The Best Amiga Computer Is An A3000?

[McVenco]

alexh wrote:

Why anyone would want anything other than an A1200, A4000 or CD32 is beyond me.

Anybody ever tell you you're an AGA wh*re? :-)

[Darrin]

Can I just point out that a Military Spec A2000 is by far the best Amiga available and that the rest are all crap (so I'm told by an (un)reliable source.   ;-)

[Acill]

Well as you can see this thread hasn't made it any more clear. I do have to put my vote with the A3000 as well though. Why? Well when te system was being developed the engineers were a lot better. They put everything in sockets, the board is very well made, it's case is built to last as can be seen by just how many are still in use today. It came with everything every Amiga user was asking for out of the box, and you paid the price for all that too.

The A4000 was a cost saving version of what the next A3000 was going to become. The engineers for forced to make cuts, built it as cheap as they could, and take a lot out of what they wanted to put into it. In the end it had a lit of great features, but nothing like the A3000+ has and I know, I have one and it works.  All of this lead to a ton of dead A4000 systems, a ton of revisions to attempt to fix the  issues, and resulted in a even poorer model in the end. How many have seen the cost reduced version of the A4000?

So in terms of engineering and design the A3000 is by far the best Amiga ever produced.


Oh and for those saying the A3000 cant take a mediator? I think you better look again, mine has one in it and it s working great with a Voodoo 5, a soundblaster card, a 100MB ethernet card, a USB card and a TV card in it.

http://buy.elbox.com/cgibin/shop?info=209M3D&sid=266e2c82

[adonay]

The amiga 3000 sux it needs several fixes and even a buster upgrade to be usable AFAIK with newer hardware. It also has little room inside comes with ECS chipset and weighs a ton . Wow it has scandoubler so does my amiga 1200ds right no amber but still ....

[Fixer]

Okay okay, I'm gonna simplify my opinion on this:

Best out the box (functionality/productivity):

The Amiga 3000D

Best Amiga for general things (games/AGA/simple add-ons):

The Amiga 1200

Best Amiga:

The Amiga 4000T (or 4000D as long as it is expanded)

[A1260]

alexh & Crumb for the win!!!!!!!! the a3000 fanbois have been crushed!  :-D

[ChaosLord]

My A1200T r00lz u all!  :crazy:  *WAHAHAHAAAA!!*   :roflmao:

[McVenco]

A1260 wrote:
alexh & Crumb for the win!!!!!!!! the a3000 fanbois have been crushed!  :-D

Meh, I still don't see a winner. Most arguments against the A3000 are that it's a b*tch to upgrade, and expensive to upgrade... Also, people tend to forget that the A3000 is quite some years older than the A4000, so that's another reason why you can't compare them in a neutral way. They both are completely different machines for that matter.

And finally (I'm going to stop ranting now, honestly), it's all a matter of taste, and what you use your Amigas for.
Therefore *I* think the A600, A1000, CDTV and AmigaOne completely suck (burn all of them!), and the A500, A3000 and A4000T are cool.

[amiga92570]

Crumb wrote:
@dannyp1

He said that the A3000 was actually the best computer Amiga had made. Is there any truth in this?

I have owned/own various amiga models (A500/A600/A2000/A3000/A4000/A4000T)

A3000 is overrated. IMHO it's crap compared to an A4000:
-It doesn't have ROM3.1 (you have to buy it)
-It doesn't have Buster11 (you have to buy it)
-It has a crap and slow SCSI interface that heats up DMAC chip and usually has problems with multiple devices. A4000T has IDE and a much better SCSI controller.
-It doesn't have IDE interface. A4000 has IDE.
-You may have to replace DMAC+Ramsey because ZorroIII sucks on A3000. In addition to that A3640 has problems with it so forget about cheap accelerators.
-The case is rubbish. You have to modify it (cutting it) to fit a proper accelerator and it doesn't have space for CDROM. A4000 in contrast has space for 4 3.5" devices and one 5.15" device. A3000 loses with just 3 3.5" devices but cut that to two if you fit an accelerator. In addition to that A3000 doesn't provide good air flow to the cpu accelerator. It doesn't provide you space to put a proper scsi controller external connector so you have to cut the case (again).
-You can't put inside an internal Mediator4000Di or GREX4000. The only solution is using a Prometheus and waste a lot of slot space.
-Oh yes, it doesn't have AGA. That means it's useless for demoscene stuff and even a crap A1200 will be much more fun for that.
-It uses crap ZIP memory. For those who don't know what's that it means you have to deal with small chips that don't want to fit inside the damn socket, have 200 more chances of failing than SIMMs due to bad contacts and that are expensive and hard to find.

The only good point A3000 has is the internal flickerfixer. But it's useless and rubbish compared to PicassoIV flickerfixer.

In addition to that you can add a cheap scandoubler to your A4000 that will make your A4000 run rings around the old A3000. You may argue that "oh, an scandoubler doesn't come as standard" but it's much cheaper and better than upgrading an A3000.

A4000T is clearly the best if you want to expand it.

A1200 is the best features/price if you don't plan to expand it much.

A3000 is a hole where you can throw a lot of money and you won't get a system that can do all you can do with the two previous.


For those who think I hate A3000 I must say I own one with CSPPC, CV64, Toccata, Prometheus... but it's crap compared to my previous A4000 and I had to waste a lot of money upgrading it. And after wasting a lot of money it won't never be as good as an A4000 (Tower or desktop).

You have to buy 3.1 for all amigas except 4000T, unless you purchased very late in the game. Most amiga 4000s did not come with buster 11 except for 4000T. I never experienced ZorroIII problems with 3000 providing you swap the buster to REV 11. The 3640 REV 3.1 and above has no problems with 3000 providing you have 3.1 roms. I have all models of amigas and I like them all. I think AGA is pretty useless as most of the good games run on RTG anyway. I think if you want to play around with the Amiga computer platform, just try to buy something that works and doesn't strain your budget, and most any of the amiga models will give you your fix.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

IMHO:
The A1000; the most advanced machine of it's time
The A500; the best price/performance of it's time
The A2000; the best upgradeable machine
The A3000; heavily equipped with kinda everything
The CDTV; the best design
The A600; too late, but really nice small, expecially considering the A600HD

AGA just came too late, but nevertheless, practically beseen, you're best off with an AGA machine (a towered A1200 with a big huge cheap ide harddisk and an accelerator I think is the most realistic option)

[Speelgoedmannetje]

McVenco wrote:
Therefore *I* think the A600, A1000, CDTV and AmigaOne completely suck (burn all of them!), and the A500, A3000 and A4000T are cool.

After him! Burn the heretic! BURN BURN BURN!

[HammerD]

@Acill

Why do you think the A4000-CR is worse than the normal Revision B A4000?

The CR model adds:

-Lithium coin-type battery (no leakage)
-header for external battery
-on some models, on-board 030 and socket for FPU
(C= shipped an A4000/LC040 that had A3640 and no 030 onboard - I know I have one
-on board chip ram (you can argue this either way, good or bad)
-Revision 11 buster standard

So I would say the A4000-CR is actually a better board than a normal A4000 Rev. B.

[Crumb]

So in terms of engineering and design the A3000 is by far the best Amiga ever produced.

Don't make me laugh. You have to upgrade a lot of chips due to engineering bugs (buster/dmac/ramsey/scsi). SCSI interface is not exactly brilliant, just like the case. socketed chips often pop out of the socket and cause problems. ZIP memory can have bad contact with the socket easily. You have to make INT2 modifications... and engineers learn from their mistakes.

Oh and for those saying the A3000 cant take a mediator? I think you better look again, mine has one in it and it's working great

So you are saying A3000 case is crap and you have to put it into an expensive tower to make it useful?

I didn't write anywhere you can't put your A3000 into an ugly and expensive tower, I said standard case is the worst amiga big box case ever built.

In addition to that you can't keep the original case just like you would do with an A4000 & a Mediator4000Di. Your computer motherboard is a just a "card" inside an alien  box. In contrast both Mediator4000Di/GRex4000 use the original box. A3000 case is crap and you have to waste a lot of money putting your motherboard inside a tower.

FYI, if you don't upgrade your Buster to rev 11, A4000 will have faster Zorro.


BTW, you can use AGA for Scala, Brilliance and other apps, not just games&demos.

Why? Well when te system was being developed the engineers were a lot better.

That's rubbish and nonsense. Look at any A4000 motherboard and you'll read BERLIN/HAYNIE FISHER/GUAY.

Open up your A3000 and you'll read TF/HD/DH/GB/SH/JB/MN

Are you saying David Haynie and Greg Berlin (the creators of the A3000) are worse than... David Haynie and Greg Berlin? Uh yeah that makes sense.

[amiga92570]

Boy, there are endless opinions on this subject. I wonder if any actually answered the posters question? I will add one other thing. If you want to run OS 4.0 with the hardware supported so far 3000(T) and 4000(T) will work equally well. I hope Amigakit gets my OS 4.0 soon.

[Starrfoxx]

I never had a 3000, but I do have a couple of 4000d's.  I personally think that WinUAE is the best Amiga, because it's the cheapest solution.   :-D

Too bad it can't run the Video Toaster though, otherwise it would be perfect for what I want.

[Tripitaka]

Are you lot still arguing?
I'm with Chaos Lord, 1200T all the way!!




....but given the choice between 3 or 4,000 I'd pick aa A4000T every time.