Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: lillPiP on April 11, 2005, 09:44:30 PM
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Yeah, that's the question?! :-D
What should I choose between?
An Amiga 3000 with it's built-in scandoubler or an Amiga 4000 with its AGA-chipset?
The A4000 has known problems with the simm-sockets and battery-leak, but can use a Mediatorboard in it's desktop-case.
The A3000 must be in a tower-case to use a Mediator..
Both machines has it's own positive and negative things..
Can I use all the accelerators from the A4000 or is this INT-2 modification neccessary? And what is this modification?
Kind regards
//Peter
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There's nothing wrong with buying both. :-)
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Well, I already have a A1200-desktop and a A500T with Blizzard 2040, so one more computer is enough :-D
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The scandoubler in the 3000 is a great advantage!
The 4000 with the mediator lacks the videoslot so an internal scandoubler is not possible.
This means a external one with a switch.
While in the 3000 there is the scandoubler build in and saves you the high! cost of a second hand scandoubler.
Maybe it is wiser to buy the tower for the 3000 for the money of the scandoubler.
This hack for the 3000 is something of a wire soldering I believe.
Not to hard to do I believe.
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I have looked at some pictures of the desktopmodels of the A3000 and the A4000, and the A3000 seems more nicer :-)
I'm not interested in putting the A3000 in a tower.
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The A4000 is much easier to accellerate, if you want a 'modded' machine take the A4K.
The A3000 is often quoted as the peak of Amiga design, much higher quality case, easy to solder etc, if you want the best 'stock'(ish) machine then the A3K is the one.
I have UAE for 'modded' (since it can go so much quicker than an '060, obscene amounts of memory etc), and an A3000 filled with period extras for the latter :-)
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Well, just putting a 060 like the Cyberstorm and maybe the Cybervision 64/3D is more than enough for me I think.
Maybe I should go for the A3000 ?
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Personally, I love my A3000, specifically because of the sturdy case and internal scan-doubler. However, it's been a big issue lately locating accelerator cards for this model. I had a Cyberstorm MK-II with an 060, but it seems most of these boards will not work properly in an A3000 due to some SCSI / DMA issue. I ended up forcing a WarpEngine 4040 into my A3000 case. Naturally none of these boards have issues with the A4000, as this was the machine that most were designed to run in. I also considered the AGA chipset advantage minimal when I still had my A1200. I found using my A3000 and GVP Spectrum was adequate enough.
:-D
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Shouldn't it be possible to turn off the scsi on the acceleratorcards and only use the built-in on the A3000?
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lillPiP wrote:
Yeah, that's the question?! :-D
What should I choose between?
An Amiga 3000 with it's built-in scandoubler or an Amiga 4000 with its AGA-chipset?
The A4000 has known problems with the simm-sockets and battery-leak, but can use a Mediatorboard in it's desktop-case.
The A3000 must be in a tower-case to use a Mediator..
Both machines has it's own positive and negative things..
Can I use all the accelerators from the A4000 or is this INT-2 modification neccessary? And what is this modification?
Kind regards
//Peter
You're always guessing right that you should go with the better. Take the '040 beast. I bet it'll bite your brains out.
-- ive
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I would go witht he A300 too. I had one from the day they came out and
love it. With the int 2 mod you can use just about any accelerator
yes, but you dont HAVE to do the int 2 mod. Its only used for the scsi
controllers on them. I used my csppc for many years without doing it,
I just used the internal scsi is all. The mod takes less time to do
then it takes to take the system apart to get to the solder points
9only two places get connected) I used mine in a Mirage tower and had
amediator before getting the Pegasos and selling it off. If you are
just starting out though I would recomend an A1200 and then get a
Pegasos II or an A1 now. The new systems need support and the old ones
are just getting older. AGA isnt all that. When the 1200 came out I
got one as well and ended up selling it off about a year later. The
AGA titles that came out were never worth me getting an A4000. I
thought of it as a step down from the A3000 to tell you the truth.
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I have to recomend the A3000 also.
I've never own an A4000 but I've owned an A1200. I didn't
think that much of the AGA chips.
In my A3000 I have a WarpEngine 040 @ 40 mhz and a CV 64
gfx card. Its loaded with 80 megs ram and I use the
WarpDrive SCSI for the internal HD and the built-in SCSI
for the external SCSI box with CD Rom and back-up HD.
This is a GREAT machine (I've never had the urge for
an A4000). The only thing I'd kind of like is a little
faster accelerator. (Like a 220 mhz ColdFire ;-))
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I had a Cyberstorm MK-II with an 060, but it seems most of these boards will not work properly in an A3000 due to some SCSI / DMA issue.
You had the bad buggy CSMKII card. I have the same card and it worked flawlessly in my A3000, which until recently I removed it and installed it in my A3000T! No INT2 mod needed too since this card does not have built in SCSI.
As far as which one if you had to choose? I would get the A4000, since it will be able to run ALL Amiga software, and it has AGA, which is cool. :banana:
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I won't try to hide the fact thatI find the A4000 to be a better machine in the long run... right out of the box stock the A3000 have more to offer but the A4000 will pass it with ease in the long run.
The builtin scandoubler of the A3000 VS AGA in the A4000. Of cause the scandoubler is a great thing but lack of AGA is bad. Internal scandoublers that clipp over chips on the motherboard DO EXIST for A4000 (in case you're thinking mediator) but the A3000 can't be upgraded to AGA. So the A4000 is better in the long run.
The A3000 get hotter and thus isn't designed to handle 040 or PPC boards, thought it can be done life expectancy on such boards might be shorter than in an A4000.
You need indeed to do the INT2 mod to take on all A4000 turbos and even then some won't work and others won't fit under the floppy bay of the A3000.
You probably need to change buster and other chips on the A3000 to be able to use cards such as the CyberVision64.
The lack of a 5.25" space in the A3000 is sad. Today we count CD in our systems as standard and then the A3000, although concidered a bigbox Amiga, need to be upgraded outside the main unit.
The battery issue of the A4000 is just as real on the A3000, don't fool yourself into thinking it's any more safe to keep the barreldrum battery in an A3000 than in an A4000. In fact the ones in the A3000 are older so should be worse off.
Conclusion, if you've starred yourself blind on an internal scandoubler to be the main thing for you and a thing you don't want to uppgrade to have, and the outer design of the A3000 pleases more than the A4000 you even though the interior leavs things to be deciered then the A3000 is for you... for all other reasons the A4000 is the one to get.
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Although I do love my A3000 (looks cooler than an A4000!), it does have it's shortcomings.
I do miss the AGA chipset for those games that need it, plus I dont use the internal scandoubler anymore since I have a Picasso IV (but when I did use it it was great feature). Plus there's something I always missed: an internal cd-rom (call me weird, although my external CDRW works great).
There are of course it's pluses: Way nicer than an A4k (IMHO), all chips socketed (that's not standard on an A4k), can run AMIX out of the box, good and reliable scsi, SUN wanted it to be a low-cost UNIX box, etc.
My .2 euros ;-)
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I'd go for the A3000. The lack of an AGA chipset is a pain if you want a good looking workbench, but considering that this graphics card is due out next month I wouldn't worry too much:
http://www.computercity.biz/product_info.php?products_id=2452
I use my A3000 with a stock PC monitor and it gives me a high res interlaced picture with next to no flicker visible (just the very top line on the screen).
I wasn't too impressed with the onboard SCSI so I fitted a Buddha Gold IDE card which also adds an A1200 clock port for further expansion.
The lack of a bay to fit a CD ROM drive is a major pain. Right now I have the lid off and the CD drive sits ontop of the floppy drives until I either cut the casing and fit a laptop CD drive or tower the thing.
Don't forget to buy some 3.1 ROMS!
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A4000 without esitations :-)
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I already had a Pegasos. It's a fast system, but I didn't like it. For me the differences wasn't too much from a upgraded A1200 except the PPC. I can do almost the same with the A1200 as I could with the Pegasos. But I could do one more thing with my Amiga Classic...play all good old games without any emulation or actually without have to do anything!
Neither the Pegasos or the AmigaOne is a Amiga for me, since both systems lacks the chips that are found in the Classics I think the Classic is a better choice. Although the Classic is much more expensive to upgrade than the new Pegasos or AmigaOne. But it's kind of fun to keep upgrade the Amiga with rare items.
As it is for now I have a Amiga500+/T with a Blizzard 2040 in a Micronik zorro-busboard and a A1200-tower with Micronik zorro-busboard which also gives me a A3k/A4k-cpuslot. Maybe I should stick with the A1200T instead?
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I'd go for an A3000, a computer with a rock solid feel.
Like the others said just get a gfx card for it like the Cybervision 64 so you can pass thru the native screenmodes (have one in mine).
Just find a good external SCSI cd-rom and you're set up.
Most important thing is if you use a '040 accelerator is that it has a good cooling fan.
My A3000 '040@40mhz actually runs cooler than my '060 A4000.
Not sure if I can fit a CS MKIII I have in my A3000 without adding some cooling but since you can use a Blizzard 1260 in an A1200 desktop it should work.
good luck
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@Darrin
interesting GFX card! 16MB VRam.
Pratically, should be a sort of Prom/Zorro interface (ala XSurf or so) . . . nice idea indeed :-)
Any news about?
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What must have AGA softwar is out? AGA came to late and most of it is
crap. The A3000 is a better made machine. You can replace more on it
and its just solid. the A4000 wasmade with spare A3000 parts and was a
rush job. I have never had any issue with turbo cards in my A3000,
never!
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Framiga wrote:
@Darrin
interesting GFX card! 16MB VRam.
Pratically, should be a sort of Prom/Zorro interface (ala XSurf or so) . . . nice idea indeed :-)
Any news about?
I emailed the company manufacturing the card last week to see if it was still on schedule. I got two replies (!!!) from different people within the company saying that it is still on track for a May release and that the protype production run had been initiated. There is a chance that due to the Zorro II slots causing a bottleneck problem with data transfer that the card may only be available for Amigas with Zorro III slots (I guess this is something they'll be testing with the prototype cards).
Either way, it looks like an exciting product and I certainly want one. If anyone is thinking of selling a PIV card on eBay then they had better do it now before this card becomes available. :-)
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It depends on what you want to do and also on how upgraded the A3000 is. I owned one but I end up giving back the computer in less than a week because it sucked. You have to waste a lot of money to avoid problems:
-you have to buy the rom3.1
-you have to upgrade Ramsey and DMAC
-You can't put simms on the motherboard unless you use a hack
-You must upgrade to buster11 to get full zorro3 speed
-The scsi interface is slow and doesn't recognize all devices
-the case is small and won't allow you to use all accelerators (for example CSMK1) and if you can fit some accelerators you won't be able to completely populate them with ram.
-You can't put a CDRW inside the case because it doesn't have a 5 1/4 bay
-You have to make the INT2 modification to use Accelerators with proper scsi
-You have a low density disk drive
-You can't use cheap IDE drives
-Mediator4000Di won't fit inside
Conclusion: Get the A4000. You can get an internal scandoubler and an accelerator and have proper scsi. The only thing you may want to change is the Buster if it's not version 11 but buster9 works correctly with Mediator&Prometheus so it's not mandatory.
I own an A4000 and an A4000T and I prefer them over my old 3000 (and ended up being much cheaper).
If you don't need AGA why buy a classic amiga? Get a PegasosII or MicroA1.
An A3000 is a waste of money because you have to invest a lot of money to make it work properly.
Accelerator+ramsey+dmac+rom3.1+buster11+graphiccard+tower... get a Peggy or microA1... both have less bugs, are far more stable, cheaper, more expandable...
BTW, I owned A500, 500+, 1200, 3000D, 4000D, 4000T and the A4000 are far better...
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"Either way, it looks like an exciting product and I certainly want one. If anyone is thinking of selling a PIV card on eBay then they had better do it now before this card becomes available. "
I doubt you can watch AGA demos with a 120Hz refresh with that Voodoo3-Zorro. And you can't have a TV Card, Sound card etc... I think I'll keep my Picasso4 and my Prometheus ;-)
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@amiga4001
The 4000 with the mediator lacks the videoslot so an internal scandoubler is not possible.
You can fit an A1200 internal one
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Machine wars! Great! :-D
But I dont agree on the following:
-you have to buy the rom3.1
Not all A4000 are 3.1 either.
-you have to upgrade Ramsey and DMAC
No reasone to upgrade those. Havent had a single problem with my stock ones.
-You can't put simms on the motherboard unless you use a hack
True, but most these days come with some zips on-board, plus when you get an accell, the mobo ram is a waste. (Btw, I've heard that A4k simm slots are quite fragile).
-You must upgrade to buster11 to get full zorro3 speed
Again, not all (or none? AFAIK) A4k's come with buster 11 on board, plus some of them have buster 9 soldered!!! (all A3k's have socketed chips). And you only need a buster 11 for DMA boards.
-The scsi interface is slow and doesn't recognize all devices
Havent tried a lot of devices, but it did work with everyhting I've thrown into her.
-Mediator4000Di won't fit inside
Well, it is a 4000Di! (But, yeap true, sadly there is no such thing for A3k's)...
(Damn, there are threads like this one, that I would wish to see Doomy reply...) :-D
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Again, not all (or none? AFAIK) A4k's come with buster 11 on board, plus some of them have buster 9 soldered!!! (all A3k's have socketed chips). And you only need a buster 11 for DMA boards.
MrZammler . . . things are rarely black or white ;-)
My A4000-030 had a socketed Buster09 :-D
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@ Darrin
thanks for the info :-)
I'm just curious, to see how they will manage the thing.
From a economical/practical point of view, the card should be a sort of Zorrro>PromLOGIC (1 slot or even no slot-i.e soldered as the XSurf solution)> PCI GFX card thing. . . right?
Seen that AHT has aquired the rights for Matay technology, it should be a great project, don't you?
Have you a rough idea, of which PCI GFX card they will use?
AmiVD
149.00EUR
- 3dfx graphics processor
- 128-bit 2D/3D Video Accelerator
- 16MB SDRAM
- 166MHz graphics core/memory clock speed
- 350 MHz RAMDAC
- 166 Megapixels/second
- 333 Megatexels/second fill rate
- 7 million polygons per second processing
- 2D Resolution up to 2046x1536 @ 75Hz
- Amiga ZorroII/III interface bus
WOW even the price seems right :-)
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One of my A4000 mobos has a soldered buster 11 chip. :-)
I find A4000 to be nicer as far as heavy upgrading goes, however A3000 can be put in Mirage 3000 case and be just as upgradeable as the A4000. There's something about the A4000 being the last big-box Amiga that makes it shine in my eyes better than the A3000 does, however this is only my personal view. When I look logically at features of both A3000 and A4000, I clearly see which has better and which has worse features in regards to certain aspects of design.
Socketed chips are useful nowadays, as any Amiga hardware is quite old, and if you are (un)lucky enough that only a custom chip fails, in case of a broken motherboard, you can easily replace if you Amiga is A3000. A4000 is a pain in the butt, with its soldered custom chips, but as long as you are careful and treat your A4000 motherboard well and with care, it shouldn't fail on you so easily. :-)
The best "value" for your money makes definitely an A1200 the winner of all, I think, as heavy expansion of it is the cheapest...and what you get in the end is pretty comparable to the best looking A3000 and A4000 setups out there.
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As I said before, I run a WarpEngine, CV64, and MultiFace
serial cards in my A3000D. I haven't done the Int2 hack or
upgraded any chips (all standard origonal chips).
I bought this A3k new in 1990 or 91 ( can't remember for
sure) and I haven't had ANY problems.
Oh ... I did upgrade to 3.1 roms.
All those chip upgrads and hacks mentioned in the other
posts don't seem to be necessary in my A3k :-D.
Also .. with WHDLoad and a RTG GFX card (if I understand
correctly) the AGA chip set means nothing.
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For me its not even a choice, all the way A4000..
AGA for (new) demos is a must (IMO) :) !!
But if you dont watch many demos, a A3000 would be fine..
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Not all A4000 are 3.1 either.
But you have 3.0, a revision far more useful than the crappy 2.0 that came with the A3000.
No reasone to upgrade those. Havent had a single problem with my stock ones.
You are lucky... check the hundreds of problems others have in google for example (http://www.google.es/search?hl=es&q=ramsey+dmac+problems&btnG=B%C3%BAsqueda&meta=).
And if you try to use an A3640 you'll end up with headaches. High speed Zorro3 cards like the CV64 will make your A3000 hang if you don't use the latest chips or use a mixture of old ones and newer ones.
True, but most these days come with some zips on-board, plus when you get an accell, the mobo ram is a waste. (Btw, I've heard that A4k simm slots are quite fragile).
I've owned 3 A4000 and none of them had problems with the simm sockets. Other friend's A4000 doesn't have a single broken connector.
You can use a stock A4000 with an A3640 and 16MB without problems. Can you do the same with an unmodified A3000? I gues you'll have to upgrade the rom at least to be able to do something useful. And then you'll need an accelerator due to the small quantity of slow ram. And If you want to use a cheap A3640 your A3000 will start to hang because you don't have latest chips.
Again, not all (or none? AFAIK) A4k's come with buster 11 on board, plus some of them have buster 9 soldered!!! (all A3k's have socketed chips). And you only need a buster 11 for DMA boards.
According to Dave Haynie's Definitive Buster document (http://wonkity.com/~wblock/a4000hard/defibust.html) ZorroII DMA cards can have problems on A3000 without buster 11 but not on A4000 with buster9 or 11.
Havent tried a lot of devices, but it did work with everyhting I've thrown into her.
Check this if you think that there are no issues (http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~miles.j/amiga.html#MOBOSCSI) There are lots of pages commenting the A3000 scsi problems. You can read there that many accelerators have problems using the scsi interface if you don't make the INT2 modification.
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Crumb wrote:
Not all A4000 are 3.1 either.
But you have 3.0, a revision far more useful than the crappy 2.0 that came with the A3000.
No reasone to upgrade those. Havent had a single problem with my stock ones.
You are lucky... check the hundreds of problems others have in google for example (http://www.google.es/search?hl=es&q=ramsey+dmac+problems&btnG=B%C3%BAsqueda&meta=).
And if you try to use an A3640 you'll end up with headaches. High speed Zorro3 cards like the CV64 will make your A3000 hang if you don't use the latest chips or use a mixture of old ones and newer ones.
True, but most these days come with some zips on-board, plus when you get an accell, the mobo ram is a waste. (Btw, I've heard that A4k simm slots are quite fragile).
I've owned 3 A4000 and none of them had problems with the simm sockets. Other friend's A4000 doesn't have a single broken connector.
You can use a stock A4000 with an A3640 and 16MB without problems. Can you do the same with an unmodified A3000? I gues you'll have to upgrade the rom at least to be able to do something useful. And then you'll need an accelerator due to the small quantity of slow ram. And If you want to use a cheap A3640 your A3000 will start to hang because you don't have latest chips.
Again, not all (or none? AFAIK) A4k's come with buster 11 on board, plus some of them have buster 9 soldered!!! (all A3k's have socketed chips). And you only need a buster 11 for DMA boards.
According to Dave Haynie's Definitive Buster document (http://wonkity.com/~wblock/a4000hard/defibust.html) ZorroII DMA cards can have problems on A3000 without buster 11 but not on A4000 with buster9 or 11.
Havent tried a lot of devices, but it did work with everyhting I've thrown into her.
Check this if you think that there are no issues (http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~miles.j/amiga.html#MOBOSCSI) There are lots of pages commenting the A3000 scsi problems. You can read there that many accelerators have problems using the scsi interface if you don't make the INT2 modification.
Ehmm...my A3000 with CV64 never had any hang-ups...I'm using the original stock chips except the WD SCSI chip which is rev.8.
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>I have never had any issue with turbo cards in my A3000,
never!
Hmmm, I had to hack my A3000 motherboard to take my CPU accelerator. It just worked in my A4000T... :p
As for must-have AGA software, the Toaster 4000 is a bit more advanced than the original Toaster card and uses AGA. Software for that is a good example of what to use AGA for. Beyond that, it's really mostly games support or web browsing in more than 16 colors of ECS. Though anyone doing web browsing on Amiga today most likely has a graphics card that can do more and faster than AGA. Most of the later games could do graphics acrds as well.
If you don't care about any games that are AGA-only and can't work on gfx cards, and you don't care about Video Toaster 4000, then go for whichever offers you the cheaper combination of computer and graphics card.
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@Crumb
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You are lucky... check the hundreds of problems others have in google for example.
And if you try to use an A3640 you'll end up with headaches. High speed Zorro3 cards like the CV64 will make your A3000 hang if you don't use the latest chips or use a mixture of old ones and newer ones.
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Sorry but this just isn't true......
I used a 3640 card in my A3k with the CV64 card for over a
year before I got the WarpEngine.
All origonal chips, using both the Commodore SCSI and the
WarpDrive SCSI at the same time, NO CONFLICTS.
It works great.
What you are saying may or may not be true depending on
the MOBO revision, but certinly not true for ALL A3000's.
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I have to agree with Acill and others that the A3000 is a better all around machine, especially when kitted out with a graphics card like a Spectrum. Now, put a PicassoIV with it's built-in flicker fixer in an A4000 and you start to even the score. All in all, the A3000 get the nod for built-in dma scsi controller since the A4000 uses a crappy cpu-hog pio-0 ide controller. AGA is nice for a few games and necessary for the VT4000 but other than that, a graphics card is much better. Replace the Buster with a Rev.11 and no problem using ZIII cards. I've found no need to upgrade the original Ramsey4/Dmac2 combo. The INT_2 hack is not a big deal either, just solder a small wire to connect a couple pins if you plan on using a dma scsi controller on an accelerator card. I use a CyberstormPPC200 in a Rev11Buster A3000 with the ultra-3 and native scsi controllers and have no problems. Graphics are supplied by the CybervisionPPC card.
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Crumb wrote:
I doubt you can watch AGA demos with a 120Hz refresh with that Voodoo3-Zorro. And you can't have a TV Card, Sound card etc... I think I'll keep my Picasso4 and my Prometheus ;-)
Ah, but I have my trusty A1200T for that ;-)
I want one of these cards because they're cheap and I'd like a workbench that doesn't look like it's still stuck in the '80s. :-)
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Framiga wrote:
@ Darrin
thanks for the info :-)
I'm just curious, to see how they will manage the thing.
From a economical/practical point of view, the card should be a sort of Zorrro>PromLOGIC (1 slot or even no slot-i.e soldered as the XSurf solution)> PCI GFX card thing. . . right?
Seen that AHT has aquired the rights for Matay technology, it should be a great project, don't you?
Have you a rough idea, of which PCI GFX card they will use?
AmiVD
149.00EUR
WOW even the price seems right :-)
It looks like a fantastic project and, at the price advertised, it is something we all could have done with years ago.
As for the specs of the card, I'm afraid that I know no more than you do. You could always try emailing the company as they replied to me in a couple of hours. If you do and you find out anything else then please let me know :-)
Now I just need a good 10/100 ethernet card for my A3000. I've got Zorro slots or the A1200 clock port to attach it to... any recommendations?
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I'd go with an A3K as I'm after one myself because I'm sick of using my A4K. The SIMM sockets are useless, so much so that I had to buy an accelerator just to add fast RAM. Even the Chip RAM socket is dodgy and I had to wedge some paper between the SIMM and my Picasso IV in order to stop my system from hanging. Not an ideal solution! As I have a graphics card and don't have a Toaster 4000 I never use AGA and to be quite honest would rather not have it as the ability to play old games such as Jimmy White's Snooker appeals to me more. Like others have mentioned before the on board IDE is like treacle so I'm much rather a nippy SCSI interface instead. I don't know as I've never owned an A3K whether or not it's plain sailing but I do know that my A4K can be a right pain in the arse sometimes.
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Great debate! Now can anyone direct me to where I can obtain 3.1 ROMS for my A3000??? :-?
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KD7HTH wrote:
Great debate! Now can anyone direct me to where I can obtain 3.1 ROMS for my A3000??? :-?
Got my set from vesalia. (www.vesalia.de).
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Crumb wrote:
It depends on what you want to do and also on how upgraded the A3000 is. I owned one but I end up giving back the computer in less than a week because it sucked. You have to waste a lot of money to avoid problems:
-you have to buy the rom3.1
-you have to upgrade Ramsey and DMAC
-You can't put simms on the motherboard unless you use a hack
-You must upgrade to buster11 to get full zorro3 speed
-The scsi interface is slow and doesn't recognize all devices
-the case is small and won't allow you to use all accelerators (for example CSMK1) and if you can fit some accelerators you won't be able to completely populate them with ram.
-You can't put a CDRW inside the case because it doesn't have a 5 1/4 bay
-You have to make the INT2 modification to use Accelerators with proper scsi
-You have a low density disk drive
-You can't use cheap IDE drives
All crap! The scsi interface isnt that bad for what the Amiga can use. All accelerators that are worth a damn work just fine! The MK 1 was a POS monster, plenty of external drive cases are out, a pain I agree but they work well, INT2 mod takes 5 mins and I never bothered for years and used a CSPPC in mine with all RAM on it, 128MB worth, A4000 came with a 880kb drive as well, A300 and A4000 BOTH had the HD drive as an option, the RAMSEY and DMAC are fine, I NEVER botherd to change mine and NEVER had an issue at all. I know most poeple didnt have any. For the hell of it I put in the last Ramsey with my old DMAC to see what it would do. It works fine and they dont have to be upgraded in a pair like they say. Joel that was at Software Hut can also tell you this, the buster 11 needs to be done on MANY A4000 and MANY have it soldered to the board!!!!! I used IDE in mine with a Budha controller. In the A4000 you need a SCSI card so its just the reverse problem isnt it? SIMMS? Who cares if you plan to use an accelerator? I took all my ZIPS out and had 128MB on my CSPPC. Its faster ram anyway.
The point is the A3000 is just as upgradable as the A4000 is and only lacks AGA. Most want an RTG card anyway. Put in a Mediator and a tower like I did and your have one kick ass system for no more then what an A4000 would be, and a lot of the times less. You can get an A3000 on ebay US for WAY less then a A4000.
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KD7HTH wrote:
Great debate! Now can anyone direct me to where I can obtain 3.1 ROMS for my A3000??? :-?
If your in the US then go to www.softhut.com and give them a call. Dont order online. They have them all the time and at a fair price. I got mine from them years ago and just picked up another set for my spare A3000 I decided to take back out of storage.
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CSPPC in mine with all RAM on it, 128MB worth, A4000 came with a 880kb drive as well, A300 and A4000 BOTH had the HD drive as an option, the RAMSEY and DMAC are fine, I NEVER botherd to change mine and NEVER had an issue at all. I know most poeple didnt have any. For the hell of it I put in the last Ramsey with my old DMAC to see what it would do. It works fine and they dont have to be upgraded in a pair like
this is not exact. Almost every A4000, if not all, were shipped with Hi density floppy drive (1760 Kb) and a IDE HD (min. 120M).
You have to change RAMSEY and DMAC either if you want to use the Page-detect mode with static column RAM, which may give you faster access or if you want to use certain cards designed for A4000, for example the crappy C= 3640.
Dave Haynie said many times that Ramsey and DMAC should be changed in pairs ( either you have Ramsey 04 and DMAC 02 or Ramsey 07 and DMAC 04). Maybe a mixed pair can work in some circumstances, but do you trust it works for everyone?
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All crap!
I had to upgrade my A3000. I know people with an A3000 who have problems, I have read reports of many people with problems. You may not have found problems, but the A4000 is less problematic and requires less modifications in order to have a proper machine.
A4000 came with a 880kb drive as well, A300 and A4000 BOTH had the HD drive as an option, the RAMSEY and DMAC are fine,
Firstly you say that A4000 floppy disk drive was a 880KB and later you say that it was a 1.76MB one. Sorry, but I don't understand you. All the A4000 that I have touched had High Density Floppy drives (but that doesn't mean that there weren't a few with low density units)
I NEVER botherd to change mine and NEVER had an issue at all.
You probably didn't use many Zorro cards then.
I know most poeple didnt have any.
Yeah, that clearly explains why there are so many texts in internet describing the problems of A3000 with old revision chips.
It works fine and they dont have to be upgraded in a pair like they say.
Well, you have to put rom3.1, a graphic card, ram and an accelerator if you want to do anything with it. And you'll never be able to watch AGA demos for example, so I can't see the point in buying an A3000 unless it's already upgraded with latest chips, roms, accelerator and graphic card... it's a waste of money.
" I used IDE in mine with a Budha controller. In the A4000 you need a SCSI card so its just the reverse problem isnt it? SIMMS? Who cares if you plan to use an accelerator? I took all my ZIPS out and had 128MB on my CSPPC. Its faster ram anyway."
So the A3000 is only really useful if you invest a lot of money on it.
With a simple A4000 you can do much more things, and with an expanded one you can watch AGA demos.
If you don't use AGA a Pegasos is a better investment.
"Put in a Mediator and a tower like I did and your have one kick ass system for no more then what an A4000 would be, and a lot of the times less."
The funny thing is that you have to waste a lot of time buying a tower, roms, expensive hard drives, an accelerator etc... from different sources, and with a desktop A4000 you don't need a new tower, you have AGA, you have rom 3.0 so you can use most of things and you don't need to spend so much money.
You can get an A3000 on ebay US for WAY less then a A4000.
In Europe there are few A3000 and lots of A4000 so these machines cost more or less the same. The first A3000 I bought years ago was 210€. It had rom 2.0, ocs, a 030/16Mhz, 8MB of ram and was crap. I tested it for 2 days and gave it back to the original owner. A month later I bought an A4000 with 040/25, rom3.0, buster11, 16MB, HD Floppy drive, etc for only 60€ more. Guess what computer was more useful? That A3000 required expensive roms 3.1 and most of shops charged 70€ for them. And I didn't have an accelerator yet...
If you buy it already upgraded an A3000 can be a nice machine, but if it's not upgraded and you want better features you'd better get a Pegasos.
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Crumb wrote:
In Europe there are few A3000 and lots of A4000 so these machines cost more or less the same. The first A3000 I bought years ago was 210€. It had rom 2.0, ocs, a 030/16Mhz, 8MB of ram and was crap. I tested it for 2 days and gave it back to the original owner. A month later I bought an A4000 with 040/25, rom3.0, buster11, 16MB, HD Floppy drive, etc for only 60€ more. Guess what computer was more useful? That A3000 required expensive roms 3.1 and most of shops charged 70€ for them. And I didn't have an accelerator yet...
Some points here (some maybe obvious).
- A3000 never had OCS, they were always ECS.
- Of course a 25MHz 040 is more usefull than a lowly 68030/16Mhz + 68881 FPU
- A3000 and A4000 3.1 ROMs are usually the same cost. I've never seen a great difference in cost as you say. (and, I believe most A4000s were shipped with 3.0 ROMs)
- A3000 were shipped with HD floppies also. (my bought in 91-92 A3000/25 had a HD floppy)
- Upgrading chips isn't necessary (and when they are it's necessary in the same sense as the A4000 ie. buster 11). (BTW, my buster 11 install on the A3000 took approximately 30 minutes due to the location under the drive tray... On the A4000 it took 2 week turnaround due to the soldering.)
If you buy it already upgraded an A3000 can be a nice machine, but if it's not upgraded and you want better features you'd better get a Pegasos.
You can say the same thing about the A4000. Excluding AGA, the A3000 can be pushed just as far as the A4000 can. Even unmodified it has better features like a flicker fixer, SCSI, etc.
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Man! I love hardware debates!! :-D
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KD7HTH wrote:
Man! I love hardware debates!! :-D
:-) Its interesting as long as it doesn't turn
into a Flame War.
BTW .. some A3000's did ship with HD 1.76 floppies.
I have one of them.
OOps ..sorry, thats kind of misleading.
I have the HD floppy drive that came new in my son's
A3000. We swapped them before he sold his machine.
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Hi,
I've followed this thread, but now I have to invoke :-)
@darkcoder
> Almost every A4000, if not all, were shipped with Hi density floppy drive (1760 Kb) and a IDE HD (min. 120M).
If I'm informed right only the A4000/040 have had the HD-floppy per default, the A4000 with the 68030 have had a DD-floppy (and a friend of mine has both versions of the A4000, the one (68030) with DD-, the other (68040) with HD-floppy). Btw: My A3000T has been equiped with a HD-floppy when I've purchased it :-)
> You have to change RAMSEY and DMAC either if you want to use the Page-detect mode with static column RAM,
> which may give you faster access or if you want to use certain cards designed for A4000, for example the crappy C= 3640.
NO, I own two A3000T's and both had been equiped with the A3640, both running RAMSEY and DMAC in the old version, without ANY problem. You have to use the revision 3.2 A3640 for an A3000, than you don't have any problems.
The static-column memory always worked in fast burst-mode.
> Dave Haynie said many times that Ramsey and DMAC should be changed in pairs ( either you have Ramsey 04 and DMAC 02 or Ramsey 07 and DMAC 04).
> Maybe a mixed pair can work in some circumstances, but do you trust it works for everyone?
Maybe, currently one of my A3000T's is equiped with a RAMSEY -07 and a DMAC -02. An A3640 accelerator is in this system and the SCSI-chip is replaced by the SCSI-II version (many people said that this doesn't work -- it works great and improves performance and stability of the SCSI-bus.
The mayor problem with the DMAC -04 is: It isn't available any more...sold out :-(
Oh and don't say: "An A3000T is completely different than an A3000 desktop." It is equal, just the layout of the motherboard is different, but the used IC's and their connections are the same, both computers are electrical identically.
EDIT: And the Zorro-slots of both A3000T's are (nearly) complete populated, I've just changed the buster of one of the machines to revision 11 to use a CyberVision64/3D graphicscard. At least, I've made the INT2-hack, my main computer is equiped with a CSPPC.
Noster
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@Noster
A4000/030 here (purchased brand new)
HD floppy as default (FB357A)
85Mb HDD
SB9 (socketed)
EDIT- ohh and different package also (i think all the one outside the USA).
2 boxes . . . 1 for the case and another one for the keyboard.
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All accelerators that are worth a damn work just fine!
There are issues with certain accelerators and the on board chips that may require an update.
A4000 came with a 880kb drive as well, A300 and A4000 BOTH had the HD drive as an option
:lol: An option... :lol:
the RAMSEY and DMAC are fine
No they are not fine. They are good, but not fine. There are issues with them. Please don't take the piss if you don't know facts about the A3000 h/w.
I used IDE in mine with a Budha controller. In the A4000 you need a SCSI card so its just the reverse problem isnt it?
Well, a Fastlane can be bought for peanuts in eBay. A friend bought one for 3 euros. I don't think you can find Buddha at that price. Not to mention the prices of SCSI HDs.
SIMMS? Who cares if you plan to use an accelerator? I took all my ZIPS out and had 128MB on my CSPPC. Its faster ram anyway.
Well, speak for yourself. Recently a friend bought an A3000. Imagine his surprise when he opened the box and tried to find the SIMM slots. Several people are happy with say 18MB of RAM. When I recommended him a QL retailer in the UK for buying the crap memory chips for the A3000, he was in shock by the prices. He ended up buying a ZII memory board because he didn't want an accelerator. There are some adaptors for SIMMs but they are as scarce as mermaids.
The point is the A3000 is just as upgradable as the A4000 is and only lacks AGA. Most want an RTG card anyway. Put in a Mediator and a tower like I did and your have one kick ass system for no more then what an A4000 would be, and a lot of the times less. You can get an A3000 on ebay US for WAY less then a A4000.
The A3000 is upgradable but NOT as much as an A4000 is. It is a lovely machine, but the AGA, although not of great use, is making difference when using 2D Painting s/w that is not compatible with RTG. There are also some games that are worth having in AGA and you can't in non-AGA Amigas.
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Hey Yo!
Although the A3000 is a lovely machine, i would pick the A4000 over the A3000, simply because of AGA thugh. Even though AGA vastly underachieved, it is still worth it for the limited good games and demos available. Also some compatibility with software as well that only use native chipset. Man, i wish they commercially released the A3000+, that is the holy grail! :-D
Regards,
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CU_AMiGA wrote:
Man, i wish they commercially released the A3000+, that is the holy grail! :-D
Regards,
I don't think I've ever heard of the A3000+.
What was the upgrade, AGA, Simms ??
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Hi,
it has been here:
http://www.thule.no/haynie/research/a3000p/docs/a3000p.pdf
but currently I cannot load it any more (Cannot resolve host name) :-(
Anybody knows where this site has gone to?
(I have a copy of this pdf on my harddisk.)
Noster
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Hi,
found it again:
http://www.computer-history.de/Amiga/Seiten/A3000P.PDF
Noster
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Hi,
@Thread
I think, if you use an accelerator and a graphics card, you could use either A3000 or A4000 whichever you prefer, they make no great difference. And if you like the A3000 more than an A4000 (like me) and want to play AGA games or see AGA-demos: For 99,- EUR you could buy a NEW A1200 for that purpose.
Noster