New to Amiga

[Waterland]

Hello, I am new to the world of Amiga.  Just over this past weekend I purchased an A2000 at a garage sale for a grand total of $15.  I have been doing extensive research and it looks as if I can get quite a bit out of this machine.  Any information about upgrading would be greatly appreciated.  I don't know much about my 2000, I've turned it on and played around with it some, but I'm not really familiar with everything yet.  Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

[Waterland]

Did you get much with it? Many disks? Did it come with a hard drive?  

Yeah, it came with 2 huge boxes of games and disks, probably 50+ games and 100+ disks with who knows what on them.  And yes, it does have a hard drive.  It was a hell of a deal for 15 bucks, the lady that sold it to me was just happy to get rid of it......

oddmario wrote:
Welcome
You came to the right place.
Need a bit more info to give advice though.
If you don't know what is what,take pictures.

What kind of info do you need?  Let me know what you need to  know, and I'll see if I can tell what I've got.

[Waterland]

Wow, thanks for all the advice and welcomes, I plan to stay for awhile.  This is one of those rare forums where people actually help new comers rather than tell them they don't know anything....

I haven't had access to my A2000 for a couple days and haven't had a chance to look it over any more, but I'll be back tomorrow so I can give you more info then.

EDIT:  SamuraiCrow, I noticed you're from Minnesota, do you know of any places around the Twin Cities where I can get Amiga stuff, or if there are any Amiga groups or clubs or anything?  I'd love to meet up with some other Amiga users.

[Waterland]

Sidewinder wrote:

I don't mean to step on SamuraiCrow here, but I'm orignally from MN also and still keep in touch with some good Amiga guys at Raymond Computer in St. Paul.  They are a full service Amiga and Commodore shop with lots of cool Amiga stuff laying around.  I can never leave their shop without finding something fun.  Ray is the owner and is really nice and helpful.  They also host Amiga user group meetings about once a month and have an Amiga mailing list.

They're the only Amiga shop I know of in Minneapolis/St. Paul, but maybe SamuraiCrow can point out some others.

Welcome aboard Waterland.

Excellent, sounds like a great place, maybe I can pick up some cool stuff for my A2000 there.

Anyway, I played around with my A2000 some more and this is what I found out, it says I have Kickstart version 37.175 and Workbench version 38.35.  It also looks like I have a GVP G-Force 030, I don't know what any of that means, whether it's good, bad, or mediocre, but that's the only information I could come up with.

I also took some pictures, I'll upload them soon.

[Waterland]

Here's a picture of the inside of my A2000:



Any suggestions on further upgrades I could do?

[Waterland]

Wow, thanks for all the advice everyone.  That's exactly the kind of advice I needed.  I'll see if I can find some of those hardware upgrades, maybe that Raymond Computer has some.

One other question.  What exactly is the difference between Kickstart and AmigaOS?  I'm still confused as to what Kickstart is....

[Waterland]

From your photograph I can see you have either a 25MHz or 40MHz 68EC030 GVP Combo board, with what looks like just the 1MB (25MHz) or 4MB (40MHz) of 32-bit RAM soldered on the board.

Actually, there's one simm on the card, it's just covered up by the cords in the photo.

(can't tell what size Quantum drive you have there, but it's probably an LS120 or similar i.e. less than 200MB).

It says I have a 50MB hard drive.

From the looks of the power supply I'm willing to bet you have a latter model Rev. 6.2 motherboard A2000 (it's printed in the lower left hand corner of the motherboard); so you probably have the latter 1MB chipram version of the Agnus chip (8372A), it's what's called an Enhanced Chip Set Amiga (though you may not have the so-called SuperDenise 8373 chip (check the m/b)).

You're right, it is Rev 6.2.  Where do I look on the motherboard to find out everything else though?


I also checked my battery, it looks brand new, no corrosion or anything.  Of course, when I bought the computer, it was in immaculate condition.  It was in the original box with all the original styrofoam and plastic packing materials.  It must have been used only for a short time and then packed away.