Amiga 3000 or Amiga 4000

[Amigaz]

I'd go for an A3000, a computer with a rock solid feel.
Like the others said just get a gfx card for it like the Cybervision 64 so you can pass thru the native screenmodes (have one in mine).
Just find a good external SCSI cd-rom and you're set up.
Most important thing is if you use a '040 accelerator is that it has a good cooling fan.
My A3000 '040@40mhz actually runs cooler than my '060 A4000.
Not sure if I can fit a CS MKIII I have in my A3000 without adding some cooling but since you can use a Blizzard 1260 in an A1200 desktop it should work.

good luck

[Amigaz]

Crumb wrote:

Not all A4000 are 3.1 either.

But you have 3.0, a revision far more useful than the crappy 2.0 that came with the A3000.

No reasone to upgrade those. Havent had a single problem with my stock ones.

You are lucky... check the hundreds of problems others have in google for example.

And if you try to use an A3640 you'll end up with headaches. High speed Zorro3 cards like the CV64 will make your A3000 hang if you don't use the latest chips or use a mixture of old ones and newer ones.

True, but most these days come with some zips on-board, plus when you get an accell, the mobo ram is a waste. (Btw, I've heard that A4k simm slots are quite fragile).

I've owned 3 A4000 and none of them had problems with the simm sockets. Other friend's A4000 doesn't have a single broken connector.

You can use a stock A4000 with an A3640 and 16MB without problems. Can you do the same with an unmodified A3000? I gues you'll have to upgrade the rom at least to be able to do something useful. And then you'll need an accelerator due to the small quantity of slow ram. And If you want to use a cheap A3640 your A3000 will start to hang because you don't have latest chips.

Again, not all (or none? AFAIK) A4k's come with buster 11 on board, plus some of them have buster 9 soldered!!! (all A3k's have socketed chips). And you only need a buster 11 for DMA boards.

According to Dave Haynie's Definitive Buster document ZorroII DMA cards can have problems on A3000 without buster 11 but not on A4000 with buster9 or 11.

Havent tried a lot of devices, but it did work with everyhting I've thrown into her.

Check this if you think that there are no issues There are lots of pages commenting the A3000 scsi problems. You can read there that many accelerators have problems using the scsi interface if you don't make the INT2 modification.

Ehmm...my A3000 with CV64 never had any hang-ups...I'm using the original stock chips except the WD SCSI chip which is rev.8.