website/content/museum/commodore-amiga-3000.md

title, categories, types, origins, years, cpus, params

title	categories	types	origins	years	cpus	params
Commodore AMIGA 3000	Computers	Professional Computer	U.S.A.	1990	Motorola MC68030	name company company_name specs tabs photos adverts hardware emulators links videos comments related oc_id source AMIGA 3000 /companies/commodore Commodore label value NAME AMIGA 3000 label value MANUFACTURER Commodore label value TYPE Professional Computer label value ORIGIN U.S.A. label value YEAR 1990 label value CPU Motorola MC68030 label value SPEED 16 / 25 mHz label value CO-PROCESSOR 3 : Super Denise (video),Fat Agnus (memory manager, blitter & copper), Paula (I/O, sound), 68881 or 68882 (math processor), SCSI DMAC label value RAM 1-2 MB Chip RAM, up to 18 Mb (with 16Mb FAST) and theoricaly to 4 Gb. label value ROM 512 KB label value TEXT MODES 60 x 32 / 80 x 32 label value GRAPHIC MODES 12 graphic modes : from 320 x 240 to 960 x 512 label value COLORS 32 (for 320 x X modes), 16 (for 640 x X modes) among 4096 + 2 Special modes : EHB 64 colors and HAM 4096 colors on static display. label value SOUND Four 8 bit PCM voices label value I/O PORTS Video (RGB, Composite), Parallel/Centronics, RS232c, SCSI, VGA, stereo sound, joysticks (atari) & mouse, 4 Zorro III internal slots, 2 ISA slots, 1 CPU slot, 1 video slot, external floppy, external SCSI-2, keyboard, Stereo audio output label value BUILT IN MEDIA one 3.5'' disk-drive (880k), SCSI-2 Hard-Drive label value OS AMIGA WorKBench 2.0x, Unix System (SVR4) V operating system label value POWER SUPPLY Internal PSU label value PRICE Amiga 3000T (100Mb HD) : $4498 (USA, 1991)\ Amiga 3000T (200Mb HD) : $4998 (USA, 1991) photos adverts hardware emulators links videos title subtitle text image AMIGA 3000T-040 Thanks to Andrew Bienhaus for this picture null title subtitle text image AMIGA 3000T-040 - FRONT PANEL CLOSE-UP Thanks to Andrew Bienhaus for this picture null title subtitle text image COMMODORE BROCHURE Photo taken from an Amiga 3000 brochure. null title subtitle text image MIDI GOLD 500 by Golden Hawk Technology This is a MIDI interface for the Amiga 500, 2000, or 3000... It features :\ - one MIDI In\ - two MIDI Out\ - one switchable Out/Thru\ - one MIDI/Serial Switch\ - one Out/Thru Switch /media/museum/hardware/commodore_amiga_golden-hawk-midi-interface.jpg title subtitle text image AMIGA 1300 Genlock /media/museum/hardware/commodore_amiga1000_1300-genlock.jpg title subtitle text image MEMORY EXPANSION BOARD 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 MB expansion card here fitted with 2 MB. /media/museum/hardware/commodore_amiga1500_memboard_1.jpg title subtitle text image VIDEO BOARD This board featured 2 MB of RAM and allowed the Amiga to be connected to a standard VGA monitor. All the video modes could be displayed, including the interlace one. /media/museum/hardware/commodore_amiga1500_videoboard_1.jpg title subtitle text image A570 CD-ROM Thanks to David Griffith for this picture /media/museum/hardware/amiga_cdrom_a570_1.jpg title subtitle text image HARD DISK CARD 40 MB SCSI card from SUPRA CORP. Additional SCSI devices could be connected in chain trough the back connector /media/museum/hardware/commodore_amiga1500_hdboard_1.jpg title url platform text Amiga Forever http://www.amigaforever.com/ Windows Complete but commercial Amiga emulator title url platform text AMIthlon & AmigaXL http://amigaosxl.haage-partner.de/index-e.html Windows Powerful commercial emulators title url platform text WinFellow HTTP://FELLOW.SOURCEFORGE.NET Windows Probably better at some games than UAE, but not as versatile. title url platform text WinUAE http://www.winuae.net/ Windows The best Amiga emulator ? :-) title url platform text Max UAE http://maxuae.de/ Apple UAE for Mac OS X title url platform text AmigaSYS http://amigasys.fw.hu/ Unix / Linux AmigaSYS is a pre-installed full Amiga OS for WinUAE title url platform text Pocket UAE http://pocketinsanity.sourceforge.net/ Other platform Amiga Emulator for Pocket PC title url platform text Experimental UAE http://www.rcdrummond.net/uae/ Multiplatform Standard UAE enhanced with features from WinUAE. title url platform text MESS http://www.mess.org Multiplatform MESS now emulates the Commodore Amiga title url platform text UAE http://www.freiburg.linux.de/~uae/ Multiplatform (Ubiquitous Amiga Emulator) for BeOS, Mac OS, Linux, NextStep, MSDOS, OS/2 and Win95/NT : Homepage. title url text Amiga animations http://www.randelshofer.ch/animations/ A collection of Amiga Animations. This is the only site where you can see them online! title url text Amiga Interactive Guide http://amiga.emugaming.com/ Excellent site ! A lot of very interesting infos there. title url text Amiga Island http://www.virtualpast.de/ Excellent site with ROMs to download! title url text Amiga Web Directory http://www.cucug.org/amiga.html title url text AMIGART.COM http://www.amigart.com Nice site with Amiga news title url text Back to the Roots HTTP://WWW.BACK2ROOTS.ORG/ Amiga culture, guides, huge collection of legally downloadable software, and much more. title url text Lex Site - Amiga Hardware Database http://amiga.multigraph.com/ The website title says it all! title url text NetBSD-Amiga http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/amiga/index.html title url text Old Computer Mags http://www.old-computer-mags.com/ Scans of old computer and videogames magazine title url text Recorded Amiga Games http://www.recordedamigagames.org Speedrun, longplay and misc videos of Amiga games and more. title url text RetroPack http://www.retropack.co.uk/ Website dedicated to selling original Amigas, CD32s and Amiga/CD32 Games. title url text The Amiga Monitor http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/MikeWebb/amhome.html title url text The Big Book of Amiga Hardware http://www.amiga-hardware.com/ Pics & info (pinouts, jumpers etc.) for just about every piece of Amiga related hardware there is title url text The English Amiga Board http://eab.abime.net/ Community site for Amiga fans title url text World-Wide Amiga - Online!! http://www.amiga.org/ title url text Web Wiz CAPTCHA http://www.webwizcaptcha.com Reviews of Amiga software, hardware title url text Commodore Amiga commercial - EXIT http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=8721405286052618769&hl=fr Length: 41 s title url text Commodore Amiga 500 commercial http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=5737538578208665725&hl=fr Length: 29 s title url text Commodore Amiga 1000 commercial http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=5356507595228759374&hl=fr Length: 32 s title url text Commodore Amiga 600 italian commercial http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-768109352967297990&hl=fr Length: 19 s title url text Commodore Amiga packs commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdaMq8JLyHA Length: 21 s title url text Commodore Amiga TV Ad - Celebrities https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEFoj6sbDjU Length: 29 s title url text Commodore Amiga 500 promotional video http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=9038863557655975739&hl=fr Length: 15 min 06 s title url text Computer Chronicles: Amiga 3000 (1990) http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=6336054364333755091&hl=fr Length: 29 min 09 s title url text Computer Chronicles: Amiga & Atari (1985) http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=8978343825632445107&hl=fr Length: 29 min 18 s author date text Havoc (USA) Monday 6th January 2020 Please correct the line about a3000t The Amiga 3000T, released in 1991, was a tower system with built-in speaker, 32Mb RAM... a3000t was shipped with 1MB chip (expandable to 2MB), and 4MB fast (expandable to 16!). I have no idea where you got 32MB from. author date text George (greece) Monday 30th July 2007 I have an amiga 3000\ What i must do to use the 1.3 rom. I can see no choising screen when the amiga starts and it boot with 2.0 kick start.. author date text Nick Henning (Isle of Wight) Tuesday 8th August 2006 Regarding qwerty's problem - The spin-up time of the hard drive may be causing the problem. The original kickstart ROMs didn't allow much time for hard-drive spin-up and if it takes too long, the system assumes that there is no HD attached and shows the boot screen. If this is the case, doing a warm reset (Cntrl-Amiga-Amiga) should boot the system.\ What shut down procedure???? This is an Amiga!\ I think the only way round this problem is to get a faster drive :-) author date text qwerty (a place still) Tuesday 27th June 2006 I mean amiga 3000 :-) author date text qwerty (a place) Tuesday 27th June 2006 Hi everyone, I have an amiga 300, and quite frequintly whenever I turn it on I get the kick-start choosing screen with the hard drive greyed out. I have it properly installed, though I have been failing to follow shut down procidure properly till now, though it seems like that shoulden't be enough to kill the hard drive. Even when I was turning it off improperly, I had no applications running when I did. Any help please? author date text Peter Jutzies (Germany) Wednesday 25th January 2006 Hello, The first version of the A3000 was shipped without Kickstart-ROM, because the Kickstart V2.0 was only beta. The Kickstart (1.3 or 2.0) was booted from a 50 or 100 MB hard disk. The version of the Kickstart was selected in a bootmenu, which appeared when a mouse button was pressed in the cold start phase. author date text Michael Jantzen (Beaverton Oregon) Wednesday 6th July 2005 Few corrections - the 3000 and 3000T had Zorro 3 slots, not Zorro 2, and the 3000/16 wasn't so rare - I even had one at one point. author date text Ekkehard Morgenstern (Germany) Tuesday 17th May 2005 The Amiga 3000 was a magnificent machine for its time. I bought mine in 1992, a 25 MHz version with AmigaOS 2.1. The OS was partially in ROM, and I upgraded it to AmigaOS 3.1 some years later. What hasn't been mentioned here is that it, as the only Amiga model, had a VGA connector to connect VGA monitors capable of 50/60 Hz vertical frequency. A scan-doubler (that could be switched off for 15 kHz monitors) created the 31 kHz horizontal frequency required by VGA monitors. It had so-called "productivity" graphics modes which exploited some of the VGA characteristics, with less colors and a restricted palette (like 4 out of 64 colors). The downside of these modes were that they ate up all of the DMA cycles. A better approach would've been a multi-frame interface like that used by the A2024 monitor (which I also owned). The A2024 monitor was capable of displaying 1008 x 1024 pixels in 4 shades of gray, which was enough for the 3D look of the AmigaOS 2.0 user interface. It was achieved by sending 4 frames to the monitor, which resulted effectively in a screen refresh rate of 10 or 15 Hz, respectively. The A-3000, also as the only Amiga model, had a SCSI-2 interface and could be hooked up to any SCSI hardware. I used the A-3000 mainly for text processing, creating music, and programming, and some painting and stuff. I had expanded mine to 6 MB which was enough for ALL applications. I never ran out of memory! :) I believe that if Commodore hadn't kicked the bucket, that A-3000 or A-4000 models could've been in every office, but I guess it was already too late at that time. AmigaOS was perfect for any application, but the hardware could've been a bit better, but the AA (aka AGA) chipset came too late and AAA was never completed. One other drawback on the hardware side was that the custom chips were only clocked with the regular 14 MHz, not 25 MHz as the CPU. Jay Miner once said that it was been possible in the 80ies already to ship Amigas with higher resolutions and 25 MHz chipset, but I guess C= didn't listen. /museum/commodore-amiga-1000 /museum/commodore-amiga-1200 /museum/commodore-amiga-1500 /museum/commodore-amiga-2000 /museum/commodore-amiga-2500 /museum/commodore-amiga-4000 /museum/commodore-amiga-500 /museum/commodore-amiga-500-plus /museum/commodore-amiga-600 /museum/commodore-amiga-600hd /museum/commodore-cdtv 30 url date https://web.archive.org/web/20230327012043/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=30 2023-03-27

The Commodore Amiga 3000 is the successor of the Amiga 2500 (itself a successor of the Amiga 2000). It was replaced three years later with the Amiga 4000.

Amiga Interactive Guide description :
The A3000 is a powerhouse in comparison to previous Amiga, it was sold as a high-end graphics workstation. For a time it was used by W Industries as the basis of their highly acclaimed Virtuality machines. At the heart of the A3000 was the powerful 68030 (described in ST/Amiga Format as a 'as a mainframe on a chip'). In addition the A3000 was the first Amiga to feature the new Kickstart 2 upgrade and Zorro III slots.

To emphasis the A3000s capabilities as a high-end workstation, two operating systems were included:
The first was the newly released Kickstart/Workbench 2. This was unusual by the fact that Kickstart was stored on the hard disk rather than in ROM. This was similar to the A1000 that required Kickstart to be loaded from floppy disk before anything else could be done.

The second OS to be included with the A3000 was the Unix System (SVR4) V operating system. This allowed the use of the Unix graphical interface, X Windows and Open Look. It also came with standard networking capabilities (probably a first for Commodore), such as TCP/IP, NFS and RFS for networking between different operating systems. In a bizarre twist, the Unix OS was sold on a magnetic tape rather than floppy disk.

Three Amiga 3000 models were produced : 3000, 3000UX, and 3000T.

The 3000 was the desktop model (pictured here) which shipped with flippable 1.3 or 2.0 AmigaOS Roms. The Amiga 3000T, released in 1991, was a tower system with built-in speaker, 32Mb RAM, high-resolution mouse, 100 Mb hard-drive, a lot of Zorro II slots, a variety of drive bays, and a 25Mhz 68030 with a 68882 math coprocessor. The 3000UX shipped with "AMIX", Commodore's System-5 derived UNIX which was very nice and came with X-windows. It was Commodore's only serious attempt to get into the UNIX workstation market, and a noble effort that unfortunately failed utterly.

Notice there are some rare versions of the Amiga 3000: the 3000/16 (the speed is only 16 MHz) and the Amiga 3000+ which uses an AGA video chip and a DSP. The 3000+ was a prototype only. A few units are known to exist, but they are not supported. The DSP was able to function as a software modem in some configurations, which was extremely cool.

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Jurgen Schober adds:
Also note, the A3000 (A3000T/4000/4000T) came with Zorro3 slots. This was unique at the time, as it is comparable to todays PCI expansion. It was a true 32 bit high speed expansion system, fully backwards compatible to (older) Zorro2 16bit bus. 16Bit cards could be used in the 32bit slot in parallel with 32bit cards without harming the performance.
The buscontroller (Buster) had known flaws and the protocol was hard to implement and Zorro3 boards were very expensive, but even Comodore released a 32bit SCSI-II HD controller for these Amiga models. A lot of hi-res graphics boards have been built for the faster 32bit mode, too.