just got a 1200 Tower Setup Needs Graphics Card ! Any Suggestions ?

i just got an amiga 1200 on a big tower setup with cd rom, 2 FDD, 3GB HDD, 16MB RAM
now i want to buy a graphics card for this setup, which card shall i buy ?
suggestions please. thanx in advance

[RetroMan]

What kind of Zorro Board you have in that Tower ?? With a ZII Board or ZIII Board, be sure to get a CyberVision 3D64 .... with a ZIV Board you may have a look for a Picasso IV

Cant say, I have to check with the original owner.
newbie you see

can you help ?

below is a digi pic of the tower.

[thomas]

Cool, seems to be self-made. There is no doughter board at all. And as far as I see no room to place one because part of the original case is taking all room.

Bye,
Thomas

[DrBong]

It looks like just an A1200 with a DKB Spitfire 030 accelerator in the tower with no ZII/III board to speak of. If that's the case then you have a few options:

(1) Mediator PCI/Voodoo 3/4/5 combo- brand new/2ndhand (see http://www.elbox.com/products/mediator_pci_1200.html)

(2) Blizzard 1240/PPC or Blizzard 1260(/PPC) with BVision graphics card- brand new or 2ndhand (see http://www.dcecom.de, <a href="http:...vesalia.de</a>)

(3) Pixel 64 with Ateo busboard- 2ndhand, not manufactured anymore (see http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/~aminet/d...w/Pix64Rev.txt)

(4) ZII/ZIII/ZIV busboard plus ZII/III/IV graphics card (like a Cybervision 64/3D, Picasso IV etc.)- brand new or 2ndhand (see, for example, http://www.eyetech.co.uk, http://www.powerc.com)

There may be a few more options, but they're expensive and not worth considering. Of the above options I think the Mediator PCI/Voodoo card is probably the most worthwhile option from a price/power perspective. It may well be the cheapest option period, depending on whether you buy brand new or 2ndhand! If you want to save some money and buy 2ndhand, then AmiBench (http://www.amibench.org) is a good place to look.


In any case, you will probably need to tell us the full specifications of your A1200 when you receive it, so we can better answer your question (and to make sure I've given you some correct information here). Also, information about what you will be using your A1200 for might be useful in determining the best graphics card option. Hope this helps.

thanks to all of you, I can now get a much clearer picture of where I shall go from this set up.

as confirmed by original owner, its amiga 1200 in ez tower, with 16 MB Ram, Paravision 1230 accelerator card, scsi hdd 3 GB, 24 speed cdrom, kickstart 3.1 OS amiga 3.5, NO ZORRO I &II board !

shall i go for the mediator option ? that means scrap the paravision right ?
I fancy gettin a zorro busboard and get a picasso 4 Though
so how do I go about doing that ?
Just sold my entire atari st collection to finance this amiga, hope i got enough quid now.

thanks again

[RetroMan]

Well, the Picasso IV is kinda rare nowadays and also very expensive .... and btw. to get a Zorro Board into your Tower, you have to rip out all the things installed there to make room for the Z-Board and resolder the A1200 Mainboard after that ..... not the easiest solution

right, think i will leave the 1200 as is and save some more quid to buy a A4000T and then work all the way from there.
The new OS3.9 is nice and i want that

[RetroMan]

Hmmm, but you won´t need a gfx card to use OS 3.9

[DrBong]

Originally posted by xamigax
as confirmed by original owner, its amiga 1200 in ez tower, with 16 MB Ram, Paravision 1230 accelerator card, scsi hdd 3 GB, 24 speed cdrom, kickstart 3.1 OS amiga 3.5, NO ZORRO I &II board !
shall i go for the mediator option ? that means scrap the paravision right ?

I suggest going for the Mediator PCI board. It will work fine with the 030 card (check the specs on the link in my previous post for the Mediator card). With the Mediator you can buy cheap PCI cards including graphics, sound, TV tuner and ethernet cards. Zorro cards on the other hand are increasingly hard to come by and quite expensive both new and secondhand. Some are also quite outdated in terms of performance. For instance, a Voodoo 3/4/5 graphics is far superior to a Picasso IV, especially on fast systems with 060 accelerators. I have a Voodoo 3 card myself in my A4000/060. It is so much faster than the CybervisionPPC graphics card (Permedia 2 chip) that I used to run. In any case, if your predominant use for your A1200/030 is to play games, then a graphics card might be grossly underutilised. If you have more serious uses, then a graphics card and 040/060 accelerator are probably a good idea. A4000T's are very nice, but are generally expensive to buy 2ndhand. Good luck with it all!

Shadowen, thanks for the very informative replies, I use the A 1200 currently more for games (especially with the 2200 amiga disks i just bought ), its just that I would want to go further than only games. There are some amiga DTP / Painting programs I'd like to use.

just now, I have been told that jumping on the Amiga A4000 isnt a good idea if you still like to play old games due to incompatibilitness. And its better to stay with the A1200 and try to upgrade it instead of moving on the A4000.

Well I'll check if I can get the mediator pci, hopefully can get one at ebay

Now.. a dumb question perhaps, can I get my A1200 tower connected to the net ? I have a cable connection on the pc.


Cheers

X