Great write up and photos Ian! ![:D]( "Very Happy")
As Ian has summed it up to a T, I will just add a few things.
Well, yes it certainly has been another monumental leap in further enhancing the Monster A3000. It was an absolute pleasure being able to visit Ian over the course of a weekend in January and deliver the machine to him, have a discussion about plans moving forward with it and the possibility of scope to add a few more things to the bespoke Monster.
The machine behaved at ABUG North really well, the only hiccup as Ian mentioned being the Eesox SCSI card which did have us chasing our tails and lots of head-scratching. Upon extensive testing, and borrowing other podules to test, the machine would always fail on startup with the Eesox, notably with an address exception and some weird error screen referring to WMI (I’ve read it’s something to do with certain SCSI modules). Since then I have obtained a different brand of SCSI card (Powertec) to see if I have better stability with it. Ultimately, the SCSI interface will be used to interface with both my external CDRW and Iomega Jaz 2GB drive.
With the Eesox out of the equation (head-ache podule) the machine is now a rock-solid A3000 sporting Ian’s and Steve’s modifications and creations. The original Simtec card with Steve’s custom programmable clock generator that achieved 49.5 MHz has been preserved as Ian created an ARM3 / FPA combo board to house the FPA11 and a different 35 MHz ARM3 CPU that was obtained.
There are further plans for the Monster, as Ian has mentioned. Fast RAM, ArcDVI, wireless keyboard to compliment the existing wireless mouse capability when I am topless (who wouldn’t want to be topless with this machine![:lol:]( "Laughing")
) and of course a little addition into the WV expansion box. This notably being a bracket to be able to support a slot-loading dedicated IDE laptop CDRW for the Elvis in the unpopulated podule bay and an audio out RCA along with amplifier to power it. The Elvis Card supports IDE Master / Slave configuration as standard and so with the current Master being the SSD, the slave will be the optical drive. There is also provision for an audio out port from the Elvis. Something nice to add some desktop speakers too when playing with Windows 95 / 98.
With all that, I have also tried the machine on a newly acquired Samsung 27” LED Curved Monitor and with the UltraVIDC it is really go albeit currently at a cost to the RAM bus. Hopefully with ArcDVI, the full potential of the curved monitor can be used with a super crispy-sharp image.
What a chapter this has been. Onto the next, watch this space for more updates. Thank you to all at the ABUG for your positive praise, input & comments and admiring the truly fantastic work that both Steve H and Ian J have put into this special and unique A3K.
As Ian has summed it up to a T, I will just add a few things.
Well, yes it certainly has been another monumental leap in further enhancing the Monster A3000. It was an absolute pleasure being able to visit Ian over the course of a weekend in January and deliver the machine to him, have a discussion about plans moving forward with it and the possibility of scope to add a few more things to the bespoke Monster.
The machine behaved at ABUG North really well, the only hiccup as Ian mentioned being the Eesox SCSI card which did have us chasing our tails and lots of head-scratching. Upon extensive testing, and borrowing other podules to test, the machine would always fail on startup with the Eesox, notably with an address exception and some weird error screen referring to WMI (I’ve read it’s something to do with certain SCSI modules). Since then I have obtained a different brand of SCSI card (Powertec) to see if I have better stability with it. Ultimately, the SCSI interface will be used to interface with both my external CDRW and Iomega Jaz 2GB drive.
With the Eesox out of the equation (head-ache podule) the machine is now a rock-solid A3000 sporting Ian’s and Steve’s modifications and creations. The original Simtec card with Steve’s custom programmable clock generator that achieved 49.5 MHz has been preserved as Ian created an ARM3 / FPA combo board to house the FPA11 and a different 35 MHz ARM3 CPU that was obtained.
There are further plans for the Monster, as Ian has mentioned. Fast RAM, ArcDVI, wireless keyboard to compliment the existing wireless mouse capability when I am topless (who wouldn’t want to be topless with this machine
) and of course a little addition into the WV expansion box. This notably being a bracket to be able to support a slot-loading dedicated IDE laptop CDRW for the Elvis in the unpopulated podule bay and an audio out RCA along with amplifier to power it. The Elvis Card supports IDE Master / Slave configuration as standard and so with the current Master being the SSD, the slave will be the optical drive. There is also provision for an audio out port from the Elvis. Something nice to add some desktop speakers too when playing with Windows 95 / 98.With all that, I have also tried the machine on a newly acquired Samsung 27” LED Curved Monitor and with the UltraVIDC it is really go albeit currently at a cost to the RAM bus. Hopefully with ArcDVI, the full potential of the curved monitor can be used with a super crispy-sharp image.
What a chapter this has been. Onto the next, watch this space for more updates. Thank you to all at the ABUG for your positive praise, input & comments and admiring the truly fantastic work that both Steve H and Ian J have put into this special and unique A3K.
Statistics: Posted by Joka80 — Fri Feb 09, 2024 2:23 am