Best A1200 Mods?

[Amiga1992]

I suppose OS3.9 runs in an 030, but can't confirm this myself.

[DopPie]

68060's are not cheap unless you get lucky. I paid 120 euro for mine and I consider that cheap for an 060 (other may disagree). 68030 can be found secondhand for much less. I guess around 40 euro depends on memory, clockspeed and PCMCIA friendlyness.

[Miggy2TheMax]

Originally Posted by DopPie

Ok lets see; what and why seems to be enough to explain things. The 'why'part explains what the mod does anyway.

I added a harddisk. Why? Cause I hate floppies.
I added a scandoubler. Why? It enables me to use VGA monitors.
I added extra cooling to the scandoubler. Why? I hope it will last longer.
I added an 68030 accelerator. Why? Cause it allowes me to compile / (de-)comress files faster.
I added 32MB of RAM. Why? Cause it allows me to load lots of stuff at the same time.
I added a compact flash adapter. Why? Too be transfer files between PC/Amiga.
I added a NIC? Why? For networking ofcourse.

I'm going to add my newly acquired 68060 accelerator. Why? See 68030 accelerator and multiply that by 4 (or more?).
I'm going to add extra cooling for the 68060. Why? So it may live longer
I'm going to add a scsi connector. Why? To connect my external CD-Player

That is what I've done / going to do.
There are lots of things you could add (USB for instance). But the challenge of fitting it all inside becomes greater everytime.

See:
http://www.amiga.org/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=1866
This is my scandoubler mod. There are more photo's of my progress there.

Nice and neat setup, good idea about installing a heatsink on your scandoubler. Looked at photo
but its all a bit obscured by IDE cable? I assume you must of bought an internal one aswell?
I think I might pop a heatsink and fan on my external scan doubler just to be sure, those
things do get very hot, nice idea, learn something new everyday! Cheers.

[wlcina]

I have a little idea - what about to exchange internal floppy for internal HDD - and use external floppy when needed ?, Will amiga works without internal floppy connected ?

[Amiga1992]

It will work but take ages to boot.
also, if you need to boot a game from floppy for any reason,it probably won't run.

It ends up being annoying. Why would you want to do this, though?

[Martin_L]

I have a couple of Q's: can you plug and Amiga into your TV set, ive always used a philips monitor?

isnt there space for an internal HD in a 1200 anyway?

what do you need a scan doubler for?

[DopPie]

Originally Posted by Miggy2TheMax

Nice and neat setup, good idea about installing a heatsink on your scandoubler. Looked at photo
but its all a bit obscured by IDE cable? I assume you must of bought an internal one aswell?
I think I might pop a heatsink and fan on my external scan doubler just to be sure, those
things do get very hot, nice idea, learn something new everyday! Cheers.

Thanks. And it's still white (I wonder for how long )

You could click my name (erno) displayed at the photo. You see my other photo's each photo displays a step of the scandoubler mod. One of them clearly displays the round heatsink.

The fun part is too determain where to make the hole in the tinware.
What I did was glueing the heatsink to the chip first. Using thermal conductive glue ofcourse. After that I put a 2 euro coin ontop of the heatsink. The coin is slightly larger. On top of the coin I put a drop of butter.
Then the tinware was placed on top of the coin as if I was putting it down.
The coin stuck to the tinware on the place where the hole should be. Easy enought drawing the circle with a CD-R pen this way

Hope the photo's work inspiring.

I'm going to add fans too, atleast for the 060 when it is going to be in operation. The fan will be temprature controlled. I hate noisy fans/harddisks. The amiga should be as silent as possible.

Edit: Yes it is an internal scandoubler.
Edit: This is the link of the photo you are interested in: http://www.amiga.org/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=1864
to make things easier

[DopPie]

Originally Posted by Martin_L

I have a couple of Q's: can you plug and Amiga into your TV set, ive always used a philips monitor?

Sure you can. Using the RF output or composite.

Originally Posted by Martin_L

isnt there space for an internal HD in a 1200 anyway?

Yes there is. Some however, are not shipped with one nor do they have a cradle and cable by default.

Originally Posted by Martin_L

what do you need a scan doubler for?

To double the horizontal scan rate. This is upped from 15 to 30kHz allowing the use of regular VGA monitors.

[Martin_L]

thanks again DopPie!

[Martin_L]

oh yeah one more thing, is it possible to hook an A1200 to the net? Im using broadband rather than dial up, I heard that 3.9 comes with AWEB

[Amiga1992]

Yes,m it is possible, having in mind you got the necessary hardware. Look at DopPie's first post.

Nobody said it's enjoyable to browse tehweb with it, though :P

[Martin_L]

oh yeah, cheers akira, I used to browse the web on an old P133 win95 machine, it cant be much worse that can it?

[Amiga1992]

I used to browse the web with a P133 running w98, it's much worse than that i tell you.

[DopPie]

Amiga systems have no serious support for webbrowsers nowadays. There are several browsers but none, with the exeption of A-Web, is been developed recently. Look at it this way; the amiga can compete with PDA web browsers but even competing with portables it looses on some fronts.

Where is Java? Where is Flash? Streaming video anyone? Maybe my 060 will be able to do a little but I doubt the avarage A1200D is able to.

If you're really after browsing I can only give on economically viable advice; get a PC.

[T_hairy_bootson]

Just picked up an A1200 and it came with no hdd mount or 44pin cable, having an absolute prick of a time tracking down a 44pin cable atm...

Anyways I found this article and I am wondering if any one else has tried this method and can comment on its advantages over buying a 2-way buffered ide splitter.

[DopPie]

I dislike 3.5 inch harddisks in A1200's. It doesn't fit nicely and the case will buldge.
Anyway you can get 2.5 inch cable from www.computercity.biz or www.vesalia.de
There are probably various sources.

[Martin_L]

Akira - well I was thinking of using the amiga to browse the web just to download games, coz i cant think of a way of getting games from my mac to the amiga and i dont have any amiga floppys anymore so ive got a system but no games!

[Martin_L]

? its all so confusing

[DopPie]

I use amiga explorer (has nothing to do with internet explorer) to transfer files between my amiga and PC. Or I use my compact flash adapter. The first option is PC only I beleive. But you could get an USB Compact flash reader/writer and an PCMCIA compact flash adapter. With the right drivers I think that would enable you to transfer files from your mac to your amiga.

As for browsing with an amiga.
you'll need at least some extra fastram. Then you put one of those so called tcp stacks on your amiga (miami for instance) and install a browser (Ibrowse for instance).
But you face the chicken and egg problem. How you are going to get the tcp stack and browser to your amiga?

That is the reason I went the compact flash route. You can install the required drivers on a 720k dosdisk and use crossdos to get them to the amiga. Problem solved; you then have a compact flash enabled amiga and are able to transfer larger files.

Hope I havent spoiled the puzzling fun for you but this is a possible approach.
Edit: Check this thread http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=17879

[Info-Seeker]

Hey Guys,

I am new to this forum, just signed up to add my own bit of wisdom to this particular thread...

Personally, I love AmiTCP. It lets you set up the Amiga much like a unix box. It comes with it's own ftp daemon, though you do have to set up the home/user file structure yourself. You can also have it force a login requester before you get to Workbench which gives it the SunOS / Solaris style security and front end. I like it a lot. The ftp server is a bit basic, but once it is up and running you can get to it from any other box, Amiga or Otherwise. I use FlashFXP to get to it from the PCs and have 0 problems. Also, if you have access to AmiForever and AmiExplorer, mentioned in a previous post, it works great across the network. Much faster than a null modem or parnet cable, and you have the added benefit of a decent pc side interface for it.

I put AmiTCP 4.2 on all my Amigas, and would highly recomend it to everyone. People say it is hard to set up, but I had it running in under 10 mins. I am a unix admin by trade though, but would be happy to provide any guidance you may require.

-Info