Amigas are OK here, eh? ;-)

[Zane H. Healy]

> Yea, the subject line is "baited," but technically, the machine's 
> offtopic... I have an Amiga 4000T now (built in January 1998!) with a 

OK, I for one am green with envy!  Though I was afraid you were going to
tell us you were lucky enough to get an AmigaOne.

> "standard" VGA card (It's got an S3 Virge chipset), 2G SCSI HD, CD-ROM 
> reader & not much else.

Which video card is it?  Is it a Picasso IV, or something else?  Based on
the age of the machine I'd tend to guess a Picasso IV.

>   1,969,472 bytes Graphics Mem
> 11,534,728 bytes 'other' Mem

Little short on RAM.  I don't remember what the options are for expanding
the RAM on an A4000.

> It's got a 68040 in it, but IIRC, it's a 25Mhz.

OK, since I've only got a 68030/16 in my A3000 I'm still envious, but I'd
have expected this to have a 68060.

> I don't have the coin for one of those Zorro <-> PCI thingamabobs on ePay, 
> and the last few searches I did didn't bring about much for an ethernet 
> adapter[1], so I'm guessing the best way to get info on the machine would 
> be via the CD-ROM drive and CD-R's. I think I could also compile a custom 
> Linux kernel that allow read/write access to an Amiga-formatted HD, but 
> I've never done it, so I don't really know for sure.

Might be easiest to go Serial.  You might even be able to get SLIP or PPP
running between the Amiga and Linux box.

BTW, about the time your system was built an ethernet card would have cost
about $200, IIRC.  At least I think that's how much my 10Base2 card cost me.
 
> I have a few questions:
> 
> 1) Was there ever a version of OS-9/68K that ran on Amiga hardware? I know 
> there was one that ran on the Atari ST series...

No idea.
 
> 2) Would I be best off to just buy the latest available version of AmigaOS 
> (for dox, media, etc.) or should I search/wait/etc. for it? It easily meets 
> the 'minimum' install requirements for AmigaOS3.9, and is still better than 
> the "for improved usability" specs...

You might as well buy a copy of Amiga OS 3.9, though I can't comment on the
differences between 3.5 and 3.9, as I don't think I've ever even seen 3.5
running.  My A3000 runs 3.9.

> 3) I have access to a SCSI CD-R/RW burner - Is this machine capable of 
> burning CDs (even at 1x - I'm not in a hurry... ;-) at all? That could help 
> me making backups in case of a disaster...

Yes, but does it have a SCSI adapter?  IIRC, a stock A4000 uses IDE.

> 4) Anything else I forgot to ask about??? ;-)

My address so you can ship it to me :^)  After all you don't really want to
mess with an A4000T :^)

		Zane