A3000 desktops

[Vlabguy1]

Curious and Im putting some feelers out.  Just how popular are A3000's?  Reason I ask is that I have 3, all of which are projects to be restored or used for parts.  I may throw them up on a well known auction site.  I was never really into the A3000 computers so I don't know much about them.

Rich.

[Lurch]

Tease ;-)  Anyway an Amiga fan already knows that most people consider them the best looking of the bunch.

I've always wanted one but due to insane pricing that people put on things don't think this will happen.

If you stick them on Ebay you'll get quite a bit for them, although there are few people on there that snap them up and sell them again at a higher price, causing price inflation.

Amibay is always the best place to pick Amiga items up for a fair price, but I refuse to give pricing.

It's what you think they're worth at the end of the day.

[mechy]

Tease ;-)  Anyway an Amiga fan already knows that most people consider them the best looking of the bunch.

I've always wanted one but due to insane pricing that people put on things don't think this will happen.

If you stick them on Ebay you'll get quite a bit for them, although there are few people on there that snap them up and sell them again at a higher price, causing price inflation.

Amibay is always the best place to pick Amiga items up for a fair price, but I refuse to give pricing.

It's what you think they're worth at the end of the day.

A3000's sell on a regular basis on ebay in the usa, and most go for reasonable prices,anywhere from $100-300+ depending if they are stock or more, but i guess NZ is another story.. anthony(castellan) had some for sale on his web site before, not sure what the price was. I find plenty of deals on ebay,and i have see pricing on amibay, it cant control the prices any better.

@vlabguy   Go for it, 3000's are a fine machine even in stock form.

[Lurch]

Must be extremely lucky to score one for a $100USD. I'm an Ebay watcher, and jump from ebay.com/ebay.com.au etc as each have there own listings.

At the moment I see two listed, one for 400+ Euro (700+ NZD) and another at $300USD as you've mentioned at your higher end.

[mechy]

Must be extremely lucky to score one for a $100USD. I'm an Ebay watcher, and jump from ebay.com/ebay.com.au etc as each have there own listings.

At the moment I see two listed, one for 400+ Euro (700+ NZD) and another at $300USD as you've mentioned at your higher end.

a friend of mine picked up a a4000 with Cyberstorm MKii,toaster and flyer boards for $600 off us ebay about 6 months ago. i didnt even see it! it wasnt listed as having a accelerator. lucky sob

take a look at these sold listings on us ebay:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=amiga+3000&_in_kw=1&_ex_kw=&_sacat=0&LH_Sold=1&_udlo=&_udhi=&_samilow=&_samihi=&_sadis=15&_stpos=76522&_sargn=-1%26saslc%3D1&_salic=1&_sop=10&_dmd=1&_ipg=200&LH_Complete=1

sorry for hijacking your thread vlabguy!

[matthey]

Must be extremely lucky to score one for a $100USD. I'm an Ebay watcher, and jump from ebay.com/ebay.com.au etc as each have there own listings.

Yea, $100 would be very cheap even here in the U.S. where the 3000 was most common. I would prefer and pay more for a motherboard which is clean around the battery and is already fully populated with static column zip memory (a pain to find and install). An already upgraded SCSI chip is a plus but it is an easy replacement. The 3000 caps seem to be better quality than the later 4000. Most 3000s are 25MHz which is worth more but it is not necessary with most accelerators. Some early revision motherboards required a ROM tower which is probably already sorted but less desirable. A 3000+CV64 (not CV64/3D) is a great Amiga combo if you find the pair for sale.

[mechy]

Yea, $100 would be very cheap even here in the U.S. where the 3000 was most common. I would prefer and pay more for a motherboard which is clean around the battery and is already fully populated with static column zip memory (a pain to find and install). An already upgraded SCSI chip is a plus but it is an easy replacement. The 3000 caps seem to be better quality than the later 4000. Most 3000s are 25MHz which is worth more but it is not necessary with most accelerators. Some early revision motherboards required a ROM tower which is probably already sorted but less desirable. A 3000+CV64 (not CV64/3D) is a great Amiga combo if you find the pair for sale.

A 4000 makes more sense since it has updated chips,aga,simm ram,etc  but yea a 3000 is cool. The good old thru hole caps with good old poisionous pcb's seem to last forever in the 3000 etc.. my c64's are still going fine from 83. that being said my 4000 in mediator tower is from 92,still has the original caps and runs 24/7,but its hit and miss with 4000/1200 caps. they are all overdue anyway

You can ditch the rom tower and use a 27c240,27c220,27c2048(i think it is,prob. also as 27c4096 and get rid of the rom tower. I think they shared the same pinout.

[Tenacious]

Many believe the 3000 is the best quality machine Commodore made (2000, too).  It is the most powerful Amiga with thru-hole technology and replaceable chips!  This makes it far more repairable by the avaerage user than any cost saving SMT system.  When coupled with almost any thru-graphics card, and a new 128 MB memory card, it becomes fairly modern very quickly.  

My .02.

[mechy]

Many believe the 3000 is the best quality machine Commodore made (2000, too).  It is the most powerful Amiga with thru-hole technology and replaceable chips!  This makes it far more repairable by the avaerage user than any cost saving SMT system.  When coupled with almost any thru-graphics card, and a new 128 MB memory card, it becomes fairly modern very quickly.  

My .02.

i agree for the most part, but the 4000 with surface mount is what makes it so reliable. those 20+ year old sockets in the 3000 often tarnish and the chips need reseating.
The 3000 was a good design memory wise and with scsi,but some problems you run into: most came with buster7,which don't support Zorro-3 DMA or Quick Interrupts, and they don't attempt to translate local bus burst cycles into Zorro-3 burst cycles-easily upgraded.

next is the dmac2/ramsey4 which are part of the problem of detecting static column ram when used with 3640 cards-not a problem in most cases since using pagemode in the first bank works around this, ideally the dmac4/ramsey7 was the upgrade.
Although the case looks cool, you have to tear it almost completely down to do anything inside. Most accelerators don't fit well with ram except the warpengine 3040.The a3640 will fit with a microscopic fan or large wide heatsink seen in some 4000t's. You still cant have any 5.25" cdrom etc inside,so external scsi case for that-which isnt a big deal.

It needs Int2 wire soldered for the  accelerator scsi usually.
Wd33c93 needs upgraded to rev8 or amd 33c93a to fix some ssi troubles when using multiple drives/cdroms etc- most came with rev4 proto chips or earlier.

fix all that and the battery and it makes for a solid machine, i ran one to death back in the 90's stuffed full of cards. it never missed a beat but i still love the 4000(t) and its cheaper in the long run since it usually has the latest ramsey,dmac,buster.

[Tenacious]

...You still cant have any 5.25" cdrom etc inside,so external scsi case for that-which isnt a big deal...

Of the items you listed, this is probably the biggest deal for me.  I love how all of the expansions a user might want fit into the case of the A2000, the tower designs, and the A4000 (never had the pleasure of using one).

My first A500 was a sprawling subdivision of expansions.  My 3000 has a old AST case underneath for the extra drives.  I love the platform but appreciate a clean setup.  

[matthey]

i agree for the most part, but the 4000 with surface mount is what makes it so reliable. those 20+ year old sockets in the 3000 often tarnish and the chips need reseating.

Not only the caps but also sockets seem to be higher quality on the 3000 and 3000T than 4000 or 4000T. I have a early revision 4000T with a warped Buster socket (heat?) and my 4000 sockets look cheap. C= tried to be more professional for awhile during the 3000 days (remember the gold service plan?) and then gave it up and went back to making hardware as cheap as possible (maybe because of money problems by that time or the new management sacking the guys that were doing a good job).

The 3000 was a good design memory wise and with scsi,but some problems you run into: most came with buster7,which don't support Zorro-3 DMA or Quick Interrupts, and they don't attempt to translate local bus burst cycles into Zorro-3 burst cycles-easily upgraded.

With a gfx board, upgrading to a Buster 11 gives a substantial speedup over the slow Buster 7 and seemed to me to be more reliable. It's nice that the Buster is in a socket which is not the case on many of the 4000(T)s.

next is the dmac2/ramsey4 which are part of the problem of detecting static column ram when used with 3640 cards-not a problem in most cases since using pagemode in the first bank works around this, ideally the dmac4/ramsey7 was the upgrade.

I believe the Buster 11 has a workaround which fixes the problem in Ramsey. I have all static column zip ram in my 3000s with Buster 11 (and didn't notice a problem with the A3640). The Ramsey 7 does speed up motherboard memory transfers and I didn't notice any problems without the super DMAC (but I had Buster 11). Oddly, the rare Super DMAC caused SCSI problems when I added it to this setup with an A3640. There are likely some bugs here which the 4000(T) has worked out and there is probably a modest performance gain in memory and Zorro. AGA is nice to have for games but a gfx board blows it away in performance.

Although the case looks cool, you have to tear it almost completely down to do anything inside. Most accelerators don't fit well with ram except the warpengine 3040.The a3640 will fit with a microscopic fan or large wide heatsink seen in some 4000t's. You still cant have any 5.25" cdrom etc inside,so external scsi case for that-which isnt a big deal.

Yea, too bad they didn't make the 3000 case a little taller and put a 5.25" bay in but it's not too big of deal with Ethernet or USB. The compact size isn't so bad except when running a hot 68040. Accelerators with memory could be made smaller today, if somebody would make one for the big boxes (68060 or FPGA).  

It needs Int2 wire soldered for the  accelerator scsi usually.
Wd33c93 needs upgraded to rev8 or amd 33c93a to fix some ssi troubles when using multiple drives/cdroms etc- most came with rev4 proto chips or earlier.

These are easy and not even necessary most of the time. The SCSI chip upgrade does help SCSI performance (requires synchronous mode in SCSI settings). Like the Buster 11, it is a nice upgrade which helps performance and stability (kill 2 birds with 1 stone).

fix all that and the battery and it makes for a solid machine, i ran one to death back in the 90's stuffed full of cards. it never missed a beat but i still love the 4000(t) and its cheaper in the long run since it usually has the latest ramsey,dmac,buster.

Besides the lower quality electronics on the 4000(T), the 4000T has way too many connections and wires that can be loose. Other than that, the 4000T performance, modularity, and ergonomics are nice. The 4000 is lacking in some areas compared to the 3000 but an accelerator and gfx board can fix most of what it lacks. The quality issue is always in the back of my mind though.