My interest in the Amiga started way back in 1986. At the time, I was the proud owner of a CBM Plus/4 (my first computer). I read magazine articles, saw the hardware and software and was mightily impressed! Well, despite taking four years to scrape together the money, I finally bought an A500 in 1990 - and it still ranks as one of my best purchases ever!
In 1994, on the eve of the Commodore's demise, I bought an Amiga A4000/030 with some inherited money. 6Mb of RAM, a 200Mb Hard Disk and the excellent Kickstart 3.0 and AGA chipset. Even though I was considered stupid for not buying a PC, I still feel it is a great machine - the PC is just too bloated and unusable... trust me, I've used a LOT of different computers and operating systems (hey, I was raised on them!) so I'm not just making wild claims!
I upgraded my A4000 during February of 1997. Taking advantage of the cheap SIMMs prices I expanded the RAM to 14 Megs, and added an Oktagon 2008 SCSI Card and Sanyo/Compaq CRD-254V CD-ROM Drive. Since then, now that I'm working, I've added a gorgeous CyberVision 64/3D graphics card and a few other little things to boost productivity. I can certainly recommend the Zip Drive, it's just the thing for doing backups and mass storage. The Zip has freed up hundreds of floppy disks, and allows me to swap files between the Amiga and the Linux box at work with ease. Backups aren't a chore anymore too.
Next steps? Well, the PowerPC boards look tempting but I'm really of the thought that it's best to wait for the new Amigas - I'm definitely going to get one of the first as soon as they hit the streets. I'd also like a dual-PowerPC Met@Box transAM, but since there's no PowerPC version of AmigaOS at the moment and the transAM isn't currently available, it would just be an expensive luxury. Recent contemplations also include a BoXeR 060 or one of the IAT Impulse multi-Coldfire boards to uprate the A4000 temporary.
| A4000 | |
|---|---|
| CPU: | 68EC030 @ 25 MHz |
| RAM: | 2 Mb Chip / 16 Mb Fast |
| OS: | 3.0 |
| Storage: | 1.76 Mb Floppy Disk Drive Quantum Fireball 2.1 Gb IDE Hard Disk Sanyo/Compaq CRD-254V 4X CD-ROM Drive Iomega Zip-100 Drive (Ext. SCSI) |
| Expansion Cards: | Phase 5 CyberVision 64/3D Graphics Card CV64/3D Scandoubler Oktagon 2008 SCSI-2 Card IOBlix 1.3 IO Card (1xS, 1xP) |
| Peripherals: | CTX 1555E 15" SVGA Monitor Epson Stylus COLOR 600 Inkjet PACE 56k Modem UMAX Astra 610S Scanner PalmPilot Cradle |
| A500 | |
| CPU: | 68000 @ 7.2 MHz |
| RAM: | 512k Chip / 512k Fast |
| OS: | 1.3 |
| Storage: | 880k Floppy Disk Drive External 880k Floppy Disk Drive |
| Peripherals: | Microvitec M1438 Monitor Star LC200C Colour Printer |
Fitting the CD-ROM drive was a huge pain, as many A4000 users will testify. I had to move the hard disk into the second rear bay and do some ingenious coiling and bending of cables to make the thing fit! Adding another IDE hard disk is now an impossibility, though that shouldn't be a problem. Anyone thinking of adding a CD-ROM drive to a desktop A4000 should check the drive fits first! Easier said than done, though...
The graphics card also proved to be a pain and took about three hours! How come? Well, the card was absolutely refusing to slide into the slot. Eventually, after much grunting, pushing and soothing of fingers with cold water (my fingers are still red and swollen as I type this!) it managed to slide in okay. I'm not sure why it takes so much effort to try and push the card into the slot, and I always fret about using too much pressure, but I'd recommend getting a second (preferably strong) set of hands to help out. I'm glad to say that the software installation was a breeze - though if you have a second floppy disk I'd recommend you use it, there was a LOT of disk swapping!
I also own the following non-Amiga machines: CBM Plus/4, Amstrad NC100, 3Com PalmPilot Pro, and a K6-2 450MHz IBM PC compatible running Mandrake Linux 6.0 (on permanent loan from work).
