Amiga 2500
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| Type | Personal computer |
|---|---|
| Release date | March 1987 |
| Introductory price | USD 1495 (1987) USD 3,200 (2017 equivalent) |
| Discontinued | 1991 |
| Operating system | Amiga OS 1.2/1.3 or 2.0 |
| CPU | Motorola 68000 @ 7.16 MHz (NTSC) 7.09 MHz (PAL) |
| Memory | 1 MB (9 MB maximum) |
| Predecessor | Amiga 1000 |
| Successor | Amiga 3000 |
The Amiga 2000, or A2000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in March 1987. It was introduced as a "big box" expandable variant of the Amiga 1000 but quickly redesigned to share most of its electronic components with the contemporary Amiga 500 for cost reduction. Expansion capabilities include two 3.5" drive bays (one of which was used by the included floppy drive) and one 5.25" bay that could be used by a 5.25" floppy drive (for IBM PC compatibility), a hard drive, or CD-ROM once they became available.
The Amiga 2000 is the first Amiga model to have allowed expansion cards to be added internally. SCSI host adapters, memory cards, CPU cards, network cards, graphics cards, serial port cards, and PC compatibility cards were available, and multiple expansions could be used simultaneously without requiring an additional expansion cage like the Amiga 1000. The Amiga 2000 not only includes five Zorro II card slots, the motherboard also has four PC ISA slots, two of which are inline with Zorro II slots for use with the A2088 bridgeboard, which adds IBM PC XT compatibility to the A2000.
The Amiga 2000 was the most versatile and expandable Amiga computer until the Amiga 3000T was introduced four years later.
Aimed at the high-end market, the original Europe-only model adds a Zorro II backplane, implemented in programmable logic, to the custom Amiga chipset used in the Amiga 1000. Later improved models have redesigned hardware using the more highly integrated A500 chipset, with the addition of a gate-array called "Buster", which integrates the Zorro subsystem. This also enables hand-off of the system control to a coprocessor slot device, and implements the full video slot for add-on video devices.
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