WTB an A1200, A3000, or A4000

[Dreamcast270mhz]

I dont really know much about Amiga Hardware, but my bare minimums are:

Complete motherboards
floppy Drive
Cd drive if no floppy present

Please Pm me if you have one I live in the US, will consider if below $300, maybe higher I use paypal, but I may be slow in reply. i'd prefer it without extras. please no spam, thank you!

[NeXT]

Welcome to the forums. :)


Just so you know for future use, we do have a "Hardware Wanted" forum here as to not clog up this forum full of posts like this.

[Dreamcast270mhz]

well thank you! I'm sorry, this is not the first time, I've done this mistake on other forums.

[carlsson]

CD-ROM is very unusual with Amiga hardware. It certainly does exist, but would in most circumstances be a SCSI CD-ROM. Floppy drive on the other hand is obligatory.

[Dreamcast270mhz]

ok, well my purpose for such a purchase is to use MorphOS and AmigaOS old and new on nartive hardware, i'm planning on getting a PPC card after a while, but if it's SCSI, that's even better than the IDE or proprietary interface I expected, I know the most recent release is PPC native, so all I really want is the tower with the motherboard, the floppy and what ever is standard for RAM, I can get that all separately. i've got plenty of connections, so getting the rest will be easy, I'm looking for a deal.

[Unknown_K]

If you need it to be a tower, then most likely you are not going to find any for under $300. A towered A1200 tends to be pricey and 3000T and 4000T systems are very expensive since they are very rare.

If you can deal with a desktop then you can find a 1200 on ebay for $200ish stock, 3000 and 400 for more then that.

[One Man Band]

Yeah, I was going to offer up my A3000T Dev Edition with CD drive, all original manuals and disks and all the trimmings, but then I saw the "looking for a deal" snippet from the original poster. I don't know about "deal", but mine'll certainly go for more than $200. :)

]3ob

[Dreamcast270mhz]

desktop would be fine, i don't care about yellowing, dings or scratches, cosmetic stuff, all I care about is if it works out of the box, and just for curiosity, onemanband, how much would you want?

[Sharkonwheels]

CD-ROM is very unusual with Amiga hardware. It certainly does exist, but would in most circumstances be a SCSI CD-ROM. Floppy drive on the other hand is obligatory.

Not really true.
If it's an IDE capable system, ASIMCDfs works just fine.
SCSI or IDE, both are supported.

I think with either AmigaOS 3.5 or 3.9, forgot which, CD support came built-in, but as I recall, it was a sort of chicken-and-egg deal - you couldn't INSTALL the OS, which had CD support, it without cdfs access already :confused:

T

[carlsson]

IDE capable systems, would those be Amiga 600, 1200 and 4000?

[One Man Band]

onemanband, how much would you want?

Probably not less than $800.

]3ob

[Dreamcast270mhz]

Ok, thanks anyway

[barythrin]

Just adding an obvious statement but just keep looking. You'll likely find a 3000 for somewhere around that price if you keep looking around auction sites. I know it's a tough search but eventually you'll get there.

- John

[Dreamcast270mhz]

I have searched and found some, but I want some input from this forum, if you got one worth my while over my price, I can be flexible, but my real spending limit depends on how an ebay auction of mine goes, still open for replies

[Sharkonwheels]

As for One Man Band's price, for what it is, it is not out of line.

As I recall, I think the 3000T's may be ever rarer than the 4000T, which came in (3) variants: The C= 4000T, the Escom 4000T, and the Amiga Technologies 4000T. The C= 4000T is probably the rarest of all the OEM "T's". By OEM, I mean *NOT* the 3rd party tower kits/conversions and the like.

T

[cosam]

If you're on a budget and not shy of a bit of work, you might consider putting a tatty old A1200 in a PC tower case. They have IDE on board, so a hard disk and CD-ROM are easily added. I did this myself (http://www.cosam.org/projects/a1200t/) a while back and, with a few choice upgrades, ended up with a pretty nice system.

[Dreamcast270mhz]

how high speeds are the blizzard ppc cards in mhz if it's below 500mhz i really am not sure, but that's a great idea. I might try and contact this dude with a 3000T that got run over :(, and get my 2 extra Pc's combined into one. Anyone with an Amiga 1200, 3000 (T), 4000 (T) with a bad case or none at all may PM me

[Dreamcast270mhz]

Sorry for a double post, but the only reason i wanted a tower was for the extra slots, but, with the amiga's board in a new case, would it be possible, to, make an expansion board with extra slots available, or else split an existing slot, or if it is much more than getting PCB made and tacking it on and go, i may not even attampt tarnishing such a jewel..., although I've never seen the inside of an amiga, so I'm clueless as to what card interface is used.

[Unknown_K]

Does it have to be Zorro slots? Most people who tower a A1200 buy a PCI/Zorro bussboard and use cheap commodity PC sound, video, and networking cards (old ones that are supported anyway).

[Dreamcast270mhz]

@unknown K

Thanks for teh info.

[Unknown_K]

@unknown K

Thanks for teh info.

No problem, network and video cards for an Amiga are a few hundred each so a PCI busboard saves you a ton of cash (asuming you want hi-resolution desktop and OS 3.x).

[Dreamcast270mhz]

WHoah! That's a lot now I REALLY appreciate the info

[Dreamcast270mhz]

which models I've specified support the busboard, and what is the maximum RAM for each with Blizzard/cyberstorm accelerators installed?


EDIT: also i have some other questions, i saw this Desktop 4000 http://cgi.ebay.com/Amiga-4000-Computer-No-PS-Daughtercard-CPU-FastRAM_W0QQitemZ270384690538QQihZ017QQcategoryZ45 98QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

and thought: Can i use any HDD? What is the recommendation on a CD drive, and how much would an appropriate CPU cost? if someone can locate a good 1 let me know. Also, since I'd need chipRAM, how much does that go for? I appreciate your patience and help with my ignorance of amiga hardware

[Unknown_K]

Do some research:

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/

This might help.

[Dreamcast270mhz]

Well I still don't have one, I'm kinda looking for a 3000D right now, found a few here and there, if anyone has a good offer, its still open

[Trixter]

I have an A3000 I'm not using, but what's the difference between an A3000 and an A3000D?

[Dreamcast270mhz]

3000 D is just a term for the desktop version, same thing as a plain old 3000, just another way to say it. If an ebay seller declines my offer, i'll think about it, pics would be nice, plus specs and price you want

[Unknown_K]

How can you have a 3000 and not be using it?

[Trixter]

How can you have a 3000 and not be using it?

I use my 4000 w/'060 accelerator instead!

[Unknown_K]

Ah, good comeback.

How well does the 060 work with games (or do you have lesser machines for games)?

[Trixter]

Two A500s, one NTSC A1200 (degrader works well), one A3000, two A4000s, so I'm covered. The '060 hurts games more than helps; the A500 and A1200 handle that.

I don't use them much any more; I burnt out on Amiga stuff making MindCandy Volume 2. I have other things like ethernet cards, two video cards, tons of software, light gun, joysticks, boxed software... Even a CD32 with lots of games.

I feel like I should sell it as a lot, but at the same time, I can't help wondering "What if I need to run something Amiga in the future?" I'm torn.

[Unknown_K]

I havn't booted my Amigas in a few months, busy working with other platforms.

I have a 500, 1200, 2000, and 3000. If/when I get some 3.1 ROMs for the 3000 I am going to run a boxed copy of OS 3.5 and get it online. The other systems are all for games.

Seems like I go through phases where I play games and then acquire and fix stuff then back to games.

[Dreamcast270mhz]

which amiga is the best? in ur opinion.

[kb2syd]

which amiga is the best? in ur opinion.

I don't think Amigas wever available in Ur.

[carlsson]

If you want to play older action games: Amiga 500
If you want to play newer action games: Amiga 1200
If you want to play big adventure, RPG, strategy games: any Amiga with a HDD
If you want to use productivity software: any Amiga with a HDD and accelerator
If you want decent expansion options: Amiga 2000/3000 (I suppose)
If you want the most powerful classic Amiga ever made: A4000T with accelerator etc

An Amiga 3000/4000 may require you to soft boot to a previous Kickstart version to play some of the older games. While in theory backwards compatible, games written in a system unfriendly way will be hard to get going on anything other than a stock Amiga 500, with or without memory expansion.

It appears Amiga 500 and to some extent 2000 you can get very cheap. Amiga 1200 is often sought after and thus gets more expansive. Perhaps you'll find a decent priced 3000 if you keep looking. Amiga 1000 is a collectors item while 4000's are quite often still in use which means you have to battle Amiga fanatics willing to pay lots of money to get a complete, working Amiga 4000 instead of investing the same money in a modern PC at least 10-100 times as powerful.

When I look to buy something but am unsure about the market value, I search in the usual places like eBay and so on, to get a feel what people really pay for an item. More than once I've found it sells much higher than I'd be willing to buy. Sometimes I give up the idea to get one, sometimes I adjust my budget so I can also be part of the bidding. Of course you may still get lucky and claim a bargain, but don't expect people to sell for the prices you think are reasonable.

[Unknown_K]

For the most part A500 is great for floppy booting games (get the 512K trapdoor expansion and 2nd floppy like a A1011).

Any old HD installable games would be best for a 2000 with A2091 SCSI card, Kickstart 1.3

AGA games would be for the A1200 preferably with a 68030/50 trapdoor expansion and more RAM.

For serious work and upgrades stick to a 3000/4000 or 1200 towered with 2MB chip RAM and preferably a video card.

As far as pricing goes most of my gear was purchased in 2001/02 timeframe when people were ditching them. Seems like Amiga gear has gone up quite a bit since then to values I am not willing to pay. But you still can find deals if you look around, same as anything else. Ebay is just an indicator of what current pricing might be, but you can get things cheaper.

[Dreamcast270mhz]

The 3000/4000 is what I want then

[Dreamcast270mhz]

Still taking offers, just PM me

[carlsson]

Out of curiosity: are you looking for offers on other, more Amiga-centric forums too?

[barythrin]

Very pertinent point. http://www.amiga.org has a lot of sales from their members in the forums. I've seen a few 3000's on craigslist. Also check other auction sites like chasethechuckwagon, our local marketplace, goodwill auction site, and a few other good ones folks here have pointed out that I can't remember the names of.

[Dreamcast270mhz]

yeah, amibay for one, but the dude on there said he'd take pics an never replied after that, just waiting this last week and calling it off if he won't reply