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060 4000D and 486 Project with some nice photos now its completed :D

A

aysel

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2014
Messages
61
Location
Nottinghamshire UK
Hi all,

I have been putting this together over the last few months so thought I would share some pics now its finally complete and not raining so I can get a few daylight pics.... I'm really chuffed with the machine now its done :D

I spent a good four months or so hunting for an absolutely mint boxed machine and found this one, still sealed with all the spares still in their little bags and the battery was intact and it ran perfectly.

a3

First job was motherboard recap and sourcing a new case front as it had gone beyond yellow... to that sort of dark baby poo yellow that even Retrobrite can not save. Thankfully a fellow Amibayer Voyagaer1971 in Australia sorted me out with a much less yellowed version which has retrobrited perfect white after a single 60 minute treatment :)

I have a Commodore 2386SX bridgeboard in an A3000 so fancied something different in this one. Fellow Amibayer and all round splendid chap BlindGerman hooked me up with a very nice Golden Gate 486SLC and compatible VGA card. It was a pain in the back box to get working but after two days of trial and error and a 4 hour Skype chat with a friend in Denmark we tracked it down to a dodgy 32mb SIMM on the Cybervision that it didn't like and all has been good since swapping it, as you can see below!

I also wanted to put a very origional looking machine together so for authenticities sake drove to Coventry to pick up a beautiful Commodore 1942 multisync monitor. I will run it daily wiith a 17" Sony Trinitron but keep the 1942 hooked up to RGB out should I feel the need for some classic OCS/ECS stuff that the Indivison cant quite scroll smoothly.

The finished machine :D

weba4k4

So the spec is:

  • Cyberstorm Mk1 060 @57mhz = 128MB RAM
  • Cybervision 64/3D 4MB
  • Indivision AGA 4000D CDMKII
  • Vortex Golden Gate 486 SLC with 16MB, 256MB Disk On Module and Co Processor
  • 1MB VGA Card
  • Tandem IDE Controller
  • 2 x 16GB PFS Compact Flash Drives (One to the Tandem, one to the internal IDE)
  • Silent fan in the PSU
  • Gotek Floppy USB drive
  • New HD Floppy from Amikit
  • External GVP G-Lock

Well, enough waffle.... on with the pics :D

weba4k1

weba4k3

weba4k2

First up, install the Indivision and Tandem

P7262347

Then the Cybervision 64/3D

P7262360
 
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VGA card

P7262365

Then the very lovely Vortex Golden Gate 486SLC

P7262371

256DOM hooked up to the Golden Gates IDE interface with MS Dos 6.2 installed (thank you BG!)

P7262374

Cyberstorm Mk1 060 @57mhz + 128MB

P7262357

Its a bit cramped but everything fits :D

P7262376

Just need to sort a propper plate for the VGA exiting the expansion slot

P7262379

Running on the Cybervision

P7262383

An finaly after days of trial and error.... the Bridgboard is up and running and we have some hardcore tentacle action! :D

P7242200

P7262393

She now has pride of place lol

web2

All that's left to do now is squeeze a Soundblaster in there so Im probably going to have to pull the Tandem and the second CF card and configure the CD and a Hard Disk with a spare IDE97 card I have knocking about to make room for it.
 
My next challenge is to remember all those autoexec.bat and config.sys shenanigans from 20 years ago to see if I can get enough free base memory to get X-Wing running. I also have a copy of Windows NT which hasn't seen the light of day for a few decades so going to see if that will run too :)
 
A great project! And the system is looking absolutely beautiful.

Really enjoyed the tour video you did explaining your 'commodore cave' setup. Would love to see a video intro to this particular project if you are ever so inclined and have time.
 
Thanks very much all... very kind :D

sgifanatic said:
A great project! And the system is looking absolutely beautiful.

Really enjoyed the tour video you did explaining your 'commodore cave' setup. Would love to see a video intro to this particular project if you are ever so inclined and have time.
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I will do my best... if there is ever a stage where one of my three kids are not in the room screaming at Minecraft I will grab the camera :D
 
jac_goudsmit said:
I'm very jealous!

If I may ask, how much money did that baby set you back?

===Jac
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Its probably quite important I don't mention total cost in case my wife ever stumbles across this thread whilst she's in close proximity to a heavy blunt object lol.... but the bridge board I managed to get with 16mb installed, the floppy controller, FPU installed, the 256MB DOM and the VGA card for less than £240 posted from Germany so very happy with that :D
 
Lovely system, one of the nicest I've seen in years. I do wish the higher-end Amiga stuff wasn't so costly... I don't think it was ever truly cheap, apart from a few years in the late '90s (if you were lucky)... but now even Amiga 1200s are LOLprice!
 
simplex said:
Lovely system, one of the nicest I've seen in years. I do wish the higher-end Amiga stuff wasn't so costly.
Click to expand...

My sentiments exactly. Just looking at the wonderful photographs and videos Matt/aysel has produced, mixed in with the penchant I've always had for the Amiga, makes me want to put together a maxed out 3000 or 4000. With all the stuff I've recently bought and the dozens of projects - literally - I would still like to get through, it would probably be unwise to let desire have the better of me.

For now, I will vicariously enjoy Matt's spectacular - and well photographed - Commodore collection.
 
aysel said:
My next challenge is to remember all those autoexec.bat and config.sys shenanigans from 20 years ago to see if I can get enough free base memory to get X-Wing running.
Click to expand...

You should try FreeDOS. It does some wizardry to load a bunch of the drivers in EMS/XMS memory and has a huge chunk of base memory free.

My 486 machine has 736k under 1 MB available and 699k available for programs. And that's with the huge Creative TSR for the AWE64, mouse drivers, cd-rom drivers and a few other things.

In MS-DOS 6.22, I remember it being difficult to even get past 600k available conventional memory.

While FreeDOS isn't 100% MS-DOS compatible, it seems to work well enough to run most games and lots of different drivers.
 
sgifanatic said:
My sentiments exactly. Just looking at the wonderful photographs and videos Matt/aysel has produced, mixed in with the penchant I've always had for the Amiga, makes me want to put together a maxed out 3000 or 4000. With all the stuff I've recently bought and the dozens of projects - literally - I would still like to get through, it would probably be unwise to let desire have the better of me.

For now, I will vicariously enjoy Matt's spectacular - and well photographed - Commodore collection.
Click to expand...

Thanks all :) And thanks for the kind comments SGIFanatic... much appreciated :)
 
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