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A very shortlived A1200
« on: March 19, 2003, 02:06:34 AM »
Sort of a dissappointing post, but I learned alot from this..and wouldn't mind getting the advice from more seasoned Amiga users. About a year and a half ago I got an A1200 motherboard, I looked all over..found the floppy drive, casing..etc..so I had a nice working A1200 with an HD..I even still have the original AmigaOS disks that I used to install (I bought the floppy and case from a local vendor here in Canada). It cost me a lot of $$, but it worked. I went another step forward and I bought an Apollo (040 I think), accelerator card.

This is when the problems started, I bought Amiga forever 5 so that I could transfer files to my PC (with AExplorer), the A1200 started to crash a LOT..this card had 16MB of RAM on it as well, and it got very hot. I took the panel off the bottom of the Amiga, but it continously crashed, sometimes the system wouldn't boot of the HD when first turning it on. It eventually wouldn't power on at all, I tried a different power supply, nothing..the whole thing was fried, I also took the board out and checked to see if it was just that, the whole this was gone. I spent a LOT of time getting workbench running perfectly, I had the VGA adapter so I could use my monitor (was a little slow though), and in less than a day all my efforts were for nothing.

So here I am..still without a system..I've heard a lot of great things about Amiga OS 4.0, and I would love to get back into it again. But can anyone give me some idea of a good,reliable system (not saying the A1200 was bad..I think it was the Apollo that killed it). I'd like to use my PC's monitor..access the internet (I have high speed cable)..I've been out of the loop for sometime...so please be gentle, and if anyone knows of a good Canadian Amiga source, it'd be greatly appreciated :) And I do apologize for the very large post.
 

Offline Yogi27

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Re: A very shortlived A1200
« Reply #1 on: March 19, 2003, 04:16:58 AM »
Hi there!

   I own quite a few Amiga models, and have used other models I don't currently
have in the past.  Out of all the Amigas I  use, and the three that are used
for the business I half own, the Amiga 1200 gives us the most trouble.  Currently
it has 20 gig hard drive, blizzard 060 w/ 32 mb ram.  It is stable for the most
part, but it took a long time to get it this way.  It orignally had a blizzard 030
card in it, and that card died, but luckily didn't kill the motherboard. Another
problem is the power supply.  The original power supply gets crazy if you hook too
many things on the A1200.  You have to be careful not to draw more power than it
can put out.

   We have almost no problems with our Amiga 4000s.  They run great.  Some people
have told me about a heat problem, but we have never had a problem, and our A4000s
are on 24hrs a day, 365 days a year.

   The model that suprises me everyday, is the Amiga 3000.  It is a desktop model
with 030/25 mhz, 16mb ram, 36 Gig IBM Scsi Drive (We just installed this!), x-surf
ethernet card.  The motherboard on this computer is so dirty (I never clean it).
I bought it new in 1990.  I also bought a Commodore 1950 monitor with it, and that
still works as well (We keep it as a backup monitor when one of our monitors goes
down!).

   My suggestion to you is to get a Big Box Amiga (Amiga 3000, 4000).  Very stable
machines.  Plus, they are easy to expand.  If you are looking for a dealer, we
buy a lot of our equipment from softwarehut (www.softhut.com).  One of there
sales representatives named Joe is really good.  When you call ask for him.
Explain to him your situation, and he can hook you up (He has bailed us out
a number of times!).  If you are still looking to get your A1200 back up, I
have a motherboard for it.  Just contact me (yogi_amiga@yahoo.com), and we
can work something out.

Only Amiga Makes It Possible!

Yogi27

 
 

Offline downix

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Re: A very shortlived A1200
« Reply #2 on: March 19, 2003, 04:31:37 AM »
The 1200, in my experience, is one of the worst Amiga's built.  I had nothing but problems with mine, finally selling off it's parts.

I'd recommend a 4000 or 3000 machine, personally.  But the 3000's case is a major pain to deal with.

That or a tower amiga.
Try blazedmongers new Free Universal Computer kit, available with the GUI toolkit Your Own Universe, the popular IT edition, Extremely Reliable System for embedded work, Enhanced Database development and Wide Area Development system for telecommuting.
 

Offline Damion

Re: A very shortlived A1200
« Reply #3 on: March 19, 2003, 06:38:27 AM »
Interesting...I've never had problems with my
1200. It's ran flawless, even off of the
old psu. I also have friends that have old
'1200's from the Commodore days..and they're
still fine. Decent machines for the price
anyway.

Even though the 1200 "can" be great machine
(for its time), I would still (if I had
to choose) much rather have a '4000,
especially in regard to expansion.
High - quality sound/ethernet cards as well
as the drop - in scsi boards make it a
better overall choice, if you're into
the old systems.
 

Offline Waccoon

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Re: A very shortlived A1200
« Reply #4 on: March 19, 2003, 07:44:32 AM »
I'm rather surprised to hear about A1200 problems.  I was one of the first people in N. America to get one when they were released, and I've been using it a lot ever since, with the original PSU, 85 Meg HD, and a combo RAM/FPU board.  I never tried putting in a new CPU, though.  There's no telling what kind of horrible things 3rd party accelerators will do to the system bus without a central Amiga company to oversee the procuction of such accessories.
 

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Re: A very shortlived A1200
« Reply #5 on: March 19, 2003, 08:18:37 AM »
The 1200 wasn't a bad machine at all, don't disrespect an old friend of ours. My 1200 is configured not unlike Waccoon's unit, 110Mb Connor and 8MbRAM/882-33 expansion.

Perhaps its the 030 boards and what not that people jam up their 1200s that nape them? There is absolutely no stability issue with mine, its lasting very well, at age ten. Looks sharp, sits proud with my older 500 and a CD32 flanking the pair...

And besides, expansion can be done, just requires cunning. CDROM internally? Can do - notebook IDE, graft into left-side. More POWER? Easy! Not imaginitive enough to think how?

The Amiga is only limited by your own imagination!


Cancerous clown out.
 

Offline Damion

Re: A very shortlived A1200
« Reply #6 on: March 19, 2003, 09:38:35 AM »
My accelerator card (dce '060) has run flawless from the
original psu for quite some time now. I do however use an
external psu for the cpu fan...I don't want to risk "taxing"
the psu too much. Before that I had a GVP ram/fpu unit...
GVP made some nice looking and quality boards.

@Redwolf1

Did you have a fan on that accelerator you were running?
 

Offline Agafaster

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Re: A very shortlived A1200
« Reply #7 on: March 19, 2003, 10:06:39 AM »
Redwolf1,

040's run very hot, and are Power Hungry !
were you running your setup on an original A1200 PSU ?
you may well have overloaded the PSU, and quite probably overheated the CPU taking other sensitive bits of A1200 with it.

questions -
a) does the 1200 still run without extras (ie a bare bones floppy boot - no add ons added in !) ?
b) did you use a Heatsink on the 040 ? (even if it wasnt an 040, 030s get pretty warm too)

If you want to run AOS4 you will need either a classic Amiga with a PPC board (CyberstormPPC for A3/4000, BlizzardPPC for A1200 - kinda rule the last one out given the above !) or an Eyetech AmigaOne. you will also need to exercise some patience and use Linux with UAE (Amiga Emulator) on it, as AOS4 aint out yet.

note:
I havent had any problems with my A1200's aside from a flakey apollo (you guessed !) 1230/40MHz accellerator (overclocked from 33MHz) and having burned out one of the Custom Chips (Gayle I think) by using a 3.5" HDD and a CDROM without the protection of a Buffered IDE board. I learned my lesson the hard way - £50 for the repair !
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A1XE G3/800MHz Radeon 7000 512MB
A1200 030/25MHz 8MB
 

Offline bloodline

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Re: A very shortlived A1200
« Reply #8 on: March 19, 2003, 10:44:29 AM »
PSU PROBLEM!!!!!

I had an 040, and a 540Meg HD, it ran fine for a year, then started to crash alot... Then one night it just stopped. Dead.
The only clue I had to the problem was that one week before it died I heard a slight buzzing noise from the power switch when I turned it on. Sometimes when I tried to switch on the A1200 after it had died the Power light would glow dimly... I then decided to invest in a Goliath 150Watt PSU.

Problem solved. :-D

Offline ikir

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Re: A very shortlived A1200
« Reply #9 on: March 19, 2003, 11:54:25 AM »
I aways use my 1200 from years without problems.
I have a 060 50Mhz FPU MMU, Mediator with Voodoo3+Sb128+TV Card+Ethernet Card for my ADSL line.

I love it

In all cases, wait for OS4 and AmigaONE. They will rocks :-D
 

Offline PulsatingQuasar

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Re: A very shortlived A1200
« Reply #10 on: March 19, 2003, 12:04:57 PM »
Quote
I'm rather surprised to hear about A1200 problems.


Me too!

I bought an Escom model in 1997 and it is highly expanded and still runs flawles. But I immediatly understood a couple of things!! If your really going to expand it then you should put it in a tower and use that power supply. I have had a Micronik case but I then bought an Elbox tower because I liked it much more.

I recently bought a second hand Amiga 1200 revision 1 (early days 1200 even without clock port header). I expanded it with 3.1 ROM, CD-ROM via PCMCIA, Blizzard 1230-IV / 32MB and 4 GB Travelstar harddisk and it runs flawles on the original power supply!

If your going to get a 68040 or 68060 turbo card you might need another power supply! I think one from an A500/A600 will do!

Oh, and if you gonna use old stuff; really clean the connector from the A1200 where the turbo card fits good!

PS: I now have an Amiga 600 and Amiga 1200 standing next to eachother! Looks nice.
BlizzardPPC powered!!
AmigaOne-XE G3 800 MHz, 512 MB RAM, Radeon 8500, OS4
 

Offline filson

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Re: A very shortlived A1200
« Reply #11 on: March 19, 2003, 12:21:35 PM »
I can imagine your distress. Had the same problem with an Apollo 060 and an A1200. It was rock stable with FPU/Mem board, but the accelerator + harddisk was just too much. Swapping to a A500 PSU was too late. Guess the mobo aren't build for the amount of current drawn by all the xtra hardware.
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Offline Karlos

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Re: A very shortlived A1200
« Reply #12 on: March 19, 2003, 12:28:23 PM »
Was it an 040 at 40Mhz?

These get really hot and the Apollo 1240 card has the puniest cooling I ever saw. The original PSUs for the 1200 deliver about 30W before they cook. A hard disk, 040 accelerator and 16Mb add a motor and a few tens of millions extra transistors to your system, all of which suck juice from the supply.
060's draw much less power (static 3.3v design).
It really does sound like you have cooked your PSU.

Have you been able to test the bare machine (no accelerator / HD) on another PSU? It's probably not the main board thats damaged (unless you can see that it is, of course).
Its also possible that only your PSU is damaged, everything else may be ok.



If you can demonstrate that your maiboard is OK, hunt for a beefier PSU or convert a PC one.

Before I moved to a tower, I had a 200W PSU connected to my desktop A1200 for some time. I had two power rails into the thing - the original connector, plus an additional one I fitted into the case that fed the drives and supplied additional power to the mzinboard via the floppy power connector. I even got a 3.5 inch case cooling fan into the thing into the top left of the case, over the TV modulator assembly ;-)

-edit-

if your mainboard still doesn't work, it may only be the voltage regulators that are damaged - ie you might be able to replace them...
int p; // A
 

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Re: A very shortlived A1200
« Reply #13 on: March 19, 2003, 04:00:57 PM »
Does anyone know when the Amiga One is slated (or *IF*), in North America...I definately like the look and feel of OS4..is that still in the test phase?
 

Offline dkedrowitsch

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Re: A very shortlived A1200
« Reply #14 on: March 19, 2003, 06:41:38 PM »
68040.library?