My initial impression of the Eagle 4000TE was that it could boot faster
than any other computer I have ever used (including high-end Power Macs
and Pentium 166 PCs). From powering on, I saw the Workbench screen in
around five seconds. Phenomenal! I've since knawed away at that time and
pretty much doubled it with all the commodities and so on that I now
have installed.
It certainly seems solidly built, and for 2,500 quid, it ought to be!
From day one, I was always a little suspicious of the ABS plastic foot
that the tower sits on, but it seems sturdy enough. The front panel has
a push-to-open door to reveal the usual stuff, including two floppy bays
(one used by DF0), and six 5.25" bays (one of which is inhabited by my
TEAC 6x SCSI drive). This panel also sports an "Amiga Based" sticker,
which to be honest makes it look rather cheap. The discreet Eagle badge
is more than sufficient. However, I haven't had the heart to peel the
sticker off.
It comes with a typically noisy Seagate 1.1 Gig SCSI drive which so far
has given me no problems, and is certainly fairly nippy. SysInfo rated
the transfer at about 5 Mb/sec which, to be honest, seemed a little
disappointing, but it's not like I'm planning on spooling many
24-bit SuperHiRes animations at full frame rate or anything. However, I'd
rather have a Quantum drive any day. Faster, quieter and more reliable.
Curiously enough, all the machine's ports are positioned in what I'd
consider an upside-down position. I usually expect ports to have the
wide end at the top, and the narrow end at the bottom but it seems that
someone thinks differently. It takes some getting used to, but there you
go.
I found that although Blittersoft seem like a reasonable bunch of people
(and they've been in business longer than many others, so they must be
doing something right), I get the impression that they're not the most
efficient of people when it comes to dealing with their customers. From
the time I opened the box to investigate the disconcerting rattling
sound that had resulted from the speaker coming detached in transit, I
found that the floppy cable was broken (but still making contact). It's
now nearly a year and I still have yet to get that replacement. Granted,
I haven't phoned them every single week, I haven't had time. The
occasional phone call and E-Mail was all I could manage. One day,
perhaps.
My biggest bugbear with the machine was that there was never any
documentation supplied for the motherboard SCSI controller. There are a
series of DIP switches on the back of the machine and me being the
curious type I am, I want to know what they do. After all, I may need to
know some time.
The SCSI connector is one I can't say I've seen before in any computer.
It's got the same shape as a normal 25 pin D-socket, but has twice as
many pins horizontally. It took me a great deal of time going round
various shops in Tottenham Court Road trying to get a lead that ended in
the usual Centronics-type SCSI interface. I finally found a shop that
sold one -thirty bleedin' quid! In case you're interested, the shop was
Shyamtronics (Tel: 0171-637-1961).
Overall, this machine is the new love of my life. It's got all the
expansion slots I could ever need, tonnes of memory, and just about
everything else you'd expect from an Amiga. Pricewise, it's far from
cheap, and with the latest batch of clones on the way, it'll seem pretty
overpriced. It already looks as though Micronik's Amiga clones are going
to be significantly cheaper (albeit based on the A1200 motherboard
therefore making things a good deal cheaper).
Andrew Elia
I had been planning for a long time to replace my ageing A1500 with a more powerful machine,
however the Commodore "situation" and subsequent buyout by Escom had left me with little to choose from.
My ideal solution would have been something similar to the idea of the A1500/B2000 idea. An A1200 spec machine
but in a desktop or tower case with room for expansion, however this was not available and
neither did it look like appearing in the near future. After using a friends A4000 over the period of a few weekends I had decided
to take the plunge and order one, however my A1500 pre-empted this decision by finally giving up on me one week before
the World of Amiga show in 1996. Although a replacement hard drive would have got it up and running again, I decided to upgrade and so I purchased an A1200HD
at the show the following week. The difference between the two machines was amazing. Workbench 3 was an improvement over 2.01 and
the increase in speed was very welcome, and very noticable especially when using Final Writer to produce a report for my Final Year University project.
Chris Livermore