A few general Amiga questions.

[Hougham]

Its a long time since I have used my Amiga and have a quite a lot of questions. I have searched round the forum and found some information but still have many questions. I thought rather than peppering the board I may as well just put one big thread with all of them. I will start by listing my spec.

Amiga 1200
68030 + 68882 @ 40Mhz
128Mb RAM (EDIT sorry this is 64mb not 128)
IDEFIX97
60GB HDD
DVDRW
PC FDD with adapter
3.1 ROMs
I also have AmigaOS 3 on FD and AmigaOS3.5 on CD.

Now the questions,

-Can I use more than 4GB of the HD and if so what is the best way to go round this?

-What version of AmigaOS would be best to use and if its 3.9 who sells the CD these days?

-If I want a multi media computer with audio, video playback, DVD play back, CD and DVD disc durning, Internet browsing, Messenger, torrent downloading, Some sort of word applications with spell checking or even a full office sweet and photo editing what are the best programs to get. Assuming these programs are out there?

I am also thinking of upgrading the hardware a bit.

-Unfortunately no one looks to stock CPU boards anymore is this correct? If so what used ones would you recommend I look out for?

-If I get a Catweasel with a PC FDD atacshed can it read A4000 formatted discs?

-Will a FastATA bus make much of a improvement or am I better going SCSI assuming I can get a CPU card with SCSI that is?

-Is it worth getting a sound card as I thought the Amiga sound was ok?

-What case is best if I want to use a bus bore such as the Mediator or similar?

-Does any one still sell scan doubler and flicker fixs?

Sorry for such a long one.
Thanks.

[Kristian95]

Ok, here is a bit of info, other users know more details than I do

AFAIK you can use >4Gb HD's when you use OS 3.5 / 3.9 without a problem, just make sure your boot partition is below 2Gb (IIRC).
You can get OS 3.9 at www.amigakit.com or www.vesalia.de but if you don't have an accellerator card (and they are fairly pricey) I suggest you check out Classic WB by Bloodwych (has it's own section at this forum).
You can only read Amiga HD disks (I assume that is what you mean by A4000 disks) if you have an Amiga HD floppy drive... a catweasel PC floppy won't allow you to read Amiga HD floppys.

[Zetr0]

Heys Hougham

wow lots of Q's lets have a look see

Originally Posted by Hougham

-Can I use more than 4GB of the HD and if so what is the best way to go round this?

Yes you need change the format type (from FFS to SFS) which is available on aminet, as are instructions. there are also docs for TD64 etc.

Originally Posted by Hougham

-What version of AmigaOS would be best to use and if its 3.9 who sells the CD these days?

Hmmm if not www.amigakit.com or cloanto, your best bet is ebay. although i will say OS3.9 is a system resource pig.

Originally Posted by Hougham

-If I want a multi media computer with audio, video playback, DVD play back, CD and DVD disc durning, Internet browsing, Messenger, torrent downloading, Some sort of word applications with spell checking or even a full office sweet and photo editing what are the best programs to get. Assuming these programs are out there?

Audio, yes, you may need to get a clockport sound card for 16bit stero or greater, for real mixing etc, you will need a zorro or pci bus board for zorro or PCI sound cards.

Video Playback, not likely, theres not enough umph even in an 060 to decode an mpeg stream on the fly, let alone a divx codec.

DVD Playback, again not likely.

CD Burning, oh yes... have a lookie for MakeCD, great proggy..

DVD Burning, i do not know of any DVD burning proggy for the miggy.

Torrent downloading... i know of none on the amiga.

there are some nice offices on the Amiga, but unless you only want to see half a paragraph of your work you will need either headache tablets (for the interlaced screens) or a zorro / pci busboard for RTG graphics card.

Photo editing, with my setup i used to use a Zorro 2 CV643d gfx card and GFX lab24, great proggy, it was a little slow even on an 060@50. (with 32mbram)

Originally Posted by Hougham

I am also thinking of upgrading the hardware a bit.

-Unfortunately no one looks to stock CPU boards anymore is this correct? If so what used ones would you recommend I look out for?

Hmmm well the old A500 ones are 35 watt (or there about) and this is probably to the limmit of what you hardware is using at the moment.

Personally i would just hack a 250watt or greater AT/ATX psu and use that, but you could just buy whats known as a Goliath power supply

Originally Posted by Hougham

-If I get a Catweasel with a PC FDD atacshed can it read A4000 formatted discs?

this i am unsure to be honest.

Originally Posted by Hougham

-Will a FastATA bus make much of a improvement or am I better going SCSI assuming I can get a CPU card with SCSI that is?

even though FastATA is a huge improvement over the PIO mode of the native IDE, it still uses processing power, so to really FREE your amiga, SCSI all the way.... the drives as so cheap on ebay at the moment, theres no exscuse

Originally Posted by Hougham

-Is it worth getting a sound card as I thought the Amiga sound was ok?

amiga sound is only 14bit max, this is very crap compared to even the cheapest onboard sound in a modern PC

if you are into makeing 8bit stero mods, then there is no issue, but i love my 16bit full duplexing prelude sound card!

but i would love to have one with lots of DSP effects available, like echo, phases etc.

Originally Posted by Hougham

-What case is best if I want to use a bus bore such as the Mediator or similar?

not to sure what ya mean here m8, if you are looking at cheap effective Amiga upgrading then Mediator PCI

Originally Posted by Hougham

-Does any one still sell scan doubler and flicker fixs?

there is a thread on this, have a look about on the boards, there are plenty of options out there for it.

Originally Posted by Hougham

Sorry for such a long one.
Thanks.

no worries m8y, EAB is here to help... and i have no where else to go LOL

[Hougham]

Thanks for the all the help everyone. I will let know how I get on

[Hougham]

For SCSI is this ok?

http://cgi.ebay.com/DataFlyer-1200-S...QQcmdZViewItem

I know not as good as a accelerator card with one on but you dont really see them for sale.

Thanks

[Zetr0]

Although a great bit of kit not so in this case.

Its pretty smart, it sits on the IDE port of the A1200 (which means more processing power by the native cpu )

and can have upto 5 scsi devices. there first two devices are reserved for IDE

a big drawback (other than using CPU power) it cannot auto boot scsi cards,

so its groovey in a geeky way!

[alphonsus]

Originally Posted by Hougham

I know not as good as a accelerator card with one on but you dont really see them for sale.

Thanks

You do, but they go for mental prices!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Amiga-Apollo-1...QQcmdZViewItem

will be nice but very pricey already. Or

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Blizzard-1260-...QQcmdZViewItem