Just got myself an A3000... need some help! :D

[amiga4000freak]

I was the one you outbid me on the amiga 3000 anyway well done
How much do u think amiga 2000 with a amber scandoubler a 020 fast cpu with a scsi controller with extra ram and all the manuals for the cards is worth its in good condition

[darksun9210]

woops, sorry about that :red face:

hmmm. not sure. sounds like you've got a fairly sweet setup. and the prices of these things seems to be heading skywards.
i got my A4k 030 with motorolin's psu mod, and a couple of other tweeks for £150 a while ago. now base 030's are going for £250+ and up. saw a vanilla A4k/040 with a couple of bits up for £500+ :O

a loaded A2k should fetch a good amount of pennies, just make sure it can run WHDLoad at least.
zorro cards seem pretty pricey just for themselves. but as with everything, you've got to have what other people want.
and they're usually, "what's in the box?" so have you got blizzard/firecracker/gvp accelerator? cybervision/picasso gfx?

i'm after ethernet cards, but dayum, Commodore A2065's at £180 each? phew! that's too rich for my blood.

but the market just seems to be going up at the moment. it's not been this pricey or busy for amiga stuff for a good while.

[amiga4000freak]

full spec


Commodore Amiga 1500 / 2000
2 floppy drives
A2620 Accelerator Card
2058 expansion to 2mb
2320 display enhancer
GVP HL8/11 Scsi/Ram cntroller card
120mb hard drive
Relgase 2.1 Enhancer kit
Keyboard
Mouse

For a £110

[danbeaver]

Might start a new thread on that one, Freak

[darksun9210]

yeowser! all that for £110? that sounds like a pretty good bargin! that's what i paid for my first A2000 (totally stock) all those years ago.
two questions, ram on the accelerator card? (given that it's soldered) ram on the GVP card? fpu 881/882?

the accelerator's not the greatest, but there are a few 030 based jobs on t' ebay that are a resonable price. the amber card is probably the most coveted item there i'd guess, what with the market for scan doublers to be able to feed flat panel TV's and the like.

sorry, getting off topic a bit

[danbeaver]

Yeah, new thread time

[darksun9210]

ok, well, thanks everyone for your assistance i've learnt a bit today at least.

i'll come back to this thread if i have further issues, but now we're pretty golden

thanks again!

[matt3k]

2 other things I just thought of.

1. Snag scsiprefsmui from Aminet.  Run it even if you don't have a battery, it clears amensia and you can set sync and fast scsi.  Make IO lots faster.  (without a battery it will not survive a cold boot).
2. You may want to reseat all the chips, may as well use some circuit board cleaner if you do.

[darksun9210]

ah! good info thanks
not sure how much IO throughput this old 52MB quantum drive can push

tried it with an acard scsi2ide bridge, and cf adapter with 4GB CF card.
on boot the hard disk light pulses as it scans the SCSI IDs for devices, but then takes me back to the floppy boot screen. fair enuff.
stuffed in workbench3.0 install floppy, booted, ran HDtoolbox. no devices found

maybe get the bus terminated, and some 3.1roms in there, and we'll be cooking on gas regarding the acard adapter and CF cards

i've reseated the chips, almost as a matter of course really these days i guess.

one thing i have noticed, plugged a microvitec 1438 into the amber output, and with the 31khz disabled, i get a nice screen, but a little bit of pixel jitter happens now and then. switch amber on, and the screen goes completely out of scan range, still see something, but it's very corrupt.
plugged the microvitec in to the 23pin RGB port via the official silver 23pin to 15pin vga adapter, and a rock solid pal display.

i take it my amber hardware is somewhat non-functional? initally tried running an NEC1780nx multiscan LCD off the amber port, but for both on or off switch positions, i got "signal out of range" notification - hence pulling the old faithfull microvitec out of storage and using that instead.

[lost_loven]

Did you actually turn on the switch for amber and then turn on the machine? Don't think you will get a display while toggling the amber switch 15/31khz while machine is on. Pretty sure is has to be cold booted to what ever toggled format you want.

lost

[darksun9210]

didn't think of that, ok, i'll have a look tonight

[matt3k]

Amber probably is fine.  Your monitor probably can't run below at 15khz.  Try adjusting the fine tuner in back of the 3000 to get rid of the occasional jitters.

If your going to expand the box pick up a Buster 11, they are fairly easy to find.

If you don't have 3.1 I would recommend you get that as well...

As you mentioned above, the market for the 3000 cards are up there, my guess is a real good 3k accelerator will always be high.  Save your pennies for a Warp Engine 3040 or a Cyberstorm MKIII, they work the best in the desktop.

As far as NIC's go, the best zorro nics are the X-Surf and the Ariadne (not the II version).  From my test years ago the Ariadne was the fastest nic in Amiga Zorro land.  The Xsurf is a nice card also with expansion capabilities.

Video - the best zorro based video cards are the Picasso IV, Retina Z3, and the Cybervision 64.  The slower cards are to slow at higher resolutions.

The best addition will be a video card and a nic.  The video will greatly speed up workbench and using the amiga on a lan at decent speeds is convenient.

From my experience, much better to save up for the good stuff, it makes the 3k really nice to use daily...

Thats my 10,000,000,000 Cents (2 cents adjusted for inflation).

[darksun9210]

hmmm, my microvitec can sync down to standard pal frequencies and up to most vga type stuff. i think it tops out at 1024x768 iirc... so, we'll see...

ok cool. buster 11 added to the list
Cyberstorm3+cybervision are kinda dream machine parts. hoping that the ultimatePPC team keep it together, and produce something for the marketplace.

am now on the hunt for cybervision64/3D's and zorro ethernet solutions.

did you ever hear about the ethernet controller on the wildfire A2000 accelerator - able to DMA direct into fastram. i'd like to see those performance stats!

3.1roms are on order, with a stack of zips

i want a couple of fully kitted out amiga workhorse machines, ready to rock when the impending x86 appocolypse happens :laughs:

cheers matt3k, all info more than welcome!

[Zac67]

Don't think you will get a display while toggling the amber switch 15/31khz while machine is on. Pretty sure is has to be cold booted to what ever toggled format you want.

Amber has no problem with being turned on and off while powered on. Your monitor may think differently.

[darksun9210]

this is what i get with amber enabled on power up :/

not sure if it's good or bad or what? the LCD flat screens i've tried just go "no signal" "out of range" "no signal" on repeat

[lost_loven]

What is the display mode you are trying to display? have you tried something more universal? like just pal/ntsc.. pal high res etc? if there is no options for that you might have to put them in your devs/monitors drawer to get them in the screen mode prefs. (they are in storage/monitors if you are looking for them)
To me it looks like the monitor is trying to display a mode it just can't handle. Try something else maybe.

lost