The Commodore Amiga 2000
While Commodore is perhaps best remembered today for the stunning global success of the Commodore 64 computer (still the highest-selling home computer of all time, with approximately 17,000,000 units sold), their product line eventually included a range of powerful audio/video workstations under the Commodore Amiga brand. The Retro Roadshow is delighted to have several Amigas in our collection, but this the most powerful: the Commodore Amiga 2000.
The Commodore Amiga 2000: not just another 1990’s beige box
Our Amiga 2000 is heavily upgraded and has been one of our most popular hands-on exhibits at Retro Roadshow events
The Amiga line of computers was designed with some of the most advanced graphical and audio capabilities of their day, quickly becoming the platform of choice for many of the world’s leading artists, musicians, designers and creatives. For instance, the artist Andy Warhol used Amigas to create many of his iconic celebrity portraits, and Amiga workstations were a common fixture in recording studios, TV and film production houses, etc. If you were alive and consuming any kind of media in the late 1980’s or 1990’s, the odds are very high that an Amiga was involved behind the scenes.
The Amiga 2000 takes the original Amiga design concept in a radical new direction. While the original Amiga desktop (commonly referred to as the ‘Amiga 1000’) and the consumer-oriented Amiga 500 had modest expansion capabilities, the ‘A2000’ was an upgraders dream-machine. Moving away from the slim design aesthetic of previous entries in the Amiga line, the A2000 was informally known as a ‘big box’ system. Commodore, understanding that professional-level workstation buyers would demand professional-level upgrade and expansion options, went a little crazy with the A2000: it comes with five “Zorro II” expansion slots, and four PC-style “ISA” expansion slots, and a CPU upgrade slot, and a custom video expansion slot. Perhaps unsurprisingly, with so many expansion slots available, the market for 1st-party and 3rd-party expansion cards exploded, resulting in a vast number of possible configurations for any given Amiga 2000.
Taking advantage of its highly-customizable architecture, our Amiga 2000 is equipped with a number of enhancements and upgrades:
A Progressive Peripherals “Zeus’040” CPU upgrade, which replaces the stock ~7MHz Motorola 68000 CPU with a blisteringly-fast Motorola 68040 running at 33MHz
5 megs RAM memory (4 on the Zeus board + a separate 1 meg Commodore board)
Great Valley Products "Impact 2000" SCSI + RAM board paired with a SCSI2SD adapter partitioned into four 256-meg hard drive images
X-Surf ethernet networking card
Kickstart 3.1 ROM upgrade w/ ROM Switcher
Commodore Genlock video-input card
Indivision ECS flicker-fixer with VGA video output
Gotek floppy drive emulator
SCSI CD-ROM drive
Given the broad range of enhancement and expansions in our Amiga 2000 combined with the incredible number of high-quality games, graphics and audio applications available on the system, it is perhaps unsurprising that the A2000 has been one of the more popular exhibits at in-person Retro Roadshow events. Visitors love exploring the many great games on the system, and folks of all ages are charmed by creating art and animation with DeluxePaint IV, or composing music with Aegis Sonix.
