Why was there no a2000 plus ?
- Thread starter DarkHood
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Well from point of view on creating a mini level spec (a500 plus 2mb chip ram , A600 2mb chip ram and A3000 2mb chip ram) I also heard if your using a hard drive its takes up more chip ram
A500+ was due to the new kickstart, but big box Amigas were not targeted for, let's say "home use". Therefore since there was already A3000 on the shelves (and they had already plans for the A4000 with the new chipset).
Well...you could kinda argue that that the 2000 was a plus from the start. Out of the box 500+ came with 1MB and Super Denise. 2000 came with 1MB and some later ones came with Super Denise. You could have easily bought Super Denise for your 2000 cheap back then, cheap. Of course if you expanded your 500+ with another 1MB, you'd have 2MB of chip. But that extra 1MB for the 500 was probably about $50 less than MegaChip, if memory serves me right. And in the early 90s everyone was getting the 2.04 ROMs for their 2000 already, right? If you bought your 2000 when the 500+ was shipping, chances are you got Super Denise, Fat Angus and 2.04 by default. PLUS!
Not much effort to push a 2000 back then to 2000+ spec, and for the last year of 2000 they likely were all pluses. I have recently got back into the 2000, because I think it is a killer Amiga and can do it all, and do it well. I've "PLUSed" both my 2000s, but I don't bother with the 2MB chip upgrades in them.
By the way, about that Chip RAM...is 2MB really necessary? What can't one do unless they have 2MB Chip? I haven't come across anything yet.
A2000 existed in full ECS and 2.04 ROM indeed, and only needed the 2MB Agnus with the Megichip or similar.
YKW, you are right that the A2000 has a lot of potential with numerous slots and space, but is cluttered by the Zorro2 bus compared to other bigboxes, unless you use a Vampire 500V2 as accelerator and get to use a RTG card not slowed down by the Z2 bus. Indeed RTG on Z2 has lower bandwitch than AGA, and for instance Shapeshifter with the best possible EVD is beaten on 2000+RTG by 1200+AGA at equal CPU.
YKW, you are right that the A2000 has a lot of potential with numerous slots and space, but is cluttered by the Zorro2 bus compared to other bigboxes, unless you use a Vampire 500V2 as accelerator and get to use a RTG card not slowed down by the Z2 bus. Indeed RTG on Z2 has lower bandwitch than AGA, and for instance Shapeshifter with the best possible EVD is beaten on 2000+RTG by 1200+AGA at equal CPU.
@Xanxi - I always keep saying that I'm going to start getting into some of these tests and eval and then I never do. So thank you for the feedback on tested performance of Shapeshifter. Lovely to hear that a 1200 beats 2000RTG in Shapeshifter, because I'm a big 1200 fan as well. Also, I saw a video of a 1200 LC060 50Mhz running PCTask 4.4 and it wasn't too shabby either. I know a A2286 bridgeboard didn't look and feel that good on the 2000 to me from what I recall, so not surprised to see 1200 AGA deliver perfomrance. Sometimes people give AGA a hard time, but it was clearly an improvement.
It's fun to stuff things into the 2000, even in the Zorro II bus and it is also impressive that a 1200 wedge can fly with Shapeshifter and PC Task. And as you may or may not know, I'm fond of my MISTer FPGA inside a 1200 case as well. All lovely pieces of kit, and we're lucky to have access to them all. I mean...sure, the Egyptians built the pyramids, but they never had this much Amiga choice. So....
It's fun to stuff things into the 2000, even in the Zorro II bus and it is also impressive that a 1200 wedge can fly with Shapeshifter and PC Task. And as you may or may not know, I'm fond of my MISTer FPGA inside a 1200 case as well. All lovely pieces of kit, and we're lucky to have access to them all. I mean...sure, the Egyptians built the pyramids, but they never had this much Amiga choice. So....
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