Coming Back Into The Community

[tone007]

Hopefully the 2000 you get has an accelerator if you want to run 3.9, I believe it won't run on the stock 68000.

[tone007]

There are a few decent accelerators.  The C= 2630 is probably the best priced one (sub $100 if you're lucky,) but it can only handle 4mb of RAM onboard.  GVPs are around as well for a bit more money, but they have the drawback of requiring special GVP SIMMs, so it's best to get one of those already populated with RAM.  Here's a list of A2000 accelerators: http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/a2000proc

As for scandoublers/flickerfixers, if you're not in a hurry Individual Computers is supposed to be coming out with an A2000 (and a500, a600) compatible internal one that'd be price-competitive with legacy scandoublers, and probably function better.  Either way, those are generally in the $100+ range as well.

edit: if you're up for using composite/s-video, http://www.amigamaniac.com has just developed a very affordable Amiga RGB to s-video/composite solution that seems to work very well.

[tone007]

Also, just in case this wasn't an issue the last time you were shopping for Amigas, you definitely want to look out for leaky batteries on the motherboard.  (2000, 3000, 4000.)  The acid does some pretty nasty things to the boards, and getting stuck with a half eaten board is no fun.

[tone007]

The Commodore 2320 is around as well and works much better than the Microway, for one it supports both PAL and NTSC.

[tone007]

The Indivision AGA is a great device, I have one in my 1200.  The OCS/ECS version should be very nice as well, though it might not be quite as flexible due to those machines not having AGA (1024x768 256-color workbench is a big selling point on the AGA Indivision.)

[tone007]

How usable is 1024x768 8 bit?

Like Cammy said, it's not the snappiest, even with an '060 things get a little sluggish, not to mention it doesn't work right with FBlit.  Still nice to be able to do it occasionally though, since I'm pretty sure I won't be coming across a BVision setup anytime soon and it's fun to squeeze the most out of the desktop 1200.

I generally stick with 32 colors and get decent performance and FBlit compatibility.

[tone007]

Spectrum is fun for RTG stuff (correct, VGA output,) but it doesn't scandouble unfortunately so native Amiga screenmodes as in games would still require a 15khz monitor.