The Best Amiga Computer Is An A3000?

[Jope]

The A3000(T) is nice and stable hardware wise, but both the desktop and the tower are not mechanically very nice for expansions.

There's no room for anything in the desktop, even though it looks nice.

I'm considering relocating my A3000T into a generic ATX fulltower case, just because the original tower's construction sucks so bad. (vertical drive bracket, drive rails, millions of screws that need to be in to keep the system rigid, otherwise everything falls apart constantly)

Sure, it's sturdy, but that's the only positive feature about it.

Yet still I regard the A3000T as the best Amiga commodore ever mass produced. The A4000T is probably the second..

[4pLaY]

McVenco wrote:
Apart from all the functional reasons that are summed up above this post, there is one more reason why the A3000 is better than the A4000:

It's pretty!

The A4000 is just an altered Commodore PC desktop case, while the A3000 is a design of it's own.

pretty? i never understood that! ever since it was released i thought it was ugly! each to his own taste i suppose! as to if the original poster should buy the A3000! it depends! price/what you want to do with it? there is very litle space inside an A3000D if you wish to upgrade with cpu etc..

[alexh]

Dont believe the hype. (most being re-iterated in this thread)

The A4000 is "the best" Amiga ever made to date.

It is everything the A3000 is, and it has AGA.

How can the A3000(T) be "the best" Amiga when it doesnt run (and can never be made to run) a proportion of Amiga software?

"But the A3000(T) has a better looking, higher quality case!"

So what? I dont know about you, but I tend to look at the screen when I am using my Amiga.

"But the A3000(T) has a built in scandoubler!"[/b]

So what? You can buy one for the A4000(T), I'd like to see you buy AGA support for the A3000(T). (i.e. you cant)

"But the A3000(T) has SCSI!"[/b]

It's slow SCSI-1 and the A4000T has fast SCSI-II! Plus the A4000(T) has IDE for cheap drives. If you want SCSI-1 on your A4000D you can get a comparable Zorro-II SCSI card very cheap.

Also A3000(T) motherboards have to have INT2 mods done before you can use accelerators with SCSI controllers!

"But the A3000(T) has faster motherboard RAM!"

Yeah, stoopid, expensive, hard to find ZIP RAM! A4000(T) has nice, cheap, easy to find 72-pin SIMMS. Any speed differences is negated to zero when you get an accelerator (with RAM).

A4000T has a second video slot meaning you can use a video toaster AND an RTG card.

[Invisix]

@alexh

I have to agree completely with everything you stated. :pint:  8-)

[Kin-Hell]

alexh wrote:
Dont believe the hype. (most being re-iterated in this thread)

The A4000 is "the best" Amiga ever made.

It is everything the A3000 is, and AGA.

How can the A3000 be "the best" Amiga when it doesnt run and can never be made to run a proportion of Amiga software?

The whole Amiga Community I knew when the A4K was released in 1992, all sighed with dissapointment at the lack of onboard SCSI.
Since the demise of the Big C=, everyone has forgot just what SCSI was all about & how it intergrated with the Amiga Hardware.
Sure, the A4 series wern't as solidly built as the A3 series, but as Alex says above, the A4 was capable of more colours & newer/faster software to take advantage of AGA.
Actually, the A4 series should never have been released. The A4 was a prototype for the A3500 which was planned as an A3000 with Flicker Fixer, SCSI & AGA chipset. The A4 series was a result of a cheaper product to manufacture, but should really have been the AAA chipset. This was the final nail in the coffin for C= as their marketing strategys were simply just not aggressive enough. C= sat on their arses too long raking the money in as a gaming computer. The hardware developers must have been really pissed off at not seeing AAA implemented.
I had an A3000D before my A4000 in 1993. I loved it, but it moved sideways after I threw a SCSI card & PicassoIV in the A4KD.
I never looked back.  ;-)

LOL Alex...I can't keep up with ur Editing!  :lol:
I agree with Invisix too. 10/10   :-)

[Damion]

+1 for the A3000+.

[alexh]

-D- wrote:
+1 for the A3000+.

Unreleased prototypes dont count! The lines between truth and myth blur too much.

Zac67 wrote:
Imho the best machine is an A3000+ (A3k with AGA+DSP, could use more slots though) or an A4000T (the only thing it misses is a flicker fixer).

Did you know the A3000+ didn't have a scandoubler either?

[tokyoracer]

I think the A4000D/T is still the best. Yes it doesn't have all this as standard but I don't think you can really go without AGA. The 4000 can have all that if you fork out a bit more.

[McVenco]

By just looking at the standard machine (not taking into account any addons like an accelerator or Picasso-IV) I will still vote for the A3000.

To modern day standards the SCSI-I is slow, true, but that's not what retro is about (and to me, Amiga is retro, and not competing to any modern day computer).
The only advantage of a standard A4000 are AGA and easy memory adding via SIMMs (which was just as expensive as ZIP ram back in the days), but AGA has not much of an advantage over ECS when you use it as a productivity machine (which they both are - want to play games? buy an A1200!). Who needs a 262,144 color Workbench when you're coding or writing some documents?

As for the tower versions and expansions: sure, the A4000T has faster SCSI, but when you add a Cyberstorm and/or Picasso, you must do that to the A3000T as well to have an honest comparison. Result? Still not much difference between the 2, apart from AGA, which you don't use much with that Picasso installed anyway. 2 video slots? Nice, but people who don't do any video-related stuff on their Amiga aren't likely to have much use for it.

The cases in overall view indeed again: each to his own taste. I find the A4000D very boring, and the A3000D very pretty. The A3000T might be a heavy beast with lots of screws, but at least you can take a side panel off without the need to topple the machine over because the A4000T's side panel also includes the top and bottom side of the case. But then again, I find the looks of the A4000T nicer than the A3000T (which looks a bit too massive)


Conclusion:
I would choose the A3000 when it comes to desktops and the A4000T when it comes to the tower versions. Any comparison between an A3000D and A4000T (or the other way round: A3000T vs. A4000D) is nonsense in my opinion. As for functionality, it's almost a tie between them. Like I said: you don't buy an A3000 or A4000 to play games, so please don't mention AGA. The only useful program that I know that uses AGA is DPaint.


End of rant. I'm now going to think happy thoughts again :-)

[Terse]

The 1000 is best by most meanings of the word "best."

Perhaps you meant to ask which Amiga is the most expandable?

*edit*
You also didn'tsay for what expansion. I saw a guy with a 2000 the other day with a 486 card, macintosh card, sound blaster, VGA card, NIC, Apple IIe card, RTG card, 060 card, and I think a toaster.  He said he used it for retro game shows becuse it could test IBM, Amiga, older Mac, and Apple 2 disks using one box.  I think the Amiga has a 300watt PSU and more ISA slots than the 3000 or 4000, (but maybe not the tower.)  So for that purpose I'd say the 2000 may be the "best" machine.

[Crumb]

@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).

[alexh]

McVenco wrote:
Who needs a 262,144 color Workbench when you're coding or writing some documents?

Depends if you are coding for AGA ;-)

Like I said: you don't buy an A3000 or A4000 to play games, so please don't mention AGA.

Maybe not back then, but now, yes you do. I did. The majority of A4k users today did. We bought our A4k's for demos, games and Zorro III RTG workbench.

The only useful program that I know that uses AGA is DPaint.

The days of any Amiga program being "useful" are over. It is now purely a machine for nostalgia and fun.

[Tripitaka]

Your all mad! A1200 is the best Amiga. AGA and fits in a wedge or a tower. As for an SD/FF, why? I'd rather spend cash on a monitor that can suppport my machines video then spend it on converting signals and suffering any signal degradation.

SCSI is an issue I guess, but not a hard one to fix for the 1200. :-D

Feel free to disagree, my opinions are my own.

[McVenco]

alexh wrote:

Depends if you are coding for AGA ;-)

Then you probably are coding demos (or games), so then the A1200 is the machine you really want :-)

We bought our A4k's for demos, games and Zorro III RTG workbench.

I disagree with the demos and games. Sure, I may be a nutcase with way too many Amigas but when I came back to Amiga I wanted a bigbox to do productivity stuff and a wedge cased Amiga for games - games just 'feel' better when played on an A500 or 1200 :-)

The days of any Amiga program being "useful" are over. It is now purely a machine for nostalgia and fun.

And that's exactly the reason why it bothers me that people call the A3000 a useless piece of machinery. I have used an unexpanded A3000 as my main computer for several years (about a decade ago). It ran almost 24/7 and it never gave me ANY problems. I had an external Apple PhotoCD player as a single speed SCSI CD drive which was just perfect.
An A3000 can't take a Mediator? So what? If I want "retro" with PCI cards I'll buy a Pentium 2 and run windows 3.11.

If you value an Amiga by the way you can expand it then please throw away all A1000s and A600s since there's almost NO way to have use for these machines then.

[alexh]

McVenco wrote:
throw away all A1000s and A600s since there's almost NO way to have use for these machines then.

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

[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? :-)