By Michael Webb, Editor-in-Chief, MikeWebb@CompuServe.COM
The first thing one might notice about the A4000T is its size. The tower case stretches almost two feet into the stratosphere of your room or office, making for convenient floor placement, while taking up minimal desk space if one chooses to keep it "on the level" with everything else. It is, as I have said, like a monolith sitting there; in fact, you can almost hear the music from "2001: A Space Odyssey" starting up in the background...
Well, you'll hear something coming from the case, and although it may not be reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's 1968 classic, it can be just as startling the first time you hear it, if you don't know ahead of time that the A4000T has an internal speaker. It's not particularly good, to be completely honest about it, but it will allow you to hear the Amiga's sounds right away without having to plug speakers into the box. Then again, what can one expect from a computer's internal speaker? It gets the job done, and if you're going to be listening to anything besides system beeps, you should probably connect some decent external speakers anyway. Note that because the A4000T, like every other Amiga, uses audio-industry-standard RCA jacks, while many computer speakers connect via an 1/8-inch phone jack, an adapter will probably be required.
The case itself has a simple, aesthetically-pleasing, largely rectangular shape, in a fairly Amiga-like whitish color. Much of the upper part of the front panel is dedicated to external-access drive bays (three vertical, two horizontal, all both 3.5- and 5.25-inch-drive-capable), and those bays are in turn concealed by a hinged door with a shaded transparent panel. Whether or not you like having the door would probably depend on how frequently you insert or remove disks, cartridges, or CD's into or from the drives behind it. Personally, I like it, but I find it a bit on the flimsy side, and an concerned that it may break one day. They could have done a better job on this part.
Who "they" is, however, is uncertain, because this case appears to have been, at least in part, built from a generic tower case. The strongest evidence of this is in the form of the labels above the three buttons which say "Power," "Reset," and "Turbo," as opposed to "Power," "Reset," and "Speaker," which would be, shall we say, more accurate. It all works well enough, however, and the case is large and sturdy.
What problems this case has showed up when we took it apart. Doing so entails removing a number of screws from the back, and removing a large panel that essentially is the top, left side, and bottom of the tower. An easily-removable sliding side door (possibly even as a part of the larger panel) might be preferable, especially considering that a tower is meant to be expanded. In addition to the side panel, the front panel pops off at the locations of six large metal snaps.
Inside, the A4000T has plenty of interesting components to look at, but also some empty space. It appears that there could be room for a few more drive bays within the case. Six is good, but I think a tower of this size might be capable of more. Granted, all the bays can alternately accept 5.25- or 3.5-inch drives, an aspect of design that is bound to take up some space. Still, there is empty space.
Adding components internally can be easy or nightmarish, depending on where you're working within the tower. Adding SIMM's to the motherboard was a breeze (notwithstanding the problems which came up with the SIMM's or sockets themselves, as I mentioned elsewhere in this review), as was installing a card such as the Ariadne into one of the five Zorro slots. Physically installing a new drive isn't too terribly daunting a task. Adding memory to (or removing it from, as we had to do early on) the CyberStorm board, however, is another story. The sockets are partly obscured behind the tower's internal support frame. It would be one thing if removing that frame bracket were trivial, but it is not, because several ribbon cables are threaded through various holes in the bracket, and they have to be removed as part of this disassembly. When all was said and done, the experience had been one large headache, and proceeded to lead to the peculiar situation in which the machine would not even begin to boot, as I described in the "First Impressions: What's Not So Good" section of the review. Since this all happened, we figured out a way to add memory to the processor board without completely taking the machine apart, but the frame may have to come out again one day if I ever remove the CyberStorm.
In many desktop computers, interfaces to peripherals and various external components are simply placed on the rear edge of the motherboard, as you've probably seen. A tower computer naturally challenges this convention, because the motherboard is aligned vertically. The Amiga 4000 Tower was designed with several "modules," i.e. actual cards located just above the expansion slots, to provide connections for things such as video, sound, SCSI, serial/parallel, and internally, both floppy and SCSI. Ribbon cables complete some internal connections.
One other tower-specific aspect of design worthy of note has to do with size. It is a positive consequence of all the room in this machine that not only are there five Zorro slots, but there are also two video slots, and one ISA slot that's all by itself, not inline with anything (there appears to be room for a sixth Zorro slot inline with this ISA slot, so one might wonder why there isn't one -- maybe if there is a limit of five slots in the Zorro specification?). It's a pity the Amiga's PC slots aren't more readily usable, especially in this case. Anyway, it should be noted that having various slots inline with each other, as most are even in the A4000T, can be convenient. For instance, boards like the Picasso IV use both a video (display enhancer) and Zorro (main transfer pathway) slot together, while Bridgeboards, if I remember correctly, use both an ISA and a Zorro slot.
On a more personal note, I'd just like to point out the very significant contrast that becomes apparent to somebody moving from an A500 to an A4000T. The A500's warranty was voided through opening of the case, a task which itself was difficult enough to perform in the first place. A Torx screwdriver was required, and on occasion, the screws would torque their way right through the plastic threading. My Amiga was apart many times, and it seems like each time, another little metal tab for the RF shield would fall off. There was very little room in there, too, but I managed to cram in a variety of extra components. My desktop PC has some internal space, but the A4000T is my first box Amiga, and let's just say easy expandability makes a big difference.
When I first had the machine apart, I thought the floppy data cable had been damaged during manufacturing. It certainly looks mangled. Apparently, this was the result of an intentional cable cut, twist, and splice job, which seems to indicate to me that some non-Amiga-specific components were used, perhaps in an attempt to save a little money. If this is the case, I believe it shouldn't be repeated in the future. I have had some floppy problems as it is (for a long time, high-density floppies were extremely error-prone, until we disconnected and reconnected the drives, and to this day, every copy of an OS 3.1 Install disk I have crashes on boot -- Software Hut has yet to respond to my over month-old e-mail on this subject), and for all I know, they could be related to the ribbon cable being poorly spliced.
Some internal components could have been built a little better. Most of the rear connectors are very solid, but the SCSI port has some freedom of movement. And unfortunately, a high-density SCSI connector can require more force for insertion than most connectors. Other various parts could stand to be sturdier as well, including such things as a card edge supporter (for the front ends of those full-length boards you don't see much anymore) which half fell off while I had the case open one time. Fortunately, it went back into position easily enough, but the situation shouldn't have come up in the first place.
Finally, while putting the case back together, I have occasionally encountered some relatively minor difficulties getting the panel to fit back on. Once it's in place and the screws start to go in, however, everything seems to fit together.
Overall, the A4000T's case earns its tower designation, meaning that, among other things, it is sturdy, and has plenty of room for expansion. There are some details of design that should probably be improved upon in the future, but it isn't too difficult to work with, and the specific tower configuration proves very effective in everyday use.