At last, I got me an A3000!!

[Phonic]

I'm in 2 minds as to whether I should sell it, part of me (80%) has wanted a nice A3000 for many years, the other 20% wants an A1 or Amy05(6..7.8.etc)
I was offered around $200 for it which I think is a bit low.

[c64_d0c]

are you crazy dont sell the a3000... keep it!! you have to upgrade that a3000!!.. with a 030 or a 060 with 128mb ram, a gfx card, network card and a sound card...


________
LovelyWendie99

[TjLaZer]

The A3000 and A3000T are simply awesome.  I think the ultimate Amiga would be the A3000+ !!!!

[justthatgood]

Well the 4000 would have been better if they would have done a better job with the the way the machine accesses memory.  Also the crappy IDE port leaves less to be desired.  AGA graphics can be slow at times.  Actually Commodore management was slow at times too.

I'm still amazed that it took only a few to crash and burn a very successful computer, and cost thousands upon thousands their jobs.

[Phonic]

Can anyone tell me what version this one is?

Pic1

If you need anymore pics, lemme know - I'm replacing the battery ATM.
Look, no acid leaks!

[Tahoe]

It's a revision 9.03, latest one around....

[Phonic]

Is that a good thing?

[MrZammler]

Phonic wrote:
Is that a good thing?

Of course!

[jiffydos]

Good to know that's the newest one around... that's what I have...  just recently got enough zips to have that same pretty row full of zip ram.  

[Will-i-am]

I just got what looks like an A3000 from ebay... and "as-is" doorstop so far. Here's a question for all you wise A3000 owners: my machine says it's a ver 9.03 so that's good, but so far if I turn it on the floppy light goes on and stays on and nothing else happens. Can't boot from floppy, no noises but an occasional click from the HD.... I tried another scsi HD and it does the same thing. I tried various FDs and I tried disconnecting the HD and booting from a floppy. How do I find out if the mobo is shot or have I already determined that and just don't know it? AND if the mobo is shot how rare is a working one out there? Thanks. Congrats on your working A3000! Maybe someday I'll have one too.

[tonyvdb]

Someone corect me if I am wrong but both the A3000 and A4000 used the A3640 processor and these were always a problem because some of the capasitors being installed backwards on them. This would be the first thing I would check on your 3000. What does the screen do when you turn the power on?

[jiffydos]

You can install an A3640 in an A3000... but they did not come with one.

Sounds like his machine is never even booting kickstart.

I'd say to start with making sure that ALL your chips are seated correctly, especially the kickstart roms in the right hand corner.

Also, try holding down both mouse buttons as your turn the unit on.  This should give you a diagnostic/boot screen.  If not, something is likely hardware wrong.

[KThunder]

check your jumpers also, if the previous owner had an accelerator they may have changed a few. also pull the daughterboard in and out a couple times to make sure it is seated well. the 3000 wont run without it. and check your battery

[A3KOne]

If you want to run an A3640 in an A3K, you can - providing it is rev 3.1 or higher.  Also, you will get a HUGE speed boost by overclocking it to 33Mhz.  The actual performance increase is a lot more than just the additional 8Mhz.  Due to motherboard timing issues, 25Mhz on the accelerator bus does not work well on the A3K. The extra speed helps the bottleneck from the lack of ram on the accelerator. Do make sure you put a good cooler on it, a 486 heatsink/fan combo works like a charm, fits well, and is cheap.

A good, cheap (relatively speaking) graphics card for the A3K is the Spectrum 28/24 from GVP.  You can find them on Ebay for ~$100 or so.  The Spectrum 28/24 has a pass through for native modes.  You need a monitor cable and run from the VGA port on the A3K tp the input on the Spectrum, and since the 3000 has a built in SD/FF, all your native modes show nicely (and automatically) on the same, inexpensive VGA monitor, making the integration of RTG seamless.  The Spectrum is not the best or fastest card around, but combined with the overclocked A3640, it makes the A3000 quite servicable.  I had that exact setup for a while and used it to surf the web, IRC, run photogenics, and even play MP3's.  DoomAttack is quite playable on it.  I upgraded from that to a CSPPC/CVPPC...I missed the Spectrum, even though the CVPPC was vastly superior...the ease of use of the spectrum was top notch.
The A3000 was a brilliant machine.  

If you get any accelerator with a scsi controller (CSPPC in particular), google INT-2 hack because you will need to make a mod for it to work correctly.

check out this page for detailed information how to o/c an A3640.

Overclocking the A3640

[Will-i-am]

jiffydos wrote:
You can install an A3640 in an A3000... but they did not come with one.

Sounds like his machine is never even booting kickstart.

I'd say to start with making sure that ALL your chips are seated correctly, especially the kickstart roms in the right hand corner.

Also, try holding down both mouse buttons as your turn the unit on.  This should give you a diagnostic/boot screen.  If not, something is likely hardware wrong.

kinda hate to jump in with this prob, but it was slightly on topic and maybe some other A3000 newbie will learn something. First I need a source for the jumpers and especially their location. I got zero manuals with this puppy. I have taken it down to the frame and reassembled it and with or without both mouse buttons pressed we get zip, nada nothing on screen. Bad sign, eh, except for the slight clicking sound from the HD makes me wonder what is it trying to do? I plan to open one of my a2000's, the one with 2.1 os and try swapping HDs as it looks from the software that came with it that it was running that OS. The battery is slightly fuzzy on one end. I guess I should check that out. I have a spare, although it is soldered.... Somebody messed with the covers on the daughterboard slots... that is there is a very odd cob job on one of the covers with part of a cover from what looks like an a2000 video slot cut in half and bolted to the normal slot cover only overlapping into the bay... real piece of work, I could do better with a chisel and piece of 16 ga steel. I replaced it. Lots of games, mostly war games like Falcon and A10 Tank Killer etc.... one paint program, Digipaint III. Odd. I really can't justify spending much more on my collection but I'd really like to get a working a3000! Anybody want to swap various hardware items for a working mobo if my efforts bottom out? Supergen, DCTV, Megalosound....? sigh..... :-? gee, did somebody HERE sell a broken a3000 on ebay real recently? I hope not.

[A3KOne]

Will-I-am

Maybe this will help...

A3K Tech Reference


More A3000 reference


Even More A3000 Info


Hope this helps!