Greetings, from Ontario, Canada!

[DigitalQ]

Greetings.  I have been an Amiga owner since 1988, and still have my original (albeit beat up) Amiga 500.  I still have all my disks, hardware, a spare A500, and just recently acquired a beautiful Amiga 2000.  The A2000 is my current project, which I'm building up.

I've lurked here for a while and have gotten a lot of useful information.  I'm a member at lemon Amiga, but it doesn't seem as active nor as informative as things are here.  That, and I see that I have some knowledge from my years of Amiga experience to share.  So, without further ado, I shall end this message here and move on to see how I can be of use!

[sandpiper]

@DigitalQ

Welcome and Merry Christmas. Where are you in Ontario? I am in Mississauga. I too started with an A500 in the 80s.

[thanos]

Hello!

I'm out in Caledonia, near Hamilton.

Merry Christmas.

[Retro_71]

Welcome and Merry Christmas and Joyous New Year.  :cheers:

[HammerD]

@DigitalQ

Greetings! I am in London, Ontario...couple other Amiga users here, but I don't see them that much...

[Ken86Stang]

Welcome!  Let us know about the A2000 buildup!

[amigaclyde]

Welcome, and Merry XMas and Happy New Year to you also.
Let us know how everything goes with your A2000. :-)

[DigitalQ]

I'm from Oshawa.

So far, with the A2000, I've replaced the clock battery, installed a triple kickstart ROM, and upgraded the 68000 with a 68010.  I plugged in an old 2090 card I used to use with my old A500 and a slingshot expander.  I also have a SCSI Iomega zip drive for it, with more zip disks than I'll ever need!

I have a memory and accelerator card I also picked up at World of Commodore, but it requires a hardware modification to my motherboard to make it work.  I'm a little uncomfortable doing that.  Changing the clock battery is one thing; cutting traces and soldering in jumper wires is another.

I presently have a legit copy of Workbench 2.04 with full documentation, which is probably what I'll install once I source a decent hard drive and possibly a better hard drive controller.  I'm using a 1084s with it, but I also wouldn't mind upgrading the video at some point.

Here's what it looks like as of now:


Besides this and two A500's, I also have a CD32 in my collection to play those AGA games:



I have other Commodores in my collection too; but most are fairly recent acquisitions.  2 C128's, a C64, a 1571, a 1541c, two 1541's, a Vic 20, a C16, a couple datasette drives, a 1701, a 1702, and two more 1084's (one needs the flyback transformer resoldered).  

Out of my entire collection, the A2000 is my favourite.   :-D

[sandpiper]

DigitalQ,

Nice A2000. Its one of my favourite Amigas.  You will have fun expanding it. I have one as well that is expanded just about to the limits of available slots (Picasso IV gfx card, Blizzard 060 cpu & scsi card, x-surf, delfina, subway, GVP I/O etc). I have used many different accelerator cards in my A2000 and have never had to modify traces on the motherboard. What accelerator are you using and what is the rev of your motherboard?

How much Amiga stuff do they have at the World of Commodore show? Thats not too far from where I live. I wish I had heard of it beforehand.

[DigitalQ]

The accelerator is a CSA 68020/68881 CPU board, with a CSA Turbo Amiga memory board.  The CPU board plugs into the CPU slot, while the memory board plugs into a Zorro slot.  The two boards are connected by four sets of ribbon cables.  Apparently, it was designed for the earlier revision of Amiga 2000 (prior to Rev. 4.0), and to make it work on newer Amiga motherboards, it's necessary to cut a trace and run a jumper wire to "Correct a clock signal possible design error to the coprocessor socket CN600 on the motherboard."  According to the manual.

It would probably work great for someone with an earlier revision A2000, but I don't really feel like hacking mine up if other accelerator cards will work fine.  As a historical note, I believe this is the earliest accelerator available for the Amiga.  The serial number is hand printed on the card!  It's number B4256.  Who knows; I may have my hands on an early prototype.

As for World of Commodore, there was a fair amount of Amiga stuff for sale.  The guy I bought the A2000 from was also selling a loaded A1200, as well as various Kickstart chips.  I bought the accelerator card from another person who had mostly 8 bit stuff; I also got Workbench 2.04 disks and full documentation from yet another vendor who had a wide variety of stuff; even classic videogame consoles!

Here's a shot I took there, showing a couple of the tables:


Another shot:

My haul:


Some of this stuff was stuff my son got from the show; mostly from the free table (ie; 1541's).  It was a lot of fun; I'm definitely going back next year.