Amiga A3000UX i am working on

[mechy]

hey all,
    Just a bit of hardware pron here. I finally dug out the 3000UX i had and have been getting it up to  snuff to put Amix on it. Thanks to Pascal i got a A3070 for it for a  good price. I already had the 3 button pregnant 3000 mouse. Here is  shown installing Amix 2.1 on it.

I put a CF adapter on standoffs bolted to a drive plate and hooked it to  the acard 7720U. Unfortunately i couldn't center it in the floppy drive  opening since the 7720U is so wide but it worked out and is easy to  change cf's if need be.
I added a nice Buster11 chip,coin cell battery(9/02 rev board is perfect,no leakage).A2065 ethernet card.

Some pics can he found here:
www.a4000t.com/pics/a3000ux

[ShK]

Very nice, thanks for the pictures!

[golem]

Lovely looking machine. Is the UX different dimensions to a normal 3000?

[mechy]

Lovely looking machine. Is the UX different dimensions to a normal 3000?

The UX is really nothing special other than the logo on the front of the case,its identical to a regular 3000 in every way.

[gertsy]

Elegant.

[olsen]

The UX is really nothing special other than the logo on the front of the case,its identical to a regular 3000 in every way.

I beg to differ Most (if not all) of them were "Made in U.S.A.", which makes them special. The "regular" models, after the Amiga Unix product was discontinued with a vengeance, were manufactured elsewhere. I have two A3000 units in storage which were manufactured in Hongkong, for example.

[kolla]

Very nice!

[mechy]

I beg to differ Most (if not all) of them were "Made in U.S.A.", which makes them special. The "regular" models, after the Amiga Unix product was discontinued with a vengeance, were manufactured elsewhere. I have two A3000 units in storage which were manufactured in Hongkong, for example.

i guess i should of been more specific :biglaugh:, i meant hardware wise they are the same basic hardware- i.e motherboard revisions,roms ,030 etc.. i just looked on my regular 3000's and the UX's and mine are all made in the usa..

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Man.  Computers made in the U.S.A.  Reminds me of that thread when people were posting pictures of their A1200's, "Made in Scotland" stickers, and whatnot.  That's all something that'll never happen again.  

[SACC-guy]

Didn't the 3000UX also have a ethernet (2065) card and a graphics card (2024)?
(as well as the tape drive)

[olsen]

i guess i should of been more specific :biglaugh:, i meant hardware wise they are the same basic hardware- i.e motherboard revisions,roms ,030 etc.. i just looked on my regular 3000's and the UX's and mine are all made in the usa..

Yes, the A3000UX was a "custom bundle", not unlike the A500 game bundles sold in the UK at the time  The big difference not just being what was in the package (the A3070 tape drive and the A2065 Ethernet card, the three-button mouse, as well as the Amiga Unix installation disks, the tape and the manuals), but that the label on the case was different. I think the A3000UX also shipped with more memory by default than the regular configuration, because Amiga Unix needed it.

[olsen]

Man.  Computers made in the U.S.A.  Reminds me of that thread when people were posting pictures of their A1200's, "Made in Scotland" stickers, and whatnot.  That's all something that'll never happen again.  

It could happen and it did: Apple manufactures the Mac Pro in the USA (likely using parts sourced from China), which is still viable given the price of the product and the small numbers in which it sells. It's no longer a viable business model for high volume sales, though. This ship sailed long ago...

This still worked in 1988-1990, before SMD was introduced. For example, when NeXT was still in business and making their own hardware, they had their own factory in California which manufactured NeXT Cubes and NeXTSTATIONS.

[Pentad]

That is a really, really nice Amiga 3000 you have there.  Congrats!

I have always thought it was the most sexy Amiga Commodore every made.

When I was in college I had one and people at the time were just blown away that a computer could have two different OSs on it!  

If you read the Amiga 3000UX brochure, they mention a university that went with all Amiga 3000UX machines for their students because they wanted to standardize on a flavor of Unix.  They even have quotes from a professor from the said university.

When I became a professor, I decided to track down that guy and ask about choosing the Amiga 3000UX, dealing with Commodore, and how their decision worked out.

The guy actually emailed me back with the following information:

-The machines were great and they were real workhorses for the everyone involved.  Their failure rate was very low.  Much lower than the compettion.

-Commodore went from being passionate about Amix to sort of dumping it which left them hanging.  There were fewer updates, not upgrades, and they didn't make it work for any other machines.

-Commodore went bankrupt which was terrible for the university.  They had to maintain those computers for the students/faculty no matter what.  So they bought as many Amiga 3000UX machines as they could get their hands on for spare parts and such.  He said they scrounged Usenet for machines for years.  What really helped them was that the Amiga 3000 was the same machine (more or less) so they could buy either UX or 3000s for parts.  The mouse and the especially the 2024 card was tough to get.

-He could understand why SUN was so interested in buying Amiga 3000UX machines and making them low-cost SUN workstations.  They were incredibly fast, very well built, and cheaper than the competition.  He said Apple's AUX machines were double the price or more for features standard to the UX machines.

Good memories.

I just thought you might find that of interest.

:-)

-P

[TCMSLP]

I always wonder how differently things would have turned out if Commodore had accepted the offer from Sun regarding re-branding as low end Sun workstations.  We'd almost certainly have a lot more A3000s circulating in the used market now...

[mechy]

Yes, the A3000UX was a "custom bundle", not unlike the A500 game bundles sold in the UK at the time  The big difference not just being what was in the package (the A3070 tape drive and the A2065 Ethernet card, the three-button mouse, as well as the Amiga Unix installation disks, the tape and the manuals), but that the label on the case was different. I think the A3000UX also shipped with more memory by default than the regular configuration, because Amiga Unix needed it.

Yes, i think 8Mb was standard and the a2410 optional also. The amix manual suggests 8MB minimum.. i have it running on 4MB atm and it seems ok,but amix isnt overly useful. my case is labeled 3000UX.