Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[van_dammesque]

Reusing the A500 case could have made it easy enough for a HDD floppy and a 3.5 inch HD for the C=.

I towered up my A1200 so I could get a CD-ROM drive and HDD via IDE, the PCMCIA version of the Squirrel CD-ROM would have cost as much as the whole tower project alone IIRC.

[AmigaHope]

Yeah. In 2020 having the 2.5" drive bay looks like a GREAT idea because 2.5" drives are cheap and SSDs come in 2.5" by *default*.

But in 1992 laptop drives cost 3X more than their desktop equivalent and most stores wouldn't even sell them. In 1993-1994 they still cost at least twice as much and not heavily advertised.

All it would have taken is just a *slight* increase in case size. It would have still been smaller than the A500 by a lot, for the cost of just a little bit extra plastic.

[MrDBUG]

Too little too late, should have had 2 or 4 meg fastram from the start :-/ And better CPU. (030) and updated audio and there should have been a 3,5 HD enclosure for PCMCIA similar to the A500 ones. (I mean "on the side").

[trixster]

At the time it was released I was perfectly happy with my A1200 with HD. It felt like a big improvement over our standard A500, so I was quite content. It’s only with hindsight that we look back at the 1200 and wish it had much more.

[sandruzzo]

@trixster

With little tweaks, a1200 would have been at the top.

[Exodous]

Originally Posted by MrDBUG

and there should have been a 3,5 HD enclosure for PCMCIA similar to the A500 ones. (I mean "on the side").

When I had my original A1200, I had an internal 80MB 2.5" IDE drive and an external Archos Overdrive PCMCIA drive with a 320MB 3.5" IDE drive inside.



http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/overdrivehd

[LongLifeA1200]

Originally Posted by trixster

At the time it was released I was perfectly happy with my A1200 with HD. It felt like a big improvement over our standard A500, so I was quite content. It’s only with hindsight that we look back at the 1200 and wish it had much more.

Exactly. This thread might as well be renamed "Was anyone else RETROACTIVELY disappointed with the A1200?"

People might as well complain that it didn't have a cup holder.

[r.cade]

Originally Posted by snowfire

Agree, it was solid design and a great machine.

Here comes some AGA ranting..
Amiga 1200 and 4000 were steps backwards in design and quality. AGA was a joke and I wish it was never released. At the time it seemed to me like everyone was disappointed with AGA and Amiga 1200 especially. What AGA accomplished was piss of current users by splitting the platform and made me and all my friends abandon Amiga. People just started throwing their OCS/ECS Amigas in the bin, and there was no point expanding them either as Commodore had just effectively killed the whole OCS/ECS platform..

What they should have done is release official Commodore RTG-API and 16-bit music-card expansion for all OCS/ECS Amigas.

You have to understand that electronics and computer companies exist to sell you new computers, not keep your old one.

[Alpha]

What? No not at all. The A1200 was and still is an amazing machine.

[Old_Bob]

Originally Posted by trixster

At the time it was released I was perfectly happy with my A1200 with HD. It felt like a big improvement over our standard A500, so I was quite content. It’s only with hindsight that we look back at the 1200 and wish it had much more.

Well, for me, that happened as soon as I got my Fast RAM board. It's fair to say I was rather surprised at just how crippled even a 14mhz CPU was when stuck with Chip RAM only. As others have stated, it really should have had Fast RAM as standard. And, for not much more than the price of a burger at McDonalds, a 28mhz CPU.

That, along with AGA graphics makes the thing far more of a generational step, as opposed to merely an increment over ECS.

B

[LongLifeA1200]

If any of you are disappointed with your A1200, please donate them to me. I won't be, in the slightest way, disappointed.

[LezRed]

I wasn't disappointed with my A1200 (4mb fast ram plus 200mb HDD) and thought it was great until it became apparent that it's 14mhz 020 wasn't going to cut it for the newer flightsims then appearing like Tornado and TFX, but even then it was amazing compared to the vanilla A600 it replaced.

I think what was disappointing was magazines and Bad Influence on TV suggesting the A1200 would compete with VGA equipped PC's. In some ways it did, just not for games that needed to shift polygons quickly!

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by LongLifeA1200

Exactly. This thread might as well be renamed "Was anyone else RETROACTIVELY disappointed with the A1200?"

People might as well complain that it didn't have a cup holder.

For me it's the other way around.
Back then I didn't even understand why it exists, since DOS PCs were already taking over in my friendship circles. Everybody had sold their old Amiga500s and got a PC system.

These days, I think it's an amazing machine.

Literally my favourite Amiga (along with the 1000).

[daxb]

Originally Posted by Steril707

Back then I didn't even understand why it exists, since DOS PCs were already taking over in my friendship circles. Everybody had sold their old Amiga500s and got a PC system.

Nowadays you should know/understand that an A1200 with at least fastram + HD was the better overall system compared to an equivalent PC. I would say that PC was crap in the beginning/mid '90. It become better/faster over the years but you could still have a good working Amiga system in the '90. Of course not with a stock machine. CPU, RAM, CD, ... upgrades were necessary but that was also true for PC and other computers.

[MrDBUG]

Originally Posted by Exodous

When I had my original A1200, I had an internal 80MB 2.5" IDE drive and an external Archos Overdrive PCMCIA drive with a 320MB 3.5" IDE drive inside.



http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/overdrivehd

NIICE :-D but when I got the A1200 it was likely out of sale :-(

[LezRed]

Originally Posted by daxb

Nowadays you should know/understand that an A1200 with at least fastram + HD was the better overall system compared to an equivalent PC. I would say that PC was crap in the beginning/mid '90. It become better/faster over the years but you could still have a good working Amiga system in the '90. Of course not with a stock machine. CPU, RAM, CD, ... upgrades were necessary but that was also true for PC and other computers.

I think that very much depended where you were in the world and how well off your friends (or at least their parents were). By late 1992 when the A1200 first debuted I remember a few of my better off friends (well, their dads) had 486 systems with decent sound cards and CD-ROM drives. The only areas everyone agreed that my A1200 was better was how simple it was to get games running (compared to battling with DOS memory settings) and the fact that I could put it in my backpack, cycle over and game or listen to mods when their parents needed the PC for work. Since we were teenagers and not paying overall cost didn't come into it.

I think another thing I was disappointed about was how good many games on the far cheaper Super Nintendo were compared to the A1200. The Amiga was definately being squeezed out of the market at the low-end as well as the higher end by 1993/4.

Having said that my A1200's song-swan was circa 1998 when my then girlfriend was studying for a marketing degree and wanted to make a TV advert and didn't have a clue what to do. With use of a scanner and D-Paint IV I soon had some animations (with sound track) recorded to VHS for her. At that point she thought it was excellent compared to her expensive Pentium (which was hopeless with the software/hardware she had) despite being covered in 'multi-media' branding

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by LezRed

I think another thing I was disappointed about was how good many games on the far cheaper Super Nintendo were compared to the A1200.

That’s one comparison i always find amusing, consoles themselves were always cheaper, but as they made money on every game sold unlike Commodore.

SNES games were stupidly expensive, upto £60 on many occassions, so if you take a launch SNES at £150 and 10 games = £750, compared to £400 A1200 and 10 games (at £26 on average) = £660, with the gap widening on each game you buy.

[NorthWay]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

SNES games were stupidly expensive, upto £60 on many occassions

That was around the time I was doing my military service, walking around Oslo and scoring from bargain bins - got myself an Atari 7800 - and I remember seeing SNES games for NOK800. That was near half the price of the console itself!

[Tigerskunk]

Yep SNES games were crazy expensive here.

But with the Nintendo titles you knew you bought something that was immensibly playable. I mean, stuff like Super Mario World, Yoshis Island, Secret of Mana, Donkey Kong Country but also Street Fighter 2 Turbo on the SNES was just amazing.

On the action game front, I think there was little that you could really compare on the Amiga.

Still, I think hardware wise the games on the A1200 could have been almost as good as the SNES.

There were just not many good coders and other creative people left I guess.

[sandruzzo]

I think we're far from know what we can do with Aga. I feel that it has a lot to show, They says that with Aga you could not have game like Doom. Far from the truth...