I got my A2000 today... :-)

[Ami_GFX]

The A2000 is a great workhorse. The only issue I have with it is the amount of space it takes up--especially with a 1084 monitor. I own 2 of them right now. I tried a 3.1 rom in my A2500 but had to put the original 2.04 rom back in this morning because of some compatiblity issues--I've had this machine since 1993 and have a lot of software on it from that era. I might get a rom switcher some day but the my A4000 does system 3.1 so much better, I'm not in too big of a hurry. The 3.1 rom also slowed my hard disk speed to a crawl--I believe this is because my A2091 SCSI board has 6.6 roms and the 7.0 roms were probably developed to deal with this amoung other issues.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that have some fun with your machine and play around with it as it is before you invest a lot of time and money in upgrades. If you want a machine that can do OS3.9 well, get an A4000 which sometimes can be had for what you paid for your A2000. And I don't think you got such a bad deal. You managed to bring the seller to reality at least. I sold 2 1084 monitors for $60 and $70 and paid $30 for an A2000 keyboard recently so the accessories you got do count for something. And it is nice to buy a complete system and not have to spend ages getting the parts you need to make things work.

[Ami_GFX]

spihunter wrote:
I think the A2000 is a great machine. I got mine for free and it turned out to be a PAL machine!. It kinda sucks for me because I wanted to put a video toaster in it.

There is a jumper on the motherboard that controls whether it is in NTSC or PAL mode. Open the cover and move it to the NTSC position and you will have a NTSC 2000. You will have to remove the power supply carriage to do this. The jumper is in the back of the motherboard behind the Agnus chip.

[Ami_GFX]

As far as I know, there is no active connection to the Isa slots without a bridgeboard. I used to comtemplate buying a bridgeboard but my A2000s are now dedicated graphics machines and for what a 386 or Golden Gate card costs these days, I'd rather get a flicker fixer or something more practical for my money. A bigger memory card--like a supra 8 mb card--would help your system a lot. One of the pains of the A2000 is that you only have 8mb of Zorro II ram possible and bridge boards and some RTG cards will use some of this memory space and severely limit the memory unless you buy an accelerator with 32 bit memory expansion--preferebly in the form of 30 or 72 pin simms. Zip ram is also a rare and pricey commodity these days as are GVP simms.

 And I didn't notice you were in Norway which puts a different perspective on the price you paid. Here in the US, there are a lot of A2000s around for good prices but I'm not so sure about Norway.

[Ami_GFX]

Really? How much are Golden Gate cards going for these days?

The 386 bridge boards go for more than $100 and the Golden Gate ones are a lot rarer and better so I'd say you should get at least $150 for it. I think I've only seen one on Ebay this last year and I don't remember what it sold for so I can't give you any exact figures.