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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Dmaster on February 15, 2008, 01:58:45 PM
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Hello all, well after many years of just sitting around, I finally re-vived my A2000. It currently has: Progressive Peripherals 68040/33 with 12 megs, Some GVP SCSCI card with 4 megs memory, Dual serial port board, another card with additional 4 megs, Megachip 2000, ROM 3.1, Amiga OS 3.9, 2 500 meg hard drives, Commodore 1902a monitor, CD-ROM.
Now I would like to add a graphics card to it, what is a good card to use with OS 3.9? Would I be able to connect it to a VGA monitor with a graphics card or would it still be able to connect to the 1902a monitor?
Thanks.
P.S. It felt good bringing this baby back to life! :)
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I use a Picasso II+ with almost exactly the same setup you have and it works fine.
Note that Zorro III only cards, like the CyberVision 64 won't work in your Zorro II machine. So it's not necessarily a question of "what is a good card to use with OS 3.9", but "what graphics cards are compatible with my hardware".
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Whether you need a new monitor to display graphics from the graphics card or not depends on the graphics card you get.
Most graphics cards will not work with the 1902A monitor although that model can be cabled to work with SVideo if you want to.
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I would use a card that can use Picasso 96--free--or CybergraphX--not free--drivers. These are the only drivers that give you a decent RTG Workbench.These include:
Picasso II
Picasso IV--expensive but worth it.
EGS 28/24 Spectrum
Piccolo
Merlin--rare but great. I know, I have one.
The cards to avoid are ones that are incompatible with Picasso 96 and CyberGraphX drivers. These cards include:
Retina
Firecracker
GVP IV 24
The more memory your graphics card has, the better. 2mb should be minimum.
I use an EGS Spectrum 28/24 in my A2000 and have tried the Merlin as well. Another good thing to have is a Flicker fixer--if your video slot is free, a 2320 Amber card works great--so you can use a VGA monitor for the native Amiga modes and throw away your Commodore monitor--or sell it for a fairly decent chunk of cash. An Amiga connected to a modern LCD monitor is absolutely wonderful. Commodore monitors are dinasaurs. The quality wasn't really that great for the times and newer monitors are much much better.
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I thought someone had written a Cybergraphx driver for the Retina.
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ral-clan wrote:
I thought someone had written a Cybergraphx driver for the Retina.
Only for the Z3 BLT model. The Zorro II model only has it's native drivers.