Amiga A3000UX i am working on

[mechy]

Yes, the A3000UX was a "custom bundle", not unlike the A500 game bundles sold in the UK at the time  The big difference not just being what was in the package (the A3070 tape drive and the A2065 Ethernet card, the three-button mouse, as well as the Amiga Unix installation disks, the tape and the manuals), but that the label on the case was different. I think the A3000UX also shipped with more memory by default than the regular configuration, because Amiga Unix needed it.

Yes, i think 8Mb was standard and the a2410 optional also. The amix manual suggests 8MB minimum.. i have it running on 4MB atm and it seems ok,but amix isnt overly useful. my case is labeled 3000UX.

[mechy]

That is a really, really nice Amiga 3000 you have there.  Congrats!

I have always thought it was the most sexy Amiga Commodore every made.

When I was in college I had one and people at the time were just blown away that a computer could have two different OSs on it!  

If you read the Amiga 3000UX brochure, they mention a university that went with all Amiga 3000UX machines for their students because they wanted to standardize on a flavor of Unix.  They even have quotes from a professor from the said university.

When I became a professor, I decided to track down that guy and ask about choosing the Amiga 3000UX, dealing with Commodore, and how their decision worked out.

The guy actually emailed me back with the following information:

-The machines were great and they were real workhorses for the everyone involved.  Their failure rate was very low.  Much lower than the compettion.

-Commodore went from being passionate about Amix to sort of dumping it which left them hanging.  There were fewer updates, not upgrades, and they didn't make it work for any other machines.

-Commodore went bankrupt which was terrible for the university.  They had to maintain those computers for the students/faculty no matter what.  So they bought as many Amiga 3000UX machines as they could get their hands on for spare parts and such.  He said they scrounged Usenet for machines for years.  What really helped them was that the Amiga 3000 was the same machine (more or less) so they could buy either UX or 3000s for parts.  The mouse and the especially the 2024 card was tough to get.

-He could understand why SUN was so interested in buying Amiga 3000UX machines and making them low-cost SUN workstations.  They were incredibly fast, very well built, and cheaper than the competition.  He said Apple's AUX machines were double the price or more for features standard to the UX machines.

Good memories.

I just thought you might find that of interest.

:-)

-P

Thanks for the info, that is interesting. I remember sun wanted to make a deal with C= and they blew it as usual. I have to say though, 030/25 and fast on Unix doesn't seem to go hand in hand lol.

i am toying with the idea of adding the picassoII i have here since they are supported now. it may help some,but then again, leaving it alone to do what it does is just fine.

[olsen]

I have to say though, 030/25 and fast on Unix doesn't seem to go hand in hand lol.

Considering the time and age, the MC68030 at 25 MHz was not quite so bad at running AT&T Unix System V release 4, compared to the workstations I used at university when I started on getting my computer science degree.

Back then we lucked out in that the computer science department had just retired one antique IBM System/360 and replaced it with a pool of shiny new Sun SPARCstation IPCs. These workstations were faster than the A3000UX, but not by a lot. If I remember correctly, a Sun SPARCstation IPC runs about as fast as an Amiga 3000 or 4000 with an A3640 CPU card (at 25 MHz; the Sun SPARCstation IPC CPU was clocked at 25 MHz, too).

[pwermonger]

It could happen and it did: Apple manufactures the Mac Pro in the USA (likely using parts sourced from China), which is still viable given the price of the product and the small numbers in which it sells. It's no longer a viable business model for high volume sales, though. This ship sailed long ago...

This still worked in 1988-1990, before SMD was introduced. For example, when NeXT was still in business and making their own hardware, they had their own factory in California which manufactured NeXT Cubes and NeXTSTATIONS.

Lenovo was assembling computers in the US starting in 2013 before Apple Mac Pro assembly was brought back here and they certainly are a high volume brand. Likely Apple was hoping with this carrot that the tax laws would not change so they could continue to not pay taxes on their profits using their Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich plan.

But then Commodore was also assembling here. Boards were made in Japan at the time I think, even including some of the last parts of the design to prepare the engineering design for manufacture.

[pwermonger]

Curious, what CF adapter did you get? I have a 3000UX currently just running Workbench 2.0 but have the tape drive, tape and the adf for the install. It was our 3000 at VCFE-X this year for the 30 years of Amiga display.

Want to get that 3000 setup with Unix eventually for a future VCFE but am also in a project to preserve my Amigas drives onto CF or SD. So far have had no luck with SD at all. Have two 1200s setup with CF now which are easy with IDE, as is the 4000 which I have adapters for. Hardest will be my 3000 and 1000 since my 2000 does have a Dataflyer IDE controller.

[mechy]

Curious, what CF adapter did you get? I have a 3000UX currently just running Workbench 2.0 but have the tape drive, tape and the adf for the install. It was our 3000 at VCFE-X this year for the 30 years of Amiga display.

Want to get that 3000 setup with Unix eventually for a future VCFE but am also in a project to preserve my Amigas drives onto CF or SD. So far have had no luck with SD at all. Have two 1200s setup with CF now which are easy with IDE, as is the 4000 which I have adapters for. Hardest will be my 3000 and 1000 since my 2000 does have a Dataflyer IDE controller.

Just a typical cheap one. If you have a back slot open this may be the way to go:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/40-pin-IDE-Connector-CF-to-IDE-Compact-Flash-Card-Adapter-Bootable-/121229448042?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c39d6936a

Since mine had to plug into the acard scsi to ide bridge,i used something like this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/CF-Compact-Flash-to-3-5-40-Pin-Male-IDE-HDD-Converter-Card-Adapter-Bootable-EL-/111702553476?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1a01fdb384

I have some of these if you need one let me know, i can save you time.

I haven't heard of anyone using a dataflyer ide with a cf adapter, so let us know how it goes.