Amiga 3000 or Upgraded Amiga 1200 (ECS vs AGA) --- Which should I use for daily use?

[McVenco]

Can't play AGA games on it, though...

That ain't so bad. Just install those few AGA games on the A4000 with WHDLoad. The majority of the games is OCS/ECS anyway (personally, the only AGA game that I play more than once a year is Slamtilt)

[Crom00]

Having owned an A500, 600, 1000, 1200, 3000, 3000T, 4000D, 4000T...cdtv and CD32

An A4000D or 4000T is the best bet (aga and maximum comapatiblity with modern upgrades) My A4000T had the CSPPC/060, 128 megs, Cybervision PPC, video toaster flyer, DCTV, TBCIV, Peggy plus, Scala (with a scala badge over the amiga badge) It was a great machine with BOTH scsi and IDE.

The A3000 for $3 is great. A graphics card is of use only if you want to play games that support the graphics card.
The picasso IV is good, even the EGS Spectrum is nice, Stay away from the Z2 Retina. A card that can pass through the signal and switch between the A3000 video and the graphics card is ideal.

The BIG plus is the A3000 is VGA out of the box, scsi drives are a dime a dozen on ebay or www.justdeals.com, people give away old scsi cd-roms.

You're lucky, aside from a $35 A1200 I recently scored I've paid with sweat, blood and hard earned duckets for all my amigas.

Oh and for the living room? An xbox running UAE on a lcdtv.
AGA, ECS and hardfile support plus every other emulator you can think of.

[Crom00]

Oh the A4000t has 2 video slots so I was able to use the commdore flicker fixer card to get flicker free video alongwith the video toaster. The colors cap out at 4096 for the commodore card becuase it wasn't 100% AGA compatible... but it worked and for the Toaster switcher screen it was great, I could switch between PC, MAC, and A4000T via a belkin 4 way KVM push button switch.

Used this setup for years, had some great times...No I can do most all of that (minus live vide switching) on a Dual Core MacBook with external firewire drives in HD.

[Crumb]

You already have a great system.

An A3000 will only give you headaches (The PSU is not much powerfull, scsi controller sucks, zip memory sucks, you'll need an accelerator and graphic card, ECS in hi-res is slow if you use more than 4colours, it won't run AGA games/demos and it won't run more games/demos than A1200 -simply use WHDLoad)

I had various machines (2 A500, A1200/040, 2 A3000,2 A4000, A4000T). The A3000 is nice but since I love demos there's no way it could replace my AGA machines.

I have a PPC A3000 with a lot of extras, but believe me: your current A1200 will be better than your A3000 even if you expand it with a 060 card. Since you already own a Mediator I guess you are using a Vooodoo3 right?

Do you really need various machines?

BTW... about your 060 card... have you installed the 68040/68060 libraries correctly? Have you tried Oxypatcher/Cyberpatcher? Have you tried changing the ram type? Have you tried to install a heatsink and fan? Have you tried cleaning the contacts between of the A1200 board, Mediator connector and turbocard? Have you tried to use other PSU? Your 060 card should be stable. Have you tried your 060 card without fast-ata and without mediator?

FastATA sucks... you'd better use the blizzard scsi controller with Yamaha SCSI-IDE adapters.


If I were you I would keep the A3000 as retro-system and expand the A1200 (with a scsi controller for the 060 or a PPC board)

[Tomas]

If you want to game, then the a1200 is definitely you choice. A1200+whdload will be much more compitable on a a1200.

I know there is alot of fanboyism when it comes to ECS vs. AGA but I want a truthful and honest answer; I already know AGA Is slower due to lack of chuncky mode.

I never heard about that part? I thought both chipset lacked it? Does anyone have any info/links regarding this?

[pan1k]

I second getting a 4000D (or T if you can find it...)

ECS is cool beans but an AGA machine has ECS, OCS.. blah blah you know.. I used my A1200 in a tower for everything.. word processing, web browsing, email, you name it.. then the processors started to die on me.. think it's because they weren't secured in a real CPU slot like the 4000 has, plus the 4000 isn't as cramped as a 3000 case..as mentioned above..

[Crumb]

BTW, If your bridgeboard is a CBM one you could use etherbridge device from aminet, fit a NE2000 ISA card and get Ethernet almost for free

I used for some years an old 286 bridgeboard and I used to get 300-400KB/s transfers with a 040/25

[Invisix]

Thanks everyone for your honest opinions.

@Crumb I bought that Blizzard brand new from Soft Hut back in '02 and it's never worked right. Tried to exchange and Software Hut never even bothered to exchange it. It's an XC modle meaning it has one of the first gen '060 CPU chips.

I really need to get a PPC603e@240Mhz/68060@50mHZ PPC board for my A1200 when I have the $ and when I can find one.

I might buy and upgrade an A4000 since PPC boards sold for those use a PPC604e chip, however they run at 233Mhz whilst the A1200 PPC cards run at 240Mhz.

[Flashlab]

Yeah but isn't the 603 slower than the 604 even though it's clock speed might be higher?

[Invisix]

@Flashlab yeah that's true...

I just need the funds to purchase an A4000 and all the upgrades including a PPC604e for it.

Maybe I should sell my towered A1200 + A3000 + PC to get the funds.

[Crumb]

A PPC A4000 is great and faster than a PPC A1200 but remember that A4000 accelerators are way more expensive than A1200 ones and that A4000 parts are harder to find and also more expensive.

Take a look again at that Blizzard, try it without mediator, with other PSU, with other RAM modules, without fastata, clean the contacts, check out that solder points look ok...

[motorollin]

Invisix wrote:
I just need the funds to purchase an A4000 and all the upgrades including a PPC604e for it.

Maybe I should sell my towered A1200 + A3000 + PC to get the funds.

Do it. You won't regret it. I used to have a great A1200 setup: D-Box, Mediator, Voodoo, Blizzard 1260, 128MB of RAM. I thought it was great, but then when I got my A4000 (see sig) it was so much better. It feels more "solid" to me, like it is put together as it was meant to be, unlike a maxed out A1200 which feels hacky and a bit unstable, like the Mediator could just fall off :lol:

Don't get me wrong, A1200s are a lot of fun. Buying loads of small upgrades and attaching them to the A1200 (and each other) can be very rewarding when it works. But when you want a stable, solid machine, you can't beat an A4000 IMO.

--
moto

[amigakit]

@Invisix

A well constructed D-Box 1200 system shouldn't have any stability problems.

If you add a Voodoo graphics card, this will radically change your A1200's capabilities.  AGA/ECS is one of the main performance constraints on an A1200 system (even with an 060).  If the system has a PCI + Voodoo added, this will exceed performance of any Zorro graphics card in an A4000.  The Voodoo chipset is far faster than the Virge DX in the Cybervision 64/3D and the Cirrus Logic GD5446 in the Picasso IV.  Similary a 100MB PCI network card would outstrip the X-Surf and Ariadne.

Of course A4000s can be the better system when they have a Mediator added, but that would require re-investment in a different Amiga system for you.  The performance differences  may not justify the cost differences between systems.

The benefits of a high spec A4000 (Mediator+Cyberstorm PPC) over a high spec A1200 (Mediator+Blizzard PPC) are:

- A1200 Mediator has 8MB transfer window constraint - this only affects when large amounts of data need to be sent.  A4000 Mediator doesnt suffer from the low limit.

- A4000 Cyberstorm PPC has superior PPC CPU to A1200 BlizzardPPC - may not be that important as very little software makes use of the performance benefit of the 604

- A4000 Cyberstorm PPC has superior SCSI to the A1200 BlizzardPPC - this is one main difference that requires consideration if you wish to use SCSI devices

- A4000 has slightly higher performance access to chipram - only used for legacy AGA/ECS applications- not used when using RTG and RTA.

- A4000 has Zorro III - you will have to decide if Zorro III is relevant to your intended use of the system.

- One small point: the Blizzard PPC can have maximum 256MB Fast Mem, whereas the Cyberstorm can have a max 128MB of Fast Mem.  May be relevant if you use Pagestream or similar applications that consume a lot of memory.

[Tenacious]

@ Invisix

You really have the best of both worlds.  I would only modestly upgrade the A3000.  I have an 060 in mine and it cost me some compatibilty (and still won't play Mp3s in full fidelity).  Go with an 030 or 040 that has extra ram expandability.

The built-in VGA is great!  It also opens many graphic card options:  Picasso IV, Picasso II, Spectrum, etc.  These cards are Picasso 96 compatible and will take the Amiga's native modes and pass them thru to a modern monitor.  This is worth it's wieght in gold.  If you intend to surf the net, a graphics card makes all the difference and is superior to AGA.

The A3000 is more repairable than later models due to most chips being socketed rather surface mounted.

The only modern thing this setup won't do well is Mp3s.  Add a MasPlayer (if you can find one) or use your incredible 1200.

I wouldn't sell either.

My 2 cents.  Grin

[marcfrick2112]

Invisix:
Not sure what prices you see for A4000's, but an outfit in Mission, KS may have refurbished A4000's for between $400.00 and $500.00...(Video Lab, owner is named Ed Jeffries) I don't have the phone number handy now, but you could search A.org... This guy is pretty good, motherboard is cleaned, all ports and drives tested, etc. He repaired both of my 4000's. Not sure how much a tricked out A1200 costs, but I seem to recall paying about $500.00 US for my Blizzard '060 and SCSI module.... not including anything else....

P.S. my $500.00 A4000 came with a WarpEngine/SCSI/64MB, not too bad as I spent upwards of $1000.00 on my first 4000 (many years ago)