Wanted: Amiga 3000

[Darrin]

My A3000 is gathering dust on a shelf after I went back to my A2000 which must be the only damn non-Tower miggy you can expand properly in its original case.  Unless you have a burning desire for Zorro 3 slots, stick with the A2000.

[Darrin]

Unless you need Zorro3 for something, or if you don't have a decent video card and accelerator for your A2000, don't switch.  Just re-read and saw your A2000 specs and what you want from an A3000.  Don't switch!

Yep, my thoughts exactly.

My A3000 and A4000 are both 68040 machines, both ECS, both run Workbench 3.x.  The only difference is the Zorro slots and the room inside the cases.

I have a Cybervision 643D in my A2000 which gives me a Workbench way better than AGA could provide, I have an "Amber" SDFF (It uses the same Amber chip found in the A3000 - an Indivision would be even better), I have a Buddha IDE card installed allowing 4 IDE devices (currently it boots from a CF card reader and runs the DVD ROM drive) and I have a SCSI hard drive attached to the CPU card.

The only thing worth adding would be a Deneb (it is in my A4000).

[Darrin]

If you add video and acceleration to a 3k, buy a new set of pants.  The difference will burn them right off.  Z3 and the faster bus give huge performance gains over a similar built 2k.  I ran similar systems (3k with 40mhz 040 and retina z3 and 2k 040@40mhz and retina z2) side by side and the 2k was WAY WAY WAY slower.

To be fair, for typical usage, I couldn't tell the difference between the Cybervision fitted in my A2000 or A3000.  Likewise, unless you're passing huge files across the Zorro 3 bus using DMA then don't expect any "wow factor".

[Darrin]

Thank you all for the input, but I think I'll stick with my plan. I'm not under the illusion that it's a hugely more advanced machine than the 2000, but it has two things I really want: a built-in flicker-fixer, and a smaller-profile case. I like my 2000, but it's a beast, even by '80s desktop standards, and the fact that it needs its own separate monitor just adds to that. The 3000 isn't exactly tiny either, but in my setup I'd really rather just have a smaller machine, and then I can share a VGA monitor with my PC.

Now if you said you wanted a smaller case in the first place then I'd never have posted.  

The A2000 is a fricking tank!  LOL

[Darrin]

Hmmm.  It may have been the z3 retina being so much faster than the z2 one.  The usage was very noticeable in my tests, particularly in screen refresh and IO.  Your use with the same video card would be more accurate, than mine.  Thanks for the clarification...

Mind you, you got to test them side-by-side you you would have seen the differences (speed) more easily.