Buying Amiga A1200 for games - best spec?

I'm thinking about buying an Amiga A1200 for games and I was wondering what spec I should go for - OS version, hard drive size etc?

Also, I can buy a built-to-order A1200 from here for £100:

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...f71342aedd59e1

Is it a good deal?

Thanks.

[Zetr0]

@pault2007

Hello there and Welcome to the EAB, I am sure you will like it here.

You do get a lot a support from Amigakit, although you could get cheaper through ebay / free-adds or car-booty you would be lucky to get any warrenty if any at all. considering the age of these computers its something you will have to weigh that one up youself

insofar as the spec to go for in gamings... wel theres a lot of discussion about this on these boards. but the general consensus recomends the following

Gaming Spec A1200
Recomended

• Apollo / Blizzard Mk4 68030 @40 / 50mhz CPU accelerator
• 16/32MB of Fast Ram
• 4GB Harddisk / Compact Flash Drive
• Registerd WHDLoad

Optional

• PCMCIA Networkcard
• PCMCIA to Compact Flash converter (share data from PC)
• Internal / External CDROM / DVDROM
• Cocolino PS/2 (PC) Mouse converter

i would also suggest you might want this link too KG's WHDLoad Packs it has all the important linkies for maximum gamage

I would put a cost to the above but, theres a lot of contention as to what is worth what to each different person, argaubly it would only be worth what you are willing to pay for it. this makes it difficult to propose a worth, espcially if you already have that item. With this being said, any values I propose are most likely going to be argued with. but hey... what else are forums for

This is what I would buy today if I had nothing
( Costs - include postages* )

• [£ 85] Apollo 030@40mhz + 32MB Ram
• [£ 30] 4GB Hard disk drive / Compact Flash Drive
• [£ 15] Registerd WHDLoad (best thing to buy ever!)
• [£ 25] Cocolino PS/2 (PC) mouse adapter
• [£ 10] PCMCIA Compact Flash Reader
  
• [£155] Total

Add to this the cost of the A1200, albiet through AmigaKit, (wich has great service, there is a thread here http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=24736 you might pay a small premium, but you are well looked after!) or through ebay wich you might save a bit.

*please note the prices are the average from my perspective of the current market, this includes ebay, amigakit, vesalia and a few others. you may well find cheaper components so its always good to look arround.

I hope this helps.

now, go make yourself at home and read some interesting threads

[HCF]

Since they offer 12 months warranty, I think it is a good deal. You might want to check the OS requirements of the games you plan to play on that machine. Hard disk should be as large as possible and you want to go with a CD ROM drive for games and downloaded "backups".

You can also test different hardware configurations with WinUAE prior to purchasing the computer (of course you would only use official and legal ROM files for that ).

[keropi]

exactly what Z told, plus an internal DCE sd/ff ...

I was wondering - would a standard A1200 be enough for games?

My mate had the A1200 Magic pack (2MB RAM and no hard drive) and had games like Theme Park and Sensible Soccer.

I don't think I'll want to play the advanced games - just want to play normal A1200 games and A500 games on it.

Originally Posted by Zetr0

@pault2007

Hello there and Welcome to the EAB, I am sure you will like it here.

You do get a lot a support from Amigakit, although you could get cheaper through ebay / free-adds or car-booty you would be lucky to get any warrenty if any at all. considering the age of these computers its something you will have to weigh that one up youself

insofar as the spec to go for in gamings... wel theres a lot of discussion about this on these boards. but the general consensus recomends the following

Gaming Spec A1200
Recomended

• Apollo / Blizzard Mk4 68030 @40 / 50mhz CPU accelerator
• 16/32MB of Fast Ram
• 4GB Harddisk / Compact Flash Drive
• Registerd WHDLoad

Optional

• PCMCIA Networkcard
• PCMCIA to Compact Flash converter (share data from PC)
• Internal / External CDROM / DVDROM
• Cocolino PS/2 (PC) Mouse converter

i would also suggest you might want this link too KG's WHDLoad Packs it has all the important linkies for maximum gamage

I would put a cost to the above but, theres a lot of contention as to what is worth what to each different person, argaubly it would only be worth what you are willing to pay for it. this makes it difficult to propose a worth, espcially if you already have that item. With this being said, any values I propose are most likely going to be argued with. but hey... what else are forums for

This is what I would buy today if I had nothing
( Costs - include postages* )

• [£ 85] Apollo 030@40mhz + 32MB Ram
• [£ 30] 4GB Hard disk drive / Compact Flash Drive
• [£ 15] Registerd WHDLoad (best thing to buy ever!)
• [£ 25] Cocolino PS/2 (PC) mouse adapter
• [£ 10] PCMCIA Compact Flash Reader
• [£155] Total

Add to this the cost of the A1200, albiet through AmigaKit, (wich has great service, there is a thread here http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=24736 you might pay a small premium, but you are well looked after!) or through ebay wich you might save a bit.

*please note the prices are the average from my perspective of the current market, this includes ebay, amigakit, vesalia and a few others. you may well find cheaper components so its always good to look arround.

I hope this helps.

now, go make yourself at home and read some interesting threads

[Zetr0]

A standard A1200 will play most games from floppy disk, but somethings require a small overhead of ram.

Fast ram really helps a 1200 along, especially with polygon games, almost twice the speed (well in calculation anyway).

but arguably, if all you want is a diskplaying console, than a basic vanillia would do the trick.

If I buy a stock A1200 and later decide to upgrade it, is it easy to upgrade?

I've built most of a PC on my own but I don't think I ever upgraded my A500.

Is it just a matter of finding the right bay/connector and screwing in the drive/plugging in the device?

[Hungry Horace]

yes... "its a piece of piss" - to coin a phrase.

[FOL]

Originally Posted by pault2007

If I buy a stock A1200 and later decide to upgrade it, is it easy to upgrade?

I've built most of a PC on my own but I don't think I ever upgraded my A500.

Is it just a matter of finding the right bay/connector and screwing in the drive/plugging in the device?

As horace said,

I bought a standard A1200 recently, with just a 250MB HD, i then upgraded it to 8Megs Fast RAM, IDE Express, CDROM drive (wedged into case, ) and 4GB Compact Flash as HD.

[twizzle]

if your interested i have a boxed 1200 nice & clean, with mem card + 2.5 hd +psu +joystick + mouse + rgb scart lead with 3.0 or 3.1 roms + system disks
no wb 3.0 manuals
pm or email me

[numb]

You should be able to pick something up on EBay. I picked up an a1200 with 150mb hdd, apollo 030 @ 50mhz accelerator (with 4mb upgrade - later upgraded to 32mb for £10) for about 90 quid a few years ago and I've seen people do even better than that.

I use a pcmcia network card on it to transfer stuff from my pc and it all works great - I dont think I'd be bothered to run just off floppies - unless that is I already owned a stack of them, but unfortunately I long since got rid of my amiga games. Loading games via WHDLoad makes your A1200 a lot more compatible with older games aswell.

[Zetr0]

@numb

I tihnk the truth can be said that

"once you have tried WHDLoad" you never go back! (except for those strange moments when only a "clunck, slip, grind - grind" sound will do!)

[hamster]

You guys are tempting me and faith! If I said I had a upper budget limit of €120-150 euro would I get a working A1200 with some basic expansions for that price? I would be gaming with a bit of workbenching on the side - and VistaPro of course (always had a soft spot for that).

Without a tv though - would a standard 1280x1024 dell lcd be okay for the amiga display? I ask since I would not be using the standard tv modulator. I think there is an rgb to vga convertor somewhere that works... I am tempted but just for these doubts...

[Zetr0]

@hamster

doubts are good, they are the argument of reason. the need to be sure when spending money, is a indeed (in most cases) a natural phenomina. so let me see if i can help you with those concerns.

Firstly

for arround £100, I would expect to get you a fully functional a1200 + hard disk + atleast an 68030 cpu. although at this point I will mention AmigaKit again, as not only do you get a warrenty with them, (and when you think about the age of components today its something to consider), I also have a lot of supporting hardware so if something goes pop i can fix it.

okay... so you wanna lump it on a PC monitor... yep you can do this BuuUuuUt you will need some upscaling tecnology.

Upscaling Technology

there are many forms (and hence price) for upscaling 15khz Amiga signals to 31khz VGA signals. most RGB to VGA converters are just the plugtype and donot perform and upscaling of the signal, hence you have a VGA output that is "out of range" for 99.9% of LCD and CRT monitors.

Cheapest

CRT / TFT - tuner device (arround £35)
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/New-External-T...QQcmdZViewItem
(i will put a little star here * and mention some stuff about it in a bit)

the next cheapest is an internal flicker fixer and scan doubler, the scan doublling is what you want for the screen, the flicker fixer removes all that flickering from higher native screen modes.

Medium in Price

heres one cute little beasty (arround £60 +- 15%)
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...MEWA:IT&ih=015

now its been reported that there are a few A1200 motherbards that dont funtion with these, I can atleast attest to one board. but the other 3 boards do. some have suggested that its to do with an NTSC output, I am not so sure, so i suggest to remain weary with these, ask the seller what revision of mobo they have, if thier output is NTSC etc.

Top shelf purchase

the other method is an XRGB scaler, now these are just a tad expensive arround the £80+ area

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/XRGB-2-Plus-up...QQcmdZViewItem - this one is going cheap atm...

Want it all built in?

the final method is to buy an LCD TV, one with RGB scart input and VGA. this will not only upscan from 15 to 31 khz, but also provide a flicker fixer on the side, these are arround £150 for a 17" beastie, but if you shop arround you might find a cheaper one.

Money no object

of course, the final method would be to spend around £450 on a Blizzard PPC processor and CybervisionPPC 8MB Graphics card, but thats a little hard core LOL


Final Notes

as i mentioned above, the cheapest solution, I actualy have this and I am enjoying it fully, I do intend to make a small modification to my amiga however. composite video picture is fantastic for games but I FEEL a little limmited when work-benching, basically I have been spoiled by the PC's of past etc etc. so I am building a small simple RGB to SVideo circuit, when i FINALLY get round to it I will publish it here, many have done this before, but I wanna do it for an A1200 internal mod , we shall see... its most likely going to be a lot easier for an external mod... maybe I will make both....


wow big postie, I just hope it helps

[hamster]

Awesome advice Zetr0. Thanks and very much appreciated!

Yep, I had the basic unexpanded A500 for 3 years. I brought it up to 1Mb after 1 year. The only other hardware upgrade was an external floppy drive (if that even counts!).
I was about to buy a flashy new A1200 in 1993 but then I suddenly went down the 486DX2 route and it was bye bye Amiga. I used the A500 mostly for games and some word processing (If scribble counts). I also dreamed about using those fancy applications at the time like the full blown Vista Pro 2 and 3. But memory and accelerators were crazy prices.
Seeing them relatively cheap now - I am tempted and I was going to go for a basic A1200 with 120Mb-ish HD first and pick up the rest later - and follow your advice on the CRT / TFT - tuner device.
Thanks Again!

Doh! I meant to ask - I hope to make it backward compatible as much as possible. I understand WHDLoad will help a lot here. Would getting an accelerator add-on make a big dent on compatibility? In winuae - a flick of the switch will fix but not so easy with the real thing.

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by hamster

Doh! I meant to ask - I hope to make it backward compatible as much as possible. I understand WHDLoad will help a lot here. Would getting an accelerator add-on make a big dent on compatibility? In winuae - a flick of the switch will fix but not so easy with the real thing.

If you've got an accelerator than WHDLoad is a must for games. Obviously the majority of games post-1996 will work perfectly without it (or will be improved or will require an accelerator), and most applications will benefit from it as well.

[hamster]

Originally Posted by Graham Humphrey

If you've got an accelerator than WHDLoad is a must for games. Obviously the majority of games post-1996 will work perfectly without it (or will be improved or will require an accelerator), and most applications will benefit from it as well.

Thanks that sounds good. Maybe of those earlier games ocs/ecs games work fine with accelerated A1200?

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by hamster

Maybe of those earlier games ocs/ecs games work fine with accelerated A1200?

Sorry, I don't think I entirely understand your question.

Do you mean will OCS/ECS games work with an accelerated A1200? Some will, many won't. But with WHDLoad they will all work, providing they've had a slave written for them.

Apologies if this wasn't actually what you meant with your question.

[hamster]

Originally Posted by Graham Humphrey

Sorry, I don't think I entirely understand your question.

Do you mean will OCS/ECS games work with an accelerated A1200? Some will, many won't. But with WHDLoad they will all work, providing they've had a slave written for them.

Apologies if this wasn't actually what you meant with your question.

Sorry, Graham - that was what I was asking - would most native disk a500 games work work with the A1200 (with no accelerator) as opposed to one with an accelerator? I know you can enter an ocs/ecs compatibility mode with the a1200 holding down the amiga key (or something else). I'm guessing 75% of the old disk games would work and then would drop to 30% with accelerator installed? Then I guess WHDLoad at that point would be heavily required.

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by hamster

Sorry, Graham - that was what I was asking - would most native disk a500 games work work with the A1200 (with no accelerator) as opposed to one with an accelerator? I know you can enter an ocs/ecs compatibility mode with the a1200 holding down the amiga key (or something else). I'm guessing 75% of the old disk games would work and then would drop to 30% with accelerator installed? Then I guess WHDLoad at that point would be heavily required.

Quite a lot will work without an accelerator, yes. Those that don't you can try changing the boot options as you point out (you have to hold down both mouse buttons when you switch the computer on), by disabling the CPU caches and/or switching the chipset to OCS/ECS. Or you can use a degrader program or similar.

And you are right that the amount of games that will run drops drastically if you fit an accelerator, then WHDLoad is almost essential.