Towerizing an amiga 2000 motherboard?

[cv643d]

I was oh so close to go forward with my A2000T project back in 2003.

There are a couple of problems with the A2000,

-The motherboard is HUGE, (did I mention it was huge?). You need a fairly large tower case, and even then you will not be able to use the bottom units for harddrives. Most common, it is to cut a slot in the bottom bays for the motherboard to fit though, or remove the bottom bays all together. You can fit it in a midi tower but it will be tough, and you will waste a lot of 3.5" and 5.25" units. Better find a maxi tower, the older the better and even then expect to loose a couple of bays.

-The video-slot is not aligned with a Zorro-slot, instead it is at the top of the motherboard, ok this problem can be easely solved with an extender or an Indivision ECS, but you should know about it.

Other than those two problems, the A2000 belongs in a tower IMHO, but, but...

....  it is 2009 now and Amiga users can afford to be a bit picky IMHO, with the A2000 you will never have fast graphics, you are stuck with slow Zorro2 graphics (yes, it is slow), even if you go for a low end combo such as A2630 and Picasso2, I have to warn you, it was so slow I just sold the componentes and put the A2000 under the bed.

If you go big with a 060 board and a loaded A2000 system then a tower might be worth it, otherwise, stick with an A1200 IMHO, it will be cheaper.

[cv643d]

I ran my A2000, 030 25MHz with a Picasso2 at 800x600, with 16-colors and for example Personal Paint was incredible sluggish. Forget 1024x768 at 16bit or more on a Z2 bus unless you have not experienced Z3 and Z3 graphics.

Zorro 2 bus i slower than Zorro 3, I tried a CV643d on the Z2 buss also with a 040 CPU and that experience was horrible IMHO, ok so I ran a nice background image on the workbench then but when I moved windows around you it left empty spaces on the wallpapers and then slowly filled them up with the BG-image.

My A1200 with 060 and Indivision running HighGFX package giving 1024x768 resolution feels faster in 16 colors than the A2000 with 030 and proper GFX-board at the same resolution/color.