amiga 2000

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a20001.jpg (49695 bytes) a20002.jpg (46468 bytes)
(click on picture)

 

Introduced January 1987
Discontinued ???
Release Price $1500+

 

      The Amiga 2000 was introduced in January of 1987 along with the Amiga 500. The Amiga 2000 was designed to appeal to anyone who likes the Amiga for its fast processing and superlative graphics, but who also wants the ability to run IBM PC software.

      The A2000 was actually two machines in one, it was first a Commodore computer capable of the fantastic graphics and sound with a large library of games, and second an IBM clone completely compatible with the entire DOS based software library. The engineers at Commodore built a PC ISA bus into the motherboard and integrated it into the Amiga architecture. Through the installation of what was called a Bridgeboard, (an entire PC on a plug-in board), the Amiga's Zorro II bus and the ISA bus are joined allowing the Intel processor to share the internal resources such as RAM and hard drives.

      The basic Amiga came with one 3.5 inch floppy drive, seven expansion slots, three drive bays, and a 200 watt power supply, all for under $1500. The keyboard and mouse/joystick ports are located on the bottom right-hand side of the front of the computer. The rear of the machine has standard PC type connectors for the RS232 serial ports and parallel printer ports. Also are connectors for connecting a Commodore RGB monitor and outputs for stereo audio.

      The A2000 uses a Motorola 68000 processor running at 7.14 MHz, this is a 16/32 bit processor, the same processor used in the Macintosh. Unlike the A500, the A2000 came with the built in ability to be easily upgraded to a faster processor by dropping an upgrade card into a special 86 pin processor slot inside the machine. The A2000 comes with 1MB of RAM expandable to 9 MB with an expansion card.

      A hard drive is added by dropping in an A2090A/ A2091 Hard Card ( a hard disk mounted on an ST 506 compatible expansion card ) or an IDE hard drive can be added using a IDE controller card. As with the A500 the Kickstart disk has been replaced by burning it into a ROM chip to speed up the boot process.

      The seven expansion slots extend the Amiga system's bus and provide slots for IBM ISA cards. Five of these are 100 pin Amiga Zorro II slots and two are ISA specific. However two of the 100 pin slots can be used as ISA slots bringing the total ISA slots to four. The two ISA slots were originally designed for use with the 8088/8086 processor making them 8-bit slots, but Commodore predrilled the 16-bit extenders on these slots to make it possible to add in 16-bit AT type cards.

      The Amiga that you see above is a basic machine with 2 extra MB of RAM added and an extra 880k 3 1/2 inch floppy drive. I purchased it at a local thrift shop as a backup for my A2000HD that is set up in my workshop.

 

System Architecture Ports Data Storage
Processor:  
PMMU:  
FPU:  
Data Buss:  
Address Buss:  
L1 Cache:  
L2 Cache:  
2nd Processor:  
No. of Expansion Slots:  
Clock Speed:  
Buss Type:  
   
USB:  
ADB:  
Video:  
Floppy:  
SCSI:  
Geoports:  
Ethernet:  
FireWire:  
Mic Type:  
AirPort Ready:  
Other Ports:  
Tape Drive:  
Disk Drive:  
Floppy Size:  
No. of FD's::  
Int Hard Drive:  
Int HD Size:  
Int HD Interface:  
Int CD Support:  
Orig CD Speed:  
No. of Internl Bays:  
Memory Video and Graphics
Logic Board:  
RAM Slots or Sockets:  
Min - Max RAM:  
Min RAM Speed:  
RAM Sizes:  
Install in Groups of:  
Notes:  
   
Graphics Processor  
Screen size - columns & rows  
Video on board  
Video RAM  
Max colors  
RGB output  
Composit Video Output  
Screen Resolution  
Sprites or Missles  
Physical Specs. Software Power
Introduced:  
Discontinued:  
Form Factor:  
Gestalt ID:  
Weight (lbs):  
Dimensions (in):  
Notes:  
Addressing Modes:  
Orig SSW:  
Orig Enabler:  
ROM ID:  
ROM Ver:  
ROM Size:  
Amiga OS Supported  
   
Max Watts:  
Amps:  
BTU per Hr:  
Voltage:  
Freq Range:  
Battery Type:  
Soft Power:  
Pass Through:  
Sound Keyboard Specs.  
Sound Interface Device:  
Sound Generation:  
ADSR Capable:  
Sound Output:  
Sound Input:  
Notes:  
   
Number of keys:  
Built In:  
Detached:  
Upper / Lower case  
   
   
   
 

 

System Architecture

    

Memory

  
Microprocessor 68000   Standard on system board 1 MB
Clock speed 7.14 MHz   Maximum on system board 1 MB
Bus type CBM proprietary and ISA   Maximum total memory 9 MB card
Data bus width 16-bit   Memory speed and type 120ns dynamic ram
Address bus width 32-bit CBM / 8-16 ISA   System board memory socket type ???
Interrupt levels N/A   Number of memory module sockets ???
DMA channels N/A   Memory used on system board ???

Standard Features

    

Disk Storage

  
ROM size 256k   Internal disk and tape drive bays 2-3.5 & 1-5 1/4 inch
Optional math coprocessor 68881   Standard floppy drives 1 - 3.5 inch 880k
Parallel port type yes   Optional floppy drives: 3 internal
RS232C serial ports yes   * 5 1/4 inch 360k optional
Mouse ports yes - joystick   * 5 1/4 inch 1.2MB optional
UART chip used N/A   * 3 1/2 inch 880k standard
Maximum speed N/A   * 3 1/2 inch 1.44MB No
CMOS real time clock yes   * 3 1/2 inch 2.88MB No
CMOS RAM yes   Hard disk controller included yes

Video & Graphics

    

Sound

  
Graphics Processor Fat Agnus, Denise, Paula   Sound Interface device  
Screen size - Col x Rows 80 x 25   Sound generation  
Resolution - Colors/High 4 - 640 x 200 pixels   ADSR capable ???
Resolution - Colors/Low 256 - 320 x 200 pixels      
Max colors 4096   Programming language  
Sprites or Missiles ???   Built in language Amiga Basic / CLI
      Built in M L monitor no

Expansion Slots

    

Keyboard Specs.

  
Total adapter slots 7   Number of keys 95
Number of 8/16/32 bit slots 2/0/5   Upper/lower case yes/yes
      Keyboard cable length 6 foot

Physical Specs.

    

Environmental Specs.

  
* Height inches   Operating voltage @ 60 Hz 117 VAC
* Width inches   Maximum power supplied 200 watts
* Depth inches   Power supply output - volts N/A
* Weight pounds   Power supply output - amps N/A