Amiga 3000 - Vintage Hardware
Commodore's 32-bit Amigas: The Amiga 3000
Date Range: 1990 - 1992
Release Price: US$4,498.00
The Amiga 3000 was the greatest jump in Amiga Technology since the A1000. It was to be the platform in which Commodore would base future machines. However, instead of releasing the A3000+, Commodore cut the project and focused on a lesser machine, the A4000D.
Product Specs:
- 32 bit 68030 cpu
- 25Mhz
- 50MB SCSI HD
- 1280 x 400 video
- 80 x 32 text
- 4096 colours
- 4 voices, 2 channel stereo
- 1MB Fast RAM
- 1MB Chip RAM
- ROM on HD
- 3.5 880KB floppy
- Zorro III slots
- Pre-emptive Multitasking
Commodore-Amiga 3000
 In 1990, Commodore-Amiga released the Amiga 3000 after five long years without any major improvements to the product line. The Amiga 3000 was designed as a departure form previous models and was marketed as a high-end graphics workstation.
The Amiga 3000 is fully 32-bit with its central processor being the 68030, it has 32-bit bus pathways and fast 32-bit memory. It also comes with the Motorola 68882 and runs at either 16MHz or 25MHz.
While the custom chips received several notable updates, they fell short of what should have been released. After five years, the Amiga should have had 24-bit colour graphics. It still had the same 4096 limitations.
It was now capable of running 1280 x 400 with many different combinations in between. However, the colour depths at these resolutions were minimal. To be a true graphics workstation, a 24-bit video card is essential and would add about US$1,000 to the cost of a new machine, which already sold for about US$3499.
It was the only Amiga to be released with Unix System (SVR4) V, which was the first PC to be certified for System V Unix. It could run X Windows and included TCP/IP, NFS and RFS for networking between different operating systems.
Three Amiga 3000 models were produced : 3000, 3000UX, and 3000T. The towerised version offered more ram and usually came with the A3640, which uses Motorola's 68040 running at about four times faster than the base machine.
Footnote: The 3000+ was designed to be the next Amiga. It featured AGA video chip and a 16-bit DSP for audio. However, Commodore decided to focus on cost cutting rather than producing a true successor. The result was the Amiga 4000. There are few A3000+ in existence.
Read more about this on our Amiga 3000+ page.
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