Amiga 3000 - The Best Amiga Ever?

[@danwood_uk]

The first 1,000 people to use this link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare: skl.sh/danwood08211

[@jameslewis2635]

Dan, regarding the bridge board you should check out the Jan Beta and Adrian's Digital Basement channels. Both have done videos on getting these bridge boards working although I think Adrian went a bit further in terms of trouble-finding them. He does have a couple that don't work still so it could be a good idea to keep an eye on his channel since he does tend to eventually repair things like this.

[@OptimusMonk01]

They do know everyone skips the sponsored parts right? Also, when EVERY youtuber is shilling skillshare, it really demeans the value of it, because it shows how desperate they must be to get signups that they need to carpet bomb the advertising.

[@shaanee]

Also Dan will personally come to your house and present you with an Amiga cupcake! *drool*

[@cloerenjackson3699]

It's a bit like asking "What is the best Sinclair Spectrum ever?". Who would care except fans of the platform?

[@flonkplonk1649]

Why don't you mention the Amiga 2000 ? It was the most common after the A500 and famous with Videotoaster!

[@laurencevanhelsuwe3052]

I was a software engineer working for Commodore in the UK in 1990. Steve Jobs' Next inspired more than the new Workbench L&F.. Commodore wanted to copy the Next's approach to printer driving: use Postscript from display all the way to paper. Commodore invested in creating its own cleanroom Postscript implementation (to avoid paying license fees to Adobe). This project was an internal R&D success, but Commodore marketing (in the US) decided to pull the plug on the whole idea. At the time, Commodore was led by people with little to no strategic vision. No wonder they went bust.

[@remijakobsen1848]

​@TheLogicJunkie The A1060 sidecar PC emulator was also the first offical harddrive for Amiga from Commodore. It had a MFM harddrive that could be shared and used by the Amiga part as well as the PC XT part. In late 1986, early 1987, with Amiga 2000, SCSI harddrive was an official option, the A2090 SCSI controller. The Amiga 2000HD included this from factory, and also pre-installed in the Amiga 2500 of course. They also released the Amiga 2500/UX with Amiga Unix. Amiga 2000 also got the option of flicker fixer in the video slot that is based on the same chip that the flicker fixer in the Amiga 3000 uses

[@shaanee]

the software tho minor just wasn't there for the 'killer apps' there was wordperfect but not WYSIWYG that was good enough. If they had only matched a printer and fonts (as a contingency for postscript) . They just sorta waited for developers to fix it which they didnt.

[@perplexedmoth]

@TheLogicJunkie "To do a Bill Gates on Gary Killdall", oh god, what a way to put it.

[@remijakobsen1848]

@@shaanee Word Perfect for Amiga was not out before 1987, but it was updated and the last official Amiga WordPerfect release was version 4.1.12 released in January of 1991. I've got an Amiga version with its big manual.

[@shaanee]

@@remijakobsen1848 they should've bundled WP... I used my A3000 until about 2001..I had some email client/magicWB. In the mid/late 90s I ran 7.5.5 MacOS & installed a JAVA runtime (which was then and still now pure garbage)

[@tuanbe]

Remembering me drooling at the A3000 presented in the window of the Belgian Amiga distributor Click. It took me about one hour on my bike to reach the shop, drool and go in to pick up the latest booklet price list. I regularly spent vast amount of time calculating my dream machine with all possible options. Good times 🤟

[@tmichiels]

Know where this was, did the same!

[@brodriguez11000]

Kind of like shopping from issues of Computer Shopper.

[@tuanbe]

@@brodriguez11000 or Amiga Format calculating British Pounds into Belgian Francs despite knowing a) the stuff you see isn’t available in Belgian shops and b) you’re 12 years old and have like 3 dollars on your name.

[@ortholux2343]

I've bought stuff from Johan in his appartement on the fruithoflaan when he was still in military service in Germany and brought boxes full over to Belgium to sell. This was before he had his shop click.

[@tuanbe]

@@ortholux2343 Ah didn't know he lived there! My home was a few streets from there, hence the hour journey on my little bmx

[@BartSantello]

I still own my Amiga 3000. I ran a real estate company until 1997 with the A3000 presenting color home photos and also for word processing using final writer and a spreadsheet program.

[@patkelly8309]

Look what you coulda done eh?

[@kashan9002]

😮!❤

[@adairjanney7109]

are you rich

[@TheLambLive]

As a young teen with a newly released A1200,, that will always be the best Amiga to me... The amount of horsepower they managed to fit in a device not much bigger than a keyboard was incredible. The 2meg of ram, the AGA chipset... if only they could have got it out sooner, maybe instead of the A600,,, things might have been different.

[@tomdavies6368]

The A1200 was only 6 months later than the A600 wasn't it? I think the A1200 needed the AAA chipset and an internal HD as default. It was a great machine, but it wasn't enough in 1992.

[@VincentGroenewold]

@@tomdavies6368 I did have it (and still have) with a HD in it. They released a HD version apparently. Didn’t feel like it to me back then, but it was too little too late, I was blissfully ignorant of that fact though and loved it a lot.

[@johnwayne2103]

Agreed the A1200 was such a better machine and yes it did have an internal HD. I owned an A500, CD32, A600 for a brief bit and an A1200 and traded it for a Playstation. I still own 2 A2000 machines and one of them has an 68040 processor board in it which took my A2000 and put it on Crack. I had a chance to purchase a A4000 but it was so expensive back then I decided the A2000 with the 68040 processor board was just as good. The 1200 was perfect in my opinion because it was twice as fast and so compact compared to the A500 and lighter.

[@wyterabitt2149]

Then the we would only have a500s out there though, instead of the vastly better a600 option to get modded and running.

[@BjrnOttoVasbottenbjovas]

Why they didnt put the A1200 in a proper desktop cabinet with possibility for standard 3 1/2 hard drives

[@reelmccoyfx]

Best machine I've owned was an Amiga 3000. I miss that machine. To this day, there's aspects of AmigaDOS that I miss living in the PC/Windows world. Thanks for the video!

[@MarkusWolff]

Same! :-D

[@alexatkin]

I moved from Windows to Linux which largely scratched that itch for me. I was disappointed the AmiWM (Window Manager) fell out of maintenance though, would have been nice to use for the novelty.

[@laurencevanhelsuwe3052]

I was an Amiga programmer for years (first A1000, then A3000). Just get yourself a Mac, and you'll find more than enough Amiga-like goodies under the hood. Windows sucks, always has, always will.

[@blmartech]

@@laurencevanhelsuwe3052 going to a mac would be worse. Especially from a consumer freedom standpoint.

[@laurencevanhelsuwe3052]

@@blmartech If by freedom you mean hardware expandability, you're right. But if a UNIX core tickles your bones, the Mac is an interesting product.

[@CompTechMike]

I don't have time to use my Amiga's anymore, but sure do get nostalgic watching videos on KZbin from time to time. Great job!

[@recall2880]

I’ll have them off you for gratis

[@Tech-geeky]

The only thing that keep me coming back I always think of buying Amiga machine, mags, disks etc, but that quickly passes after . 10 minutes or so in the sun, then back to reality "opps.. no i have ADF files... nevermind" how do you guys handle this?

[@williamhoodtn]

Speaking about that compact case design, Hedley Davis (my manager at CBM), stated that it should be built strong enough for him to stand on it. It was and he did! It was IMHO an elegant design.

[@wildstar1063]

I loved my A3000 desktop, got it new in 91. My first experiences on the Internet were with that computer and the AMosaic browser, of course on a dial-up connection. That computer died in 96, but I now have another Amiga 3000 desktop and an Amiga 3000 Tower.

[@remijakobsen1848]

A3000 tower is on my wishlist. Lucky you!

[@rikpeol3612]

@@remijakobsen1848 I found an A3000T on the bulky waste in the rain. It was thrown away by people who thought it was outdated computer junk. The original keyboard was still on top. It only had a small battery damage and a defective capacitor in the power supply. What is an A3000T worth today?

[@remijakobsen1848]

@@rikpeol3612 10-15k

[@rikpeol3612]

@@remijakobsen1848 10-15k? You're not serious, are you? In what currency?

[@remijakobsen1848]

@@rikpeol3612 Euro, if it's working and looks ok.

[@maragaram]

My A3000(s) are still cranking along, 30 years after they popped out. Love'em. When a local repair guy did some amazing work on my A500, he explained that the old girls were so tolerant of voltage fluctuations, that they were actually far more resilient than hardware manufactured today. Keep on truckin'! :)

[@IggyStardust1967]

The A3000 remains my favorite computer of all time. Absolutely LOVED that machine! I wish I still had a working one. If I did, I would still be using it to this day.

[@NeilRoy]

2.0 with MagicWB was my favourite back in the day. I had an A2000 where I upgraded it to WB2.0 and loved it. I also used to drool over the A3000. I used to connect to a multiline BBS in our city that was run off of an A3000. The guy that ran it went on to start one of our city's first Internet services and it is still going to this day.

[@ortholux2343]

I bought my a3000 off the guy running nightbreed BBS. It was running on a pc by that time. Don't remember his name Steven something but I'm no longer sure, met him ones a little under 30 years ago.

[@JoeMuc2008]

I agree, the most beautiful Amiga of all times (at least the Desktop version). I used to have one of these beauties until a few years ago, bought at one of the legendary fairs in Cologne, 1993 I think. One of the bigger mistakes in my life was when I decided I no longer used it enough to justify the space occupied by it. Didn't even get 450 EUR for it. And I would so like to turn back the clock now.

[@VasileiosPsomiadis]

@Dan Wood: Awesome presentation of the sexiest Amiga model ever released! 👍 Also happy to see my A3000 poster making an appearance! Many thanks for the link to my Amiga posters & artwork website.

[@friendlypiranha774]

Had an Amiga 3000 on my desk in 1990. Sweetest machine ever.

[@smakfu1375]

I have two Amiga 3000's, one is a near stock 030-35, the other running an A3640 board with a full 040-25. These are the only two Amiga's I have at the moment; one I got in 1990, brand new, the other a few years later from a friend who upgraded to a 4000. I love the 3000, but I don't think it was the best Amiga ever - I think that title belongs to the more humble A500. In 1987, it's hard to describe just how impressive a machine the A500 was for its price. Its packaging was impressive and, in many respects, it's still the quintessential Amiga. The 500 was also well engineered, generally reliable (in my experience), pretty expandable for it's form-factor, and just an over-all great little computer. However, the 3000 is still the sexiest Amiga; but it has a ton of strange quirks, a motherboard that C= was never done modifying, a truly obnoxious mid-plane expansion slot riser, annoying ZIP memory sockets, a PDS placed in the most inconvenient (and badly ventilated) place imaginable, and most shipped with a bugged SCSI controller. Then there's my early example, which shipped with a ROM tower, busted 1.4 ROM's, which I had to fix with soft-kicking (for the longest time) until I got 3.1 ROMS. The best part? I still have to use the ROM tower because they essentially (in my example) act as a giant bodge to address pin mapping problems for standard eproms. That said, every time I sit down in front of one of my 3000's (I keep one setup for use), it feels like a special, expensive and exotic machine, which it absolutely was in 1990. The power button feels serious, with it's slick tactile détente, the case looks expensive, it boots up with that seamless user experience that PC's have only just managed to achieve with UEFI in the last few years. The experience makes the whole system feel like something much more modern, like the direct ancestor of modern machines. In many respects it is, from the OS, to the outer/inner-loop display-list (copper) programming model, which is conceptually similar to GPU/compute kernel programming on modern machines, to the DMA and shared memory model, my Amiga 3000 has more in common with my modern PC's than any of the x86 machines that were the 3000's contemporaries.

[@marleypumpkin4917]

I created one side of an album with public domain software on the A500. Look up : The Blobels “ Oh To Be A Blobel”. It came out in 1989. !!

[@0zyris]

I was a professional graphic artist back in the day and had a 4000/060 with a Cyberstorm accelerator and a Picasso display card. I used the Adpro suite to do photo retouching using a gigantic Wacom tablet at resolutions far higher than my 800 x 600 professional monitor could display. I also did morphing for various advertising agencies during that craze, plus various 3D work using Imagine, Caligari, Real 3D2 and Lightwave. I also ran a brilliant spreadsheet and database, as well as some excellent 2D animation programs. Could you do a vid on a setup a bit like this?

[@dancharron7098]

As A BiG AMIGA used in the day. I Started with a 2500HD GVP 040 with the XP card. To the CDTV to the A3000 060 and then got the 4000T 060 and then the CD32 I ran A BBS or 2 and was also in video editing and in animations. But in 96 I lost all hope in the comeback and sold it all. Well all but the CDTV and the CD32. It took me a few years to get the bug back and buy into the Enemy and get a PC. And I hated it. First pc got fire. So I build my own. Now looking at that new a500 mini for fun.

[@francoisleveille409]

I miss my old digital friend. Played Gunship 2000 for hundrerds of hours on it. Learned to do real desktop publishing on it. Ran hundreds of hours of rendering on VistaPro and Scenery Animator.

[@curiousottman]

Beautiful machine. The A3000 was the best machine ever built by commodore. Adding in the Picasso II makes it so much more usable. The memory access is so fast compared to the a4000. Scsi interface also was a great touch. Commodore seemed to go backwards on the a4000 with no scan doubler in hardware, ide controller, cpu daughter card with slow memory access, el cheapo case. Thanks for the walk down memory lane.

[@DomainObject]

Great job again Dan! Always fun to have a true Amiga enthusiast give the run down on this legendary machine.

[@alangiles4616]

Every time I see one of your videos, Dan, I want to find an Amiga, especially a 3000 or 4000. You have great knowledge and enthusiam.

[@taxevasionwitt]

Does anyone know the name of the background song at 1:08 ? I've been trying to track down that one for a while now heh

[@stephenbruce8320]

I also have an A3000 with the HD Drive and it still had a spinner in it too. I have all the Classic Amiga Desktops in my collection along with all the Single Board Amiga's. My favorite is still the A2000HD only because I have owned it since the early 1990's so I have a sentimental attachment to it that I do not have with my other Amiga's.

[@robertdaone]

I miss my old Amigas. I had a Amiga 500 and a 2000 but always wanted the 3000 along with the Video Toaster.

[@RobertoDohnert]

That was the first Amiga I ever owned. Good show Dan

[@KarlHamilton]

Hmmm... correct me if I'm wrong here, but couldn't the Picasso IV in an A4000 take the video from the onboard video slot, flickerfix/scandouble it, and pass it through? An altogether neater solution than that bloody cable.

[@danwood_uk]

Yes it can. I have a PIV in my 4000.

[@lactobacillusprime]

It's always amazing that I can get surprised by yet another Commodore management decision from back in the day that seriously altered or probably better said contributed to its demise. Still a fan of Commodore computers nonetheless.

[@cloerenjackson3699]

You can say the same about anything. People complain about the limitations of the original PC platform.... it could also have been launched and marketed differently.

[@livefreeprintguns]

I got kind of a late start to the world of computing, my first computer being a Macintosh Performa 630CD so I missed out on all the cool hardware I've always been fascinated by from Sun, SGI and Amiga. Thanks for making these videos!

[@spiritualastralsoul]

Really nice video and thanks for sharing, I wasn't that familiar with the A3000 so was interesting to see what it brought to the table.

[@marcbontekoe4083]

The A3000 UX was my first Amiga and it brought me the wonder of a graphical interface to Unix on a machine with 4 Megabytes of RAM and an amazing at that time 200MB SCSI hard drive. I was sold immediately. Since then my main operating system became Unix and later on, Linux and I only use Windows if I really have to. When seeing this review I have to think back to that time. My A3000 is long gone, but it was an incredible machine.

[@gazac48]

I worked for Commodore Australia, I was manger user support & was using the A3000 before anyone new about it, in fack I got to use one a lot of new amiga , it was a good Amiga the A3000 & I had a change to take it home a lot to play with

[@zpepgamer]

Great vid Dan! Special machine, I still love my a500 though 😁 Your knowledge of Amiga makes me realize how little I know🤣 Hopefully we can have an Amiga convention in Ireland 2022, I think we all need it😁👍

[@Leartech81]

I used to sell and repair the Amiga's back in the day in a retail store in Toledo, Ohio.. I still love the 500! I could plop in a copy of Dungeon Master hooked to a stereo system and it would sell itself!

[@BuddhaPhi]

Great vid showing my favorite Amigas! I have a couple 3000 systems that I love. One was a freebie retired from a local science museum that did some very early VR displays and ran part of laser light show. (I actually got 4 systems free from the museum: A 2000, 2500, 3000 and 4000 Video Toaster.) The 3000s were exceptionally uncommon in the US. My LED board also cracked and I just glued and soldered it back to normal. Both of my boxes have a front panel that's for dual floppies. I'd prefer a single floppy and removable slot. The 1010 external floppy also works well with the 3000. I also only have the 2000 keyboard but have never had an issue with it. Otherwise my specs in my main box are very similar to yours. I've got a 040 board from a 4000 for the CPU. I have used both a Picasso II and GVP Spectrum 28/24 RTG board with much success. I added an A2065 network card and Sunrize AD516 16-bit sound card for sampling. For a memory upgrade I also have the BigRamPlus 256MB Zorro board. (It's great!) A SD SCSI adapter also is a must have. BTW, that tank mouse is so uncomfortable so I use a new Amiga branded mouse.

[@JOELY79]

i only had an amiga 600 still got it still love it don't judge me it still counts hahaha

[@TheTurnipKing]

the 600 takes a lot of flak, (and somewhat deservedly so. Releasing it one year before the 1200 was just cruel) but it's really just a diminutive A500+ with built in IDE.

[@The_Temple]

The Amiga 600 is much nicer nowadays with so many upgrade options (ironically enough, some of the features slammed back in the day make it far more expandable than likely dreamed of)

[@DarkDefender01]

I used to have: A500 CDTV modded, CD32 + SX1 A1200 + "turbo card" I miss them so much, now just preordered TheA500mini to bring the memories back!

[@20windfisch11]

As far as I know the A2286 bridgeboard needs a working RTC to do anything, so you have to replace the Dallas chip or open it and connect a CR2032.

[@thingsiplay]

I only ever had an Amiga 500 and remember to buy a full copy of Monkey Island 2 and not being able to play the game. And I didn't know back then why it did not work. Good memories.

[@midierror]

Great video Dan, as always! I never had an Amiga, but played the heck out of New Zealand Story at my mates place as kids. And...uh...shell suits are still fashionable?! I'm still wearing mine anyway.

[@danyoutube7491]

Keep away from naked flames midierror!

[@midierror]

@@danyoutube7491 What do you mea,....AHH IT BURNS!!!

[@superviewer]

Thank you for another great video. I love the NeXT connection which clearly also inspired the look of Windows. Back when I was a proud C64 owner I remember that there was a company making a desktop conversion kit for the C64 ditching the wedge look and making it resemble an Amiga 1000 or C128D. With separate keyboard. Getting an Amiga 500 made me forget the desktop dream though, but boy did it return when I saw the A3000 in a magazine. It just looked so good. Such a clean design. Super sexy. Like the Mac IIci with its striped snow white design. Soon everybody wanted tower cases.

[@johnbos4637]

14:31 No! The Picasso II graphics card is in a standard ZORRO 3 slot. The video slot is located at the top left. With a Picasso IV it would have to be put into the top slot because it has a built in flicker fixer that requires the video slot and a ZORRO 3 slot.

[@kirschhoffer]

I fell in love with that model at the time !

[@captainglume]

Wow. That's for the trip down memory lane. I had an Amiga 3000 back in the day. Ran a 5 line BBS on it. I had a 4gig HD, Graphics card, Serial card, 10mbit network card, 68060 CPU upgrade and all Memory slots filled for 50 megs total memory. All the fond memories. ♥

[@J25x]

I was always fascinated by the Amiga. And the Amiga vs Atari rivalry. Thanks for the video. You had so much information and with the fast talking, I had to slow it down.

[@NightSprinter]

Hey Dan, any update on the A2286 you have? Am an A2000 owner here (bought mine from a German friend, got a voltage converter due to US outlets, but the machine and bridgeboard I have is being fixed by a friend. For some reason, a bridgeboard doesn't seem like a good fit for a 3000D or 4000D due to the limited expandability (all Zorro slots are shared by the ISA slots too).

[@jjock3239]

A nice review of the Amiga 3000 features. I am still running an A3000/40, with WB 3.1. In addition to the harddrive, I have an internal HD floppy, plus a Dell external HD floppy, and have purchased and have plans to use a Gotek drive. It is not as fast as my A4000/40 when doing large calculations in spreadsheets like Maxiplan. but I like the machine a lot.

[@CorvusNumber6]

Superb video! I remember salivating over the A3000 but it was way out of financial reach for me. Liked & Subbed! 👍🏻😎

[@jniska]

Cool to see - I worked as a tech spec at Commodore - all the way from C64 up to Amiga… The Amiga will never die :-) It was an incredible comuter

[@bigmaxy07]

Great video Dan. I was right off Amiga and into the PC by the early 90's but had about 3 good A500 years after the C64. Such awesome times and awesome games.

[@maarkaus48]

Not sure, but around 15:32 it looks like you have a blown cap at C102. Its hard to see, but it looks popped. It might just be a black dot from a marker, but the metal looks a bit funny too.

[@xXTheoLinuxXx]

About the presentationsoftware you mentioned, it was at least in the early 90's a selling point for the Dutch cable compagnies. All of them had a channel called 'Kabelkrant' to display local news etc. But at the it was also used for programs like 'Jeugdjournaal' (News but in a way to make it more understandable for the younger ones), the weatherforecast was made on the Amiga as an example.

[@Brian-vs9sd]

My favourite will always be the 1000. I could never afford one, so saved all my money when the 500 came out. But I always thought the form factor to me felt like it wasn't a real computer and always dreamt of owning a 1000. It was the machine after all that started it all

[@robertdaone]

The 1000 was the original and when Amiga was just Amiga before Commodore bought them out. I still wouldn't mind owning a 1000 today and set it up on display just for nostalgia.

[@andershammer9307]

@@robertdaone I have 2. Want one ?

[@andershammer9307]

I remember see the Amiga 1000 for sale at the Monroeville mall for $900. I went to buy it but they told me I had to buy the Commodore monitor with it. I said no and that I will buy my own monitor. I said I wanted to buy it now for $900. Guy said come back later. So I did and then bought it. I still have it. And a 500 and a 2000 and a CD32.

[@danyoutube7491]

I think the A1000 looked stylish, I always liked the keyboard 'garage'.

[@robertdaone]

@@andershammer9307 Is it in good physical and working condition?

[@8BitRetroReFix]

Nice video Dan . Always a pleasure watching :)

[@christianhujer346]

If I may point out, the Zorro-III slot is much more like a PCI slot than an ISA slot, due to autoconfig.

[@thebritishindian1]

I never knew this machine existed. At school, my friend only had the 500 and then the replacement of that (whatever that was). Thanks for making this video because it helped me understand why my friend was always raving about Workbench, when I never knew what the hell the fascination was. Now I understand what he meant by saying the Amiga was unlike any other computer (I had the Commodore Plus 4).

[@iamsnakehips]

I used to work for a company in the 90s who ran their business on Amiga 2000’s. We used to support around 30 regional offices and, for security, we booted off Iomega Zip drives. That way, the manager could pop out the Zip drive and take it off site. Such forgiving machines. I remember ordering many spare parts from the CPC catalogue and performing ‘surgery’ to keep thing going.

[@timothy8428]

My EGS 28/24 blew up, so I'm back to vanilla A3000 display. I must have one of the noisy fans because when I compare it to my PC, the thing sounds like a server rack.

[@dbloyd2]

I would have loved to try UNIX on the Amiga 3000 in the year 2022. Also had a lot of Amiga software that I wish I would have saved such as Deluxe Video III, Deluxe Paint IV, Scala. Spent a small fortune on software for it. Wish I saved all my disks.

[@micksmithson6724]

I had an A12/030 and put it in a PC Tower with Zorro 2 breakout board, (Micronik? I could be wrong), then I picked up an A3000 from Exchange and Mart, drove over to Luton and bought it home, soon it had an 060 card, Cybervision 64/3D card and lots of RAM, 17" monitor and it was a beast. I don't recall selling wither of them, and suspect they're in the loft with my Atari 800XL (I think I used the monitors with my PC when I made the move to WinDos) , I must take a look to see one day :)

[@The_guy_on_the_internet]

I had the A500, then the A2000 and then finally A3000. By then the 3D hobby I started with the A500 was my newly found profession, and I only sold the A3000 when we bought an SGI desktop with Alias PowerAnimator. The A3000 was my favourite. One thing though, I dont remember what graphics card I used. I remember the Picasso card but not if that was the car I had. Were there more professional videocards cards available? I was the first in town to buy a Colorburst for the A500, a graphics card on a separate box that could display 24 bit RGB. That was quite a spectacular sight to behold back then, specially 3D rendered images.

[@TallysVids]

I can remember getting a 500 Plus and then finding quite a lot of the older games would not work. This was easily remedied by installing a Kickstart Switcher and a Kickstart 1.3 rom that I purchased from Power Computing. Took around 5 minutes to fit. I can remember to switch between the roms, I had to hold down some keys on the keyboard for a few seconds (I forget the keys needed to do this) and a beep could be heard coming from the rom switcher inside the Amiga, once the switch over to the other rom had been done.

[@markferrero9288]

My first Amiga was an A1000 purchased new in 1986 for $1000! Eventually brought my A3000 to college, everyone was amazed by that machine.

[@RealtyWebDesigners]

I traded a car for my Amiga 1000 and monitor :)

[@VengerDFW]

Same here. Got the A1000 for graduation, took it to college, left my dorm room door open and had my A1000 playing Marble Madness, and in less than an hour, the whole floor of the dorm was in my room...

[@Roger__Wilco]

I grew up only using PC's (after the C64 anyway!) and was pretty much oblivious to the world of Amigas and it's only recently that I'm starting to take an interest in them out of curiosity. A pity I missed out on experiencing their golden age, in many ways it seems like they would have been a superior gaming experience for a while at least up until the early 90s. But either way that doesn't take anything away from all the fond memories from the PC from back then and on balance I suppose I'm glad I've been there on the journey consistently through everything from very near to the beginning.

[@IkarusKommt]

They never had the golden age. They had some niche due to integration with NTSC color TV, but it was useless outside of US, where PAL/SECAM was used, and they have a primitive videocard and CPU, which couldn't do memory management or float operations.

[@Roger__Wilco]

@@IkarusKommt Well from what I can see there would certainly be a hell of a lot of people who would strongly disagree with your opinion there about a perceived 'golden age' of Amigas apparently not existing. And that seems to be a completely uninformed and unfounded total dismissal of everything but NTSC on the platform being 'useless' as if the extremely strong EU PAL market both in hardware and software didn't exist either! (That was maybe even more popular over the period than the NTSC region?) Of course there's issues running software from each region on each others hardware but that goes for both sides and people largely didn't have to in the first place and there's plenty of arguments for people to prefer PAL versions over NTSC. And as for the strength of the hardware, I'm not sure what point is supposed to be relevant here. Of course as an affordable home computer at the time there were certain limitations, either way despite those the machines were obviously still well loved and people embraced them. Talking down their raw hardware capability from decades in the future doesn't change anything at all about that. Anyway to me there certainly seems to be a timeframe where at its peak I can see that I would have preferred the Amiga version of games against their PC counterpart, which is what I was posting about. And this is based off watching all sorts of footage almost completely from UK computer nostalgia channels using PAL.

[@remijakobsen1848]

@@IkarusKommt Amiga 3000 had both MMU and FPU.

[@RetroGamesRediscovered]

Really interesting video Dan, I haven't seen an Amiga 3000 in the wild before but now I want one! 😂

[@MoralCertainty]

Not sure how my brain has only just pieced together the fact that the Dan Wood on the Retro Hour podcast I listen to every week who has the exact same name, voice and interests is you but here we are..

[@Textra1]

I wish they had carried forward some of the 3000 design choices to the 4000; i.e. scan doubler / flicker fixer, case design. As much as I love my 4000, it feels like a bit of a step backwards from the 3000.

[@Sinistar1983]

I'm curious as to what make the 4000 a step backwards from the 3000. I'm new to the amiga market

[@remijakobsen1848]

@@Sinistar1983 Maybe the look of it. But an Amiga 4000 is more powerful in every aspect. Came with 4x faster CPU, more RAM and bigger HDD and newer improved Amiga OS and much better and faster graphic chip set. I own both machines.

[@cardigansrule]

SCSI, the cheap plastic case, no scan double etc

[@kevinmills3329]

I don't know what it is about the A3000 but every time I see one a get a strong emotional response

[@chloedevereaux1801]

ask adrian black at adrian's digital basement about the bridgeboard... he figured out how to get it running.

[@BAgodmode]

I’m surprised Adrian isn’t in the comment sections already. I see him around a lot on great stuff like this.

[@JimmerofOz]

I have one of the early 1.4beta Kickstart disks for the Amiga 1000, whilst it is 256k it does have the 2.0 animated disk screen as seen in the 1.4beta that the A3000 had, the GUI is somewhat a mix of 2.0 and 1.3 with 1.3 stylings but 2.0 menu options. Full 2.0 was to big to fit in the A1000's 256kb WOM, but you could soft kick it from 1.3 and as long as you had enough fast memory you could have your HDD boot strap it or you could hack a ROM socket into the A1000 off the CPU socket (such daughterboards exist) - An A500/A2000 ROM works fine with the A1000 with such an addon fitted

[@FuZZbaLLbee]

20:24 your 3000 is a bit slower (0.97) then the reference 3000. Any idea why?

[@notacop1477]

It easily is the best. Zorro Three alone makes expanding this great. The softkickstart made it compatible with most games and it had the power for Wing Commander. I loved this machine and it still sits in the attic with a Picasso IV and a 68040 expansion next to a 16 bit Ram expansion. It ran everything and Shapeshifter rtg was fun to use. Mac games for example and Photoshop

[@Joseph-Cav]

What about the year 2000 type problem for the amiga computers? I'd like to get one again but how is this addressed?

[@RalphBarbagallo]

Friend of mine in college had a 3000T. AN ABSOLUTE UNIT!

[@DevilbyMoonlight]

I used to run an /x BBS 24/7 on an A4000 for years, I found the transition to the pc very painful

[@jrherita]

Wow - multi-line I assume? It’s a lot to use a 4000 for a BBS

[@manueljesus3147]

Due to the affluence of thr average US 🇺🇸 computer owner it was fun to be an Amiga enthusiast in the 90s. As folks abandoned the Amiga for greener pastures I was able to score A3000D, A3000T, and an A4000D 030 with the CR motherboard. I eventually got a video toaster Flyer A4000T with the PHASE PPC cRd and used that alongside Macs. I used to work from 9AM to 6 or 7PM then stay up until 3AM learning Lightwave, Video Toaster and all the rest of it. I was living my best life.

[@jkdsteve]

Gotta love the MAGIC WB homage!

[@wayneyadams]

Speaking of applications, my favorite, which I cannot remember the name of, was able to use USGS data to render simulations of landscapes. I actually rendered Olympus Mons on Mars. You could choose the camera position, camera angle, and sun position. Best of all, you could designate a path and render the frames for a fly through just like NASA does. Admittedly it took a long time, even with the 680030, but at the end you had a fly through on Mars which could be output to a VCR tape. The one item I could not afford was the Video Toaster from Newtek. It was the Cadillac of rendering hardware for the Amiga, being used to render the graphics for the first season (possibly more season, but I am not sure) of the TV show, "Babylon 5."

[@waltberger7885]

Cool video ! I had a 2000 back in the day. Also had an Atari

[@thromboid]

Ah, I would have loved (and still would!) to have a big-box Amiga, especially a 3000. Classy exterior, built-in scan-doubler and SCSI...lovely!

[@BenS1002]

Back in the day I had an Amiga 3000T -- the tower version of the A3000. Amazing machine! I wish I'd kept it, but sadly I sold it on in 2000.

[@tristanfletcher6621]

I upgraded from an A4000/040 to a A3000T GVP Gforce 040 / rainbow 3 graphics running 3.1. Awesome machine. Sold it for £250 in late 90’s.

[@AunCollective]

A different experience for somewhat similar systems is something I adhere to as well. I try to keep a modern windows home, windows server, linux, and macos system at all times. For just standard PCs, I also try to keep an MS-DOS, win98, win xp, os/2 compatible, haiku, AROS, and others -- often dual booting for the less frequently used OSes. I keep my emac up and running too, for the late PPC Mac experience. I really need to start replacing my retro PC collection

[@anticat900]

I had a nicely loaded A3000 in the early 2000's, multisync monitor, ethernet, 16bit sound, 68040 and Picasso card. It was good for productivity, but sat in-between the two popular standards for gaming. It was also the first time I had a an Amiga that could that with original parts could actually browse the web almost effectively. Must have sold it for about a grand, I bet it is worth more now?

[@milk-it]

Just a bit. I've got an A4000D and had to throw in cards to get the most out of the SCSI capabilities. A3000 owners don't have to worry about IDE 🙂

[@anticat900]

@@milk-it I've got nothing of my Amiga now other than it's harddrive image. It lives on from time to time using Amiga Forever on my PC.

[@MD0MDI]

I’ve got one on the shelf, must try it out one day

[@Bassquake76]

I think Adrians Digital Basement did a video on those 286 on a board cards. Might be able to give you some hints on the issues.

[@KarlHamilton]

As a pedant I must point out that the Picasso is connected to the Zorro slot, not the video slot.

[@danwood_uk]

Oops

[@livefreeprintguns]

I love the pizza-box design... I always had a thing for SPARC stations by Sun back in the day.

[@dbreardon]

I never had an Commodore but I did have an Atari (800XL). I actually use the Atari to write my masters thesis back in 84/85. I have an external disk drive separate monitor and a daisy wheel printer. The word processing was done using a word processing cartridge.

[@Exposingscammers]

I remember those. I went to a computer club and one of the guys brought one along. I was with my Amiga 500 with an extra drive and my 34 cm 1084 ?

[@ridiculous_gaming]

The sad reality is that the price of Amiga computers are a getting more rare and expensive annually here in Canada. However, the further increasing prices means that the Amiga has a greater demand than supply, which is actually nice to see. Also, some brilliant people have created new accelerators that are more affordable than in the 90s enabling fans to play games the way they were originally intended. There are also some excellent new games being produced on this ancient platform as well. I will probably never pick up an A3000, since they are so rare and expensive, but the various models that I do possess should be more than enough to keep me occupied. Also, the fact that I picked up a Pal A500 motherboard the other year made compatibility better than ever compared to my NTSC models. Additionally, regarding the tank mice - it is still my favorite!

[@danyoutube7491]

I always enjoyed the tank mouse too!

[@pnvgordinho]

When it comes to looks, I prefer the 1200 or the cd32 or even the cdtv.

[@jay1177]

And they have the AGA chipset

[@johnostambaugh8638]

I remember a text program called "Psignus Ed" or something like that. Is it still around?

[@noelwiltshire8926]

did you solve the booting problem when using the bridgeboard?

[@ChrisFranklyn]

I did my final year dissertation on Final Writer... sadly not on an A3000 though. I vividly remember the magazine adverts with Toki being bundled with it.

[@robertthoren4022]

I have one. But sadly I can't get it to output anything on screen. It starts but the screen just stays black so now it's just collecting dust in the addic.

[@Mmmm_tea]

its funny that amiga/ magic workbenchlooks more appealing than anything microsoft has squeezed out in over 20 years !! custom icon size that amiga does is just something windows doesn't natively do and I think the color limitations of amiga helping everything use uniform icons makes it look great! its even doing window backgrounds !! why hasn't microsoft figured that out in 20 years? all modern windows just boring white boxes full of folders and lists

[@ShaneBro]

I bought one of these back in '91 or '92. Had a computer purchase program where I worked and took all of the $2500 for just the A3000. Also, I worked for a cable provider during that time and we had an A2000 with Scala that was used as the community channel when it was not playing back tv programs. Those were the days.

[@majormauser]

The 1000 is and was always the best-looking Amiga. OG!

[@adamroper1197]

I had one of these years ago. It's a good solid machine (super heavy) and Zorro 3 slots were fast if you got expansions that used them..

[@devMashcom]

I’m still driving my original 1990 A3000 with 1.4 kickstart roms and kickstart files on the Hd. I just replaced the aging quantum with a scsi2sd . I’ve got 3 1000’s including my original 1986 system, and I’ve owned a 500 and a 2000, but my 3000 has always been my absolute favorite. Btw, I have a very early A3000 and it shipped with a standard tank mouse.