Amiga 2500 questions

From: Gary Hildebrand <ghldbrd_at_ccp.com>
Date: Thu Apr 11 09:07:23 2002

I'm glad you asked, as I just picked up bits and pieces to one yesterday
in Topeka. Here goes:

$30 isn't bad, but the keyboard is the tough item to get; they go for
$50 when available. The keyboard for an A3000 will also work. The
telltale on Amiga keyboards is that they only have 10 function keys, and
the cursor keys sit all by themselves . You can get an in-line keyboard
adapter for about the same, and use a PC keyboard in place of it
(another few bucks).

Mice are also different, but you can get new ones from Software Hut or
merlancia for about $15 give or take. The bad thinkg about them is that
they are made with crappy switches that don't last very long, about a
year under normal use.

You have Kickstart 1.3 (DOS version), and that has been pretty much
superceeded by 3.1. To upgrade to that you have to replace the ROM chip
and get the latest software either on disk, or CD (around 50). That has
CD-ROM support and most internet software needs 3.1. The floppy drive
is a standard DSDD, and you can use HD disks, but they'll only format to
880k. The SCSI interface is SCSI-2 compliant.

The monitor is using the composite video output, which is only black &
white output (no color). The Amiga will drive either analog or digital
(CGA) monitors, but the analog is preferred for best results. As CGA is
limited to 16 colors, you can't see the whole pallete that is possible.
The specific Commodore monitor used with it are the 1080 and 1084
series. Phillips/Magnavox made some as well of vaarious styles. If you
have a multisync monitor you can also use that, but it has to be able to
sync down to 15 kHz (NTSC) scan rates. I have a Sony CDP1302 for that
exact purpose.

FYI, the A2500 is nothing more than a stock A2000 with a 68030 _at_ 25 mHz
accelerator card (A2630). This should be the card right in the middle
of the machine. Over on the side are the amiga/PC slots. The PC slots
don't work without a bridgeboard, which is nothing but a PC-XT or AT on
a card that shares a memory window for graphic display and I/O ports.
You should also have an A2091 SCSI controller card with the HD
attached. The common sizes were the older Quantum ProDrive series, in
52, 105, or 240 mB sizes. The 5 mB you mention is probably incorrect.
I'd reccomend a minimum of 105 mB, 240 is good for most uses. Keep in
mind software packages are small compared to Microslop code bloat.
Large programs might run a meg or more.

Software is available off of Aminet.org. You can get just about
anything from soup to nuts for it, as either freeware or shareware at a
nominal fee.

If you decide not to get it going, I'm sure any of us would like a shot
at it. I'm up to four of them right now, 9 Amigas total. If you have
any other questions, plese reply off-list with questions and I'll get
you going in the right direction.

Gary Hildebrand
St. Joseph, MO




Doc Shipley wrote:
>
> Hi. I'm looking at an Amiga 2500, with a 5M hard drive, unknown ram,
> a lot of boards in it (the owner knows as little about it as I do), and
> no keyboard, mouse, or display. He wants $30 for it. He has a display
> from a Commodore Colt hooked up to the composite video port, and the
> 2500 will boot to a screen with hand holding a WorkBench 1.3 floppy shown.
> Are keyboards as hard to find as it seems? That's the showstopper so
> far. Is $30 reasonable for a partially tested A2500? Will the
> kbd/mouse from the Colt work?
>
> Aquiring minds want to know. :)
>
> Doc
Received on Thu Apr 11 2002 - 09:07:23 BST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:34:30 BST