Amiga A1200 (Harddrive)

[Rogueraven]

Hello, I'm new too this forums, i just got a few general questions,

I was wondering what was the max harddrive size a A1200 supports and if it was just a regular IDE drive

Also i was wondering if the Serial ports 0 and 1 was the same type of Serial Ports used on old PC's ?, and would i be able to use old Serial Ports from PC's too fix damage serial ports on my Amiga,

I currently own 2 Amigas an A600 which has the serial port damage and a A1200 which i am improving and networking to my PC

so if you know the answers or relevant information on the 2 matters please let me know,

Thanks

[Gnorman]

The max HD size is dependent on OS I think but on a standard 1200 it is 4gig. It's a standard 2.5" IDE like those found in laptops. You will need an IDE cable to connect it to the Amiga.

Can't help you with the serial port questions I'm afraid.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Rogueraven

Also i was wondering if the Serial ports 0 and 1 was the same type of Serial Ports used on old PC's ?, and would i be able to use old Serial Ports from PC's too fix damage serial ports on my Amiga,

There are no serial ports 0 and 1 on the Amiga. The Amiga has only one serial port which is a 25pin connector. The two 9pin connectors on the Amiga are game ports. You use them to connect joysticks and mice. The connectors are the same as the serial connectors on the PC, so you can use the hardware to repair them. But don't dare to connect any serial device (e.g. a serial mouse) to the game ports. The pin content is totally different.

[Rogueraven]

yea i ment the 25 pin serial port i got throw by the game port numbers and didnt double check before i posted

ok the IDE cable for the Harddrive is a 44 to 40 pin or am i wrong ?

and basicly i can use any 2.5 harddrive up to 4gb from and old notebook/laptop

[thomas]

If you want to use a 2.5" HDD (as it is supposed to be used), then you need a 44 to 44 pin HDD cable. If you want to use a 3.5" HDD (which needs a litte more work to fit into an A1200), you need a 44 to 40 pin cable and an additional power cable.

You can connect a HDD of any size, but you may only use the first 4GB of it. If you create partitions beyond the 4GB border, writing to these partitions will destroy data on the partitions below the border.

[cooldude]

OS 3.9 allows the use of >>ANY<< size HD. I have an 80GB drive
attached. The system does a reset at Setpatch and loads the
updated ROM thereby allowing any size partition on any size HD ;^)

[thomas]

OS 3.9 allows the use of >>ANY<< size HD.

Up to 128GB on the internal IDE bus. No support for LBA48 yet.

And OS3.9 needs at least 6MB RAM and a CD-ROM drive. System specs have not yet been discussed here, so we have to assume an unexpanded A1200 with 2MB RAM and not even a HDD yet, not to mention the CD-ROM drive.

[blade002]

Originally Posted by cooldude

OS 3.9 allows the use of >>ANY<< size HD. I have an 80GB drive
attached. The system does a reset at Setpatch and loads the
updated ROM thereby allowing any size partition on any size HD ;^)

Would OS3.9 chew up a bit more Chip ram thus making it harder to load games from Workbench with WHLoad ?. I know you can turn everything off and degrade the system, and boot without startup. But woud there be a better way around it?.

[Rogueraven]

yea i was on about standard A1200 straight from box with 2mb chip ram no fast running AmigaOS 3.0

at moment i just adding a harddrive beings that most parts are hard to come by now, and harddrive addition is cheapest, plus gives me option of installing certain games to harddrives saves using orig disks.

later on when i get more of a undeerstanding of Amiga parts and familiar with upgrading then i might rebuild a A1200 into a tower, using parts that are being sold has spares or replacements, last thing i want to do is to be taking a perfectly working computer apart to pimp out so to speak would rather have one A1200 completely or almost all in orignal condition.

after all if we take working amiga apart and upgrade here and there instead of rebuilding broken amiga's and getting them working again there will be more then likely less working Amiga's for next generation, thats of course if they will be interested