Thinking about thinning the herd...

[noxenlux]

Ok, a bit of opinionated help please.

I am thinking about thinning out my amiga bits to make room for my music studio gear.

Now what I am trying to figure out is which to keep the A3kd or the A4kd, I havent been able to play w/ either of them for the last year, so I have no clue as to which one to keep... Or to sell both and just pimp out my 1200... So hardware vs hardware comparison please, and of course what you love about your preferred miggy.

Thanks

shawn

 

[RedDaemonFox]

I like the 3000 better because:
Has SCSI vs Slow IDE
Built in SD/FF vs no SD/ff
Smaller, cooler case vs Bulky PC case (C= used extra PC-clone cases)
No worries about broken SIMM sockets vs. Crappy plastic SIMM slots


I like the 1200 better than the 4000D, Take the VT out of it, put it in the 3000 and sell that 4000D. The 4000T, however, is one of my favorites. I think, personally a good sized collection of Amigas only needs: A500, A3k, A1200. That said, give the 4000 a chance and ditch the 2000 would be my best advice. I have a 2500 I'm gonna fix, then sell

 

[keropi]

For me the A3000 is just ECS, has very small space inside, restricts several accelerator usage unless you want to cut through metal (also you need to apply the DMA fix to get the good ones working), not cooler when loaded , and a PAIN IN THE A$$ to get the onboard ram to 16MB... old SCSI hdd's are noisy as hell too.... not to mention that SCSI can be VERY buggy with certain hardware so you might need a RARE WD controller chip upgrade or else you get data corruption and you need a buster upgrade to use several zorroIII cards...
so you see Dreamcast270mhz , the 3000 has some SEVERE problems if you want to expand it , and unless noxenlux gives us his A3000 and A4000 hardware setups we cannot really advice him which one to keep...

The A4000 is the BEST amiga model if you consider expanding, there is no doubt about it... but it all depends on what the end user wants to do ofcourse.

 

[noxenlux]

both are stock, only two internal upgrades that can be switched, Video Toaster 4K, and a cybervision gfx card. Nothing else.


Most of what I do with these systems is landscape and object renderings.

 

[RedDaemonFox]

For me the A3000 is just ECS, has very small space inside, restricts several accelerator usage unless you want to cut through metal (also you need to apply the DMA fix to get the good ones working), not cooler when loaded , and a PAIN IN THE A$$ to get the onboard ram to 16MB... old SCSI hdd's are noisy as hell too.... not to mention that SCSI can be VERY buggy with certain hardware so you might need a RARE WD controller chip upgrade or else you get data corruption and you need a buster upgrade to use several zorroIII cards...
so you see Dreamcast270mhz , the 3000 has some SEVERE problems if you want to expand it , and unless noxenlux gives us his A3000 and A4000 hardware setups we cannot really advice him which one to keep...

The A4000 is the BEST amiga model if you consider expanding, there is no doubt about it... but it all depends on what the end user wants to do ofcourse.

Of course SCSI is noisy, otherwise it wouldn't be SCSI . And what are you talking about with the SCSI? I see your points Keropi, and no, I didn't mean cooler as in temp. I meant it as in looks. And most A3ks I see nowadays have a rev11 chip, that reminds me, I gotta check mine. And Mine has the DMA fix, and the RAM issue can be fixed with a metal SIMM to ZIP converter.

 

[arnljot]

If you're going to do rendering you really just need a bit more CPU as you do have the gfx card.

Then either machine will be fine. Just go with what you feel like.

The A4000 is a beefier machine, but the A3000 has a more vocal fan club *looking at dreamcast*

No, seriously. The A3000 is nice, but like it's been pointed out it has space limitations inside, but it do have a built in scandoubler, which is pricey to buy extra for the A4000 for showing the the native modes on native lcds.

Also the A3000 has scsi, which is faster than the A4000 native ide. This isn't to pricey to "replace" on the A4000, either with a scsi card, accellerator with scsi or another faster ide card. But again, this is extra money to spend which you don't have to spend on the A3000.

For desk tidyness the A4000 wins over the A3000, even the A4000 is a small desktop, it's outright roomy compared to the A3000. Want optical media? There is room set aside for that in the A4000, but on the A3000 you need to either hack the case or get an external affair.

Also IDE equipment is cheap. SCSI disks and CDRoms aren't rare. But have a small premium and takes longer to get hold of, also it takes one component less to use a CF card as a harddrive on an A4000 than on an A3000.

There is also room for one more Zorro card in the A4000, and I think that it's easier to get PCI card solutions into the box if you want that.

Both machines have the FastCPU slot, and all cards are electrically compatible (some A3000s need a signal/bug fix). But only the A4000 can accommodate all CPU accellerators in size.

So, its a bit like comparing a sports car to a soccermom car. Both are excellent choices. The sports car is one sexy lady, but with the soccer mom you know it will put out

 

[Kin Hell]

Keep the A4KD & try to get some SCSI into her.

Kin

 

[noxenlux]

thanks kinny. I think thats what I am going to do. Just need to get the x-calibur up and running.

going through bits and pieces I stumbled upon a 2091 scsi controller with updated roms, think I should hold out for something better or would that be acceptable for th a4k?


shawn

 

[Kin Hell]

You could do better like a Z3 FastLane. Afaik, the A2091 is not DMA compliant, meaning you're probably better off using an IDE solution than the A2091.

If you're going to put SCSI in any Amiga, make sure it does DMA correctly. Also with the Z3 FastLane, it's a ZORRO III card, meaning you get much faster access in your A4KD.

Another option involving an upgrade, would be to sell/trade the A3640 & the X-calibur. Then get yourself a processor card with at least a SCSI II Controller on it, such as CSMKII with the SCSI module. This would then blow the Z3.

Good luck however you go about it. These things are getting harder & harder to find.

Best Wishes,

Kin

 

[RedDaemonFox]

The Z3 fastlane is an amazing piece of kit, rivals the x calibur in the fact it can address 256mb ram fully upgraded, which, coupled with a CSPPC or MK3 gives you 384 MB ram, i've heard only a few card can do this, and AFAIK, your Z3s can address 512 meg each?

 

[woodycool]

As much as I like the A4000, I'm with Dreamy on this one (oh dear, here comes the flying objects) .... the A3000 looks way cooler than the A4000, I like the SCSI implememtation and it has built in SD/FF.
I have a 2GB SCSI HDD in mine (I've kept the original 120MB HDD just in case) and the A3000 is a little flyer.
I rarely use AGA (if at all) as most games I play are pre-AGA (I never had an AGA Amiga back in the day, I had my trusty A500+ for years) and for Workbench etc. you don't need AGA (unless you're using NewIcons or the GlowIcons of OS3.5/3.9)
In fact, I still have the 2.0 ROMs in my A3000 and I'm using Workbench 2.1 which runs smoothly, no stupid addon packs (MagicWB or NewIcons) so I'm still using the standard icons etc.
Not sure if the A4000 has this, but the A3000 has an internal HD floppy drive (I think the A4000 does too, but could be wrong)

So, yeah, I'd probably keep the A3000, but that's just me.

If I had the room, I'd keep the A4000 too, and get shot of the rest of the Amigas.

 

[Kin Hell]

@ Dreamy

The Z3's max ram is 256Mb in the guise of 16 x 16Mb 30Pin Simms. There are few cards (if any at all) that can do this. The card has to be a V2.3 at least, which requires an upgrade via it's GAL Chips. V2.4's are rumoured to be 256Mb ready, but that could still be tosh. :shrug:

Kin

 

[noxenlux]

First off I would like to thank all of you for your insightful and rather professional opinions in this matter. I have been looking up shipping for everywhere and its not cheap, leading me to the conclusion that a local pick up would be the best option, which means craiglist.... which ultimately means Doomy Troll.

though I cannot get rid of the A500 thats for the kiddo's I want them to learn how to be proper computer geeks.

The A2k has a power supply issue which I am hoping to rectify soon. though it does have an accelerator card and a scsi card Updated rom chips as well.

And the A1200 is just a sexy beast.

then there are the odd bits a4kt which has a boot error that I cannot figure out. Which the guys here were so eager and willing to help with.
https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=1194

and I have another a4kd shell.
Also have a toaster 4k that I dont have time to fiddle with due to my band having higher priority.
I wish you guys lived closer.


shawn

 

[SkydivinGirl]

@noxenlux

Don't forget there are some of us in the USA so posting things for sale here first might be a good idea and shipping might not be too bad. I know I've been willing to pay for shipping a desktop within the USA.

Whatever you decide to do, I hope you end up with the perfect system for you.

Take care,

Heather

 

[Kin Hell]

@ noxenlux

We never got to the bottom of your A4KT issue & yeah, you're right. If only we were all closer to each other. :|

Back then you had an Angry Yellow smiley for your Avatar Pic & I see you have changed it recently. I wanted to post the animated version of it as I think it's brilliantly funny. Especially if you are an FPS Gamer on a crap Network connection. :nod: Enjoy.

Kin

 

[Templar]

That's funny??? LOL.....

 

[Kin Hell]

@ Phantom

Counter Strike days 10 years ago m8. It arrived in my Mailbox one day from "TheSpunkster". :jester:

Kin

 

[noxenlux]

Just as a forewarning I will be posting some stuff in the market place. I however need to unpack and take pics of it all. So be patient.

 

[RedDaemonFox]

Have you ever watched "the angry german kid"? pure genius, but I can't understand his german.