A4000: Custom 5.25 bracket

From my previous A4000, I realized that good airflow and heat dissipation is rather difficult due to the not so spacy case and devices.
First of all CD/DVD-ROM units are rather big and along with the cabling makes it kinda messy.
I made a quick comparison back between the length of a normal DVD-RW and a slim DVD-RW.
Result was indeed amazing!




Ok I had to put it! Finding a 5.25 bracket back then wasn't easy and after a lot of searching around I found a really neat unit that has a spot for a slim CD/DVD unit, a spot for an 3.5 unit (floppy/multicard reader etc) and 2xUSB headers!
I quickly put a slim slot-in DVD-RW that I had along with a stock A4000 floppy to check it out! Not bad I'd say...




Well. After selling my A4000 and getting a new one... I came across the same issue as before but now I had the solution in my hands! In the following pictures you can see a test paint I used (which kinda suxed) along with a tray slim DVD-RW nice and neat Temperature/Fan control bracket that I bought.




I really liked the combo cause it's really good to know the temperature and fan speeds of my 060/PPC CPUs and VGA without being too kitsch.
It definitelly needed a good paint though cause that thing had so many colors... Ewww! Result was pretty perfect





I really like it and it works just fine! I found out that the Temp/Fan control bracket had also an Alarm per Temperature that you can set at will and also at a fan error (I tested it by pressing one working with a finger) you also get an alarm sound except the 0rpm message. NEAT!

The most awesome part though was that the bracket it's so thin that the 3.5" slot is almost empty!!! Time to take advantage of this extra space (as always lol).



This is the bracket of the default 2.5" HD for A600/A1200. Since I had 2 spare of these (nice to use CFs in my Amigas lol) I thought about modding it a bit for my needs.




...and now, you can place it inside the Temp/Fan bracket...





It fits like a glove! Also the cables for the Fan/Temp connectors/sensors were glued to the sides of the internal bracket.



Yep... the 2.5" Hard Drive is very well putted in it's bracket and it's ready for receiving it's own care... meaning an ACard!

More soon to come :)

A4000: PSU mod

A4000's PSUs have some times some issues with the fan being incorrectly installed (opposite direction blowing hot air from PSU inside the Amiga instead of Outside!).
The exterior holes for the air flow to come out aren't good enough so I'd thought of making something about it :)

For this task I trusted my good old friend Leo (Keropi) to cut the PSU case and mount an inox backplate, since he has done that on his previous A4000 as well.
Having the right tools is always awesome :)

Marking where to cut is essential... Yep the passthrough female power connector (for Monitors) isn't needed. I only need the normal power connector which will be re-aligned on the top where the female power connector was instead!







Inspecting it by hand to check if everything is as it should. Yep it's just fine :)



...and now it's the time to attach it permanently!


It's ready now. Kinda ugly after all the surgery but still cool to see.



Looks pretty cool doesn't it? Ok time to cover the Inox surface before the painting...



It looks rather well I think :) Can't wait for it to dry in order to peel off the tape and see it complete!



After leaving it for 12+ hours to dry... stickers were peeled off. Awesome lookz!!!



On the meanwhile... as I said we bypassed the passthrough (female power connector) since I'm never gonna use a cable to connect a monitor to the Amiga. This is too oldskool and better keep every device with it's own cable instead!
Alas, this is what the internal power cable looks like



Also removing the old noisy fan was essential (for putting a new better and more silent one) so off he went...





After putting the modified backplate and mounting the power connector... One final look...



...and we're set! PSU ready for putting inside the Amiga :)




And finally... 2 last photos of the PSU before and after the mod. I hope you like it :)

Thanks a lot to Leo (Keropi) for his awesome work!!! /respect bro.

Vacation ended... New items arrived though :)

Haven't wrote for a while since I was on vacation @ Chania (Crete). I had a great time and sadly today is my first day @ work.
Thankfully many packages were waiting me patiently and I was happy enough to unwrap every one of them gently...

Well... here's some photos of my after vacation LOT that include:

• A4000D (030@25MHz, Oktagon SCSI controller, Coin-Battery, Changed Caps etc)
• Cyberstorm PPC 060/604
• CvisionPPC (bought it as faulty but will have to check it out to see)
• Deneb USB adapter (brand new from AmigaKit... I'm glad I got one of the very last of them)
• kipper2k's CF Extenders (2x)
• kipper2k's IndivisionECS Extender
• kipper2k's DB9 Extender Multiadapter (incl. connectors for PS/2 Mouse, 2xPSX Joypads)

Along with these I also had some other stuffz like LSDJ module for my Gameboy and an ArduinoBoy kit...


FUN TIMES AHEAD and soon more updates to come!


EDIT: After checking out CVisionPPC I noticed that a capacitor was having an issue so I removed it and soldered a new one in it's place.



After putting the A4000 on... Turns out that CVisionPPC outputs Kickstart Bootscreen (4 colors) just fine W00h00!!! Also checked the CSPPC Menu (Esc key on boot) and indeed works there as well. I guess that capacitor was indeed a problem, so now I'll have to make more thorough tests as I'll setup this beauty from scratch!

Stay tuned...