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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 image company company_name specs tabs forum_thread photos adverts hardware emulators links videos related oc_id source
AMIGA 3000 /media/museum/photos/commodore_amiga-3000_nb.jpg /companies/commodore Commodore
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NAME AMIGA 3000
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MANUFACTURER Commodore
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TYPE Professional Computer
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ORIGIN U.S.A.
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YEAR 1990
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CPU Motorola MC68030
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SPEED 16 / 25 mHz
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CO-PROCESSOR 3 : Super Denise (video),Fat Agnus (memory manager, blitter & copper), Paula (I/O, sound), 68881 or 68882 (math processor), SCSI DMAC
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RAM 1-2 MB Chip RAM, up to 18 Mb (with 16Mb FAST) and theoricaly to 4 Gb.
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ROM 512 KB
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TEXT MODES 60 x 32 / 80 x 32
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GRAPHIC MODES 12 graphic modes : from 320 x 240 to 960 x 512
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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.
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SOUND Four 8 bit PCM voices
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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
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BUILT IN MEDIA one 3.5'' disk-drive (880k), SCSI-2 Hard-Drive
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OS AMIGA WorKBench 2.0x, Unix System (SVR4) V operating system
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POWER SUPPLY Internal PSU
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PRICE Amiga 3000T (100Mb HD) : $4498 (USA, 1991)\ Amiga 3000T (200Mb HD) : $4998 (USA, 1991)
photos
adverts
hardware
emulators
links
videos
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AMIGA 3000T-040 Thanks to Andrew Bienhaus for this picture /media/museum/photos/commodore_amiga-3000t-040_1.jpg
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AMIGA 3000T-040 - FRONT PANEL CLOSE-UP Thanks to Andrew Bienhaus for this picture /media/museum/photos/commodore_amiga-3000t-040_2.jpg
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COMMODORE BROCHURE Photo taken from an Amiga 3000 brochure. /media/museum/pubs/commodore_amiga3000_brochure_1.jpg
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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
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AMIGA 1300 Genlock /media/museum/hardware/commodore_amiga1000_1300-genlock.jpg
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MEMORY EXPANSION BOARD 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 MB expansion card here fitted with 2 MB. /media/museum/hardware/commodore_amiga1500_memboard_1.jpg
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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
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A570 CD-ROM Thanks to David Griffith for this picture /media/museum/hardware/amiga_cdrom_a570_1.jpg
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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
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Amiga Forever http://www.amigaforever.com/ Windows Complete but commercial Amiga emulator
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AMIthlon & AmigaXL http://amigaosxl.haage-partner.de/index-e.html Windows Powerful commercial emulators
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WinFellow HTTP://FELLOW.SOURCEFORGE.NET Windows Probably better at some games than UAE, but not as versatile.
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WinUAE http://www.winuae.net/ Windows The best Amiga emulator ? :-)
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Max UAE http://maxuae.de/ Apple UAE for Mac OS X
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AmigaSYS http://amigasys.fw.hu/ Unix / Linux AmigaSYS is a pre-installed full Amiga OS for WinUAE
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Pocket UAE http://pocketinsanity.sourceforge.net/ Other platform Amiga Emulator for Pocket PC
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Experimental UAE http://www.rcdrummond.net/uae/ Multiplatform Standard UAE enhanced with features from WinUAE.
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MESS http://www.mess.org Multiplatform MESS now emulates the Commodore Amiga
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UAE http://www.freiburg.linux.de/~uae/ Multiplatform (Ubiquitous Amiga Emulator) for BeOS, Mac OS, Linux, NextStep, MSDOS, OS/2 and Win95/NT : Homepage.
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Amiga animations http://www.randelshofer.ch/animations/ A collection of Amiga Animations. This is the only site where you can see them online!
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Amiga Interactive Guide http://amiga.emugaming.com/ Excellent site ! A lot of very interesting infos there.
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Amiga Island http://www.virtualpast.de/ Excellent site with ROMs to download!
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Amiga Web Directory http://www.cucug.org/amiga.html
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AMIGART.COM http://www.amigart.com Nice site with Amiga news
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Back to the Roots HTTP://WWW.BACK2ROOTS.ORG/ Amiga culture, guides, huge collection of legally downloadable software, and much more.
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Lex Site - Amiga Hardware Database http://amiga.multigraph.com/ The website title says it all!
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NetBSD-Amiga http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/amiga/index.html
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Old Computer Mags http://www.old-computer-mags.com/ Scans of old computer and videogames magazine
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Recorded Amiga Games http://www.recordedamigagames.org Speedrun, longplay and misc videos of Amiga games and more.
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RetroPack http://www.retropack.co.uk/ Website dedicated to selling original Amigas, CD32s and Amiga/CD32 Games.
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The Amiga Monitor http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/MikeWebb/amhome.html
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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
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The English Amiga Board http://eab.abime.net/ Community site for Amiga fans
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World-Wide Amiga - Online!! http://www.amiga.org/
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Web Wiz CAPTCHA http://www.webwizcaptcha.com Reviews of Amiga software, hardware
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Commodore Amiga commercial - EXIT http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=8721405286052618769&hl=fr Length: 41 s
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Commodore Amiga 500 commercial http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=5737538578208665725&hl=fr Length: 29 s
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Commodore Amiga 1000 commercial http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=5356507595228759374&hl=fr Length: 32 s
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Commodore Amiga 600 italian commercial http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-768109352967297990&hl=fr Length: 19 s
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Commodore Amiga packs commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdaMq8JLyHA Length: 21 s
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Commodore Amiga TV Ad - Celebrities https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEFoj6sbDjU Length: 29 s
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Commodore Amiga 500 promotional video http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=9038863557655975739&hl=fr Length: 15 min 06 s
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Computer Chronicles: Amiga 3000 (1990) http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=6336054364333755091&hl=fr Length: 29 min 09 s
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Computer Chronicles: Amiga & Atari (1985) http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=8978343825632445107&hl=fr Length: 29 min 18 s
/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
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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.


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.