A first look at the Amiga AA3000+ motherboard by Hese
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ต.ค. 2024
- In this video, I take an initial look at the new AA3000+ motherboard replacement for the A3000, comparing it to the original motherboard and checking out the AGA functionality. I also try it out with RTG graphics.
You know, the A4K was supposed to support 8Mb of CHIP RAM, some A4000D motherboards (not sure about the T) actually have a useless jumper supposed to switch from 2Mb max CHIP to 8Mb max CHIP. It is my opinion that FAT Agnus should be replaced by an FPGA that fully implements the 8Mb CHIP support. This would do wonders for AGA GFX and audio.
As someone who was pursuing a computer science degree at university at the same time, I was a die-hard Frankenstein Amiga 500 owner. I loved the idea of competition between types (PC, Apple & Amiga alternatives) of computers driving both/all toward better quality at hopefully lower costs. And I still think the Amiga was a superior machine for its time. When I learned that they went belly-up/bankrupt, I was crushed. That then became my 2nd rather bad experience buying into computers in the mid-80s to the mid-90s. The first was when I was a senior in high school, and had a newspaper route -- delivering quite a few newspapers to finally be able to afford a brand new Apple ][gs (I sold my Apple IIe, and added a good amount of cash to upgrade). And I had that thing all of about 10 full days before Apple discontinued it. Two valuable lessons learned by me at significant cost and an impressionable age... 'Better' doesn't always ensure business survival, especially if mismanaged. And even at this later stage of life, I am not sure I could easily afford to own, and keep semi-modern, Apple systems, upgrading every couple/few years or so.
My board was just finished by Hese. Also ordered a A4000TX board. They are works of art. I never had an Amiga back in the 1990's, let alone a big box Amiga. I asked for the custom chips to be socketed due to being NOS but still 20/30 years old. Lets revive the Amiga.
Now I kinda want to see somebody rolling their Amiga around in a child carrier.. lol
also: "I have to push the pram a lot!"
HP branded Lisa and alice? ??? totally amazing work by all parties...
Is that unusual? I bought those chips quite recently so it was just what the retailers had in stock
@@wrangleramiga896 ive heard of them, but never seen one. and thats the new logo. very kick ass indeed
@@ChrisEdwardsRestoration they are very common in USA boards.
hi, orginal Amiga owner here, A500, several A2000/video toaster and finally A3000 and A4000. I believe the DSP was intended to be used for audio. Also the "AA" chipset was never produced. The board shown here apparently has the "AGA" chipset which was a cut down version of AA at the time for release in the A4000. Later they would rename AA as "AAA" and continue development, and there was also a prototype of that board that works, I believe in the possession of Dave Haynie who has showed it working in the past...
The real AA chipset was originally supposed to ship with the A3000, and it was a true color (24bpp) hires, non interlaced graphics chipset, backwards compatible with the Amiga OCS/ECS, and it was FAST, not like the other true color solutions available at the time (ie Mac II) that were terribly slow. IF they had released the A3000 with the real "AA" it probably would have saved the Amiga.
Everything you just said is wrong.
AGA wasn't a cut down version of AA, they are the exact same thing. It was called AGA for marketing purposes only.
Your description of a "real AA" actually matches AAA, but you miss out that it's development was very very behind. Haynie expected a 1994 release.
Not sure how I missed this! Great video! Wonderful to see your experience installing and testing the AA3000+ =D
Thanks! That's appreciated, coming from one of the masters of retro computer videos!
That clear plastic and bubble wrap can generate over 3,000 volts of static electricity. So, those boards are probably zapped. They should have been placed in silver or black anti-static bags.
Luckily the video shows that they are working :) Good tip though for anyone intending to ship such items.
Shut up doomy, nobody likes you.
If I knew how to make a version of the 3000... I'd stick a 68060 and a PPC on instead of an 030 and 882... I mean .. why not?
Also... those old serial mouse/joystick ports would give way to USB 2.0 (at least).. so u can use a gamepad and USB mouse.
the serial port on the back would go to.. room for an ethernet jack and another USB port or two.. or four..
I figure.. with the cpu situation it's not like you will have a major compatibility issue if you up'd it to 060 and ppc
Same as if you got one of those blizzard 060's with ppc.. ya just shove it straight onto the board and replace the 030/882 with it.
the cpu slot could then be used to add even more RAM maybe (as long as you figure out a way to max it past the boards (earlier) limit of 16mb RAM.
If that can't be done because of the older limitation.. then a jumper disable the onboard fast THEN the expansion board could be 128mb or beyond because it would be on the CPU's bus directly.
As for the Graphics/System RAM I still wonder if that can't be bumped up to 4 to 8mb at least.
Not sure if it would work.. but could you run two Alice chips ( that is the graphics chip right? I may have forgot).
I'd go all out to push the boundaries of the Amiga in a mobo redesign....
There would also be a SSD port for those faster SSD stick drives... that would be awesome.
Parallel port would go to.. more USB... so then you could use USB printers/scanners and whatever.
I mean ... pimp it up bigtime. Might as well.
Then you got all those card slots... to put even more stuff later.
Amiga COULD make a comeback...
they flat out need to make an AMIGA GRAPHICS Card (for all pc's) and compete directly with NVDIA and AMD...
This would be a huge money maker.. but they got to make one that is damn good and uses their own chipset to be unique.
Amiga Graphics card PCIE for all PC's (and even Amigas that have a PCIE slot-- via daughterboard replacement).
Maybe later.. an Amiga Gaming console to compete with XBOX, Playstation.
Those two products alone.. would bring amiga back to the forefront.
Then.... as they gain money.. they can play around with the hobby end of Amigas and slowly bring them up to speed
This way they can learn new things as they develop ... and without spending a fortune to do so.
All the while maintaining the GFX card and gaming console as the ca$h makers.
Dang I said that a year ago?
Now I learn they got a 68080.... :D
Enough space on the motherboard now to put stuff like maybe an MPEG-2 decoder or some other type of sound chip. For reasons.
In a perfect world, someone will get the onboard DSP working, which can do that. We live in hope!
Bubble wrap = ESD damage
The new boards look nice though.
This is like walking into a time machine
Wrangler, you’re such a bad influence. I just dropped a ton of money on one of these boards, fully assembled by Hese, all because of this series of videos from you!
Haha! I don't think you'll be disappointed!
I have been a massive Amiga fan since buying my first A500 in 1988. I never heard about this board until today. What an amazing machine this would have been also considering the potential uses of the DSP chip. How many blank boards were discovered?
Apparently, a couple of the guys on A1k.org got hold of 5 AA3000 rev 2 boards, populated them and got them working. But I don't know if Hese's replica board is directly based off them or not.
And: as far as I can work out, the A3000+ came first and had a chip called Gary+ which reset the DSP properly. The AA3000 incorporated this logic into PALs and used a regular Gary chip. So the replica is closer to the AA3000 design than the A3000+, it would appear.
Great video! Nice machine :) I want one ;)
I wish my amiga 500++ would have been wrapped like that.
What about a 256GB SSD interfaced to the computer via a SCSILVD -->SSD adapter.
Info: 18:20 there should be 3 blocks, not only one in the middle but also 2 at the edges. You lost already 2 of them?
Very Nice! I finished assembling mine last week and have been enjoying it immensely! I am curious to know if you left the scan doubler disabled for the balance of the video or did you re-enable it? I’m still waiting for some field memory to show up so I can use my scan doubler but I’ve been very interested to see if the image quality is as good as Amber...
I turned the scandoubler on at about 20 mins into the video and then left it on after that. The image quality is great - at least as good as Amber IMHO
@@wrangleramiga896 I got mine all finished and it works great too--except for NTSC interlaced modes. Could you do me a favor and test NTSC HiResLaced and NTSC Laced and let me know if it's really blurry?
Also, for some reason in several Team17 games like AlienBreed2AGA, whatever screen mode they're using the screen is horizontally "tripled" and overlaying itself. Very strange!
@@RogerWilco486 NTSC Hi res laced and NTSC low res laced scandouble fine for me (with a bit of pixel clock tweaking). I've not been able to test AB2 though
@@wrangleramiga896 Hese helped me with the NTSC issue. Apparently he updated the GAL jedecs for U460 and U461 after initially sharing the build data. So I was using the old jedecs that didn't work with NTSC. Updating fixed that, but unfortunately AB2 still has the weird wrapped around effect. Really curious to hear how yours handles AB2...
Really nice video, have you tried a Video Toaster 4000 in this machine?
No, sadly I don't have a toaster
Nice review! I have my board here but need to send it back to hese for assembly. Quick question (maybe I missed it) but why does WhichAmiga say it's running on a 68060? Did you put an A3660 in?
Yep, I added an A3660 into the system although I didn't show that in the video.
@@wrangleramiga896 But you mentioned it and he could have heard it though ;) had he listened
Wonderful!!
Is there any way to 32GB of RAM modules into that machine so that it becomes stable.
hi!
omg! are those board sold ? where?
I miss my A3000
(Man, I oughta be on commission!)
Log onto Amibay and have a look for the AA3000+ thread by hese.
@@wrangleramiga896 thank I will sign up
I don't think the Video Toaster board will fit.
A2000 had more expansion slots.
How much does a board like that, fully finished and ready to be put in an A3k case, cost in USD (or Euros) today?
Probably best to ask hese on his Amibay sales thread for the AA3000+ if he'd build one for you and at what cost. You would need to supply all the components, including the custom chips which are now difficult/expensive to find.
@@wrangleramiga896 Are we talking about 500 dollars or even 1000?
ESD bags?
The risk of damage from ESD is really small, so if you're careful not having ESD bags is fine.
Did you ever het PCI/PPC going on the Prometheus? I have to running an my A4000D/Mediator and it and of rocks....apart from the lack of PPC software. I was away from Amiga scene for 10+ years and there nothing new for ClassicPPC in terms of software to run......tough it as interesting to get my old Amiga titles installed and working :-/
Yeah, (some) PCI PPC cards work on the Prometheus. See my videos on that. And there has been loads of new Amiga PPC software in the last 10 years eg Cowcat's conversions of Quake 1/2/3, Diablo and others, and my own conversions of Stratagus (Warcraft 2) and Duke Nukem...
@@wrangleramiga896 neat, I haven’t seen the last two. I just got an 800MHz g3 / 512 Ragnarok…got links!?
Source code is on github.com/Wrangler491, binaries are on Aminet (search Stratagus and Duke Nukem) - enjoy!
What type of memory modules does the AA3000+ use? I heard 2 SIMM modules are supported. I think 16MB is max. But, what type of memory modules are they? How many pins? What speed? Etc…
Yes, 2 SIMM modules max, 72 pin type. 70ns should be fine. I don't recall the max size but probably no bigger than 16MB, and I don't know about EDO. I just used a SIMM from an A4000 to give me some fastram although I'm really relying on ram on the accelerator as it's so much faster.
Will the new version still have the feature where the system corrupts all my floppies..?
That sounds more likely a problem with your floppy drive than the motherboard, although I suppose it could be a dodgy Paula or CIA chip
@@wrangleramiga896 Well, I have still 4 Amiga 500s in my basement from when they came out, and no it's not a problem with a dodgy chip. It's a well known issue. That's why they said to back up all your disks and use copies instead of using the original disks. I have a Commodore 128 and a VIC-20 too and they didn't have the issue, just AMIGA. My workbench disks and all my programs all eventually got 'bad cylinders' even though I only used my original disks to make copies. When the computer ruined my Disney cartoon studio which was a program I paid a lot of money for I was done. I'm shocked that you haven't heard of this, since Commodore themselves said you have to to back up your disks. Garbo computer system
Where do you get the AA3000+ ?
Need Dmac-04 or work with Dmac-02 ?
Dmac-02 is fine
@@wrangleramiga896 Thanks ! Because i have same board to mount components
is there somewhere to order this board?
HOW DO I BUY THIS!?
Join Amibay and search for Hese's sale thread on the AA3000+!
@@wrangleramiga896 Hese *is* ???
A user on Amibay
is there a link on where to get this???
So as I said before it's for sale on Amibay.
www.amibay.com/showthread.php?108604-AA3000-Amiga-3000-AGA-motherboard-PCBs&highlight=aa3000%2B
Wo kann man das Board kaufen? Wie sieht es mit der Hardware aus?
See the comments for this video - I've answered this a couple of times before
Great work
Would like to buy one from him in the near future as anyone have his contact details as i m not on the forum
To get on the order list, you will need to join Amibay (which is pretty painless). That'll allow you to communicate directly with Hese.
Are there new aga chips being made?
No, I don't believe enough is known about any of them to recreate them even if financially it made sense. This has meant though that the prices of spare original custom chips have rocketed.
@@wrangleramiga896 HP Fabbed many of the later chips and would still have the schematics on file. But yeah, it would be a fortune to do a small fab run of complete sets. Though I thought they did 100% accurate recreations in FPGA with minimig?
@@wishusknight3009 Dave haynie is supposedly working with individual computers on a new Buster 12 chip.. we shall see if it comes to light.
@@a4000t It may be in something similar to the new vic2 replacement that was recently put out using a cpld on substrate. Or use fpga.
so its a bit crap then
5mins of blablabla until the interresting part starts.
Pls concentrate on the interresting facts, that would help.
From there, a very good video! Thank you!
Mate, you can give constructive feedback without sounding so dismissive. Your points are valid, but your tone is just wrong.
Boring. Finish the AAA board and chips and that would be interesting...;)
That board appears to be all surface mount crap. I like the original Amiga 3000 motherboard better because it is the higher quality Thru-Hole technology. But, no other Amiga model beats the Amiga 2000 and 500 as far as design and quality. Why do you think they were Commodore's number one selling and most popular Amiga models. Also, you have to remember that over 90% of all Amiga software runs the best on the OCS and Kickstart / Workbench 1.3. The Amiga 1200 and 4000 computers (AGA chip set) are actually Amiga Clones. They are NOT true Amiga computers, like the Amiga 1000, 2000, and 500. Commodore got the idea to produce Amiga clones from Apple Computers, because they were doing the same thing with their Macintosh line. SMT boards are low quality and much cheaper to produce than Thru-Hole boards. They also have a much higher profit margin. Why do you think Commodore killed the Amiga 2000 and 500 computers in order to force people to buy the new Amiga 600, 1200, and 4000 pieces of garbage. SMT Amiga boards, no thank you. Let me know when there are new Thru-Hole Amiga boards. Then I will consider buying them.
You watched the video and left comments using your Through The Hole technology PC, I take it?
When are they gone be soled, so we the Amiga fans can buy the AA3000+ motherboard and put it in the Checkmate A1500 Plus???
You should use spell checker.