AmigaOne and the Apocalypse
Scientists and Theologists have long debated how and when the Apocalypse will come about. In fact, throughout the ages there have only been two things they've been able to agree on:
1. There will be an Apocalypse.
2. NeRP finally receiving his AmigaOne is a pretty sure sign that the Apocalypse is near.
And so it went for centuries, each generation watching and waiting, looking for that fateful sign. Recently, Ook (infamous for the ill-fated new8n1.device, which can still be found on Aminet) finally received broadband, and people looked to the skies, fearful that fire would come raining down any second. It had long been thought that the combination of Ook and any significant amount of bandwidth would signal the end of civilization as we know it.
But the end didn't come, and once again all eyes turned to NeRP...
And then it finally happened.
Despite the threat of a postal strike, NeRP's AmigaOne arrived on July 30th, a date that will forever live in infamy.
Is this the end of the world as we know it? Perhaps so, but NeRP feels fine.
What follows is an account of the event from NeRP himself...
The Arrival
Well, it's finally happened. I've received my AmigaOne.
It actually arrived in my sector of the world on July
30th, but the post office neglected to tell me until the
first of August. So much for spending extra for "Express
Post"...
After the long wait, I half expected the box to be glowing
gold, accompanied by the sound of a heavenly symphony. Alas,
just an ordinary box.
I eagerly opened the package to find two high quality motherboards. What? Had they made a mistake and sent me two of them? No, one of them is Erchin's. In fact, it will be her system we'll be taking a closer look at, since it's the one I assembled first.
The boards, pictured below, measure up well to what you'd expect from a high quality PC motherboard. The only caveat I noticed was the lack of shrouds around the IDE and floppy connectors with a keyway to prevent putting the cables on wrong. They are numbered however, so if you can breathe, you can probably figure it out.
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| Double your pleasure. I have two AmigaOne's. How many do you have? |
CPU Module Fun
The first thing that I was interested in seeing was how exactly the
CPU module fit to the board. No one has really shown that
yet to my knowledge, and I really wanted to see the much
talked about megarray
connector. The CPU module is secured to
the board using screws. Once the screws are removed, the CPU
module comes off easily with some gentle rocking.
A closer look...
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| The infamous Articia northbridge chip. The megarray socket sits right beside it. |
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| The other half of the megarray socket, on the CPU module. |
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| The CPU itself. Notice it says 933. Yes, that's a 933mhz cpu running at 800mhz :) |
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| The HSF (heatsinkfan) that comes with the AmigaOneXE is a thermaltake chrome orb. It looks fine, but the thermal pad on the bottom *has* to go. |
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| I think the thermal pad looks rather good right there :) |
By now you may have guessed my other reason for removing the CPU module. It was to get the CPU and HSF cleaned and prepped with Arctic Silver thermal compound. The Arctic Silver will reduce CPU temps (and increase the HSF's temp) by at least a few degrees Celsius.
Ahhh... Arctic Silver....
Putting It All Together
I put the module back together, and inserted the MB into the tower. Everything fit perfectly. Installation was so easy, your sister could do it.
The video card is an ATI Radeon 7000
64M TVO. Why not a higher end card? A higher end card would cost more, cause more troubles with linux,
and isn't going to provide much benefit at this point. By the time
the AmigaOne can make use of the extra GPU
horsepower, I'll be able to buy an ATI 9800PRO for $100US,
instead of the almost $400US it is now...
Wires everywhere! ARRGGGH!
Below are a couple of pictures of the AmigaOne mostly put together with the extra wires cleaned up. The strip of neon at the bottom of the case gets hidden nicely the moment the case door is put on. The blue cable laying on the bottom of the case is a round floppy cable, awaiting its Catweasel home :) The stick of ram installed at this point is a regular Micron 256 stick. I tried it and a Micron 128 meg stick, and experienced no apparent problems. In the second picture, you can see the dual disk drives, one being for the AmigaOne's FD connector, the other for the aformentioned Catweasel.
Now this next part is a bit non-standard. I'm building this system for Erchin and she specified that she wants to be able to use both Linux *and* AmigaOS, but she wants neither to be able to interfere with each other. The solution? Removable HDs. One for Linux, and one for AmigaOS. One benefit will be not having to mess around with some sort of boot loader. The other benefit is redundancy. If she has a HD failure, she'll still be able to get going by slapping in the other cartridge. You can see me sliding the HD cartridge (with HD) out, and in the next picture, you can see the HD slot empty, with the 2 HD cartridges sitting on top of the tower.
I should note at this point that the AmigaOne was starting to turn me on. I thought it only fitting that I should return the favor. Below you can see the AmigaOne powered on for the first time, both with the case door open and closed. The camera is using the flash, and the room is quite bright. The item on the top of the case is a fan controller, for reducing noise if the fan speed isn't needed. All things considered, the four LED case fans are rather quiet regardless, and the chrome orb is louder. Just down from the fan controller is the removable HD. The green LED display lists information like HD temperature, if the HD cooler (built in) is running, and even if the HD is master or slave on the IDE chain.
Now if only I had OS4.. but that's for another article...
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| This picture turned out nice. The camera's flash is off, and it's later in the evening. This is probably my favorite picture :) |
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| Some close ups of the inside of the case, all lit up, and more or less all finished. Hmm, dust on the window. ARRGGH! |
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| And at last, the final product. Here's hoping Erchin likes it! :-) |