I am finally into the stage of waiting my AmigaOne XE board to arrive. Yes I have finally managed to find one mobo plus a Radeon GFX Card and of course I got a lot of questions.
1. I want to buy this sweet cube case form Amiga kit. Does the AmigaOne XE board fits into this? Is it designed just for the Micro A1 boards or an xE can find its way in there?
2. I am planning to buy a CateWeasel. Which is the latest edition? I guess it is connected via PCI but does it have the current voltage amount to work with AmigaOne XE board? Is it 3/5 or 5V ?I do not remember the number well-?
3. In general how many voltages the PCI cards should be to work with an AmigaOne?
4. Has anyone tried those cateWeasel drivers for OS 4? Do they work? Thanx.
There's nothing 'micro' or 'mini' about an AmigaOne XE - it's a 'big box' Amiga and as such requires the same as any other type of standard desktop PC (ATX?)
A1-XE motherboard 750GX CPU module / 800Mhz 512 MB certified RAM Radeon 7500 AGP video card
Can it be mentioned as a G3 or G4 model? -Accorrding to the board it is a G4 but I want to confirm. Also the CPU type mentioned on the board is 745x mine is 750GX does it makes any difference?-.
Where there both G3 and G4 models of AmigaOne XE released?
My A1 is in a CoolerMaster Mystique case, with a Corsair power supply. Any case that has room for a full size ATX board should work.
I have a Catweasel Mark III in mine. It works OK. Snuffy has a Mark IV, and has had some issues with it. The "drivers" -as such- sort of work. I can read, write, and "Format" (by writing an empty ADF image) Amiga and PC floppies using my MKIII.
Cooling has always been an issue with the A1's. . . although maybe not so much for the G3's. Be sure you have an effective cooling fan of some kind for the CPU.
Make sure you start off with a brand new 2032 coin cell battery on the motherboard when you put it together. It's easier at that point than when it's in the case and surrounded by cables.
Paul
Builder of Frankenthousand The monster A1000 The Young Frankenthousand A1-XE G4 X5000
The A1XE never came with a 750GX processor. What youve bought is a XE with a micro A1 cpu module. Whoever sold it to you probably has a micro with the original 750FX module from your XE.
Reason for the swap could be that the person who sold it to you may have been having stability problems with a micro and therefore swapped the cpu's over.
If you have any stability issues I'd get in touch with the seller and ask why you didn't get the original XE cpu.
Catweasel MK3 and MK4 work OK in the XE, only used it for reading data of old 880K and 1760K disks.
Or maybe I bought the board used from another fellow who fried the original CPU 7451 module (known to overheat) and his dealer put the 750GX CPU module in its place.
Just make sure you buy a good quality power supply for the AmigaOne. You will run into all sorts weird nonsense if you buy a cheapass power supply.
Good power supplies are usually the ones that have an efficiency of at least 80%. And how do you know if it has that? If the specifications don't say anything about it, it is usually not that efficient.
SID chip is supported but only when using VICE, I have a MkIII with SID chip. The only problem is that sound samples in the later games music do not play you just get a clicking noise, but this was down to a hardware fault on the MkIII. There is a work round for the Windows driver that would play them, as far as I know the MkIV has fixed the problem but can not confirm how well it works on OS4. Does anyone have a MkIV with SID chip as I would be interested in how well it works with VICE.
A1XE G4 800Mhz, 512Mb, Sil0680, ATI9200se 128Mb, Sounblaster Live & Catweazle Mk3 with SID chip +OS4.1. A4000 233MhzPPC/04025Mhz, 112Mb, CyberPPC, OS3.9 Other Amiga's A4000, A2000 A500+, A500 & various hardware. 15+ other retro machines.