Who else was enchanted with their A1200?

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Always loved the 1200, always will.

Amen, brother.

[Karlos]

I remember creating some pretty nice images in HAM8 I. DPaint AGA when I got the machine originally. It was very slow going on stock, but with the 040 it was much improved. I guess it would be shockingly slow compared to what I might be accustom to now but I don't think I'd be bothered by it on the same way I would of my PC was grinding. There's something different about using the Amiga. Like spending time with an old friend, no matter what you do, it's time well spent.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Karlos

I guess it would be shockingly slow compared to what I might be accustom to now but I don't think I'd be bothered by it on the same way I would of my PC was grinding.

Grinding peecees

[Pyromania]

I got an A1200 with an 68030 card, 2.5 inch HD and extra RAM in late 1993 and I loved it. I sold my Amiga 500 earlier in that year with the goal of getting the A1200. I had my A500 since late 1988 so it was time for a new system. I had wanted a 1200 since it was released. My only complaint was that it’s not black like the CDTV & Amiga CD32.

[eXeler0]

I'll repeat what Ive said a bunch of times over the years in these forums.
First when I saw the specs in 1992 I was veeery disappointed actually. (After the A4000 specs, and probably reading about the Falcon, I was hoping it would come with something like at least a 16MHz 030 and small HDD)
Then in August 1993 I got one anyway (I still have it).

First upgrade was a 60MB HDD just a couple of months afterwards.. which made things nicer, I mean just to boot up WB and have your fav apps right there was a big upgrade
.. but then in early 94 I got a Blizzard 1220 (28MHz) + 4MB and *that* was the moment I fell in love with it. It made all the difference. I could do proper stuff all of sudden. (Imagine 3d, ADPro, DPaint IV animations..)

Then the year after I got a Biizzard 1230/50 + 8MB RAM, then as soon as the Blizzard 1260 came out I got one of those with 32MB. (By then of course, Pentiums were fairly common in the PC world.)
Last upgrade was a SCSI addon for the BLizzard + I got 80MB RAM (64+16 on the scsi card) + 4GB SCSI hard drive in 1997 ish. In 1998 I did the last of my more serious work on Amiga, had a PC too by then. Then in late 1998, early 99 I stopped using it and in 2002-ish I sold the 1260+SCSI ("while its still worth some money" ;-))

After that I was away from the Amiga for a full decade... until 2013 -ish when I made a come-back. Ironically, I think it was some info about Natami that got be ignited again ;-) At that point I lived in a house so there was plenty of space for a growing retro-collection.

[pixie]

Originally Posted by Karlos

Later, I got a HD and eventually the Apollo 1240. And later another machine and the BlizzPPC, then the BVision.

That was a similar path to that which I took. I went just one extra step, Blizzard040 -> Blizzard 060 -> Blizzard 060/PPC -> BVision

All a major bump on their own. I was learning 3D at the time with Imagine 3D which was given with Amiga Format/CU Amiga, it was one of the first software I had acquired, good times!

[lordofchaos]

Was a late adopter of the A1200. I saw TFX and thought wow, there was quite a few previews in mags that persuaded me it was viable, that was the main reason I wanted it.. We all know how that turned out..

EDIT: Seeing really smooth screen fades for the first time felt quite special, and very nice copper gradients, so yeah I suppose that was enchanting.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by lordofchaos

Was a late adopter of the A1200. I saw TFX and thought wow, there was quite a few previews in mags that persuaded me it was viable, that was the main reason I wanted it.. We all know how that turned out..

EDIT: Seeing really smooth screen fades for the first time felt quite special, and very nice copper gradients, so yeah I suppose that was enchanting.

I presume you are aware that TFX has been updated recently? @paraj has kicked the rendering code into touch and it's now immeasurably more playable.

[Karlos]

I remember oddly simple things that stand out.

Just seeing the ribena kickstart 3.0 screen and booting up workbench for the first time. Then no longer seeing it after installing the hard disk.

With the HD and fully patched 1240, being blown away by just how fast everything started up and how snappy everything felt.

Before going RTG, I had every kind of fast memory patch going (fblit, ftext, icons in fast, etc). Seeing workbench up with almost the entire 2MB of chip available was always oddly satisfying.

For a while, I had MagicTV running, with a hires laced 16 colour display. The palette was carefully chosen and the flicker was barely noticeable on my 1084. I was able to use a 1280*1024 display area and used it a bit like multiple desktops with a hot key to snap to each corner. The RTG card made all that irrelevant, but for a while it was quite productive.

[Karlos]

Another stand out for me was watching Nerve Axis Pulse for the first time on that same 040. While there have been more technically accomplished demos, that for me was an absolute banger. I loved it, the overall presentation was soon good. Not just a bunch of effects but every one had a transition of some sort into the next. Plus the soundtrack, thumping out through an old hifi amp and speakers was something else.

[lordofchaos]

Originally Posted by Karlos

I presume you are aware that TFX has been updated recently? @paraj has kicked the rendering code into touch and it's now immeasurably more playable.

Oh, very interesting. Any recommendations which set-up (emulated) to use with it, 68040, 68030, JIT etc?

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by lordofchaos

Oh, very interesting. Any recommendations which set-up (emulated) to use with it, 68040, 68030, JIT etc?

It was "fixed" for the PiStorm but the same fix makes a big difference on any CPU that has much faster access to fast ram than chip ram

See: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=114266

For emulation purposes though, the PiStorm is an 040 so that's probably what you want to configure UAE as.

[lordofchaos]

@Karlos. Cool, thanks for the info.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by lordofchaos

@Karlos. Cool, thanks for the info.

If that one slipped under your radar, you might not be aware that Alien Breed 3D 2 is also updated.

[lordofchaos]

Originally Posted by Karlos

If that one slipped under your radar, you might not be aware that Alien Breed 3D 2 is also updated.

Was this the version that got a speed boost some years back and packaged in a Whdload version? I remember trying it on my real A1200 (now deceased), it felt smoother but I was only rocking a 68030. Would be good to try it again on a beefier set-up.

[grond]

The first Amiga I got was when they were selling A600s at a very, very low price in the summer of 1993. I only bought it for games but when I started uni in October of that year I got in touch with a guy I knew from school who was a more serious Amiga user. His parents had bought him one of the first A500s and he had had some years to do enough gaming to eventually explore the more serious side of the computer. He gave me SAS/C which I then used for some programming project at university. I discovered assembly coding and, when I got really excited about the Amiga, my A600 broke down. I got a used A1200 and put everything into it that was possible at the time: a 50 MHz 1230/882, 8 MB of fastmem, 330MB 2.5" hdd, HD floppy drive. I was absolutely convinced until about 1995/96 that this A1200 was the best computer possible. I saw some of its shortcomings, of course, but no PC was better in all relevant aspects for several years after the end of Commodore. It could have been a better computer but the other thread is reserved for that. I would also say that the A1200 was the computer I have had in my life I get most emotional about. Up to that point I can name the hardware I used, from then on I can at most name the brand of the various computers I used but hardly say anything about their actual configuration.

[Lilura]

The problem was compatibility with A500 games. Really annoying back in the day trying to get some of them going.

And 2 meg chip RAM was not enough. And you wanted to expand RAM via trapdoor, not fall into PCMCIA trap.

AGA-enhanced games sometimes looked worse than spartan originals.

Still loved my A1200. Got one as soon as they came out. Then accelerated it (030, fast RAM).

For me, that was the bee's knees.

In 1992 A1200 and Falcon were cool machines to own. The last micros...

After that, got a soulless PC and Doom.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Karlos

Another stand out for me was watching Nerve Axis Pulse for the first time on that same 040. While there have been more technically accomplished demos, that for me was an absolute banger. I loved it, the overall presentation was soon good. Not just a bunch of effects but every one had a transition of some sort into the next. Plus the soundtrack, thumping out through an old hifi amp and speakers was something else.

A mate of mine popped round when he heard I had a 1200, with two floppies full of 40k demos from Assembly '94. Man that was one hell of an afternoon - and all ran just fine on my stock 1200.

Blew me away. Prior to that the best I'd seen was Coma on my A1000.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Lilura

After that, got a soulless PC and Doom.

But... but Doom has Lost Souls.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by lordofchaos

Was this the version that got a speed boost some years back and packaged in a Whdload version? I remember trying it on my real A1200 (now deceased), it felt smoother but I was only rocking a 68030. Would be good to try it again on a beefier set-up.

No, this is a living, breathing, ongoing upgrade that lives on GitHub.

I mean it may have been bundled in a whdload update by someone but given I recompiled it as recently as Saturday afternoon, I don't imagine it's up to date