[rescue] The other question...need Amiga advice!?!

[Eric Webb]

On Wednesday 28 May 2003 03:27 am, N. Miller wrote:
>
> 2 Amiga 4000s, one is the expansion tower case (higher end one).  The
> lower-end one has 1 or 2 GB HD.  He thinks both have 16MB RAM.  I'm
> asking him about the Toaster & ROM versions, as well as TBCs (what's
> that?)

Ahh, a bit better then.  4000's are a tad more expandable (esp. in the 
accelerator department), but go IDE instead of SCSI like everything else 
(except 600/1200, but that's different).  TBC stands for Time Base Corrector 
-- you really really need one if you plan on using tape as an input source.  
The Toaster is extremely picky about its input signals and won't like a 
virgin tape playback signal.

> Do I have to have a special monitor to attach to a 4000?  

Back on the 2000, you really needed a 15Khz (NTSC) monitor because of how 
tightly the Toaster (in the video slot) works with the rest of the system.  
But that may have changed with the 3000/4000.  The 3000 has the built-in 
flicker-fixer (scan doubles 15Khz signal into a 31Khz "VGA" signal), but I 
don't remember about the 4000s.  The flicker fixer lets the graphics hardware 
run at 15Khz to make the Toaster happy, yet outputs a 31Khz signal to make 
our eyes happy.  

> What about
> network connectivity, or is that something that's not really of much
> import?

Zorro bus NICs on the Amiga are like gold.  I had one that got hit by 
lightning and now I can't afford the price to replace it.  People just want 
too much!   TCP/IP stacks were kind of a problem in the early days -- it was 
basically add-on software that you had to purchase.  Later OS revs (3.2 I 
think?) included a stack, but I don't know how well the newer OS works with 
the Toaster software.

Eric