Who was really pleased with their A1200?

[grond]

Yes, very true! I had also played Frontier on the A600 and then on the A1200 with 1230 a great game became even more enjoyable. That was proper coding!

[logo]

I was very pleased with my A1200 !
I had to sell my beloved A500+ first to get it. It was the right move.
I was able to upgrade it almost endlessly.
HD 120 MB
Mtec 68030-28MHz + 68881-16MHz - 4 MB RAM
Added 4 MB more later
Replaced 120 MB internal HD with 4 GB external drive
Added PCMCIA CD-ROM X2
Removed CPU card and added Blizzard 603e-200 + 68040 25MHz 32 MB RAM
Added BVISION PPC graphic card with 17 inches IIYAMA MONITOR

I was very happy with my A1200 and for a very long time, it came to the market let's say 1 year too late but it was a fantastic little multimedia home computer !

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

While framerate wasn't the immense number-comparisons game back then that it is now, there are plenty of situations where Frontier on the A600 slowed down to the point of affecting gameplay. Relieving those issues somewhat by playing on an A1200 made a huge difference to the playability for me, and therefore the enjoyment. I could never play it on an A500/600 once I'd played it on an A1200 (and adding an accelerator made a similar jump in the game's enjoyability too - it's difficult to go back to playing it on a stock A1200 after playing it on an '030).

Yep I wouldn't also go back from my 68030/50mhz A1200 to a stock A500 to play Frontier. I wouldn't either go back having floppy gimnastic now that I have WhdLoad games on my HDD.
That doesn't mean thought that the game wasn't enjoyable on an A500/600 back then not that multi disk games weren't either. Our expectations weren't the same IMHO

[ImmortalA1000]

I got mine on launch day, same month I also got a 25mhz 486 SXGA(?) PC. I thought the build quality was better on my A1200 (solid piece of kit, the Mercedes of all in one computers back then) and it did some things my 486 25mhz PC of Oct 1992 could never ever do still (max res for 256 colour graphics for my PC was 800x600 and 1024x768 was 16 colours max IIRC) and it had onsite warranty repair which my PC did not. If you loved things like F1GP then yeah I would play that on my PC but everything else I played on my A1200 and HAM8 in 1280x512 was something nothing else remotely affordable could do so it was great for a pixel artist like me. The 2mb Chip RAM for MOD tunes was also great, 512k Chip on my A1000 was a bit limiting on sample quality/quantity IIRC. Didn't come with any software at all, just the plain white box with blue/red stripes and Workbench disks/manuals in the box but I had loads of software from my 1987 A1000 era so no problem.

So yes I was very happy with my stock 2mb A1200 with WB 3.0, looked nice, built well, quiet and no hassle to use with a classy warranty and took up less space than the A500. The higher DPI mouse was also nice in use.

I would have loved a HDD model but you couldn't find those for love nor money even as the first customer on launch day sadly and I never broke the warranty seal so didn't have a HDD but it was still a nice machine even from floppy drive as I already had 2 external disk drives with my A1000. Once I had Zkicked WB 2.0 into my 2.5mb A1000 I only had 256k more RAM in total anyway so I used my A1200 a lot.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Gorf

It is about pointing out that the A1200, or the AGA machines in general, failed to convince the majority of former users and only very little new users, as numbers evidently show.

Personally, I don't think it was the machine...
I think it was Commodore that failed to convince the majority to buy the 1200.
I think it was good enough at the time.
Not that it wasn't without flaws, but I don't think those were what really hurt it. I think that was Commodore...
...and Microsoft...

To be honest, even if Commodore had released the 1200 with an 030 and some FAST RAM and it cost the same (or a bit less) as the 1200 did, AND let's say that AGA had a Chunky mode that could run Doom faster...

I love my 1200, but I still think in that situation, Microsoft, 486s and VGA/SVGA win...

But that's me and my US centric view. I realize that in the UK, possible it would have been a different story.
My favorite of all "what if's" is what if Commodore UK had bought Commodore. ;-)

[DJ Mike]

My A1200 is the one I still use to this day. But then my machine before that was an A600, so not exactly big competition. At the time I got it, my A1200 just had so much more potential than I could get out of the expansion-limited A600 (I know times have changed). I was late to the Amiga party anyway, not getting my A600 till 1993, and my A1200 in late 1996. But then I got to enjoy stuff like CD-ROM capability and the plethora of internet/scene content that went with that. Plus JST/WHDLoad/random patches had already started to solve a lot of the 020 compatbility issues various games had, so I wasn't too fussed by games not working that I wanted to play.

It was very much a formative part of my growing up and becoming a software developer.

I would eventually get a PC in 1998, but my Amiga has always been something I go back to, as it continually inspires me to explore more of what makes it tick.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by desiv

Personally, I don't think it was the machine...
I think it was Commodore that failed to convince the majority to buy the 1200.
...

I guess that would be a discussion for "the other thread".

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Gorf

I guess that would be a discussion for "the other thread".

Yeah, but my point was that... No, the 1200 as a specific model didn't disappoint. I'm not convinced any new Amiga would have done much better.
1200 sales had very little to do with the specifics of it being a 1200...
I was very pleased with my 1200, and still am.
I just don't think you can use the sales performance of the 1200 as a ruler for this.
It didn't sell well enough to save the company. And many people were pleased with it. ;-)

[Nobby_UK]

I was quite pleased:

I got it + stuff for a good price

[bwldrbst]

I'm still very happy with my 1200. It's the first computer I bought with my own money and it replaced an A500 that was in pretty rough shape.

I can't remember exactly when I got it - I was 16 or 17 so it must have been very close to Commodore's bankruptcy, if not after - and I recall having to call around a couple of shops until I found somewhere that still had one - it must have been one of the last sold in my city. The only HD they had for it was a massive 240MB (or the guy was just extracting as much money as he could from this dumb kid...) and I thought there was no way I could ever fill that up. It was a big step up from the A500 and I didn't feel any jealousy towards my PC owning friends.

A while later I upgraded it with a DKB Cobra 030 accelerator but then bought a second hand A4000/030 which became my main PC until some time in 1998 or even early 99 - alas, the 4000 was slain by Varta around this time. I had sold the Cobra for peanuts when I was broke although the guy I sold it to had previously given me an A3640 for free. The 1200 then spent some years shut in a wardrobe at my parent's house.

Today it's a permanent fixture on the desk in my home office. It has a modest 8MB RAM expansion and is almost entirely used for playing games. Just recently I've played through The Secret Of Monkey Island on it with my 11 year old son.

[jotd]

Funny as my story is similar. I was looking for a A1200 in january or february 1995 to get more CPU power than my A500 for emulation projects.

I live in a town in the south of France and wasn't able to find any A1200 available there. So I saw in a paper that someone was selling a big bulk of amiga hardware, including a A1200/030/HD tower in Paris.

I asked for a friend who was living there to get the hardware for me (came with a lot of other stuff too that was less useful) and then I took my car one weekend and drove back home with the whole lot (more than 1400 km total)

Then got a 060 card, my mainboard packed up, got new ones, got rid of the malfunctioning tower and other useless boards, CD drives, ... and now got my A1200/060 desktop on my desk, ready to play/test games. A switch controlled power strip powers up the amiga+speakers+screen, I just have to press a toe to play

[Cris1997XX]

Originally Posted by jotd

Funny as my story is similar. I was looking for a A1200 in january or february 1995 to get more CPU power than my A500 for emulation projects.

I live in a town in the south of France and wasn't able to find any A1200 available there. So I saw in a paper that someone was selling a big bulk of amiga hardware, including a A1200/030/HD tower in Paris.

I asked for a friend who was living there to get the hardware for me (came with a lot of other stuff too that was less useful) and then I took my car one weekend and drove back home with the whole lot (more than 1400 km total)

Then got a 060 card, my mainboard packed up, got new ones, got rid of the malfunctioning tower and other useless boards, CD drives, ... and now got my A1200/060 desktop on my desk, ready to play/test games. A switch controlled power strip powers up the amiga+speakers+screen, I just have to press a toe to play

Attachment 78311

Why not use the 68060 for your Xevious port!?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by desiv

Personally, I don't think it was the machine...
I think it was Commodore that failed to convince the majority to buy the 1200.

Well they had no problem convincing me. Same styling as the A600 that I loved, AGA chipset, accelerator card slot, PCMCIA, hard drive, and so cheap! I could have afforded an A4000, but why spend that much when the A1200 was all that I needed in a much nicer package?

To be honest, even if Commodore had released the 1200 with an 030 and some FAST RAM and it cost the same (or a bit less) as the 1200 did, AND let's say that AGA had a Chunky mode that could run Doom faster...

I love my 1200, but I still think in that situation, Microsoft, 486s and VGA/SVGA win...

I guess it depends what you mean by 'win'. The PC I had at that time (a 386DX-40 with 4MB RAM) went in the trash soon after, but I still have my A1200 and use it very day! How many PC owners from 1992 can say that? It plays Doom better than that 386DX did, and is much more responsive and nicer to use (I tried Windows 95 on the 386DX - sooo slow!).

The A1200 lost to PCs in the marketplace 25 years ago, but in my household it beat all my old PCs and fought the modern ones to a draw. And those modern PCs know I have no love for them....

[oscar_ates]

It is you and only few more like that Bruce. Look to YouTube there are a lot of retro pc guys playing with 386 and 486 pc's. Amiga will be dead after our generation and become a museum item. All the guys around 40 now used it when they were 14-18. Our child's will not buy any a1200 retro stuff

[Pyromania]

If I get an A1200 again I’m putting it on ICE. IceDrake card I mean.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Well they had no problem convincing me.

I don't disagree.... Same here... ;-)
I thought at the time, and still do, that the Amiga was a better machine.
I still use my Amigas, and while I like a lot of retro games, I'm not a retro PC gamer...

That said, the majority didn't agree with me there...

I do think that Commodore/Amiga could have "won" the market (Well, I mean they could have been a successful concern, like (replacing?) Apple.. Still don't think they would have beaten the WinTel crowd), but I think by the time the 1200 came out, that ship had sailed.

But I still love my 1200 and was really pleased with it.
And the love that 1200s still get, I think, shows how good they were.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

It is you and only few more like that Bruce. Look to YouTube there are a lot of retro pc guys playing with 386 and 486 pc's. Amiga will be dead after our generation and become a museum item. All the guys around 40 now used it when they were 14-18. Our child's will not buy any a1200 retro stuff

Hey, I have several retro PCs too!

For me they bring back memories of endless hours building and repairing the damn things, formatting hard drives and installing DOS and Windows. I wasted away years of my life doing that stuff.

But the worst thing about a retro PC is that it feels inadequate. The only reason I keep them around is to remind me of how much better the Amiga is. This doesn't seem to be the case in the PC retro world though. High performance Pentium PCs go for nicks, while a crappy old IBM 5150 sells for 5 times the price. Why anyone would want one of those I cannot fathom.

[Retro1234]

I like the A1200 a lot but not to the point I believe the PS1 amd PC were rubbish lol.

[jotd]

only good usage of retro PC is booting MAME.

Playing a game on original A1200 hardware has something magical that I can't explain (obviously, since it's magical)

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by jotd

Playing a game on original A1200 hardware has something magical that I can't explain (obviously, since it's magical)

So is running DOS and playing DOS games on a classic 486 PC.

At the time a PC might have felt like a cold and impersonal machine compared to an Amiga, but when I compare a modern day PC to a 90's era PC, there is again a world of difference. The old PCs with parallel ports and VGA graphics adapters and Soundblaster / adlib sound cards have a warm familiarity to them.