Amiga 3000D – Part 1: A New Chapter Begins
The early years
I’ve been an Amiga user since the early ’90s, starting out making music on my brother’s Amiga 500. A few years ago, a friend of mine helped bring my Amiga 1200 back to life—with a blazing fast 060 upgrade—and that got me back into the scene. Since then, I’ve been working (slowly) on a music disk project. Progress is measured in vibes, not deadlines, and that’s just the way I like it.
Now it’s time to go big box.
I’ve always loved the look of the Amiga 3000D1. It just has that iconic workstation aesthetic, and I never really had the full big box experience before—so when the chance came to pick one up, I did. This machine is going to be my main Amiga for music production in the studio.
So… What Did I Actually Buy?
Before doing anything else, I wanted to take stock of what I got.
- The case was in decent shape, no major yellowing.
- Inside was mostly complete and surprisingly clean.
- A couple of expansion cards were installed — I’ll do a proper inventory later, but I snapped some pics.
- It had its original hard drive… but it was dead. No spin-up, no signs of life. Not unexpected.
That was pretty much it. A very much stock Amiga 3000 68030 at 25Mhz with 1.4 beta Kickstart!
The seller had powered it on briefly to show that it was working, but I got the feeling it hadn’t been used properly in years—so I treated it like a delicate archaeological find anyway. First stop: the battery.
Battery Removal
This machine had a GP-branded barrel battery instead of the more infamous VARTA type. That might’ve worked in my favor—there was definitely some corrosion, but not as bad as I’ve seen in photos of VARTA-leaked boards. Either way, it had to go.
I carefully removed it and cleaned up the area—first with vinegar to neutralize the alkaline residue, then with isopropyl alcohol to finish the job. I’m no electronics expert, but this is one of those preventative steps every Amiga owner knows to take.
Here’s how it looked before and after:
I will be removing the legs once I do more upgrades
Early Upgrades Ordered
The first things I ordered as upgrades were a SCSI emulator and new ROMs. My research pointed me to the ZuluSCSI RP2040 Compact, and amigastore.eu had it in stock, so I grabbed one. I also ordered Kickstart 3.2.2 ROMs to replace the old 1.4 ROMs that rely on SuperKickstart.
More on that in Part 2.