Improving airflow in the Amiga 4000 one step at the time
Posted by Retro Amiga User under Amiga 4000 , HardwareComments Off
Fri 9 Jan 2009
I have decided to clean up my Amiga 4000 internally. It is a busy system under the hood with cables all over the place hindering air flow and makes my Amiga run hotter than it should do.
I am running a BMon monitor switch (originally made by Eyetech) inside so that I can switch manually between CyberGraphX and AGA screens. The BMon switch clutters up the inside of the case a lot so let us hope Individual Computers will release an automatic monitor switch to go with their Indivision A4000 in the future.
To begin this mission of cleaning up the inside of the Amiga 4000 the first decision was to remove the DVD-rom. I am sharing files from a server these days where I have many Amiga ISO files which I can mount over the network so a DVD/CD is not necessary anymore IMHO.
If I remove the DVD, maybe it is difficult to understand why keep the floppy drive? First, I think the A4000 looks a lot better with a floppy drive and second, it can actually be quite handy when working on Amiga systems, particularly if you have more than one.
Next task was the floppy cable which runs irritatingly close over the PPC chip and fan blocking important airflow to the PSU.
The first idea was to take a really long floppy cable and route it under the CyberStormPPC card and then neatly fold it next to the 3.5” bay. I did have one very long floppy cable but it was a PC cable so I had to modify it since on the Amiga there should be no cross mounted cables to the first floppy drive.
The first idea failed since I must have broken the cable when I folded it, the floppy drive was dead.
The second idea was to find a really, really long floppy cable and route it over the PSU and then over the area in front of the 80 mm fan in the PSU and then in to the Amiga floppy drive.
Yes it worked, and even the case fit just fine with a cable between the PSU and case. Some hot glue to the folds of the cable and the Amiga 4000 now had improved airflow and improved looks.
So you may wonder where the hard drive is located. Competent Amiga users who know hardware well might have already spotted the IDE terminator on the motherboard to reduce boot time when not using the native IDE port.
Until I get a Deneb I am running a CF card on a Buddha Flash Phoenix edition.
The next improvement that will be done internally to the Amiga 4000 is to redo all the wiring so that all the cables are routed more neatly inside the computer.



