#A2000A/A2000B
13 messages in this thread
Phillip
re: "skeptical of the germany cbm r&d people"
I am using a 2000B purchased in Wertkauf 8 years ago ( I think ) and I have to
say it has never let me down through thick and thin, upgrades and third party
addons, still ticking away as a full time BBS 24 hours a day. They didn't do
all that shabby a job.
I did change the agnes chip to make it NTSC and rejumpered the powersupply for
115vac when I returned here, by the way. Nothing else.
Tom
alternate: jonest@amigat.com
I never met a man I didn't like…Will Rogers
re: "skeptical of the germany cbm r&d people"
I second that… the people in Germany are very bright and on top of it, every
thing I have heard from Peter Kittel & co. is no less knowledgeable than any of
the folks over here. The Germans just never got as much of a chance to design
their own things. And there isn't really anything bad about a B2000 I'm aware
of anyway. It is far less flawed than the regular 4000, which has some
problems, and even the 3000 has a few.
No, the us designed ( or fixed ) the 2000b, the 2000a was the german one which
had some severe problems. The 2000a was pulled quickly after launch. From what
I remember the 2000a looked more like an a1000 than the b2000.
Phill
And from what I remember the original Amiga 2000 looked just like the eventual
Amiga 2000B. The only way to tell the difference between a 2000 and a 2000B
(apart from looking at the motherboard) was to look round the back at a
sticker.
Jeff Walker, JAM magazine
jwalker@cix.compulink.co.uk
>And from what I remember the original Amiga 2000 looked just like the eventual
Amiga 2000B. The only way to tell the difference between a 2000 and a 2000B
(apart from looking at the motherboard) was to look round the back at a
sticker.<
Jeff,
There was a small modification to the casing. At the back, between the Disk
drive and the serial interfaces, were just two phono plugs for left and right
audio. The 2000B had a video phono plug between these two. I remember cos I had
to get out the hacksaw when I swapped my A motherboard for a B one! I still
have the A motherboard.
Pete
Ah yes! That was it. I knew there was something slightly different round the
back, couldn't remember exactly what.
Jeff Walker, JAM magazine
jwalker@cix.compulink.co.uk
Phillip,
>> From what I remember the 2000a looked more like an a1000 than the b2000
the A2000-A has the same casing as all the later A2000-B and A2000-C had. The
difference is in the number of layers the motherboard is build. And the
internal Video Slot had fewer connectors so you could not put in a flicker
fixer without some additional wiring.
I still do own an old A2000-A, equipped with a A2090 harddrive controller with
a 20MB MFM drive. I use it for software compatibilty tests, and as a terminal
for Enforcer/Mungwall/RomWack. It still runs without a flaw.
So what are the bugs of the A2000-A that had to be `fixed'?
– wkc – … via AP from Hamburg, Germany
Werner,
My early A2000 had 512k Ram on the motherboard, and 512k on a separate card
which fitted into the CPU upgrade slot. Does yours?
Pete
Peter,
>> My early A2000 had 512k Ram on the motherboard, and 512k on a separate
>> card which fitted into the CPU upgrade slot. Does yours?
yes, exactly. I heard that the small memory card populating the accelerator
slot could be upgraded to 1M giving you a total of 1.5 MB, but I never tried to
do so.
– wkc – … via AP from Hamburg, Germany
That was one of the things that wasn't supposed to work, apparently if you
tried to upgrade the memory on the built in card then it became very unstable.
There is also problems with accelerators I believe. It was a long time since I
read about it, I just remember jay miner saying in an interview that the last
thing he did working for cbm before they kicked the original team out was to
fix the german designed amiga 2000. Whether they fixed it before sale or after
I don't know, I just read that there were problems with the 2000a. I guess if
it works then it is ok. According to the kickstart 3.1 release notes there are
spurious nmi's generated on a500's and a2000's, as the nmi handler does nothing
then they don't cause a problem. Maybe the other problems ( can't remember for
the life of me what they were ) only showed up under certain circumstances.
Apparently the early 2000a's had reset warning on the keyboards but the later
ones didn't ( that is according to cbm documentation ) whether this is also
true I don't know
Phill
Phillip,
>> There is also problems with accelerators I believe
yes, if you wanted to put an A2620 or A2630 board into the A2000-A, you had to
remove the original 68000 CPU and set some jumper on the accellerator board. I
don't know if non-C= accellerators supported the A2000-A.
– wkc – … via AP from Hamburg, Germany
I know some of them definately didn't support the 2000a as you couldn't disable
the processor ( I guess that is why you had to remove it ), unfortunately there
was some clock that was generated by the processor which is probably why you
need to jumper it.
Phill
>yes, exactly. I heard that the small memory card populating the accelerator
slot could be upgraded to 1M giving you a total of 1.5 MB, but I never tried to
do so.<
Werner,
I was advised against it by friends at Commodore Belgium. Can't remember why,
though.
Pete