Returning to the world of Amiga

[Dewiniaeth]

Hi all.
I recently moved house, and in the process, discovered at the back of my attic my old Amiga 500+.
I though I would see if it would still work and tried to hook it up to my TV. But alas, it seems to not work any more.

But it got me thinking - I would love to get back into Amiga. A quick scan on ebay shows there are many second-hand Amigas around, but I am uncertain what to get. I would love to have another A500+ so I could play all my old favourite games. But I would also like to try to experience a bit more of the Amiga. I would like to try to have an Amiga hooked up to my home network to use the internet and share files with my windows pc etc. Some research suggests that hooking up the A500+ is quite tricky to do due to a lack of hardware, but that the A600 or A1200 should be easy with some kit from AmigaKit.com

So what do you recommend? I would like to play my old A500+ software and games, but can I do this on an A600 or A1200?

I would appreciate any advice you can give.

Thanks

[spirantho]

Your best bet for a beginners Amiga setup is - and this all my humble opinion!....

1) Amiga 1200
2) 68030 accelerator with 32MB RAM
3) ~1Gig hard disk.

This'll give you most compatibility because you'll be able to run WHDload installed games (i.e. most of them) straight off your hard disk. Also the 68030 (preferably at 50MHz) is a good all-rounder, it's compatible but fast(ish!).
If you find you like what you see then you'll need a big box Amiga really such as an A4000, at which point you can start looking at graphics cards (essential for serious use of an Amiga really) and stuff.
The 1200 should set you back very little, ditto the HD. It's just the accelerator that'll cost.
Of course if you really want to get into it there's a ton of other stuff you can look at like PowerPC accelerators to run the latest AmigaOS 4.0 and things like that...

[amigakit]

Welcome to Amiga.org!

[nasty]

It really depends what you want to do with the amiga if its just the same reason as me,games,apps, demo's and just messing about with then an A1200 will be fine. The A1200 also offers you the AGA chipset which will allow you to play aga games that you can't do on the A500+. And you can pretty much do the same as you can with a A4000 in expansions but these all cost afew quid to do (GFX cards,sound cards,usb etc etc etc)

but anyway welcome to a.org and welcome back to the money pit :-D

[Zero]

Welcome!
 :-D

[McVenco]

Welcome back!

Are you sure your Amiga does not work anymore? There could be a lot of things wrong with it that can very easily be solved. Just throw the symptoms onto our great crowds of hardware gurus, surely you should be able to get it working again...

[stopthegop]

If you got some cash, go for the big box 4000T monster mig setup.  You only live once.  

[cv643d]

lol @ stopthegop

[Daniele]

well in my opinion I would buy a 500+ that is the cheapest Amiga on ebay and I would use it only for gaming!
If you really wanna get back into Amiga World the buy an Amiga 1200 and start upgrading it!
You'll have a new world to discover!
Good Luck and have fun!

[rednova]

Friend:

most of the a500 games won't work on newer amigas. So, if you just want the games...buy an a500, and is also cheaper.
i have an amiga 1200 accelerated w 030...and is great for other stuff, like programming in amos and graphics (deluxe paint)and even 3d raytracing (aladdin 4d/imagine).
If you just want the old games..only get a a 500.
An amiga 1200 is super, super good for all kinds of stuff, programming-3d-2d-music-sound-etc.
You can prob find a used a1200 on ebay, for cheap.
hope this helps!!!

rednova
-mobilis in mobili-

[krize]

rednova: You need to check out Whdload ... www.whdload.de , run games from harddrive and quit back to wb when you are done gaming