Bought a massive Amiga 2000 collection tonight

yoyodyne · Post by **yoyodyne** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 9:46 pm

I found a local guy listing his A2000 on Craigslist this weekend, no
picture, but he said it worked and 'lots of manuals/software'. He
wanted $120, which I thought was fair, but I wasn't sure if I needed
another Commodore around. I have had an A1000 and A500 before,
but got rid of them since I had a lack of software, and I would prefer
an Amiga with a hard drive.

Well, I asked if I could come over to check out the stuff, and I was
speechless. This guy used to develop drivers for Supra Modems as
a consultant to them. The 'lots of software/manuals' turned out
to be 5 huge boxes of disks, and developers software kits, actual
Commodore/Amiga Reference manuals (a whole stack), even a pile
of manila envelopes addressed from Commodore. Four 3-ring notebooks
full of 'Amiga Mail' Technical newsletters from 1989-1993. The computer
has a Supra drive-on-a-card installed (200 mb) , was that original?
Anyway, theres 2 extra cards included, sans drives. Sysquest 40mb
drive installed, but currently not hooked to SCSI bus, so I have to see
why. Commodore 1080 monitor, and some generic stereo speakers
were included.

There is also a new in box PC emulator kit (board, 5.25" drive,
commodore software, manuals). Amiga 2630 accelerator card
is installed, and original box is included. DigiView digitizer was included.
Around 200-300 disks total, I haven't counted, and 4 of the sysquest
drive cartridges.

Since this is the most advanced Amiga I have used, I have a few questions.
When it boots, it asks 'kickstart 2.1 y/n', I hit 'n'.
Then it asks 'kickstart 3.0 y/n', if I hit 'n' it boots kickstart 1.3?

If I hit 'y' to 'kickstart 3.0' it gives me a warning that it is for
developers only, and not to distribute it, then boots. It is copyright 1992.
Workbench is version 39.something, I can get the exact number.

Q: Whats up with that warning? Is there a version later than
what I have now?

It will take me months to go through everything, I don't know where
to start.

I think I got a pretty good deal. Here's some photos:

http://home.alltel.net/bf63349/a2000cpu.JPG

http://home.alltel.net/bf63349/a2000.JPG

http://home.alltel.net/bf63349/a2000pc.JPG

http://home.alltel.net/bf63349/a20001.JPG

http://home.alltel.net/bf63349/a2000dale.JPG

http://home.alltel.net/bf63349/a2000bag.JPG

pitcalco · Post by **pitcalco** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 3:35 am

A good deal??!

You hit the jackpot!!!

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 4:21 am

As far as I know, there is no kickstart 3.0 for A2000 (only for AGA machines - A4000 and A1200), so that must be a developer only thing as you said... But there is a kickstart 3.1 for all amiga models. I think it's different roms for the different machines though because I remember it had different prices for different models. I have kickstart 3.0 in my A1200 but the first thing it does is to load a kickstart 3.1 image file into my blizzard card.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 7:57 am

Man, you really need to get in touch with some kind of Amiga online museum and make sure some of those development drivers for the SUPRA products are archived....as well as the correspondence from Commodore. You really did hit the jackpot. Some of those disks and correspondence might be the only copies left. Please archive them

!

The A2000 did not come with the Supra hard drive board standard. The A2000HD did come with a Commodore A2091 SCSI controller card (and hard drive) standard, though).

You have a 68030 accelerator in there on your CPU card.

I have an A2000 which I use extensively, so can help you out there.

Boray is right. Kickstart3.0 was never released publicly for the A2000. So you have an in-Commodore beta of WB3.0 there. Workbench 3.0 WAS released for the A1200/4000 but never for the old ECS machines. Sounds like you have a previously unarchived kickstart image for ECS WB3.0 and perhaps an unarchived copy of WB3.0 on a partitiion of your hard drive.

That should REALLY be archived and uploaded online. Try looking under the drive tray in the A2000. Is there a riser daughterboard with TWO or THREE kickstart chips somewhere under the floppy drives? I'm just wondering if the Kickstart 3.0 is a hardware chip, or if you are booting it from a software ROM image.

You NEED to let this guy know about your find.
http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/

The officially released versions of kickstart/workbench for the A2000 are:

1.2, 1.3, 2.04, 2.1, 3.1, 3.5 and 3.9.

So you have an in-between version (pre 3.1 release) that I have never seen nor heard about before (and I'm sure a lot of people would be curious to see). Do you have the ability to dump ROMs?

Yes, please let us know about the Kickstart version that you have in WB3.0.

What does it say on those loose chips?

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 8:58 am

(But workbench 3.5 and 3.9 uses the 3.1 kickstart...)

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 9:03 am

Boray wrote:(But workbench 3.5 and 3.9 uses the 3.1 kickstart...)

Not entirely true. While the later versions of the OS (3.5/3.9) use the 3.1 kickstart chip, they software patch it during bootup to a newer version of kickstart. That's why Amigas with OS3.5 and 3.9 reboot themselves during startup.

There was never an actual 3.5 or 3.9 hardware kickstart (on a chip) released, it's all done from a software kickstart image. But some people have been successful in putting this info on a chip and actually creating their own 3.5 and 3.9 kickstart chips. It just seems the new Amiga company never had the finances or felt the need to create a hardware version of the 3.5/3.9 kickstart chips.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 9:12 am

Yoyodyne, I have posted some of this info on one of the more active Amiga forums:

http://www.amiga.org/modules/newbb/view ... post478673

If you'd like to register there, I'm sure the Amigans there can help you out. Otherwise, I can post more info or links to pictures you provide, with your permission or course.

yoyodyne · Post by **yoyodyne** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 10:03 pm

Thanks for the tips, everyone!

Ral-Clan, please post anything I've posted here on
Amiga.org. I'll be joining over there soon.

I looked over the 2000 owners manual, and the accelerator card
manual, so I see now I was asking some dumb questions at first.
I hope to get better.

I can dump (and burn) eproms, so if there is anything we need
to get, I can.

The only roms installed are on the accelerator card, not the motherboard.

They are marked '1991 CBM 2620-30 390282-06'.

Here are some other facts about this machine I found:

MB is screen printed : 'Amiga B2000-CR Rev 4.1', but a sticker marks it
as 'Ver 4.3'.

Denise chip is newer 8373, original 8362 is in a box.

Angus is newer 8372A, original 8370 is in box.

On the MB, 68010 cpu is installed, original 68000 is in box.

Something is wrong with the Syquest drive, when I land the scsi
cable, it does not boot (can't detect hard drive). I found no manuals
for the Syquest drive, do you know of anyone using one?
(This would be a good question for Amiga.org, I bet)

I started sorting floppy disks, there is close to 300 total, about 1/3 of
them are commercial software, the rest are work disks, copies, or
public domain (lots of Fred Fish disks, and about 40 of a local
Amiga user group).

When the machine boots, and I select 'kick 3.0', I can briefly see
before the screen clears: 'Rekick started and validated BETA *something*
,etc'. So is it booting kickstart from the hard drive?

Here's another newbie question. There are several game disks with
instructions, but they only talk about floppy-based machines. How
do I start the game when I don't have the chance to insert the
game disk instead of the workbench disk?

Are the 'Amiga Mail' Technical newsletters documented online already?
I was looking at the table of contents, and found something interesting,
but some one else must have thought that too, 'cause those pages are
missing.

I agree that anything that has not been archived needs to be. I haven't
verified the contents yet, but I found some disks marked
'Supra Modem source'. There is also some Devcon disks marked
from Commodore Amiga as 'confidential'.

OK, one more newbie question: Is an ethernet card a worthy item
for this computer? Or is CrossDos a better solution for file transfer?
Or can you get this machine on the 'net?

My immediate goal is to get a list of all the books together, and then
try to get this mess organized. Right now it is spread across a
table in several piles.

I will be out of town for a few days the last part of this week, so
I will not be able to update any info on the items. I will however be
able to get online.

Centallica · Post by **Centallica** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 6:59 am

I hope you grinded the guy down to $100

Nice score man! (Even @ $120

)

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 9:06 am

yoyodyne wrote:The only roms installed are on the accelerator card, not the motherboard.

Okay, these wouldn't be the kickstart ROMs. Just ROMs for the accelerator card.

MB is screen printed : 'Amiga B2000-CR Rev 4.1', but a sticker marks it
as 'Ver 4.3'.

I have a revision 4.1 Amiga 2000. It's an 'earlier' revision MB but still good. Sounds like someone has upgraded it to a 4.3 revision board with some modifications.

Denise chip is newer 8373, original 8362 is in a box.

Angus is newer 8372A, original 8370 is in box.

Good. Sounds like someone has done the ESC (enhanced chip set) upgrade (from the original OCS chipset). This gives the Amiga the ability to use a full 1MB of "chip" ram for graphics and also gives it some enhanced graphics modes (productivity mode, double-NTSC, etc.).

On the MB, 68010 cpu is installed, original 68000 is in box.

This was a popular cheap modification. It really doesn't do much, except speed up some rare mathematical calculations a little bit. Doesn't hurt though.

Something is wrong with the Syquest drive, when I land the scsi
cable, it does not boot (can't detect hard drive). I found no manuals
for the Syquest drive, do you know of anyone using one?
(This would be a good question for Amiga.org, I bet)

I can't help you too much with this, but you might need to mount the drive in workbench or create a mountlist. Because it's removable media, there might be some sort of software thingy you need to click on or run to tell the A2000 you've inserted a new SyQuest disk. The A.org people would know more.

When the machine boots, and I select 'kick 3.0', I can briefly see
before the screen clears: 'Rekick started and validated BETA *something*
,etc'. So is it booting kickstart from the hard drive?

Definitely sounds like it is being softkicked from a kickstart image on the hard drive. Would be good to back up this image if you can find it, or back up the whole partition. It's probably in the Workbench: directory or partition. Maybe in the S: or STORAGE: directories. If you know how to display your startup-sequence (in the S: directory) you can read the path there to find out where it is.

Here's another newbie question. There are several game disks with
instructions, but they only talk about floppy-based machines. How
do I start the game when I don't have the chance to insert the
game disk instead of the workbench disk?

There are two ways to run floppy games. You can try putting in the game's boot disk before you turn the Amiga on. It will boot from the floppy before it tries to boot from the hard drive.

Also, you can hold down both mouse buttons when you turn the Amiga on. This will give you an early startup menu, in which you can do a lot of things, including disabling drives (like your hard drives) temporarily.

I'm not sure if the early Startup menu will come up on your triple kickstarted Amiga. You might have to wait until you've chosen Workbench 2.1 or 3.0 and then during the reboot, hold down the buttons. Workbench 1.3 had not early startup menu. This all depends on what actual kickstart chip you've got installed, and which of the other two versions are being softkicked. If you've got either the 2.1 or 3.0 actually on the real kickstart chip, the early startup menu should work right from powerup.

You might find that some of those old game will conflict with the 68030 you have installed. There is probably a software method for disabling the 68030 temporarily, from within Workbench.

Are the 'Amiga Mail' Technical newsletters documented online already?
I was looking at the table of contents, and found something interesting,
but some one else must have thought that too, 'cause those pages are
missing.

I have never seen them online, but I have not looked extensively. I would think this is something of value, though.

I agree that anything that has not been archived needs to be. I haven't
verified the contents yet, but I found some disks marked
'Supra Modem source'. There is also some Devcon disks marked
from Commodore Amiga as 'confidential'.

This is definitely valuable. The Supra modem driver source code, although obsolete, would still be worthy of saving and archiving. The Supra modem (internal for Amiga) was only 2400 baud maximum, but it was the only internal Amiga modem ever made.

OK, one more newbie question: Is an ethernet card a worthy item
for this computer? Or is CrossDos a better solution for file transfer?
Or can you get this machine on the 'net?

Amiga network cards are pretty expensive. I would think either using CrossDOS to read PC discs, or rigging up some sort of parallel port network with a PC would be cheaper. (there is some free PC to Amiga parallel port networking software on Aminet.)

One of the easiest ways to tell what actual kickstart chip you've got installed in there (without removing the drive tray to look at the chip) is to disconnect the ribbon cables or power cables from all your hard drives. Then turn on the Amiga. Since the Amiga can no longer boot from a hard drive, and there is no floppy inserted, it will show you a screen asking you to insert a floppy. This screen will also tell you the version of the kickstart chip you have installed (or at least the version of Workbench it wants).

d0c · Post by **d0c** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 5:09 pm

$120 for all that is a riot!!!!

yoyodyne · Post by **yoyodyne** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 7:52 pm

Ral-Clan,
I looked again for the MB rom, a socket labeled 'HN62402' has
chip 315093-02 in it. I was looking for an eprom with a window, my
bad.

Here is a file with a listing of the 'Commodore' books:

http://home.alltel.net/bf63349/amigabooks.txt

This list doesn't count the manuals for software.
There are a couple of other Amiga books not listed from other publishers.

Some of the ROM books are basically different revisions of the
same subjects. Some of them go into details and specifics I never
will have time (or level of expertise) to use.

It appears that I have several versions of 'C' compilers. I learned 'C'
and Unix at the university, but I had more fun using Pascal. Anybody
know of any good Pascal compilers for the Amiga? If so, how
available are they?

Ral-Clan,
Your tips on getting the games to work was perfect, and yes, I had
to disable the 68030 to get them to go. Thanks!

This guy also wrote and distributed a program called 'LDebug', a
68000 debugger/trace program. I seem to have the source for
that also.

Centallica, on my way over to his place, I did wonder if he would
take less. After seeing the size of the collection, I felt it best
to pay and leave before he changed his mind!

yoyodyne · Post by **yoyodyne** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 9:54 pm

I found a neat little program on the hard drive :'sysinfo' that displays
all the software versions, plus identifies the chips and memory installed.

It says kickstart is V39.106, and workbench is v39.29.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 8:40 am

One thing that's great about having your triple kickstarted system is that some games really only run well on the older Workbench 1.3.

That's why it's good to keep it on there, even though it is an earlier version.

Okay, based on the number you gave me, you have a Kickstart 1.3 chip installed in your motherboard. So the kickstart images on your hard drive are for Workbench 2.1 and the developer's release 3.0.

This probably means you don't have an early startup menu (both mouse buttons while powering up), but can get it if you hold down the mouse buttons after the computer reboots to load WB2.1 or 3.0.

Yup, you've got the same 3.0 kickstart that was used in the Amiga 1200/4000: V39.106.

http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/images/wb_30k.gif

I'm surprised it runs in an ECS machine, as these are AGA machines. But perhaps yours is special because it is a version made for the A2000/500. I have heard some people were able to get that version of the kickstart working on an A3000 (which is ECS).

Your version of Workbench corresponds to the 3.0 version found on the A1200/4000 too.

yoyodyne · Post by **yoyodyne** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 11:01 am

ral-clan wrote:
This probably means you don't have an early startup menu (both mouse buttons while powering up), but can get it if you hold down the mouse buttons after the computer reboots to load WB2.1 or 3.0.

I can get a menu on power up by holding the mouse buttons down, it
lets me select either 68000 (MB, actually 68010 that was upgraded), the
68030 (accelerator card), or unix.

I get this menu before I get asked to select my kickstart version.