New A1200 - some questions

[Desolator]

If you buy the Amiga Magic pack from GGS-Data (they are THE best when it comes to Amiga systems.) then beware of the floppy drive. I read somewhere that the drives in the Amiga Magic packs actually was converted PC drives, and it seems to be true. Things that work on my Commodore 1200 perfectly does not boot on my newer A1200. But so far that has only been a few games like Chuck Rock, Awesome, RocketRanger,Bubba & Stix and sadly Tower of Souls. Covert Action worked perfectly and the HDD that comes with the Amiga Magic Pack has plenty of room for games and applications.

It is a good purchase anyway IMHO. I remember my hands were shaking when I unpacked it. It was like it used to be, in the good old times... A new Amiga, the A1200...  :-D

(hey, same town I notice..  :-P )

I remember my hands were shaking when I unpacked it. It was like it used to be, in the good old times... A new Amiga, the A1200...

Hehe, sounds great!  :-D I'm actually considering buying some stuff from ggsdata.se. A scandoubler would be nice for example, but it's a bit expensive IMO. But I'll be buying some other stuff. :-) I'll se about an A1200, but it sure would be awesome.

Lund rocks!  8-)

[whabang]

sharpshooter wrote:
Inte många som har kvar lådan har jag märkt, men det kvittar ju egentligen. Nåja, gött om du kan kolla den i helgen. :-) Hur mycket hade du tänkt dig att ta för den om den funkar förresten?

Beror på i vilket skick den är i.
Har inte använt den på evigheter.
Tror jag kan rota fram en 2.04 ROM med disketter också ifall du vill. ( Länsar A600'n )

[whabang]

Lund rocks!

That's unfair.
So far I've seen three "Lundabor", but I seem to bee the only one here from Helsingborg. :-(
There is a small user group in Landskrona, but as I can't afford a drivers lisence and I hate the scanian public transport system...

Tror jag kan rota fram en 2.04 ROM med disketter också ifall du vill. ( Länsar A600'n )

Oj, superbra i så fall! Fast annars kan jag ju eventuellt köpa A600an också om du ändå ska länsa den. :-) Vad är det för en? HDD o grejer eller?

[Desolator]

"That's unfair.
So far I've seen three "Lundabor", but I seem to bee the only one here from Helsingborg.
There is a small user group in Landskrona, but as I can't afford a drivers lisence and I hate the scanian public transport system..."

Heh, you have to move then.  :-P
I thought I was the only one from Lund here first, and likewise on the AmiGBG show. Noone I know went there except me.  :-(  (ofcourse, they are all PC junkies.  :-D )

whabang:
Kollat om A500an lever än? :-)

I'm considering buying a new A1200 in the form of the "Magic Pack"

Don't waste your money, unless you have money to throw around.

By the time you buy a flicker fixer and an accelerator you could have bought an amigaone system.

Unless you already have those things.

[Desolator]

"Don't waste your money, unless you have money to throw around. By the time you buy a flicker fixer and an accelerator you could have bought an amigaone system."

That depends on what he's going to use the Amiga for. When it comes to games, an unexpanded Amiga works fine. I got 2 unexpanded ones which I do both gaming and graphics on.  Although a flickerfixer is nice, a TV set can suffice.   :-)

[Desler]

If you just wanto play the good oldies the a500 is the best choice. If you want a more powerful machine the a1200 is a pretty good choice. But bear in mind that ALOT of the a500 games doesnt work on the a1200.
In any case I would wait a couple of month if I was you. When the amigaOne gets shipped its my guess that it will be possible to buy amigas much cheaper than today. (Mmmm a4000  :-) )
On a final note: If you buy the a1200, and experiences that the floppy is broken. Just swap it with the floppy from the a500. Its the same connectors.

[harrison]

1. Will I be able to play most old games like Giana Sisters, IK+, Bubble Bobble, Ports of Call, Defender of The Crown etc? I've heard there's some kind of boot menu that can trick the games to think they're running on an A500 and the likes of that machine. Does this work for most games? Or will I be better off buying an A500 if I want to play these games?

As mentioned by others in this thread, some games will not work because the A1200 uses a more advanced processor with more memory addresses and because it has more chip memory than the old Angus chips couldn't support.  

Many OCS/ECS games will work fine and some will need you to use the A1200's boot menu (by holding both mouse buttons down on booting) and some trial and error on switching options on/off is needed before the best option for each game is found.

And with a boot disk called ReLoKick 1.3, you can get more of them working fine. If you need a copy of the disk let me know by emailing me.

The games I have that won't work on an A1200 no matter what are:

Alien 3
Bubble Bobble
Cadaver
Chase H.Q
Fire Force
First Samurai
Full Contact
F16
F29
Hardball
Indyheat
Killing Game Show
Lotus Turbo Challenge 2
Lotus 3
Midnight resistance
Moonstone
Nitro
Shadow of the Beast
Super Off Road
Super Scramble
Swiv
Wolfchild
World Snooker

And out of the games you mentioned above, I know IK+ works fine and Bubble Bobble won't work on anything above a ECS machine with a 1.3 degrader.

2. If I want to add a HDD in the future, will I be needing some kind of interface to attach an ordinary IDE-drive or is it just to plug it in and boot?

To just add a HD, you will need to buy a 2.5" drive but if you wanted to fit the larger normal 3.5" HD's to a A1200, you will need to find a kit as it needs a cable to convert between the two connector types and power supply connectors.  Power Computing are still selling 1GB 2.5" drives for A1200's if you are interested.  There website is www.powerc.com

3. I've read about problems with the floppydrive in the late/relaunched A1200s. Any experience with these?

Yes, Escom used converted 1.4Mb PC drives that can't read some disks.  You could get around this by buying a second external drive and using that for the disks that don't boot. You can swap the drive boot sequence around in the A1200's boot manu for this.

[Damion]

@harrison:

 Lotus 2 and 3 never worked for me on my unexpanded A1200, but when I bought an 8meg trapdoor board they worked fine...I guess they just needed some fastram.

 I have gotten all but one or two games to work on my 1200, the one I have a problem with is Mega lo Mania, it seems to crash after a bit, and I can't get Moonstone to work no matter what!  

With an A1200 and fastram,  I've gotten pretty much all of the old games to work, a few of them just need some extreme coaxing and combination of degraders. Sometimes hours of ridiculous trial and error just for a stupid old game I don't even play afterwards!

 For some reason I have had no problems at all with the Escom disk drive. Even the few really old games I have work fine.  

[Desolator]

Moonstone works. Sometimes...  :-D (haven't figured out why though.)

[harrison]

For some reason I have had no problems at all with the Escom disk drive. Even the few really old games I have work fine.

When Escom took over the production of the A1200 from Commodore, there were many partly built machines still in the production plant as well as lots of components, including disk drives.

Therefore until the stock ran out, the Escom A1200 came with a proper Amiga floppy drive.  It's only after they coudn't source more supplies that they started using PC drives.

 

Lotus 2 and 3 never worked for me on my unexpanded A1200, but when I bought an 8meg trapdoor board they worked fine...I guess they just needed some fastram.

I have an expanded A1200 with 8MB Fast Ram and some of the games I listed will work sometimes but as it's not everytime, I use my A500 or A600 machines for these games as they are guaranteed to work.

have gotten all but one or two games to work on my 1200, the one I have a problem with is Mega lo Mania, it seems to crash after a bit, and I can't get Moonstone to work no matter what!

I forgot Mega lo Mania.  Great Game.  I coun't get that one to work on A1200 or A4000 either.  Seems to only like 1.3 the best.  Crashes a bit on 2.0 systems as well.  Moonstone freezes during booting and goes no further.

One thought, my Commodore A1200 has 3.0 Roms and Escom A1200's have 3.1 Roms.  This might lead to some games working on some machines and not others.  There were also some MoBo revisions.  The last being the worst if I remember correctly.

With an A1200 and fastram, I've gotten pretty much all of the old games to work, a few of them just need some extreme coaxing and combination of degraders. Sometimes hours of ridiculous trial and error just for a stupid old game I don't even play afterwards!

I know what you mean.  I used to spend ages trying to get games working with every combination I could think of.  The most annoying was when I couldn't get an HD installed game to work on either my A4000 or A1200.  And after so long I have forgotten how I got some of them to work which is really annoying.  

On my A4000, Worms won't run.  It gets so far and then just stops.  Not sure of the problem.  Not really bothered as I have Worms on  DC, GBA and PC as well.

[Damion]

@harrison

Yeah, I just love it, when at the critical moment (usually to show a friend something cool) you forget the cryptic ritual to get an old program working.

I'm pretty sure my internal drive is a Teac. I don't know if C= used these or not. It's much more quiet than the Chinon in my old 500, but it is unfortunately starting to give some problems...too bad after the little use it has seen! :-(

BTW: I checked out your site and it looks fantastic! It has a geat feel and layout. Count me a regular visitor.  

[Gavilan]

Well...i have managed after a lot or research & investigation, & trying & trying with different little programs like T.U.D.E, Degrader, Relokick & Kickswitch that about 90% of the old games will run on your plain1200. Its difficult if you have expansions like accelerators or stuff like that, but i can tell you for sure that from the list quoted above, i managed to play to most of that games on my 1200.

Kind Regards
Sebastian
 :-D