My (new ) A2000

[quarkx]

Ok, so I git my "first" working Complete Amiga today (thanks again to Mpiva. He gave me a "stock" 2K, a Commodore 1084S Monitor with a glare guard and swivel base, a US robotics 33.6 k Baud external modem, a Agfa hand scanner and a boxed copy of final word 2 and lastly a A2088 PC Emulator card (not installed).
Inside is a A2090 HD controller in it with two 20Meg ST drives installed (which are probably loaded full of Amiga software).The bad "news" was he could no longer remember how to get the card to be recognized and how to make them bootable- so a chore for me now. He had mentioned that the motherboard was a rev.6, but it turns out to be a revision 4.3.
When I got home from work, the first thing I did was set it up and turn it on. It only has 1.3 roms, so I dug up some workbench disks and booted her up. I have at least 3 coppies of 1.3, but sadly only one workbench disk worked. I am not sure if the floppy drive needs cleaning or if I just have some dead disks, as I tried others and sometime got read errors.




I then decided to tear it apart and see inside.



the Serial number is really low, 007412 if that means anything, with no manual on the 2k I am flying abit blind.

The motherboard was just a tad dusty, but nothing bad, the battery was fine, but I decided not to risk it and removed it anyway.The motherboard also had the label JA0046253.



I then packed it back up, and booted it up again. I am noticeing that it boots to different screen resolutions, each time I boot. I am not sure why at this time. the 2, 20 meg drives are huge, they remind me of the old FMF drives.



 I did not install the A2088, for there is no software with it, and the unit doesn't have a 5 1/2 floppy drive.


More comming soon :lol:

[InTheSand]

Nice! Wouldn't mind an A2000 - lots of space inside that case for a CD writer!

That's my only real gripe about my A3K - the CD has to sit externally...

What do you plan to do with it? Any upgrades on the horizon or will you leave it with good ol' 1.3?

I hope you like blue and orange! :-)

 - Ali

[quarkx]

Slowly, I will upgrade it to as much as possible. I am looking into getting 3.1 roms, I have workbench disks. Of course ram  and cpu upgrades are a must and looking for a cd rom drive, it may take a while. The first thing is to get the existing drives to be recognized and it auto-booting, but i don't think the A2090 is an auto booting device. The nice thing is that the posibilites of it are almost endless.

[alexh]

Good idea to remove the battery before it leaks. Looks like it might be a bit furry which is the first signs it is about to leak. The Amiga will work fine without the battery.

If you are considering getting a hard drive, rather than screw around with ancient hard drives and a non-booting controller why not just get a Buddha? The Zorro II IDE controller by Individual Computers. The A2000 is the one computer that it is actually worth getting one. They are only CD $62. You will then be able to use IDE drives upto 128GBytes and IDE optical drives (CD-RW/DVD-RW) etc. You could even get an IDE to Compact Flash adapter. Install it into one of the front bays. It would make it VERY easy to transfer files between the PC and the Amiga!!

NOTE: I've heard that the newest Kingston CF cards are a bit fussy with Amiga IDE controllers, while I think this refers to A600/A1200/A4000 internal IDE controllers, best to be safe and avoid this brand. SanDisk and Leisurestore are known to work well.

[ajlwalker]

Wow!  A Signetics CPU.

I never heard of them before today!

[quarkx]

alexh wrote:
Good idea to remove the battery before it leaks. Looks like it might be a bit furry which is the first signs it is about to leak. The Amiga will work fine without the battery.

If you are considering getting a hard drive, rather than screw around with ancient hard drives and a non-booting controller why not just get a Buddha? The Zorro II IDE controller by Individual Computers. The A2000 is the one computer that it is actually worth getting one. They are only CD $62. You will then be able to use IDE drives upto 128GBytes and IDE optical drives (CD-RW/DVD-RW) etc. You could even get an IDE to Compact Flash adapter. Install it into one of the front bays. It would make it VERY easy to transfer files between the PC and the Amiga!!

NOTE: I've heard that the newest Kingston CF cards are a bit fussy with Amiga IDE controllers, while I think this refers to A600/A1200/A4000 internal IDE controllers, best to be safe and avoid this brand. SanDisk and Leisurestore are known to work well.

I will definably look into that, I much prefer IDE components (as I have tons of them kicking around) over scsi any day.

ajlwalker wrote:
 Wow! A Signetics CPU.

I never heard of them before today!

they are pretty rare, but look at the numbers on it. if I am reading it correctly, it says 8 n64. I wonder if that means 8 Mhz overclocked to 64? (nice wish). I would believe also that this is probably an aftermarket CPU, not Commodore issued or one of their regular suppliers.

[quarkx]

Here are pictures of the scanner and the A2088 board.

[countzero]

quarkx wrote:

they are pretty rare, but look at the numbers on it. if I am reading it correctly, it says 8 n64. I wonder if that means 8 Mhz overclocked to 64? (nice wish). I would believe also that this is probably an aftermarket CPU, not Commodore issued or one of their regular suppliers.

No way. A 64 MHz 68000 is just not possible (maybe except in FPGA) and overclocking the CPU sitting on the CPU socket of an Amiga will break all sorts of things. That's a plain simple replacement for a Motorola chip, I had a couple which popped out from A2000s too. Nothing rare or precious.

[tokyoracer]

Your first Amiga is a 2000!? I am so jealous. :-(

Congrats anyway.

[quarkx]

tokyoracer wrote:
Your first Amiga is a 2000!? I am so jealous. :-(

Congrats anyway.

Actually, No, I received an A1k and an A500 about 6 months ago, The 1K needs a new power supply and I had no monitor or A520 for the 500, so technically I could only use it in B/W (which is no fun at all). Both are in pieces and the cases getting professionally painted.They were so tared and yellowed that they would never have gotten clean
The A2K is the fist USABLE Amiga that is complete with monitor that I have gotten, But thanks anyway.

[mpiva]

Glad you're enjoying the "new" system.

quarkx wrote:
He had mentioned that the motherboard was a rev.6, but it turns out to be a revision 4.3.

Sorry about that.  To be honest, I didn't actually check the motherboard; I based that off of the fact that Workbench showed it had 1024k of RAM and that the Big Book of Amiga Hardware says that Rev 3.x/4.x/5.x has 512k of RAM and that the 6.x has 1024k.  Now I'm curious why it has so much RAM as I don't recall the being any RAM cards installed.

[CLS2086]

Congrats it's a nice machine  ;-)

[T3000]

ya might want to clean out that power supply and dust off that motherboard.   :-o  

[quarkx]

T3000 wrote:
ya might want to clean out that power supply and dust off that motherboard.   :-o  

That was already done right after the pictures were taken :-)

[rkauer]

 You don't have to paint the cases.

 Peroxide (H2O2) in 30~35% concentration plus a bit of TAED (Tetra-acetyl-ethylene-diamine)
 plus direct sunlight (or an UV-lamp) will make everything goes back
 to original colour. A full day for direct sunlight and TAED, up to 4 days
 on direct sunlight and peroxide only.