Should I or shouldn't I?!

[Zeewolf]

I've recently got back into the Amiga scene after a number of years out due to all my Amigas being skipped by the ex and having a big change in my life. But over the past week I've felt the Amiga calling me again.

Im now debating whether to buy myself a new Amiga or just go and get myself Amiga forever 2006.

Out of all the machines I've had, I've never had a passion like I've had for the Amigas, whether thats down to nostalgia I do not know. But I know one thing, that feeling has never been replicated. I now have a Wii and an Xbox 360 but neither comes close to giving me that same buzz!

The machine I'm thinking of buying is as follows:-
A1200 (new old stock)
Amiga OS 3.1
40gb hard drive
Refurbished 4mb memory card
Total price £253.69

Is it worth the money? Should I or shouldn't I? What would you do? Go for the real thing or emulation?

Thanks for your help in advance guys.

[keropi]

for that money u can get from ebay a way better machine....

[Zeewolf]

I'm a bit wary of buying second hand goods as I've been burnt in the past, though I know not everyone is a rogue. The reason why I liked the look of this was because the Amiga was new (just new old stock which has come into stock - if that makes any sense ) that comes with a 12 month warranty.

[SWOS]

I am not a pro, but i would go for an Amiga anyday over emulation. basically u get what u pay for. I just got an A1200(stock) used in v.clean condition with tons of games(900+ disks of games,utilities..etc),2 joystics,external drive,manuals and some other stuff for around 100 pounds (around 150 Euros) which i think is a good deal. will get it by next week.

check the following deals,u might be interested in one of them:

A1200 with 2GB HD:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Commodore-Amig...QQcmdZViewItem

A1200 with 1.4GB HD:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/AMIGA-1200-WIT...QQcmdZViewItem

A1200(stock) with Joystick:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Commodore-Amig...QQcmdZViewItem

[Minuous]

No need to buy Amiga Forever just to use emulation, I have it but never use it, AF is not very good and a complete waste of money.

[Ironclaw]

AF sucks.... I have tried it to see what it was... and it was to no use to me... so I threw it away.

[blade002]

When it comes to the Amiga, the real deal is the only way to go .. I dont mind emulating other machines, but not the Amiga.

[DamienD]

Personally I emulate using WinUAE as I don't have the space in my house for another PC / console and I don't really want to spend the money...

Sure, people will say that emulation isn't perfect but it's pretty damn close in my book plus there's the added benefit of being able to emulate all different models

[Retro-Nerd]

Get the machine, if the high price don't hurt. Otherwise SWOS is right, you get an used machine with a 4MB memory extension & Joys etc for 100 pounds or less. I got my A1200 & turbocard from eBay too, all is fine here.

btw:

Is there a DamienD emulator, i've tons of roms for it?

[jabsy]

Get the old hardware, as nothing beats the real thing, but dont overlook emulation. Winuae makes the real amiga hard drive so easy to set up (Bloodwych's ClassicWB and KillerGorilla's most excellent guide to setting up SFS) so it's easy to get back into the groove.

If you were into the amiga in the 80's and 90's then you'll need the real thing. If you just jumped on, then emulation is a piece of cake. But going by your question, you really need to treat yourself to the hardware.

Get yourself a 44-40 pin IDE converter, and a chunky CF card and PCMCIA adapter, register WHDLOAD, and enjoy yourself like you couldn't afford to in the 90's.

[Zeewolf]

Thanks for your help guys, I think I'll have to punt for the real thing. Just a few questions before I finally do.

1. Would you recommend buying a HD or not? I've read up that they can be a bit of a nightmare. I'm no technical wizkid either. I'm looking at transferring ADF's over from my PC to play, so is having a HD essential?

2. Can you get hold of a lead now so that you can plug the Amiga in via scart?

3. Is it still easy enough to get hold of floppy disks? I'm looking at getting perhaps 200-300 in bulk. Is it possible to play Amiga games off CD? Can you buy external CD drives even?

4. Can you still buy Zipsticks? Or if not Zipsticks, how about Pythons?

5. Is there anything else you recommend I should get while I still can?

Sorry for all the questions. Thanks for your help again guys. Much appreciated. Cant wait to get back to Amiga life. I'm also dying to get to enter the EAB competition.

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by Zeewolf

1. Would you recommend buying a HD or not? I've read up that they can be a bit of a nightmare. I'm no technical wizkid either. I'm looking at transferring ADF's over from my PC to play, so is having a HD essential?

Without a doubt go for one. Any 2.5" drive will do, as long as they're smaller than 4GB because otherwise you'll have problems using the full capacity. They're not that hard to set up; there's a cradle inside the machine where the drive fits as well as a port to plug the cable in, it's dead easy

If you get one with the machine then you can ignore the above

It's easy enough to format, partition etc. You could just use something like ClassicWB for convenience.

2. Can you get hold of a lead now so that you can plug the Amiga in via scart?

You should be able to, I've got one, can't remember how I got it though. You could try somewhere like Amigakit I guess.

3. Is it still easy enough to get hold of floppy disks? I'm looking at getting perhaps 200-300 in bulk. Is it possible to play Amiga games off CD? Can you buy external CD drives even?

Again, I'm sure Amigakit sell Double-density disks that the Amiga uses. You can buy High-density floppy disks, you'll have to format them as DD but they do work, I've got plenty and never had a problem.

External CD drives are possible to get hold of, I've got a Squirrel SCSI that plugs into a PCMCIA port, and a CD-ROM drive attached to it. (Ebay may be your best bet here.) There are quite a few games that were released only on CD, like Shadow of the Third Moon, T-Zero, Quake etc.

4. Can you still buy Zipsticks? Or if not Zipsticks, how about Pythons?

Not sure about brand new Amiga joysticks. Again Ebay is probably your best hope.

Sorry for all the questions. Thanks for your help again guys. Much appreciated. Cant wait to get back to Amiga life. I'm also dying to get to enter the EAB competition.

You are my new best friend

These answers may not be entirely accurate, but I've done my best. I'm sure there are plenty of other people who can help you out more.

[Retro-Nerd]

Since there is WHDLoad the time for messing around with hundreds of amiga floppy disks should be over. I highly recommend you a HD or a CF Card via IDE. There are a lot of guys with hardware knowledge here. I guess, they will help you with any technical question.

[lopos2000]

@Zeewolf
1. Yes. Defiantly. A must have. If you have a decent PC with USB connection buy a HD enclosure and transfer files on to your 2.5'' HD
2. Yes. Search EBay
3 & 4 Try AmigaKit
5. Get a PCMCIA card with a 250MB memory card. So you can transfer files between your PC <-> Amiga

I would definitely recommend going for the real thing; if you want a nice shiny new A1200 and are happy to pay for it go ahead, but there are plenty on Ebay that are in good condition for less money.

And go for emulation too; it's what I've done (started off with the Amiga Forever so I had the legit workbench disks, then I scored a nice A1200 with hard disk, extra floppy, 4meg ram and a fpu for 40 quid). The real deal is great, but the emulator means I can emulate a much higher spec Amiga if I want to.

I find that the combination of emulator and real machine is hard to beat, I can use the emulator to test stuff out on a scratch hard disk before doing it for real on the real A1200.

So long as your A1200 comes with the Workbench version you want, then you don't need to get Amiga Forever, you could just download WinUAE and use the Workbench that came with the A1200.

It's also worth having a PCMCIA Compactflash adapter, works a treat for transferring files to and from the A1200, there are easy to follow instructions elsewhere in these forums for setting it up, or you can try to source an old PCMCIA network card and transfer files that way.

[Adropac2]

I love my real Amiga 1200's but if it was impossible to ever use them again ,i would happily use the brilliant Winuae.I often swap between the two because my PC is in another room but because Winuae has advantages regarding how much memory you want and choice of cpu speed ,it's definitely worth considering over a real machine.Always nice to have the real thing of course but i don't see Winuae as inferior an option.Another option is Winuaex for Xbox which is a fantastic port.Myself ,i'm spoilt for choice when it comes to playing the Amiga.

[Adropac2]

Setting up ClassicWB to run on your Amiga is quite a treat should you ever get round to it.Even better is being able to use a PCMCIA card for this - very cool.Modifying your hardrives contents is easy in Winuae and means you can bin all your backups ,relying on pc to store all your games for when you want to write them back for floppy use or just using WHDload.I never would have thought this possible but it certainly does give a reason to keep hold of your Amiga or consider the idea of getting one back.

Love Amiga

[killergorilla]

Originally Posted by jozza

I would definitely recommend going for the real thing; if you want a nice shiny new A1200 and are happy to pay for it go ahead, but there are plenty on Ebay that are in good condition for less money....

MORE STUFF HERE

You sir are a wise man I agree with everything you've just said But you failed to mention WHDLoad

You live just down the road from me so all the more awesomeness to ya.

Ain't it a shame how the arcades in Southend have now been overrun by absolute morons. Boooooooooooooooooooo.

Originally Posted by killergorilla

You sir are a wise man I agree with everything you've just said

Thanks, I'm honoured

But you failed to mention WHDLoad

Ah yes, WHDLoad, not got around to messing about with that yet, but it seems a good way to play my games without opening the boxes and feeding disks into the A1200. I've only had the machine for a couple of weeks now, and there's so much tinkering to be done with it; I'm only just getting around to actually loading it up with stuff (I've got the Compactflash replacement for the hard drive, the PCMCIA CF card reader going, and tonight's dedicated to setting up the network card). I suppose that's one thing that you don't get with emulation, there's something about playing with the real hardware that emulation can't quite match.

You live just down the road from me so all the more awesomeness to ya.

Ain't it a shame how the arcades in Southend have now been overrun by absolute morons. Boooooooooooooooooooo.

Cool! I noticed that there's quite a bit of Amiga activity in this neck of the woods - I never knew that when I had my first Amiga, as the Interweb hadn't been invented and I didn't get out of the house very much .

I know what you mean about the arcades, and the cruise nights just aren't the same as they used to be either . I haven't been to the arcades for a while, the last time I spent any amount of time there was when the new Arkanoid machine was first installed in Mr B's .

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by jozza

Ah yes, WHDLoad, not got around to messing about with that yet, but it seems a good way to play my games without opening the boxes and feeding disks into the A1200.

That's something of an understatement