Amiga 3000 or Amiga 4000

[MrZammler]

Although I do love my A3000 (looks cooler than an A4000!), it does have it's shortcomings.

I do miss the AGA chipset for those games that need it, plus I dont use the internal scandoubler anymore since I have a Picasso IV (but when I did use it it was great feature). Plus there's something I always missed: an internal cd-rom (call me weird, although my external CDRW works great).

There are of course it's pluses: Way nicer than an A4k (IMHO), all chips socketed (that's not standard on an A4k), can run AMIX out of the box, good and reliable scsi, SUN wanted it to be a low-cost UNIX box, etc.

My .2 euros ;-)  

[Darrin]

I'd go for the A3000.  The lack of  an AGA chipset is a pain if you want a good looking workbench, but considering that this graphics card is due out next month I wouldn't worry too much:

http://www.computercity.biz/product_info.php?products_id=2452

I use my A3000 with a stock PC monitor and it gives me a high res interlaced picture with next to no flicker visible (just the very top line on the screen).

I wasn't too impressed with the onboard SCSI so I fitted a Buddha Gold IDE card which also adds an A1200 clock port for further expansion.

The lack of a bay to fit a CD ROM drive is a major pain.  Right now I have the lid off and the CD drive sits ontop of the floppy drives until I either cut the casing and fit a laptop CD drive or tower the thing.

Don't forget to buy some 3.1 ROMS!

[Framiga]

A4000 without esitations :-)

[lillPiP]

I already had a Pegasos. It's a fast system, but I didn't like it. For me the differences wasn't too much from a upgraded A1200 except the PPC. I can do almost the same with the A1200 as I could with the Pegasos. But I could do one more thing with my Amiga Classic...play all good old games without any emulation or actually without have to do anything!
Neither the Pegasos or the AmigaOne is a Amiga for me, since both systems lacks the chips that are found in the Classics I think the Classic is a better choice. Although the Classic is much more expensive to upgrade than the new Pegasos or AmigaOne. But it's kind of fun to keep upgrade the Amiga with rare items.
As it is for now I have a Amiga500+/T with a Blizzard 2040 in a Micronik zorro-busboard and a A1200-tower with Micronik zorro-busboard which also gives me a A3k/A4k-cpuslot. Maybe I should stick with the A1200T instead?

[Amigaz]

I'd go for an A3000, a computer with a rock solid feel.
Like the others said just get a gfx card for it like the Cybervision 64 so you can pass thru the native screenmodes (have one in mine).
Just find a good external SCSI cd-rom and you're set up.
Most important thing is if you use a '040 accelerator is that it has a good cooling fan.
My A3000 '040@40mhz actually runs cooler than my '060 A4000.
Not sure if I can fit a CS MKIII I have in my A3000 without adding some cooling but since you can use a Blizzard 1260 in an A1200 desktop it should work.

good luck

[Framiga]

@Darrin

interesting GFX card! 16MB VRam.

Pratically, should be a sort of Prom/Zorro interface (ala XSurf or so) . . . nice idea indeed :-)

Any news about?

[Acill]

What must have AGA softwar is out? AGA came to late and most of it is
crap. The A3000 is a better made machine. You can replace more on it
and its just solid. the A4000 wasmade with spare A3000 parts and was a
rush job. I have never had any issue with turbo cards in my A3000,
never!

[Darrin]

Framiga wrote:
@Darrin

interesting GFX card! 16MB VRam.

Pratically, should be a sort of Prom/Zorro interface (ala XSurf or so) . . . nice idea indeed :-)
Any news about?

I emailed the company manufacturing the card last week to see if it was still on schedule.  I got two replies (!!!) from different people within the company saying that it is still on track for a May release and that the protype production run had been initiated.  There is a chance that due to the Zorro II slots causing a bottleneck problem with data transfer that the card may only be available for Amigas with Zorro III slots (I guess this is something they'll be testing with the prototype cards).

Either way, it looks like an exciting product and I certainly want one.  If anyone is thinking of selling a PIV card on eBay then they had better do it now before this card becomes available.  :-)

[Crumb]

It depends on what you want to do and also on how upgraded the A3000 is. I owned one but I end up giving back the computer in less than a week because it sucked. You have to waste a lot of money to avoid problems:
-you have to buy the rom3.1
-you have to upgrade Ramsey and DMAC
-You can't put simms on the motherboard unless you use a hack
-You must upgrade to buster11 to get full zorro3 speed
-The scsi interface is slow and doesn't recognize all devices
-the case is small and won't allow you to use all accelerators (for example CSMK1) and if you can fit some accelerators you won't be able to completely populate them with ram.
-You can't put a CDRW inside the case because it doesn't have a 5 1/4 bay
-You have to make the INT2 modification to use Accelerators with proper scsi
-You have a low density disk drive
-You can't use cheap IDE drives
-Mediator4000Di won't fit inside

Conclusion: Get the A4000. You can get an internal scandoubler and an accelerator and have proper scsi. The only thing you may want to change is the Buster if it's not version 11 but buster9 works correctly with Mediator&Prometheus so it's not mandatory.

I own an A4000 and an A4000T and I prefer them over my old 3000 (and ended up being much cheaper).

If you don't need AGA why buy a classic amiga? Get a PegasosII or MicroA1.

An A3000 is a waste of money because you have to invest a lot of money to make it work properly.
Accelerator+ramsey+dmac+rom3.1+buster11+graphiccard+tower... get a Peggy or microA1... both have less bugs, are far more stable, cheaper, more expandable...

BTW, I owned A500, 500+, 1200, 3000D, 4000D, 4000T and the A4000 are far better...

[Crumb]

"Either way, it looks like an exciting product and I certainly want one. If anyone is thinking of selling a PIV card on eBay then they had better do it now before this card becomes available. "

I doubt you can watch AGA demos with a 120Hz refresh with that Voodoo3-Zorro. And you can't have a TV Card, Sound card etc... I think I'll keep my Picasso4 and my Prometheus ;-)

[Crumb]

@amiga4001

The 4000 with the mediator lacks the videoslot so an internal scandoubler is not possible.

You can fit an A1200 internal one

[MrZammler]

Machine wars! Great!  :-D

But I dont agree on the following:

-you have to buy the rom3.1

Not all A4000 are 3.1 either.

-you have to upgrade Ramsey and DMAC

No reasone to upgrade those. Havent had a single problem with my stock ones.

-You can't put simms on the motherboard unless you use a hack

True, but most these days come with some zips on-board, plus  when you get an accell, the mobo ram is a waste. (Btw, I've heard that A4k simm slots are quite fragile).

-You must upgrade to buster11 to get full zorro3 speed

Again, not all (or none? AFAIK) A4k's come with buster 11 on board, plus some of them have buster 9 soldered!!! (all A3k's have socketed chips). And you only need a buster 11 for DMA boards.

-The scsi interface is slow and doesn't recognize all devices

Havent tried a lot of devices, but it did work with everyhting I've thrown into her.

-Mediator4000Di won't fit inside

Well, it is a 4000Di! (But, yeap true, sadly there is no such thing for A3k's)...

(Damn, there are threads like this one, that I would wish to see Doomy reply...) :-D

[Framiga]

Again, not all (or none? AFAIK) A4k's come with buster 11 on board, plus some of them have buster 9 soldered!!! (all A3k's have socketed chips). And you only need a buster 11 for DMA boards.

MrZammler . . . things are rarely black or white ;-)

My A4000-030 had a socketed Buster09 :-D

[Framiga]

@ Darrin

thanks for the info :-)

I'm just curious, to see how they will manage the thing.

From a economical/practical point of view, the card should be a sort of Zorrro>PromLOGIC (1 slot or even no slot-i.e soldered as the XSurf solution)> PCI GFX card thing. . . right?

Seen that AHT has aquired the rights for Matay technology, it should be a great project, don't you?

Have you a rough idea, of which PCI GFX card they will use?

AmiVD

149.00EUR
 
- 3dfx graphics processor
- 128-bit 2D/3D Video Accelerator
- 16MB SDRAM
- 166MHz graphics core/memory clock speed
- 350 MHz RAMDAC
- 166 Megapixels/second
- 333 Megatexels/second fill rate
- 7 million polygons per second processing
- 2D Resolution up to 2046x1536 @ 75Hz
- Amiga ZorroII/III interface bus

WOW even the price seems right :-)

[x56h34]

One of my A4000 mobos has a soldered buster 11 chip. :-)

I find A4000 to be nicer as far as heavy upgrading goes, however A3000 can be put in Mirage 3000 case and be just as upgradeable as the A4000. There's something about the A4000 being the last big-box Amiga that makes it shine in my eyes better than the A3000 does, however this is only my personal view. When I look logically at features of both A3000 and A4000, I clearly see which has better and which has worse features in regards to certain aspects of design.

Socketed chips are useful nowadays, as any Amiga hardware is quite old, and if you are (un)lucky enough that only a custom chip fails, in case of a broken motherboard, you can easily replace if you Amiga is A3000. A4000 is a pain in the butt, with its soldered custom chips, but as long as you are careful and treat your A4000 motherboard well and with care, it shouldn't fail on you so easily. :-)

The best "value" for your money makes definitely an A1200 the winner of all, I think, as heavy expansion of it is the cheapest...and what you get in the end is pretty comparable to the best looking A3000 and A4000 setups out there.

[melott]

As I said before, I run a WarpEngine, CV64, and MultiFace
serial cards in my A3000D. I haven't done the Int2 hack or
upgraded any chips (all standard origonal chips).
I bought this A3k new in 1990 or 91 ( can't remember for
sure) and I haven't had ANY problems.
Oh ... I did upgrade to 3.1 roms.
All those chip upgrads and hacks mentioned in the other
posts don't seem to be necessary in my A3k :-D.
Also .. with WHDLoad and a RTG GFX card (if I understand
correctly) the AGA chip set means nothing.