I'm an idiot.

[nubbins]

Hi everyone, I'm new at this Amiga thing. I thought I was experienced (had an Amiga 500 almost 20 years ago.)

Well, now I have an Amiga 2000, and I'm finding out that there is more to these things than inserting a floppy disk and playing.

I was curious as to what the latest OS I could run would be, it would need to be on floppys, and info on where I can buy it. I have Workbench 1.3, and it seems very limited. And I screwed up my HD boot disk this morning trying to make a back-up (read the title of this post).
I really want to be able to transfer between PC and Amiga, but from what I read my SCSI card and HD are weak at best.
The unit is a bone stock A2000 with an A2090 disk controller and only 20MB HD.
Is it worth getting a new boot disk? I don't need anything on there. Is there anywhere to get controllers and drives, other than Ebay?

Any help would be appreciated, and I'm sure I'll be asking more questions once I get my null modem cable.
And thanks to those who have already helped me out.

[Tension]

Use PC2Amiga when you get your cable.  It`s on AmiNet here:

http://aminet.net/package/comm/misc/PC2Am308

Small, easy to set-up, and works reliably even on stock Amigas.  The drives on the PC appear as a disk icon on the Workbench screen called 'PC'.  Then the PCs drive letters show up as drawers in the opened window.  I used it for years, it`s great!!

You can get Workbench3.1 for the A2000 as well.  You`ll need to open up the case and swap the Kickstart ROM chips over unless you already have them installed.

[nishtek]

Welcome to Amiga 2000.
Available for sale : Floppy disks and Floppy drives fully tested.  I also send you a PM.  
Will provide some advice what you may want to do with your A2000, but need some photos.  You can post them here too if you'd like.
Null Modem is one of many ways of transfering files.  The best one is a network card, and the cheapest one is OS 3.1 which comes with CROSSDOS. (i think 2.1 has it also) :-)

[NovaCoder]

Hi everyone, I'm new at this Amiga thing. I thought I was experienced (had an Amiga 500 almost 20 years ago.)

Well, now I have an Amiga 2000, and I'm finding out that there is more to these things than inserting a floppy disk and playing.

Hiya,

It depends what you're after from your retro computing experience but you might be better off getting a 1200 and installing OS 3.9.

With a 1200 you can play loads of OCS/ECS/AGA games/demos off your HD drive with WHDLOAD with a simple double-click of your mouse button.  You can also plug in a wireless network card and access shared files on your PC with something like EasyNet.

Anyway, have fun with your new toy

[TjLaZer]

I would get a Kickstart 3.1 ROM, WB 3.1 disk set, a 2091 SCSI card (or similar card like a GVP Series II) and a larger SCSI HD and go from there.

[new2amga]

If speed is not a serious factor, you could always get a Buddha Flash Phoenix Card from Amigakit so you can use IDE drives.  The only thing is that you need a 2.04 or 2.05 (don't know which) Kickstart ROM to make it work.  Once you have a newer kickstart you can install a newer AmigaOS, and the Buddha card is autoboot on 2.04 or higher Kickstart, don't think it works on a Kickstart ROM earlier than that though.  I use one, and it's faster than my 2091 card was, because I didn't have any ram for the card, and I have tons of IDE hard drives lying around.  Little harder to get SCSI I drives around here.

[nubbins]

Wow, thanks for all of the suggestions. I'm going to find out what Kickstart ROM I have, and start from there. Too many choices. Thanks again.

[motrucker]

No one bothered to tell you that 1.3 is very likely the newest OS you can run from Floppies! Even 2.0 has too much to be run well from floppy disks only.
The best bet is to get the 3.1 ROM, but you'll have to get a new hard drive - Get a 2091 card, and a SCSI hard drive. Then install OS 3.1 onto the new hard drive. Even that is a real basic system, but will work fine.
BTW - chances are real good you have a 1.3 ROM in there now.