So, after all these years, I'm finally the owner of an Amiga 3000 that I bought from someone on Amibay! It should be here in the next few days. I'm pretty pumped -- I was a college kid when the 3000 was released and couldn't afford one, so I had to make due with my Amiga 2000 (which you guys helped me refurb and upgrade last year).
It already has 3.1 ROMs, 18 MB of RAM, and a 500 MB SCSI hard drive. Any hints/tips/recommendations on what to look for when I receive it? I'd like to put a 68040 or above accelerator in it at some point, but I've read some confusing things about which chip revisions to look for, which revisions of accelerators to look for (esp. with the A3640), and stuff like that. Any tips you guys can give me will be appreciated.
Oh, and I have an old Scanjet 5P that I plan to hook to it. I assume Aminet would have drivers?
Congrats!!! This is by far my favorite Amiga and I know you will have lots of fun with it.
I would only purchase either a Warp Engine 3040 or a Cyberstorm MKIII. Do it right or don't do it at all, this will take more time and cost more money but, you will get the absolute best usability, and overall best performance. Having the Ram, SCSI, and processor one the same bus really makes a huge difference. Unless your ray tracing or need very heavy math, the 68040 (at 40MHz) is perfect and you won't notice much of a difference between an 060. The 3640 is cheap, but in the end if you really want to spend lots of time and enjoy the 3k, I would go with my recommendations.
Same for the video, the 3 I would only choose: Picasso IV, Retina BLT Z3, or a Cybervision 64. The other ones either have driver issues, too little of memory, or just plain slow.
If you can find a Buster 11, would put one in. They are easier to come by that the ramsey/dmac pair. With the cards I recommended, I don't remember any issues with older chips and accelerators.
I still use my 3000 with my Warp Engine and Retina Z3, and for most everything it is perfectly usable and still very fast.
Enjoy!!!
