from a mechanical hard drive - I'd rather die. I suppose for a hobby computer it's OK.

[Stephen Coates]

I'm pleased with it. I think it will make a nice machine when I've finished making it work.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to use it properly yet due to various things not working.

It doesn't take too long to boot up. Maybe 45 seconds or so from the Uboot (aka bios) screen to desktop. I don't know whether an SSD would be much faster. Bearing in mind that this is now a 15 year old machine. I would certainly consider getting an SSD for my main modern computer next time I upgrade though.

[Harrison]

Ssds do make a huge difference in boot time and general os resposiveness. Can change a Windows machine from 2 mins to 20 second boot time.

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[Puni/Void]

I'm pleased with it. I think it will make a nice machine when I've finished making it work.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to use it properly yet due to various things not working.

It doesn't take too long to boot up. Maybe 45 seconds or so from the Uboot (aka bios) screen to desktop. I don't know whether an SSD would be much faster. Bearing in mind that this is now a 15 year old machine. I would certainly consider getting an SSD for my main modern computer next time I upgrade though.

Hi Stephen! How is it going with the AmigaOne? :)

[Stephen Coates]

I actually haven't used it for a couple of years. I wanted to swap cases with my old PC. I put my old PC in the A1's former case with the intention of putting the A1 in the old PC's big Lian Li case, but I never got round to it.

Perhaps that can be on the todo list for the rest of this year :).

[Puni/Void]

Should be an interesting project! :) Hope you will post some photos if you decide to go for it. Would be cool to see!

[Stephen Coates]

The old Lian Li case is quite big so should suit the A1's full size motherboard quite nicely. I originally for a small case for it and it was way too cramped.

I also need a better heatsink/fan for the CPU.

[Puni/Void]

The old Lian Li case is quite big so should suit the A1's full size motherboard quite nicely. I originally for a small case for it and it was way too cramped.

I also need a better heatsink/fan for the CPU.

Nice! :)

Any specific upgrades you are thinking of?

By the way, recently read about the Greaseweazle floppy adaptor, which makes it possible to read and write Amiga disks on PC and Mac. AmigaKit are, after what I've heard, going to look into it for AmigaOS 4, but no guarantees. That would have been perfect for your setup I think. Although, if you are lucky (or perhaps you already have one in storage?), you might find one of those rare Catweasel cards. You can then load old classics directly from floppy disk in E-UAE for example. I don't know if you are interested in floppies, but I like using them on the Amiga. Has a special feeling. ;)

[Stephen Coates]

I'm not planning any upgrades. I did ponder getting a different graphics card at some point, but I think I'll stick with the one I have.

I don't think I'd bother getting any kind of floppy controller for the A1, as all my old Amigas have good working floppy drives. Sounds interesting though. I will have to look it up.

You may be surprised to know that even my main [modern] PC doesn't have a floppy drive!:blink:

[Harrison]

The floppy drive had long been officially dead now. No system had come with one in some time. It reached a point where there really want much that could fit in a risk any more. Plus usb sticks and sdcards are so cheap these days.I

The more worrying thing for me is the trend of removing Ethernet ports. Most new laptops don't have them. Got a bit stuck with my wife's last new one when she got it. It would not connect to Wi-Fi, saying it needed to download drivers, but it has no Ethernet port. Hmm..

[Puni/Void]

The floppy drive had long been officially dead now. No system had come with one in some time. It reached a point where there really want much that could fit in a risk any more. Plus usb sticks and sdcards are so cheap these days.I

The more worrying thing for me is the trend of removing Ethernet ports. Most new laptops don't have them. Got a bit stuck with my wife's last new one when she got it. It would not connect to Wi-Fi, saying it needed to download drivers, but it has no Ethernet port. Hmm..

I like the nostalgic feeling of using floppies. A while ago I bought some new floppy disk labels from AmigaKit to make my collection look a bit nicer. :) Also got my hand on some "new" disks to copy recently released games and demos onto. Inserting them into the Amiga and hearing the loading sounds brings back memories. Having the same on an Amiga NG would make it a bit more "Amiga" I think.

As for regular PC's, I can understand no floppy drive. Easier using a USB stick for example.

[Harrison]

Definitely isn't an Amiga without that iconic loading sound. Although I hated the constant click of the empty drive and always installed a noclick utility.

But I have to admit my main 1200 and 600 both have Gotek drives these days because it's so much easier. Especially as I've converted a lot to adf files using my Kryoflux. But I still have another A1200 with a drive to load real disks.

[J T]

I had never heard of a noclick utility.

But then, as I never had a hard drive, there would not really have been any occasions when my A500 didn't have a disk in it.

[Harrison]

It was a little program the loaded in the workbench start-up sequence. All my Amigas had HDDs so would boot into Workbench if no disks were inserted. Loudest drive was probably the A4000. Although it was drowned out by the even louder PSU. That was loud.