Amiga 2000
For today’s entry in my “Zscaler Logo on a Weird, Old or Obsolete Device” series, here's one of the most interesting computers in my collection: the Commodore Amiga 2000!
For a brief time, Commodore’s Amiga series was the platform for animators, musicians, video editors and other creatives. Released in an era when Microsoft PC’s were still mostly text-only systems and the Mac could only display black-and-white graphics, the Amiga introduced wildly-advanced graphics and sound capabilities, quickly making it the preferred system for artists and gamers alike.
The original Amiga was a slim “pizza box” system released in 1985, and in 1987 it was replaced by two new systems: the consumer-oriented Amiga 500, and this professional-level “big box” Amiga 2000.
The Amiga 2000 was a powerhouse professional workstation by 1987 standards. While it kept the same 7Mhz Motorola Solutions 68000 CPU as the consumer-oriented Amiga 500, it added a huge amount of expansion options within its large metal case, all designed to make it a “must have” for pro users. For example, the Amiga 2000 has five Amiga-style expansion slots along with four IBM PC-style expansion slots to make hardware design simpler for PC accessory makers. Going even further, it has a CPU expansion slot and a special video card slot too, plus internal space for multiple hard drives, floppy drives, and other storage devices.
Because it was so expandable, the Amiga 2000 was widely deployed in TV stations, movie studios, graphic design shops, and music studios. The Amiga 2000 was also the original platform for the famous “Video Toaster” and “LightWave 3D” editing and video effects systems, which let the Amiga 2000 perform pro-level video production for 1/10th the cost of a contemporary editing workstation. Amiga 2000’s like this were used to create movies and shows like Babylon 5, Star Trek: Voyager, Titanic, etc.
Because it has all these expansions options and because I’m slightly crazy, I’ve spent over 20 years seeking out and installing a large number of upgrades, taking this machine about as far as it can go.
Currently, my A2000 features:
A Motorola 68040 CPU running at 33MHz (a massive upgrade over the original 7MHz CPU)
12 megs of RAM (4 on the CPU board + a multiple Commodore RAM boards)
A SCSI + RAM board with a modern SD card adapter partitioned into four 256-meg bootable hard drive images
An ethernet network card connected to my modern Eero home network
A Commodore Genlock video-input card
Upgraded video chips
A “Gotek” floppy drive emulator (makes it easy to use software downloaded from the Internet)
A SCSI CD-ROM drive
A modern wireless mouse designed to look like an original Amiga mouse
Anyway, I bet you can tell how much I love this amazing old computer. Did any of you use an Amiga back in the day? Either way, happy Friday!
