Tips for a new A1200 owner

[Clym5]

Hey there!

After looking for a replacement for my A500 for ages, I finally found and bought a A1200 and I was just wondering what games, demos, utilities, hardware I should get for it. And if there are any things to look out for, like bulging capacitors and power supply problems.

Also, what's the best way to get the software onto the HDD?

The Amiga is a 020 in a wedge case, no RAM upgrades
And it has a HDD, not sure how big yet though.
I'm also not sure if it as KS 3.0 or 3.1, it does boot from the HDD though.


I actually don't have it with me yet, I'm picking it up from the seller in a few hours.

[demolition]

I'd open it up and look for corrosion/anything not looking right.

600s and 1200s are prone to leaking the caps, so they should be replaced if they start to do that. Whenever I buy an old used item, I like to take it completely apart, clean it up and repair anything if needed. I don't like other people's old hair and dead skin cells in my Amiga keyboards.

The typical internal storage solution is a 4-8GB CF card on an IDE-CF adapter instead of a mechanical HDD. For PC<->Amiga transfer, get a PCMCIA CF adapter and another (maybe smaller) CF card for transfer. Using FAT95 and CFD from Aminet you can mount a FAT formatted CF card in the Amiga and copy files back and forth.

If the accelerator has a maprom function, you could use that to soft-upgrade it to KS 3.1 even if it only has 3.0 in hardware, by loading the KS image from HDD during boot.

Also, get some memory in it, you'll need it.

[Clym5]

I'm in the process of digging up my pile of computer stuff looking for a laptop HDD for the Amiga, so I don't need to pay for a CF card. I just started it up a few minutes ago and found some really weird version of WB on the old HDD, looks like a slightly better 1.3, its definitely not 3.0 or 3.1. How would I install WB 3.0 or 3.1 without the floppies? I've only got 2.5 and 1.3.

Also, do you know any good places to buy memory upgrades and those PCMCIA CF adapters?

[zharn]

i did exactly the same thing when i got my amiga, ratted an old dell laptop for its hdd. I used winuea cf setup guide. but used a usb to 2.5 adaptor instead. i kept both partitions under 4gb to be safe. here are the guides i used

get a cf adaptor, no heat, no noise. dont skimp on the crappy $2 ones, mine got dry joints, and stopped working completely after insert and removing it too many times

http://www.2e0zak.co.uk/amiga/CF-setup.html
http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=4149

[Clym5]

Awesome, thanks. I just looked inside the A1200, no bad caps and I gave it a huge clean with compressed air.

Now to get the new HDD working!

[Clym5]

Okay, I've run into a problem, while setting up the HDD under WinUAE, the installer says that all my partitions on the HDD are not DOS disks.
I've done a low-level format and partitioned the drive so my boot partition is 506 Meg, my Tools & Utils partition is 1707 Meg and my Games & Demos partition is 1706.

Any idea of what is causing this error?

EDIT: I _may_ of just fixed the problem, I didn't format with workbench first. I'll edit again soon with the results.
EDIT: Nope, the HDD install works fine with WinUAE but not with the Amiga 1200... It just stays on the "insert workbench 3.0" screen. But the HDD light is constantly on.

[demolition]

Did you run WinUAE as administrator? Otherwise it probably won't work. Also, I'd recommend to use something else than the FFS filesystem for the HDD, for example PFS3. It has better performance and has a smaller risk of destroying your files.

[SS454]

Sometimes the drive takes longer to spin up than the amiga will wait, try hitting ctrl+A+A on the insert disc screen.

[sneeker]

In Hdtoolbox, is dh0 set as a bootable partition? Has to be bootable, otherwise it wont boot off it.

[Clym5]

@sneeker: I ticked the "Bootable" box that was for my boot partition.

@demolition: Why didn't I think of that! I'll have to try that when I get home.

@SS454: I'd think that a laptop HDD from 2005 would spin up faster than a old one from 1992, but I'll give it a try.

[Bamiga2002]

Originally Posted by Clym5

...
I've done a low-level format ...

Don't do it! It's not necessary with todays hard disks and can even destroy your HD.

[Clym5]

Boogers, do you think it might of messed it up?

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Clym5

Boogers, do you think it might of messed it up?

It shouldn't be possible to damage a new HDD by 'low level formatting' it, seeing as you can't actually low level format it (the drive will ignore those instructions). But it is unnecessary and will wear the disk more than you need to.

[Clym5]

Ah, okay. Phew, I thought I'd broken it!

I'm just plugging in the keyboard now, time to get this Amiga going!

EDIT: Ragh! I tried to reset the Amiga on the boot screen like SS454 said, no luck.

[Clym5]

Right! I've managed to get ClassicWB Lite running on an emulator, is there any way to copy
it over to a HDD for the Amiga?

[demolition]

I thought you already had the Amiga HDD connected to the PC?

If not, then you can just do that and mount it in WinUAE and copy your files in there.

[Clym5]

I've taken out the HDD I got for the Amiga out of the Amiga and plugged it into the PC. Last night I made 3 partitions on the HDD, I want to get rid of them and start from scratch on the Amiga HDD, but HDToolKit doesn't show the HDD any more. That's my problem.

[demolition]

Did you make those partitions in Windows or inside WinUAE? The Amiga will not recognise PC partitions.

[Clym5]

The partitions were made with HDToolBox under WinUAE.

I've scrapped the 80GB HDD I was originally using in favour of a 20GB one and I've made three partitions, like the last time, same size, same names, but the last one, Games & Demos doesn't show up.

Bah, curse you PC <> Amiga compatibility!
and my knowlegde of amigas

[demolition]

Are you using the kickstart default scsi.device on the Amiga? If so, then it will not be able to use more than 4GB (8GB with direct SCSI). There are some patched versions out there which will make it possible to use larger drives. Up to 128GB I think.