Amiga 3000 or Amiga 4000

[Crumb]

All crap!

I had to upgrade my A3000. I know people with an A3000 who have problems, I have read reports of many people with problems. You may not have found problems, but the A4000 is less problematic and requires less modifications in order to have a proper machine.

A4000 came with a 880kb drive as well, A300 and A4000 BOTH had the HD drive as an option, the RAMSEY and DMAC are fine,

Firstly you say that A4000 floppy disk drive was a 880KB and later you say that it was a 1.76MB one. Sorry, but I don't understand you. All the A4000 that I have touched had High Density Floppy drives (but that doesn't mean that there weren't a few with low density units)

I NEVER botherd to change mine and NEVER had an issue at all.

You probably didn't use many Zorro cards then.

I know most poeple didnt have any.

Yeah, that clearly explains why there are so many texts in internet describing the problems of A3000 with old revision chips.

It works fine and they dont have to be upgraded in a pair like they say.

Well, you have to put rom3.1, a graphic card, ram and an accelerator if you want to do anything with it. And you'll never be able to watch AGA demos for example, so I can't see the point in buying an A3000 unless it's already upgraded with latest chips, roms, accelerator and graphic card... it's a waste of money.

" I used IDE in mine with a Budha controller. In the A4000 you need a SCSI card so its just the reverse problem isnt it? SIMMS? Who cares if you plan to use an accelerator? I took all my ZIPS out and had 128MB on my CSPPC. Its faster ram anyway."

So the A3000 is only really useful if you invest a lot of money on it.

With a simple A4000 you can do much more things, and with an expanded one you can watch AGA demos.

If you don't use AGA a Pegasos is a better investment.

"Put in a Mediator and a tower like I did and your have one kick ass system for no more then what an A4000 would be, and a lot of the times less."

The funny thing is that you have to waste a lot of time buying a tower, roms, expensive hard drives, an accelerator etc... from different sources, and with a desktop A4000 you don't need a new tower, you have AGA, you have rom 3.0 so you can use most of things and you don't need to spend so much money.

You can get an A3000 on ebay US for WAY less then a A4000.

In Europe there are few A3000 and lots of A4000 so these machines cost more or less the same. The first A3000 I bought years ago was 210€. It had rom 2.0, ocs, a 030/16Mhz, 8MB of ram and was crap. I tested it for 2 days and gave it back to the original owner. A month later I bought an A4000 with 040/25, rom3.0, buster11, 16MB, HD Floppy drive, etc for only 60€ more. Guess what computer was more useful? That A3000 required expensive roms 3.1 and most of shops charged 70€ for them. And I didn't have an accelerator yet...

If you buy it already upgraded an A3000 can be a nice machine, but if it's not upgraded and you want better features you'd better get a Pegasos.

[adolescent]

Crumb wrote:
In Europe there are few A3000 and lots of A4000 so these machines cost more or less the same. The first A3000 I bought years ago was 210€. It had rom 2.0, ocs, a 030/16Mhz, 8MB of ram and was crap. I tested it for 2 days and gave it back to the original owner. A month later I bought an A4000 with 040/25, rom3.0, buster11, 16MB, HD Floppy drive, etc for only 60€ more. Guess what computer was more useful? That A3000 required expensive roms 3.1 and most of shops charged 70€ for them. And I didn't have an accelerator yet...

Some points here (some maybe obvious).  

- A3000 never had OCS, they were always ECS.
- Of course a 25MHz 040 is more usefull than a lowly 68030/16Mhz + 68881 FPU
- A3000 and A4000 3.1 ROMs are usually the same cost.  I've never seen a great difference in cost as you say.  (and, I believe most A4000s were shipped with 3.0 ROMs)
- A3000 were shipped with HD floppies also.  (my bought in 91-92 A3000/25 had a HD floppy)
- Upgrading chips isn't necessary (and when they are it's necessary in the same sense as the A4000 ie. buster 11).  (BTW, my buster 11 install on the A3000 took approximately 30 minutes due to the location under the drive tray...  On the A4000 it took 2 week turnaround due to the soldering.)

If you buy it already upgraded an A3000 can be a nice machine, but if it's not upgraded and you want better features you'd better get a Pegasos.

You can say the same thing about the A4000.  Excluding AGA, the A3000 can be pushed just as far as the A4000 can.  Even unmodified it has better features like a flicker fixer, SCSI, etc.

[K7HTH]

Man! I love hardware debates!!  :-D

[melott]

KD7HTH wrote:
Man! I love hardware debates!!  :-D

 :-) Its interesting as long as it doesn't turn
into a Flame War.

BTW .. some A3000's did ship with HD 1.76 floppies.
 I have one of them.
OOps ..sorry, thats kind of misleading.
I have the HD floppy drive that came new in my son's
A3000. We swapped them before he sold his machine.

[Noster]

Hi,

I've followed this thread, but now I have to invoke :-)

@darkcoder

> Almost every A4000, if not all, were shipped with Hi density floppy drive (1760 Kb) and a IDE HD (min. 120M).
If I'm informed right only the A4000/040 have had the HD-floppy per default, the A4000 with the 68030 have had a DD-floppy (and a friend of mine has both versions of the A4000, the one (68030) with DD-, the other (68040) with HD-floppy). Btw: My A3000T has been equiped with a HD-floppy when I've purchased it :-)

> You have to change RAMSEY and DMAC either if you want to use the Page-detect mode with static column RAM,
> which may give you faster access or if you want to use certain cards designed for A4000, for example the crappy C= 3640.
NO, I own two A3000T's and both had been equiped with the A3640, both running RAMSEY and DMAC in the old version, without ANY problem. You have to use the revision 3.2 A3640 for an A3000, than you don't have any problems.
The static-column memory always worked in fast burst-mode.

> Dave Haynie said many times that Ramsey and DMAC should be changed in pairs ( either you have Ramsey 04 and DMAC 02 or Ramsey 07 and DMAC 04).
> Maybe a mixed pair can work in some circumstances, but do you trust it works for everyone?
Maybe, currently one of my A3000T's is equiped with a RAMSEY -07 and a DMAC -02. An A3640 accelerator is in this system and the SCSI-chip is replaced by the SCSI-II version (many people said that this doesn't work -- it works great and improves performance and stability of the SCSI-bus.
The mayor problem with the DMAC -04 is: It isn't available any more...sold out :-(

Oh and don't say: "An A3000T is completely different than an A3000 desktop." It is equal, just the layout of the motherboard is different, but the used IC's and their connections are the same, both computers are electrical identically.

EDIT: And the Zorro-slots of both A3000T's are (nearly) complete populated, I've just changed the buster of one of the machines to revision 11 to use a CyberVision64/3D graphicscard. At least, I've made the INT2-hack, my main computer is equiped with a CSPPC.

Noster

[Framiga]

@Noster

A4000/030 here (purchased brand new)

HD floppy as default (FB357A)
85Mb HDD
SB9 (socketed)

EDIT- ohh and different package also (i think all the one outside the USA).

2 boxes . . . 1 for the case and another one for the keyboard.

[manicx]

All accelerators that are worth a damn work just fine!

There are issues with certain accelerators and the on board chips that may require an update.

A4000 came with a 880kb drive as well, A300 and A4000 BOTH had the HD drive as an option

:lol: An option... :lol:

the RAMSEY and DMAC are fine

No they are not fine. They are good, but not fine. There are issues with them. Please don't take the piss if you don't know facts about the A3000 h/w.

I used IDE in mine with a Budha controller. In the A4000 you need a SCSI card so its just the reverse problem isnt it?

Well, a Fastlane can be bought for peanuts in eBay. A friend bought one for 3 euros. I don't think you can find Buddha at that price. Not to mention the prices of SCSI HDs.

SIMMS? Who cares if you plan to use an accelerator? I took all my ZIPS out and had 128MB on my CSPPC. Its faster ram anyway.

Well, speak for yourself. Recently a friend bought an A3000. Imagine his surprise when he opened the box and tried to find the SIMM slots. Several people are happy with say 18MB of RAM. When I recommended him a QL retailer in the UK for buying the crap memory chips for the A3000, he was in shock by the prices. He ended up buying a ZII memory board because he didn't want an accelerator. There are some adaptors for SIMMs but they are as scarce as mermaids.

The point is the A3000 is just as upgradable as the A4000 is and only lacks AGA. Most want an RTG card anyway. Put in a Mediator and a tower like I did and your have one kick ass system for no more then what an A4000 would be, and a lot of the times less. You can get an A3000 on ebay US for WAY less then a A4000.

The A3000 is upgradable but NOT as much as an A4000 is. It is a lovely machine, but the AGA, although not of great use, is making difference when using 2D Painting s/w that is not compatible with RTG. There are also some games that are worth having in AGA and you can't in non-AGA Amigas.

[CU_AMiGA]

Hey Yo!

Although the A3000 is a lovely machine, i would pick the A4000 over the A3000, simply because of AGA thugh. Even though AGA vastly underachieved, it is still worth it for the limited good games and demos available. Also some compatibility with software as well that only use native chipset. Man, i wish they commercially released the A3000+, that is the holy grail! :-D

Regards,

[melott]

CU_AMiGA wrote:

Man, i wish they commercially released the A3000+, that is the holy grail! :-D

Regards,

I don't think I've ever heard of the A3000+.
What was the upgrade, AGA, Simms ??

[Noster]

Hi,

it has been here:

http://www.thule.no/haynie/research/a3000p/docs/a3000p.pdf

but currently I cannot load it any more (Cannot resolve host name) :-(
Anybody knows where this site has gone to?
(I have a copy of this pdf on my harddisk.)

Noster

[Noster]

Hi,

found it again:

http://www.computer-history.de/Amiga/Seiten/A3000P.PDF

Noster

[Noster]

Hi,

@Thread

I think, if you use an accelerator and a graphics card, you could use either A3000 or A4000 whichever you prefer, they make no great difference. And if you like the A3000 more than an A4000 (like me) and want to play AGA games or see AGA-demos: For 99,- EUR you could buy a NEW A1200 for that purpose.

Noster