I saw an Amiga 1200 for sale locally - good condition with an addon that lets you hook it up to any modern monitor as well as VGA monitors (very handy since the only other common standard the Amiga allowed, was the ageing SCART) - so I decided to snap it up. Prices have been going up and up so it was about time - especially for the A1200 since it didn't sell anywhere near as well but it's the best model due to its hard drive support.
Being a retro DOS gamer, I was well aware that the Amiga had many superior versions of older DOS games with much improved music and sound and for pre-1990 games graphics most of the time as well andI love the "all-in-one" idea of the Amiga. The past few years tons of quality mods have appeared to take the hassle out of things. With a compact flash card and WHDLoad you can have the ENTIRE games library in a single unit. All very tempting which is why I shelled out €350.
But boy - for anyone who isn't willing to dig and think this is very complicated. The community over the years have made a HUGE mess of things. Basically, they continued releasing Amiga software ... except not for Amiga but for new hardware which carries the Amiga name but is completely incompatible with the original Amiga's. The last official OS was Amiga OS 3.1 but then they created newer versions - 3.9, 4.0, 4.1 ... and then last year 3.1.4.
On top of that, there's many variations on existing OS - modifications of the original Workbench (basically Windows 3.1 if you want a PC analogy) which are ALSO called Workbench (like Classic Workbench) all with their own series of versions and they so love to copy the original version numbering - especially 3.1 - making it even more confusing for new comers.
I spent the entire day trying to format a Compact Flash card and to install Classic Workbench - due to terrible as well as outdated tutorials it took me ages before I realized why it didn't work as the tutorials showed.
Besides this, you need to throw some money around as well to get the best experience: most Amiga 1200 are sold without any fast RAM which is a MUST to play hard drive games. The cost? A mere €70. Want to connect a PC mouse? €25 for a dongle. A clean new case? €100. A clock module so the Amiga doesn't forget the time? €30. A floppy emulator? €80. And I'm not even touching on accelerators that give a bit of a speed boost - those go for €150 up to €2500 ... . And the mod that let's you hook up modern displays? €150. That's the main reason I paid €350.
But if you're up for it, you end up with easily the best games machine of the late 80's and early 90's. The NES was nothing compared to it and even the SNES had nowhere near the wide range of games on offer.
especially for the A1200 since it didn't sell anywhere near as well but it's the best model due to its hard drive support.
Id say that it was the best one cos of the AGA chip rather than a harddrive support. You could easy connect harddrive to any amiga model really - but I guess you mean cos it has room inside the actual computer rather than using an external one?
What addon is that btw? An adapter?
Im waiting for Vampire V4 before I use a modern monitor - until then I have 2x1080 screens and an ol flatscreen with scart port. So im fine
(with C64 I use U64 as a replacement for the old motherboards).
shitloads of new stuff in my pc. Cant keep track of it all.
especially for the A1200 since it didn't sell anywhere near as well but it's the best model due to its hard drive support.
Id say that it was the best one cos of the AGA chip rather than a harddrive support. You could easy connect harddrive to any amiga model really - but I guess you mean cos it has room inside the actual computer rather than using an external one?
What addon is that btw? An adapter?
Im waiting for Vampire V4 before I use a modern monitor - until then I have 2x1080 screens and an ol flatscreen with scart port. So im fine
(with C64 I use U64 as a replacement for the old motherboards).
If its not recapped, make sure to do so. You don't want to spend that money just to end up with a smell of dead electronics.
I did a check of all the pads and components and it all looks very clean and shiny - there's no sign of corrosion, leakage or bulging. I'm not a big fan of recapping unless you know it's prone of breaking that way because recapping can actually make things worse because often the new components are not 1:1 identical.
EDIT: I read up a bit about it and it seems that the recapping services are not that expensive - for €40 I can get it recapped. I might just do it anyway then.
Congratz on getting this piece of history, even for the higher price
Thanks! The price isn't that bad - I mean, I got:
- A very good condition A1200 that looks mint inside
- Floppy drive has been upgraded to a type that can read 1.44MB disks (the default couldn't)
- IDE-to-CF adapter with a quality 8GB CF card which is €25-30 on its own - preloaded with every WHDLoad game
- All manuals and disks for Workbench 3.0 in very good condition
- Indivision AGA MK2 worth €150
- a very good condition & clean mouse
- pcmcia adapter for CF cards with another 8GB card
- backup CF cards
- Power brick is in very good condition it seems and very clean
You won't find a good condition Amiga A1200 for less than €200 online and all the rest is at least €200-250 worth of stuff.
I mean, look at this picture, this is of another A1200 on sale for €400:
The owner was a huge Amiga nerd and had three A1200s apparently - he put all the best bits into a single machine and sold the rest and his final machine he now sold on since he's moving onto Commodore 64 stuff.
Seems ultra expensive. If I was nostalgic I would go the emulation route, fuck this.
I forgot to reply to this: Amiga Forever is a very very good emulation package for those that want to do this. This is the very reason I didn't own an Amiga before - I couldn't really convince myself that it would make a big difference and I don't have a CRT TV nor a Commodore monitor nor do I have the room for one.
That Indivision card sold me, however, since it lets me hook it up to practically any monitor or TV I'd want. The Amiga 1200 fits perfectly in front of my CRT monitor and it looks great there - and having an authentic device in front of you with the real keyboard (IBM keyboard is slightly different) and with an authentic Commodore mouse ... it just gives me the right vibes and emulating feels like cheating. It's not cheap but it's a gift to myself for the dozens of hours of overtime I've been pushing each month for the past half year.
Amiga 500 is in my attic.. with a PAL/NTSC red button on side.. along with a Hard Drive attached ready to go... I will have to fire it back up someday... I grew up on it after C-64.... Shadow of the Beast..Guru Meditation error which I saw in a McDonalds drive thru screen
I used to run BBS boards off of both of them.. Ivory, C-Net BBS...
Amiga 500 is in my attic.. with a PAL/NTSC red button on side.. along with a Hard Drive attached ready to go... I will have to fire it back up someday... I grew up on it after C-64.... Shadow of the Beast..Guru Meditation error which I saw in a McDonalds drive thru screen
I used to run BBS boards off of both of them.. Ivory, C-Net BBS...
Nice! I used to be a member of Triad (c64/Amiga). And did lots of trading and shit.
shitloads of new stuff in my pc. Cant keep track of it all.
Amiga 500 is in my attic.. with a PAL/NTSC red button on side.. along with a Hard Drive attached ready to go... I will have to fire it back up someday... I grew up on it after C-64.... Shadow of the Beast..Guru Meditation error which I saw in a McDonalds drive thru screen
I used to run BBS boards off of both of them.. Ivory, C-Net BBS...
Nice! I used to be a member of Triad (c64/Amiga). And did lots of trading and shit.
Ah, so you may be one of the people greeted in the greeting lists used in the intros/demos etc. in some of the groups I was a member of (Ydex/Hi-Tech, Defiance, Vortex 42, Spectral, Mirage and so on). Triad was a big/famous group along with Fairlight on the C64 with tons of cracked games and later on the Amiga with music discs and demos. I was never part of one of the big ones but I had plenty of friends and acquaintances that I met at various parties since 1988.
Amiga 500 is in my attic.. with a PAL/NTSC red button on side.. along with a Hard Drive attached ready to go... I will have to fire it back up someday... I grew up on it after C-64.... Shadow of the Beast..Guru Meditation error which I saw in a McDonalds drive thru screen
I used to run BBS boards off of both of them.. Ivory, C-Net BBS...
Nice! I used to be a member of Triad (c64/Amiga). And did lots of trading and shit.
Ah, so you may be one of the people greeted in the greeting lists used in the intros/demos etc. in some of the groups I was a member of (Ydex/Hi-Tech, Defiance, Vortex 42, Spectral, Mirage and so on). Triad was a big/famous group along with Fairlight on the C64 with tons of cracked games and later on the Amiga with music discs and demos. I was never part of one of the big ones but I had plenty of friends and acquaintances that I met at various parties since 1988.
That I am - however, I got into Triad at the end when they tried to go for Amiga aswell (only got as far as a few small intros and lots of trading)
shitloads of new stuff in my pc. Cant keep track of it all.
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