A3000 Discussion

[cameng]

I acquired an A3000 a couple of weeks back and had never seen nor read much about them before although I've owned other Amigas since 1986. The motherboard seemed fine but the floppy was dead. After cutting up my hand and removing everything to get the PSU cradle out, I noticed the unfamiliar ZIP RAM.  Weird wobbly things, I then read up on the RAM situation and wondered WTF?  Overlapping ram addresses?  I then checked the battery and not only was the clock working, the battery (original) held a full charge. I replaced it anyways with a coin kit, but felt bad about it.

The DF0 drive sits almost center and DF1 goes to the right, which opposite of the normal A2000; but the FDD cable length prevents switching the two.

The onboard SCSI controller is the same as the A2091's WD33C93-04 that can't be all that great. I like the Amber chip and it functions well, but overall the case is small and cramped, hard to disassemble and assemble, the PSU cradle sits a millimeter above my A3640 card, and the daughter board has to be in place to boot. The shipped KS 2.04 prevents using Picasso96 on my EGS Spectrum 24/28 board and large HDDs. I find it odd that it was considered to be used as a UNIX workstation.

I put some odds and ends in there but could not get MUI to work nor my Subway hanging off my X-Surf. Of course MiamiDX won't work without MUI, but the ZorRam 256MB card works. Tried adding 16 MB of motherboard ZIPs but one broke off a pin during installation and had to order more.

What comments do the A3000 users out there have on this beast?

Definitely cramped. Waiting on my new ks chips until its ready for rebirth and cyberstorm compatibility. I am blessed with the later buster chip on board which I hope will avoid conflicts. Stay tuned