New Amiga 2000

[crom123]

I know, simply for nostalgic purposes it's worth much more than that!  Hard to convince some others that a 20 year old computer is worth anything though...

[crom123]

More questions...sorry.  How would I tell which version of A2000 I have (A, B, or C)?  The site:

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/a2000.html

shows how to differentiate A and B models but not a C.

[Darrin]

crom123 wrote:
Also, anyone know what this particular A2000 would go for in '89?  I'm still trying to convince the wife that I didn't waste $50 ;-)

I know that in 1987 I paid around UKP2000 for my Amiga 2000 with nothing more than a couple of floppy drives, a 1081 monitor and a printer (around $4000 at today's conversion rate).  I think that makes it a deal at $50.  :-D

[rkauer]

crom123 wrote:
More questions...sorry.  How would I tell which version of A2000 I have (A, B, or C)?  The site:

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/a2000.html

shows how to differentiate A and B models but not a C.

 Quoting Dave Haynie:

The Rev 6 A2000 was never called the A2000C, except maybe by geeks on usenet :-).

[Darrin]

crom123 wrote:
Would my best bet (i.e. cheapest) way to network the A2000 be through a serial cable to my XP box?  I have the serial cable.  I've been searching for a thread on serial networking (I know I've seen it before) but I can't seem to find it...

The Amiga Explorer program that comes with Cloanto's Amiga Forever package is supposed to set up a good serial network between the PC and Amiga for file transfer.

When XP first came out I had Siamese working over a null-modem  cable, but I can't get the thing going any more - might be due to using USB-SERIAL port adapter on the PC side as I don't have real serial ports any more.  If you have an old Windows 98 box then I'd use Siamese as you'll be able to print to the PC printer and mount the PC CD ROM and Hard Drive on the Amiga side.

Seriously consider forking out for a Zorro Deneb USB card - it's worth every penny for connecting cheap devices and it will even get that A2000 online.

[Darrin]

crom123 wrote:
More questions...sorry.  How would I tell which version of A2000 I have (A, B, or C)?  The site:

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/a2000.html

shows how to differentiate A and B models but not a C.

Look up the A2000 here:

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=17

It gives a great breakdown of the various A2000 revisions.

I've got a revision 6.2 NTSC motherboard in mine (1MB Agnus, ECS) which I was able to hack so that it boots into PAL (fitting a simple switch would let me toggle it via a single jumper).

[crom123]

Looks like it's a B2000-CR version 4.2.

[gdanko]

crom123 wrote:
Sorry for the delay, I've been away on holidays. Here is the KS module.  I figured out that I can manually choose the KS with the jumper.  There has to be keystroke combo too..

I have the same switcher. Who makes it?

[bash64]

The answer to this is probably the same as I had mine set up in '97.

There are two hard drives and a switcher.

You force 68000 mode and then you force the switcher to rom v1.3 and then you boot off of the appropriate hard drive (formatted with v1,3 workbench) so you can run v1.3 software. I used to have this same setup.

I used Degrader to force 68k mode, held down the right key sequence to force the switcher to SWAP roms and then held down both mouse buttons to pull up the boot screen and selected the v1.3 boot drive. Had a copy of TurboSilver and it does not work except with a V1.3 file system.

Hope that helps.
 :-D

[crom123]

Awesome!  When I'm using the 2.X rom I can choose the boot device by holding both mouse buttons.  I can't choose the boot device though when using the 1.3 rom.  Strange, would the 1.3 rom not support booting from different devices?

[crom123]

The switcher is a Switch-Itt or Wilcom ROM Switcher.  Documentation is at:

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=676

[Darrin]

crom123 wrote:
Awesome!  When I'm using the 2.X rom I can choose the boot device by holding both mouse buttons.  I can't choose the boot device though when using the 1.3 rom.  Strange, would the 1.3 rom not support booting from different devices?

I have a utility somewhere called something like "whatkick".  I used it on my original A2000 when I had a ROM switcher with 1.3 and 2.0 ROMS.  It checks which ROM has been selected and then picks the correct startup sequence to boot into either WB1.3 or 2.0 from teh same hard drive.  If you're interested then I'll dig around for it - it's on an old cover disk.

[Tenacious]

@ Darrin

So you had a drawer with all of WB 1.3 installed and another with all of WB 2.1?  On the same partition?

I ask because many of the commands, libs, devices, etc are different from 1.3 to 2.1, not to mention the preferences.

[Darrin]

Tenacious wrote:
@ Darrin

So you had a drawer with all of WB 1.3 installed and another with all of WB 2.1?  On the same partition?

I ask because many of the commands, libs, devices, etc are different from 1.3 to 2.1, not to mention the preferences.

I'm having to think back over 20 years, but it was something like that and one of the startup sequences "assigned" one set of draws depending on the Kickstart and with KS1.3 and KS2.0 a lot of the draws could be the same, in other words I think thinks like Libs, C, S, fonts, etc could all be used from the same location.  I guess OS3.9 might throw a fit if you tried to do that with KS1.3 and KS3.1, but it did work perfectly well with OS1.3 and OS2.0 off a single 128MB hard drive with just 1 partition.  My switcher worked off the keyboard reset, so it would boot first time into 1.3 with teh traditional blue screen and then I'd reset and it would boot to the 2.0 grey screen, reboot back to blue, etc.

The real beauty of the system was that because the draws mostly intermingled, if you installed some software using OS1.3 then it would perfectly OK to run from 2.0 (assuming it was 2.0 friendly).

I think the way to go around it was to install 2.0 first so that sets up the directories and it's own startup sequence.  Then copy all the "missing" files from OS1.3's disks and rename it's hard drive startup-sequence as "startup-sequence2" (put an ECHO command in with the text "STARTING OS1.3 or STARTING OS2.0 at the beginning) and in the first startup-sequence use the switcher command so that if it detects the other ROM then it will end the first startup sequence and then run startup-sequence2.

OK, I just rummaged through 100+ disks and found the file you need.  It is called "WhatKick" and it's for 1.x and 2.x ROMS only (although I can't see why if you install say 3.1 or 3.9 first you couldn't trap the 1.3 or 2.0 ROM and run an alternative startup sequence from there).  It was given away Amiga UI disk 20.

Edit:  I just pulled up the docks for it and it basically says that if it detects KS1.x then it calls "s:old-start", if it detects KS2.x then it calls "s:new-start", otherwise the program quits (so in theory it will ignore any KS3.x ROMS and just continue s:startup-sequence as normal).