Hey all!
I am new here and new to Amigas. I had a C64 in the 80s that I remember with great fondness, and I recently caught the retro bug and bought a barebone Amiga 2000 with a rev 6.2 motherboard. It seems like there has been a great deal of activity in the accelerator and FPGA space these days. So I am throwing my extreme noobness at your generous feet and hoping to get some good advice before I start shopping and throwing money at this new interest.
A couple of restoration questions: Should I have the motherboard serviced/recapped at all? I think it's pretty original, the gentleman I bought it from said he had changed the battery and cleaned it (with vinegar, maybe?)... It does look pretty clean but I am wondering if some sort of preventative maintenance is called for in terms of battery and capacitor and who you might recommend to do that kind of work.
In terms of the casing, what are my best options for cleaning and getting rid of yellowing? not sure how discolored this is since I haven't seen another 2000 in the flesh, but I think this picture is fairly accurate representation.
For upgrades: it seems like some sort of modern accelerator board is the best call, so either a Terrible Fire 530 or something in that family or I wait for a Vampire 500 V2+ or something else?
I don't have a CRT so I am looking at an Amiga video to VGA adapter and a monitor that will that that output, unless I can find a graphic card or get the Vampire with it's HDMI solution.
How about networking? how do I get this classic onto the internet?
The board currently has a 2.04 ROM, should I upgrade it to 2.05 or 3.1 or something else?
Thank you in advance for all of your help. If I have overlooked something please suggest that too!