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What to look at before buying a used Amiga

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Crypticalcode0

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Most common Amiga is the A500 this can be easiest found on the web.
Their power supply is a simple brick format this is what cost most in logistics.(Especially the older one's)

Second most common, hm I suppose that is a close call between a A2000 and A3000 although the A1200 is very common item on the market too.

What to check is the RTC backup battery if it has been leaking or not.

On the A1200 check the Elco's in the audio circuit for some reason these tend to give away.(It is a design flaw IMHO)
 
If you're asking for opinions beyond that, you need a working disk drive, and for the 2000/3000 the correct cards or jacks to connect to a monitor.

A good solid A2000 with a flickrFixer and some minimum accelerator card is ideal. The base level 2000 is not going to run anything more than the 500.

bd
 
Personally I like the 2000 line best. I'd rather have a 4000 than a 3000. What I like about the 2000 is there seems to be a lot of flexibility with them. You can have a base system config and play games, or you can upgrade into a Video Toaster system. There are a lot of monitor options with the 2000 as well. Personally I prefer to play games or make music on an Amiga rather than do office productivity stuff. THe 3000 is best for doing work, making graphics, desktop publishing.

This is my opinion, I have recently worked on most Amiga models (earlier this year I went through all of my Amigas for maintenance). I had no opinion before then, but after going through all of the systems to repair them, I found myself liking the 2000 the best, although I have no 4000 to compare it to. I got rid of the 3000.

bd
 
The A2000 has a whole lot of room in the case, while the A3000 is kind of cramped. Mid-level A2000 accelerators also seem to be cheaper than A3000 accelerators. The downside is that the A2000 is limited to Zorro II bus speeds, but unless you're trying to build a really powerful machine that's not too terrible a limit, as long as you get an accelerator with some on-board fast RAM.

If you don't mind a keyboard wedge, the A1200 is pretty cheaply upgradable, supports PCMCIA for easy networking, and includes an IDE controller right out of the box.
 
I have most of the major Amiga models: A500, A1200, A2000, A3000, A4000 (hate the A600 and didn't bother with the console CDTV and CD32).

For just gaming an A500 + external floppy drive or A1200 are probably the best. A1200's have the cheapest CPU upgrades and laptop IDE drives are easy to find for them. A500 are best for floppy booter games, gets pricey to buy a HD for the 500.

For the box Amigas I think the A3000 is the best built, still has SCSI, and has a built in flicker fixer/scan doubler so you can use any old VGA monitor. CPU upgrades for the 3000 are kind of pricey and so is memory (SIPP CHIPS). If you like this model make sure it comes with all the RAM you need, replace the CMOS battery before it kills anything (also HD info is stored by this battery so if it is dead the HD will not boot).

A4000 is the last Amiga made and the only boxed Amiga with AGA. It uses cheap (but slow) IDE drives and commodity 4MB 72 pin SIMMs.

A2000 is a good alternative for the A500 if you need a WB 1.3 machine that can take a HD (but 2091 controllers are getting expensive and so is the chip RAM they use which is needed for DMA transfers). While the machine is fairly large it only has spots for 2 3.5" floppies and one external 5.25" (used with PC cards or you can mount a HD or CDROM), not much space for a HD which is usually mounted on the SCSI controller(hardcard). Major issues with the CMOS battery leaking and killing the CPU socket, kind of bulky too.

The major issues with all of them (except the A3000) is you need to find either a working Amiga monitor with the correct cable or a very old VGA monitor that syncs to 15khz (early 1990's vintage, most are dead and trashed by now). You can buy a Zorro video card to use a VGA monitor with, but they are expensive and will not help if you want to play games (unless it does flicker fixing and scan doubling).

Also Amigas need specific keyboards (box machines) and mice which are kind of worn out and hard to find. You can usde most Atari 9 pin type joysticks for games.
 
I just got a cheap "as-is" Amiga 2500 with Video Toaster on eBay. It's really just a 2000 with a 68030 accelerator card installed (it even still says 2000 on the back of the case), but was commonly used for Video Toaster because all the cards needed for VT wouldn't fit in the 3000.

The scarcity of Amiga monitors and keyboards has been solved by S-Video and PS/2 or USB adapters that are now available, but they sure don't come cheap! But if you're just using an Amiga for games, the Amiga 520 TV/composite video output adapter will do the trick.
 
I have a bad habit of picking up Amiga monitors whenever I see them (assuming the price is cheap). Given I have 0 actual video cables other than RCA but they're just great for high-res graphics and sound on almost any vintage console. The 2000 although I haven't experienced it first hand *knocks on wood and probably needs to check mine now* has some battery leakage issues (like most old devices). Since I haven't done it first hand I'm not sure where the battery sits but it seems like it's in a fairly critical location if it does have leakage.

Still if I had my choice or had to sell off part of my collection I'd probably hold on to the 2000 series vs the others. The newest I have though is a 3000 (or 3000T probably..which in that case it has plenty of room but weighs about 40lbs). There was a joke amongst the Amiga employees (and probably end users) that the 3000T felt like it was made of granite. The former employee who gave me his tower spray painted his with that grey truck liner to reflect the rumor.
 
As others have noted, the hardest part about using an Amiga in modern times is getting a monitor that will work with the native modes. The only Amiga that will work out of the box with a modernish monitor is the Amiga 3000 because it has a built in Flicker Fixer that uses more modern refresh rates.

If you want the most expandable but least expensive to upgrade system then the Amiga 1200 is the perfect system. I've got a couple A4000D computers but expanding them tends to be quite expensive. Of course, you get a pretty good accelerator in every A4000D.

Good luck!

Heather
 
Amiga-compatible monitors aren't terribly hard to find, because many of them were sold with the Commodore 64 and 128 (and many users of other 8-bit home computers used Commodore monitors as well). The problem is finding the cable to connect them to the Amiga's strange 23-pin video output port!
 
Hm, Nice Ebay one minor problem for me is that I need a PAL system, since i am European. (besides that some software actually uses the extra screen lines)

I have those nasty to find connectors and i don't mind to get my hands dirty with building my own solution when there is enough documentation on hand like for instance the A2630 schematics and ROM and heck even the PAL's are known!

I Prefer a OCS or ECS over a AGA system because for the OCS and ECS i have the knowledge and tooling for to test and fix.(To be honest i am still hunting for a BOM of the Loraine but that is a different story)

I have a 1084S.(Modded to support some hardware of mine)
 
Lucky for you, PAL Amigas seem more common these days. There are quite a few for sale over on Amibay at the moment. If you want ECS, go for the 3000. Built in scan doubler, DMA SCSI, and decent expandability. It came with a 68030 stock with 68040/PPC upgrades available.

The biggest thing to watch for is the Ni-Cd battery leaking and destroying motherboards.
 
I already have a A500+ a A600 is a pointless upgrade since the A500+ is a superior system in design. (Gayle is a insult to the system memory map)

I am truly looking for a big box machine, both for it's power (PSU, and upgrades)

I have equipment to fix acid damage on the PCB, so it doesn't really matter for me unless it causes a short between layers of the PCB.
 
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Sounds like the A3000 is the perfect system for you then. The A500+ is definitely a nice machine. I was just suggesting the A600 because it tends to be easier and less expensive to upgrade. :)

Good luck,

Heather
 
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