My AMiGA

My AMiGA 3000 was manufactured in November 1990. It is a 32 bit upgrade of the 16 bit A2000, running the then cutting edge Motorola 68030 with MMU (Memory Management Unit) and 68882 FPU (Floating Point Unit or Math Co-processor) clocked at either 16 or 25 MHz. This was the first of the workbench 2 machines, very upgradable, utilising 32 bit fully pre-emtive multitasking and a small, very efficient operating system.

The AMiGA 3000 was a low-cost high-end graphics work station and because of the upgradeability of the original design many are still in use. Originally many were used as VR machines, with TV and film work and a number sold as Unix work stations (model A3000UX information and usergroup). At this point in time Sun was looking at the A3000 as a Unix machine, but due to Commodore missmanagement the deal fell through and Commodore and the AMiGA missed out on a ready made, profesional user market.

The ZORRO 3 slot is the method for adding expansion cards (called ZORRO cards) to big box AMiGAs. The 4 32 bit ZORRO 3 expansion slots found in the A3000 are the same as the ones in the later A4000 and backwards compatible with 16 bit ZORRO 2. ZORRO hardware autoconfigures and the AMiGA itself is a true "plug and play" machine years before the PC world had ever heard the term. The CPU expansion slot differs from the A4000 only in the missing int2 line for SCSI. The up shot of this is that the A3000 can use any boards designed with the A4000 in mind, Zorro and CPU cards, including dual 68k 060 and PPC 604 @ 266mhz CPU cards and a new PCI expansion board with promised PPC G4 500mhz+ (as used in the new iMACs) cards on their way. This means that the A3000 can be upgraded to a very modern, powerful machine only lacking the AGA screenmodes of the A1200 and A4000 which some games employ.

Many CPU boards for the A3000 have a Fast SCSI 2 interface as a add on module or as part of the CPU board itself. The A3000 CPU slot was never intended as a I/O expansion, the designers insted opting for a ZORRO solution thus the CPU slot did not have the required signal for SCSI. Many CPU boards are designed for the A4000 that DOES have this signal on the CPU slot. To get this signal on the A3000 a wire needs to be added from a CIA chip to the CPU slot. See A3000 SCSI for the fix to the SCSI problem that affects A3000 with Cyberstorm Mark 1, 2, 3 and 68k/PPC. The WarpEngine 040 CPU card has it's own fix in the form of a jumper from the card to the CIA chip on the motherboard. The WarpEngine SCSI needs the latest revision SCSI chip fitted to the A3000. I am not sure of other CPU cards like the Apollo and GVP but I guess they too will need the fix, let me know!

The termination power diodes on some A3000 motherboards are placed the wrong way around and to confuse matters further the silk screen "picture" for these diodes is printed the wrong way too. This means that termination power is not correctly supplied to external SCSI devices. If you have SCSI problems with external devices, consult the SCSI FAQ to find out what pins deliver termination power and very carefully check the voltage (+5V) is there (pin 25) on the external SCSI port using the shield for ground. Reverse the diodes. Refer to your A3000 manual. Don't blow up your A3000!!!

Quick guide for SCSI.

Make sure all your SCSI devices, including the SCSI controllar, have different ID numbers. The SCSI controller ID is normally 7 by default. The devices at each end of the SCSI chain need to be terminated, but not other devices, inculding the SCSI controller. Terminate the devices at each end with resistor packs, remove these packs from the other devices.
In the first example the hard drive is terminated and has a SCSI ID number of 0, the CD ROM is not terminated and has a SCSI ID number of 5 and the controller is terminated and has a SCSI ID number of 7.

The second example the hard drive is terminated and has a SCSI ID number of 1 the CD ROM is not terminated and has a SCSI ID number of 4 the controller is not terminated and has a SCSI ID number of 7 and the hard drive is terminated and has a SCSI ID number of 0.

The third example the hard drive is terminated and has a SCSI ID number of 1 the CD ROM is not terminated and has a SCSI ID number of 4 the controller is not terminated and has a SCSI ID number of 7 and the hard drive is not terminated and has a SCSI ID number of 0 and the CD ROM is terminated and has a SCSI ID number of 5.

Key to the graphics.

The SCSI FAQ can be reached here for more detailed information about SCSI devices and set up examples.

SCSI connectors pictures of the different types for identification.

As well as the missing int2 line on the A3000 the Apollo 3040 and 3060 cards have some other issues regarding their use, RAM SIMMs, RAM block sizes. See Apollosidan for details and look here for a motherboard modification for the Apollo 4040 and 4060. Note: it is NOT the int2 mod and is only for Apollo A4000 cards the Apollo 3040 and 3060 do not need this mod as they are for the A3000.

When installing a new boot drive in a 3000 with the original "boot ROMs", to get the 3000 to softkick kickstart, the disk must be called wb_2.x in hard drive toolbox and the drive set to FFS with out DC or international checked. Your KickStart image should be in DEVS: This is because V.36 boot roms boot the machine and look for a hard drive called wb_2.x to find a kickstart 2.x or 3.x rom image then reboot using the hard drive kickstart. Note that if you have V.36 bootroms the A3640 040 (and any other 040 or 060) card will not work, the machine will not even boot. The kickstart image for the 3000 must be for a 3000 to work properly as must "real" kickstart roms. ROMs from other AMiGAs do not support A3000 SCSI or floppy disk drives and so are not much use!

The A3640 Commodore 68040 CPU card with MMU and FPU as fitted to the 040 A4000 (and some A3000Ts?) can be fitted to the A3000 but no ram can be put on this board and it can be tricky getting the A3640 to work in a A3000. Here is more information on the problems and ways round them. You need real 3.1 ROMs, I could not get a A3640 that was going in another 3000 to work in mine with DMAC -02 and Ramsey -04.

CyberStorm Mk2Some overclocking and 060 info for the Cyberstorm 040ERC board with links for parts, oscillators and "cheap" 060 cpus