A3000 Discussion

[magnetic]

Interesting thread.. some of my observations if you dont mind

1. The a3000 is the hardest amiga to take apart and work on/upgrade

2. The reason the a3000 is so small is because they were competing with the pc formfactors at that time and had to reduce the size drastically from the a2k.

3. Buster 11 is NOT necessary unless you are using high end zorro3 boards or certain boards.

4. Upgrading scsi chip will NOT increase speed and probably only helps with multiple devices. If you have a couple of units the default chip is fine. the a3000 scsi is very fast for an amiga as it has DMA and with a fast scsi drive is a sweet setup.

5. a3640 fits fine with a low profile heatsink (like the one that came on the amiga technologies a3640)

6. The Video Toaster 4000 fits perfectly in an a3000, i just saw a nice setup like this on us ebay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/221163563442?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

[magnetic]

In most every case, i see no need to update dmac2/ramsey4. there was a bug detecting static column ram , however when you mixed sc and page mode or went to the 3640(which doesnt like sc ram) and you had to put a pagemode zip in the first socket. this was fixed with the dmac4/ramsey7 combo.

mech

Good information did not know this. Thanks pretty obscure there

As you may know its damn near impossible to find dmac5/ramsey7 combo. (prolly worth more than a used a3k!)

[magnetic]

The problem is that Kick 2.x tries to activate burst mode with SC RAM regardless of the CPU. Ramsey is only capable of running '030 bursts and not compatible with '040 bursts. Kick 3.x in ROM also solves that problem.

Did not know this either! Thanks! Great thread

A3000 has some funny quirks I remember when we got in an a3k for repairs. My friend fixed a prob on the mb and I went to re-assemble and test it. He was out of the country and I couldnt figure why it wouldnt show the rom screen. Well, I was testing with the case open and no daughterboard! (A4k you can start without this) 3 hrs of frustration later and an amiga guy on irc told me to put the damn daughterboard in. (felt pretty dumb lol)

[magnetic]

dansbeaver

Try to use another cd filesystem like Asimcdfs on the drive

[magnetic]

U320 LVD/SE drives work fine with a proper adapter. Some models may require high-byte termination to spin up, all other devices are fine with a wide-to-narrow or SCA2-to-narrow adapter.
There may be the odd LVD-only device, not compatible with single ended, but I have yet to see such a device (got a terminated cable like this though).

Yes I can agree with this. AFAIK most modern SCSI drives "lvd type" do work with good 50 pin adaptors. I never had spin up problems most configs of this worked back when we used used to service toasters and amigas.