Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: rednova on March 15, 2009, 10:23:21 PM
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Dear Friends:
I am thinking about getting a used a3000.
What is the max possible ram ?
What are the max possible upgrades ?
what is the max ram on accel and expansion boards?
Can I use Opalvision?
Any suggestions for this system?
Mind, I have a nice working a1200...but never had an a3000.
My goal is to get the a3000 and use it to upgrade it to the max, step by step.
Thank you!!!
rednova
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If i remember well 2mb chip + 16mb fast at least on a desktop one, opalvision runs on the a3k but dont know if is pacasso96 compatible.
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You can't really talk about expanding the A3000 to the max and then talk about Opalvision. You had better use your video slot for a Picasso IV.
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rednova wrote:
Dear Friends:
I am thinking about getting a used a3000.
What is the max possible ram ?
What are the max possible upgrades ?
what is the max ram on accel and expansion boards?
Can I use Opalvision?
Any suggestions for this system?
Mind, I have a nice working a1200...but never had an a3000.
My goal is to get the a3000 and use it to upgrade it to the max, step by step.
Thank you!!!
rednova
You would probably be better off putting your A1200 into a tower conversion, or getting an A4000 to expand and "max" out step by step.
Yes, you can use an OpalVision in an A3000 and also in an A4000, it has an excellent paint program, but has little use other than that and as suggested elsewhere in this thread, your video slot would be better used by getting a PicassoIV, or other video graphics card, as most people with expanded Amigas do.
Since you already have an A1200, putting it in a tower would be your least expensive option. Also, expansion equipment for the A1200 is more easily obtained, even though A1200 towers are probably more common in the UK and Europe than the states.
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Amiga 3000 will accept 16 megs of fast memory on the motherboard. If you get an accelerator for the CPU slot, some of these will accept another 128 Megs (anyone have more?) DKB made a Zorro III card that would add 128 Megs per board with or without an accelerator. I forget the max number of boards possible. I think they are called DKB 3128. They are usually expensive if they can be found.
It's a terrible shame no one makes a modern ram expansion (and other functions) for Zorro III.
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yeah, to re-itterate,
128Mb on the accelerator
128Mb on DKB3128 per zorro3 slot
16Mb on the mainboard
2Mb chipram...
rumor was that a fastlane Z3 scsi card can take 256MB in 16x 16MB 30pin simms with the right firmware or something.
in theory, addressable space is 512MB per slot/device, able to take 7 slots with full DMA, and if there is an 8th slot, it isn't DMA capable. so in theory, 3.5GB addessable, the lower half gig filled with system devices and cpu slot space.
however, someone cranked up a machine with 128Mb on the accelerator, and three DKB3128s. if i recall correctly the machine only recognised 384Mb due to a bug in exec...
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if I remember from dave haynie's archives of zorro III docs, zorro III is set up for 2 gigs per slot. 4 gigs max with the lower parts used by system. what would anyone need anything over 128 megs for though, other than 3d rendering?
btw someone already mentioned getting a 4000, I'd say skip it, most video cards and accelerators work in either and 4000's are expensive. unless you have aga software and no access to an aga machine. you can build a souped up 3k for the same as a base 4k.
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KThunder wrote:
if I remember from dave haynie's archives of zorro III docs, zorro III is set up for 2 gigs per slot. 4 gigs max with the lower parts used by system. what would anyone need anything over 128 megs for though, other than 3d rendering?
btw someone already mentioned getting a 4000, I'd say skip it, most video cards and accelerators work in either and 4000's are expensive. unless you have aga software and no access to an aga machine. you can build a souped up 3k for the same as a base 4k.
I have to disagree. A3000s are more expensive because of the on-board VGA port.
Simple as that, otherwise I would have got one a loooong time ago.
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@KThunder
Zorro III cards can have a maximum size of 1 GB, but you could combine multiple entities on a single physical board.
Z3 AutoConfig space is 7x 256 MB = 1792 MB (2 GB - mainboard ressources).
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"....however, someone cranked up a machine with 128Mb on the accelerator, and three DKB3128s. if i recall correctly the machine only recognised 384Mb due to a bug in exec..."
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That dude is me and the machine is an A4000T.
What I found is that you can't have the DKBs in adjoining slots and you can't have the third one fully populated. I tried many combinations.
The maximum I got was 512mb fast RAM in the end:
http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=2741
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Obviously nobody had ever attempted this before. ;-)
Have you ever tracked down whether it's a software bug in expansion.library or possibly hardware related?
Z3 boards register from $40000000 upwards but according to the specs, autoconfig memory ranges from $10000000 to $80000000. Why the boards start right in the middle of it is beyond me - anyone?
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Hi:
512 mb ram ? Man, that is sooo insane !!!
hehe Thank you all for your replies :)
rednova
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Yep, I am sure that not many fools tried 3 DKBs in one Miggy!
I haven't tracked down what the cause is. All I can say is it isn't the boards or the SIMMS. I can rotate them and get the same result. Unfortunately I don't have another big box Amiga to test these DKBs with.