Recommended configuration for me (WinUEA)? Zero experience with Amigas?

Hello. Incase it helps, I'm American, on Windows 7 64, using WinUEA 4.01 64 bit.

Unfortunately for me, I never grew up or even heard of Amigas, Commodore 64 or any such home computers, while I grew up with old Nintendo and Sony consoles, and of course PC/Windows my whole life.

Ever since discovering such computers including Amiga on the internet, they fascinated me so much and I always dreamed to get really into them. I'm attempting to get into the Amiga with WinUEA. Only thing is, I still don't understand: How Amigas worked, what anything means (AGA, Kickstart), how to use the Amiga OS. And I don't know how to use WinUEA and how it works.
I have a lot to ask, and I apologize for it.

I'm in the middle of trying to configure an Amiga in the settings. I had certain desires and needs. My goal is to try to have an Amiga that would of been ideal to an developer in the 80's for programming, game development, creativity, and games themselves. Something good for the balance of both programming/development and gaming.
To the best of my knowledge from research, Amiga 2000 looks like a good fitting machine for that balance. Amiga 1000 doesn't seem that bad for the same thing either.

I couldn't find out much about storage, whether hard drive or something else, but for machines like ones used for that stuff, I thought they must of had some kind of storage so they can install their development tools and save their creations. Unless they just used blank disk for all that. But if they
normally had hard drives (Or some other storage object), then I need help on creating and using one for my configured Amiga in WinUEA.

As for software: For games I like or am interested in Lemmings, Turrican, Blood Money, Shadow of the Beast, Walkers, Out of This world, Shmups and RPG's. So software wise, its mostly the development stuff I'm asking for, I need a recommendation on an assembler for the Amiga, for other development stuff I just want Deluxe Paint for graphics.

So based on all of that, I just need a recommendation on what model should choose in WinUEA, what to set all my settings to, what I how to do things such as create a hard drive (or something) if I need.

One thing I almost forgot, I also don't know what Kickstarts and Workbench's are exactly, what different purpose they serve. The only thing I know is Workbench is the disk version and looks like an OS. But based on a chart I saw on a site, 1.3 on both would work on an Amiga 2000 or 1000. Just to be safe though, I could use a recommendation on Benchmark and Kickstart version as well.

The last thing I need to know is once I get this Amiga built, how will I actually set up and use my desktop environment, considering the things I want to do?
E.G. Do I install Assembler, Deluxe Paint and other programs onto the storage and if so how? Do I have to use the Workbench disk Every time I want to access my programs, or can Workbench be installed as well as kind of an operating system? And *can* I save my assembly programs, and pixel art files on the hard drive, and load them from their later when I use those programs again, or just on blank floppies?

Again, I am very sorry for this amount of random questions, but I've had trouble figuring things out on my own.
Thank you for your time reading. I hope I can have help with this, as I would love to become a new part of this community.

[nexus]

well many of youtube vids on amiga and setting up "WinUAE" i say start there 1st
and if you still cant figure out try https://fs-uae.net/

[Anubis]

Our friend Paul (rip) created very nice instructions that covered basics about installing an OS on amiga and basic setups. I still find them very helpful, even it has been 11 years since Paul passed away.


http://guide.abime.net/

Thanks for the replies. And yeah, I was looking at videos on WinUEA and was still confused about things like I mentioned in this thread.
But it was more about the Amiga itself, and wondered what someone would recommend setting my Amiga machine to based on my
wants and needs (Which model, how much ram etc).
But those resources are definitely helpful.

Thank you again.

[Ledfoot]

Ok, I'll answer what I can...

Think of Kickstart as the System Boot information - if you're familiar with the old Windows 95/98 days, think of Kickstarter sort of like DOS, Workbench as Windows - the windowing OS on top of DOS. (this isn't totally accurate but gets the idea across).

The 1000 was the original Amiga, started with 256KB RAM, the 500 and 2000 came next with 512 KB RAM. These were the "OCS" - original chipset machines (think of this as the lower end graphics, although they blew away the competition at the time). Then came the 3000 (desktop and tower, faster processor), 600 (which was a crappy version of the 500) - these came with the "ECS" - Enhanced chipset - slightly better - allowed for more "Chip Ram" (think video memory) (although you could upgrade the 500 and 2000 to do this too).
Finally there were the 1200 and 4000/4000T - these were AGA chipset - best graphics and sound available on the Amiga line. Faster processors.

If you're looking to buy an actual machine, I'd say avoid the 1000 as it's hard to really upgrade much (being the first version). A500's were super popular and can still be had for reasonable prices, and there's a lot of upgrades out for them. 600 is so-so. Seems like most folks try to get A1200's as they're powerful, have lots of upgrades available and expandable. 2000's, 3000's and 4000's are expandable desktop style setups that can take cards (Zorro) to upgrade or expand capabilities, and more internal storage options. 4000's are pretty rare though and usually fetch VERY high $$$$. 2000's are more common, but have more limited graphics due to their OCS and lower CPU (so you'll want upgrades for those).

All of these machines could have a hard drive installed (some with external add on bays, some with internal, depending on the unit. The later machines swapped out SCSI hard drive interfaces for IDE.

IIRC all of the units could be upgraded all the way to Kickstart 3.1 (not 100% positive on the 1000), but often required memory upgrades to do so. (Most folks back in the day had 1.3, 2.04, and 3.1.)

Workbench can be installed onto the HD, just like any OS could. Same with your software and data files. (Don't ask me how to do all this in UAE, I'm clueless on it). Games used to be the exception (some only worked from Floppy due to copy protection and the need to run under a specific kickstart version.) But that's largely been worked around via software like WHDLoad.


Anyhow, hope this helps clear up some questions you had.