McFly wrote:
Wonderful to see so many people still explores nostalgia of divine Amiga.
And you too now, welcome back!
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Should I change this battery anyway considering this long period?
This is the present battery and I would assume the initial one, link : http://tinyurl.com/ecxmd
Ah! You have an A2000A; important to remember; you have the earliest version of the Amiga 2000. This machine is mainly based on the A1000 (instead of the A500), has no Buster, has only 512K memory onboard with an optional extra 512MB in it's CPU slot.
The one thing is these machines have batteries which fortunatly do not leak
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Is this controller any special then those regularly found in A2000?
Link : http://tinyurl.com/fc66m
I ask because, quote : *** Hard Disk for Amiga 2500
Designed at Wchest USA OPC 94VO 1298M2 23-87 ***
A2500?
About as old as the Amiga itself; and very limited in it's capabilities.... (sorry)
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What are the J1 and J2 for?
Is there some conversion from J0 present cable to regular cable found in A1200
for me to use regular ATA HDD in A2000 like A1200?
Or this J0 is actually a SCSI connection?
J0 is the combined MFM cable; J1 and J2 are the individual control lines. MFM supports 2 drives on one controller.
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Card's external connector, is this also a SCSI connector?
Link : http://tinyurl.com/gja5b
Yes, but remember it is limited in it's use!
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Crown of all this questions leads to my main intention.
What do I need (please be concrete) to have normal CD-ROM drive installed
in A2000? Naturally, HDD drive included.
As mentioned by others; a real SCSI controller; like the A2091, Octagon or GVP. Or look for an Accelerator card with integrated SCSI (GVP Combo cards). However they are HIGHLY UNLIKELY to work in your A2000A!!
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Can I install CDRW by any chance instead of CD-ROM?
On an A2091; yes.
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What software would I need to install CD/CDRW and HDD?
I have all original system FDs for A1200,4000, but for A500 and A2000,
only thing I've got are two FDs : Amiga Workbench 1.2 and Amiga Extras 1.2
You would need Kick 2.04 at least; I suppose.
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What Amiga OS version in best suited for my present A2000? (1.2 rOm)[/quote]
Keep it at 1.2. Why? You have an exceptional beast here; charming because of it's special place in Amiga's history, but you are bound to run in to lots of trouble trying to add anything hardware-wise. Just keep her, and love her as she is. (I do too, have an A2000A, unexpanded apart from the old hardware that came with it)
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Should one today, for sake of more functionality upgrade ROMs to best available
versions? If so, what do you recommend as best ROM change/update for
A500,A2000? Ironically my A500 is (1.3 rOm)
Is it possible to reprogram ROMs to latest version or this is SF for Amiga?
Can you provide link or two where can I purchase them?
Can I for example, place 1.3 ROM from A500 to A2000 and A2000's 1.2 back to A500?
The ROMS from the A500/A600/A2000 and CDTV (apart from it's boot roms) are interchangable. The A1200, A3000 (T), A4000 (T) have machine specific ROM's.
You can still buy them at various online Amiga resources.
BTW: Here is the low-down on the A2000A by Dave Haynie; who designed the A2000B; the later revisions.
The A2000 Model A was a german design, like an A1000 in a different box. 512K CHIP and non-standard processor and video slots. Yes, The orginal A2000 was designed in Germany. It was based on an integration of the A1000 motherboard design and the example Zorro II backplane from "Schematics and Expansion Specifications", the A1000 hardware manual. It used the thin Agnus, which handled only 512K of DRAM. They added a "Genlock" slot, which was essentially just the 23-bit video signals on an internal connector, and the "MMU" slot, which was essentially just the A1000 external edge connector on an internal slot. The machine shipped with 512K of Fast RAM in this slot, though the case was slow and had some reliability problems. About 60,000 of these machines were made, so I've heard.
