User avatar
halfbrite

Posted Thu May 05, 2022 6:17 am

Hey all, finally got a A3000 at a okish price that works and not as-is unknown.

I want to do a few upgrades (Modern RTG, SCSI2SD, Gotek, etc with the goal to keep it a sleeper).

So I only had an Amiga 500 growing up, and I know the difference between chip and fast ram. Googling on line it looks like chip is max 2MB.

Where I struggle on the 3000 mobo is how to upgrade from the 1MB to the 2MB I read is max. There are DIP sockets, ZIP and soldered on board, as well as I read 4 banks for the ZIP and bank zero is shared with the DIP and DIP is maybe for chip or only fast.

Anyways does the 3000 manual address all this? I dont want to buy a bunch of ZIP ram that is the wrong size, or realize I have to disable onboard chip and get 2MB of ZIP or whatever weird setup I need. Can someone point me to a good guide?

Thanks!

User avatar
obitus1990
USA

Posted Thu May 05, 2022 7:20 am

All of the information you seek can be found in the A3000 manual.

A condensed form of the info needed can be found here.

User avatar
halfbrite

Posted Thu May 05, 2022 10:33 am

Thank you!

I did download the manual, I think it has cleared some things up.

I have not got the machine yet, but I did see a screen that showed it had 1 MB of Chip and 16MB of fast. However all the socketed DIPs are full on the left side near the varta battery, hence my confusion.

Is battery leakage known to effect that bank?

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu May 05, 2022 11:45 am

@halfbrite

The A3K can take 16MB fast of ZIP RAM directly on the motherboard. Sounds like you're "fully loaded," which is nice. I had to purchase ZIPs for my A3Ks.

The Varta battery is the bane of the A3K. It typically goes after the video circuitry, motherboard traces and even the nearby Agnus socket. The RAM, way over on the other side (and on the other side of the daughter card) is generally good to go if it's not damaged by other means.

Did you get the 16 or 25Mhz version?

Do you know if you have the dual KS ROM or a later upgrade?

User avatar
halfbrite

Posted Thu May 05, 2022 1:36 pm

intric8 wrote:
Thu May 05, 2022 11:45 am
@halfbrite

The A3K can take 16MB fast of ZIP RAM directly on the motherboard. Sounds like you're "fully loaded," which is nice. I had to purchase ZIPs for my A3Ks.

The Varta battery is the bane of the A3K. It typically goes after the video circuitry, motherboard traces and even the nearby Agnus socket. The RAM, way over on the other side (and on the other side of the daughter card) is generally good to go if it's not damaged by other means.

Did you get the 16 or 25Mhz version?

Do you know if you have the dual KS ROM or a later upgrade?
No clue on the speed, I will let you know when I get the system in regards to that and the KS rom :)

So sounds like the damage is there, hopefully not too bad as the system boots.

User avatar
halfbrite

Posted Thu May 05, 2022 1:46 pm

I responded back on the other thread about battery damage, I assume at this point its better off there ;)

User avatar
iljitsch

Posted Thu May 05, 2022 10:41 pm

IIRC the DIP RAM can be either 1 MB chip + 1 MB fast or 2 MB chip. How you go from one to the other, I don't remember.

User avatar
halfbrite

Posted Tue May 10, 2022 3:13 pm

intric8 wrote:
Thu May 05, 2022 11:45 am
@halfbrite

The A3K can take 16MB fast of ZIP RAM directly on the motherboard. Sounds like you're "fully loaded," which is nice. I had to purchase ZIPs for my A3Ks.

The Varta battery is the bane of the A3K. It typically goes after the video circuitry, motherboard traces and even the nearby Agnus socket. The RAM, way over on the other side (and on the other side of the daughter card) is generally good to go if it's not damaged by other means.

Did you get the 16 or 25Mhz version?

Do you know if you have the dual KS ROM or a later upgrade?
So I just got open the thing up and power it up. It had gold support until 1992, so I don't think Commodore will be helping me anymore with that!

I was able to peek on the right side, no accelerator card and fully populated with zip ram.

When it boots up it says loading kickstart 2.x, I am not familiar with the A3000 at all, so it says this when it is clearly booting from the scsi hard disk. Do these not have kickstart in ROM? It booted to workbench 2.0 I think.

I booted a copy of wing commander that was already on the HD, way faster than I would have expected!

I need to get sysinfo on there for the specs, will be cutting the leaking battery out next and completely cleaning the unit.

What is the best way to backup the hard drive? Please don't say to floppies, please!

@intric8, tell me how to check the dual KS rom and I will look. Says Rev 9/03 Commodore B, copyright 1990 on the mobo.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue May 10, 2022 4:31 pm

When it boots up it says loading kickstart 2.x, I am not familiar with the A3000 at all, so it says this when it is clearly booting from the scsi hard disk. Do these not have kickstart in ROM? It booted to workbench 2.0 I think.
Sounds like you might have the dual ROM, which would be awesome (imo). If you do, that means it's booting 2.0 by default. If you mash your mouse buttons down during boot-up, you'd see a KS selection screen. If you see 1.3, then you're the lucky winner of a dual-KS A3000! If you don't get to that screen, then your Kickstart ROM (singular) is simply 2.0, which would make it period correct in 1990/1991 when it was born.
way faster than I would have expected!
The A3000's internal SCSI is very, very fast and everything about it makes it feel like an Amiga that is liquid fast. They even boot astonishingly quickly.

User avatar
halfbrite

Posted Wed May 11, 2022 11:11 pm

Doing a bench test with nothing hooked up to the mobo but a psu and vga cable I get this:

Image





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