Dusting Off Amiga 3000 - Upgrades???

[cbcvenice]

Old time Amiga User here (started on A1000 in'88)
I Brought my A3000 out to test it and see if I want to sell, but decided I will keep (i think) and even upgrade...
USA Amiga user.

What are best upgrades in your opinion for this system?

Amiga 3000 16mhz, 8meg Ram(2chip 6fast), 40megHD, 2ndExternal Floppy, 2.04 Rom and 37.xx workbench.  

I want to go through many of my disks and put on a hard drive and organize stuff....mostly music, anims, documents and games(of course).

Here are a few issues as well:
1.Keyboard for a3000 - dont think it is easy fix(Return key doen't respond), so where to get use/keyboard?  or should I get converter?

2.battery for A3000 - soldered two things in my life, but not anything as fragile as a motherboard... I might be up to "gambling" on doing myself -so, what might be my best option with battery?

3.Bigger hard drive - current is 40meg, would love to find bigger one.  where best to look?

Oh, o.k. I'll go for 2 more questions... Please don't hurt me!! please!?

4. Kickstart 2.04 current... I think I desperately need to upgrade! Which is best for A3000 16/40 2megChip 6meg fast.

5. Lastly, best way to get latest software onto A3000?... I do not have cdrom or ethernet card

[cbcvenice]

Hey, thanks so much for all the input!
1.I will be trying the keyboard fix mentioned in another forum ....
http://www.qdev.de/?location=electronics/keyboardrepair

2. battery is already removed -- along with posts(ears), so I will have to solder some, I may try the lithium coin convert or run wires to battery in safe location.  Any harm in running a3000 without any battery?

3. found a site that has some used scsi HD drives, but will watch prices for just a little. 2gig will most likely be enough (sure, that is what I said when I got 40meg HD!)
;-)

4. Haven't looked real hard, but not having luck finding scsi cdrom drives...

5. Question on 3.1 roms... there are four (4) rom "sockets" two (2) which are taken by 2.04. Do I just add 3.1 in the open sockets or do I need to remove the 2.04.... guess I could read info that comes with chips, but hey...since your here... :-)

Thanks again!
Keep Smilin'
Lar

[cbcvenice]

Details of chips on board.

Board is A3000 B2 313312 Re 9/03

Yes, 68030fe16b and 68881fn16b are soldered on board.

Super buster (fatbuster) is 390539-07 71 4319 5101 3G
Super DMAC 81 390537 4790 - 02
Ramsey 390541-04 R

scsi controller chip - WD 33C93A-PL 911B WDC PROTO

System works fine without battery

It does have A3000 daughterboard Rev. 7 (what would be the best investment to get to plug into daughterboard? - if any?)

HD boots up to decent workbench screen (need to change the wallpaper though) and shows WB as 37.175 and kickstart 37.71 the disks that are with the manual say wb 2.05.. whatever.  


I have a few programs loaded on HD, like old version of Prowrite, diskmaster, modplayers and a few music mods, graphic viewers and couple of shareware games...

screen mode is ntsc high res interlaced 660x442 16 color on a 19 inch viewsonic...

I do have crossdos to transfer from amiga to pc - what would
be some choice programs to put on this miggy?  Hey, right now I see some Flying toasters floating around the screen....guess I will have to see what screensaver I have loaded....Thanks.

Lar