Hello from Australia

[Cammy]

Welcome back into the fold, lunithy! I'm in the Northern Rivers area too, so I would love to help you out if you need anything.

If your A2000 has a SCSI card in it, I think since it's pretty hard to get decent SCSI drives for them now you might be better off buying a SCSI memory card reader. These will let you mount and boot from SD, CF and other smart media cards, which are faster to load things from than most old hard drives and you can pick up new ones at K-Mart or Big W. I don't use an A2000 myself, but I have PCMCIA SD card readers for my A1200 and A600 and couldn't do without them. They also make it really easy to transfer data from a PC to the Amiga. You can order one from here: http://a4000t.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=68&products_id=184&zenid=55e0eddb694bed9b4883cd70b3c5adaa

I'm not sure what the noise is but it's probably the hard drive or the power supply, hopefully it's the hard drive because it's easier to replace and you can still back it up.

What kind of displays are you using for the Amigas? Many of us are using LCDs these days with the help of affordable S-Video adapters and more expensive (but worth it) flicker fixers, both of which are still in production and being sold in online stores.

If you don't have much software for the Amigas, I can help you out. There are some pretty good pre-installed Workbench distributions out there that you could install (ClassicWB and AmigaSYS), and something you'll really want to get is WHDLoad so you can play all your favourite games and demos from the hard drive instead of unreliable floppies.

If you don't have Kickstart 3.1 or a ROM switcher for the A2000 I could maybe help you out too. 3.1 and 1.3 on a switcher is the best all-round combo for running the latest software as well as backwards compatibility for old games, although with those A500s as well you won't have much of a problem there.

Anyway, feel free to ask anything and we'll try to help out. I hope you'll get lots more enjoyment from your machines like I do.

[Cammy]

You gotta remove that battery before it explodes!!!

I lost two A2000s that way, and many others have too.

If you're handy with a soldering iron you can replace them, but in any case it should be taken off before it starts to swell up and one day you turn it on and it smells funny.

Are there any RAM sticks on your A2091 card? You should be able to fit up to 8MB RAM on there, which would be plenty to turn the A2000 into a useful gaming machine and also perfect for classic applications. I use an A600 with some extra RAM and the stock 7Mhz 68000, and it's a fine computer.

Black & white is no good, you're welcome to have a spare RF Modulator of mine if you like, it plugs into the RGB port and gives you regular colour Composite-out. I have a couple of spares since I use S-Video adapters from http://amigamaniac.com (an Amiga hardware manufacturer and wholesale seller located in our own state).

I wish I had a spare SCSI hard drive to give you but those things aren't easy to come by. Many people with old SCSI-based Amigas and clasic Macs (who also used SCSI) have had to deal with a lack of SCSI drives for a while, so the arrival of these SCSI smart-card readers in the Mech Ware online shop has really saved a lot of us. It sits inside the second floppy drive bay and lets you insert up to five smart cards at once, and even one of them (at around 4GB anyway) would be plenty big enough to store nearly everything you'd need on the old Amiga.

You could also keep an eye out for a SCSI CD/DVD drive which will work fine on the A2000 with the right filesystem installed (which I can help you with if you decide to do it).

[Cammy]

Good idea, I think you can remove those batteries with some tin snips if you don't have a soldering iron.

The A520 is fine, that's the modulator I would have given you if you didn't have one yourself. They can actually be modified to have S-Video output on them if you're an electronics wiz.

[Cammy]

Only 2MB on that one? Damn, that's not so good.