Your favorite classic Amiga expansion hardware?

[x56h34]

What is everyone's favorite classic Amiga expansion hardware?

I'll start:

Amiga 1200D:
Blizzard 1230-IV with SCSI-IV kit.
It is the best upgrade one could get for a non-towerised original desktop unit, as it provides you with a decent accelerator, DMA SCSI, and ram upgrade, and it runs cooler than the bigger brothers, when used in desktop case (B1240/B1260). It provides a nice speed-up compared to stock units, and since you will be stuck with AGA, I don't think one should go with B1240/B1260 in this case as it will provide little improvement over 030 (speed wise) when using AGA and OS3.x, and they definitely generate more heat. OK, there will be some noticeable improvement of course, but the real power of 040 and 060 comes to light when using them with a graphics card. That's when you notice some significant difference. ;-)

Amiga 3000/4000:
Cyberstorm MK2 and above.
You have Zorro slots. You can install a graphics card, so why not complement your big box Amiga with a nice 040/060 accelerator. I would say that Cyberstorm MK2 would be a good place to start, as it is very reliable and much better than its predecessor MK1, and if you want SCSI you can attach it, and of course the later models MK3 and PPC only add more spice to an already established well made design.

The second pick for A3000/A4000 would be various PCI busboards (they are all very good, IMO), but the crown of course goes to the Mediator, as far as elegance and software support go.

Well, I could name plenty of more stuff, but I will leave that to other posters. :-)

[BigBenAussie]

A1000. Not used in many many years of course. But you never forget your first love.

[x56h34]

I meant to say favorite "expansion" hardware, and not an actual Amiga system. Let me update the topic subject.

[Mikkihii]

Well... I really like my mediator. :-D

[itix]

BlizzardPPC was my best buy ever. :-D

Other favorite expansions are (were! :-)) BVisionPPC, Blizzard 1230-IV and of course almighty 512kB RAM expansion for my Amiga 500.

[Animagic]

Well, there are 3 things that can make an amiga fly!

1st: A blizzard 1230IV with 16 MB ram (i will never forget that day i put one on my a1200....)

2nd: A hard drive (I'll never forget that day either...)

3rd: A cd-rom. This one reaaly makes things better, not only because you can have a backup of your system in 1 and only cd (and not 100s of disks )but also because you can transfer files from a pc/mac with ease without worrying about filesizes anymore!

P.S. If you also connect a multiscan monitor on your amiga, you will really start to see thing better

[TheMagicM]

One of the best things I ever did when I had my A2000 was...

Add a Dataflyer IDE controller and 540 meg hard drive..

A3000:
Added a Cybervision 64 4meg and a A3640 accelerator.  

[Morley]

The Blizzard 1230IV with SCSI controller...no problems ever, probably the most reliable and best equipment I have ever owned. Lots of THANK YOU'S!! to Phase5 for that one...

[Karlos]

I think my favourite expansions were (in no particular order)

1) My first hard disk. Segate Medallist 1.28Gb slimline IDE. Got that back in late 1994. Totally changed my usage.

2) First accelerator/ram upgrade. Apollo 1240/25 + 16Mb. Got that back in early 1996.

3) BlizzardPPC - got that in 1998 to replace dying (now restored) Apollo. Really wanted the PPC to see what it could do.

4) BVisionPPC - got that in 2000. The difference it made was astonishing :-D

[Orjan]

DKB3128... Need I say more?

[StevenJGore]

The SX32 Pro for the CD32, a fantastic piece of kit!

[Noster]

Hi

My favorite classic Amiga expansion hardware were:

A1000
my first HD bought 1989, a 40 MB (!) IDE-disk -- booaah lots of space and faaast :-D

A3000T:
1. Cybervision 64/3D bought 2002, what a step from 728x566 8 colors to 1024x768 256 colors WB
(now using 1280x1024 and searching for a CybervisionPPC, the RAMDAC of the CV64/3D is too slow for 1600x1200 :-()

2. CyberstormPPC 060/50 604e/200 with 128MB RAM - had have the luck to get this for lousy 256 EUR incl. shipping via eBay in summer 2002 :-D
Now I'm living in anxious that it might die, these cards are breaking down very often, I think, how long is the average livetime ?

Noster

[Doobrey]

1. CV64 gfx card , so I could finally stop using my A4000 on a 1084 monitor.
2. Cyberstorm MkII with CyberSCSI, so I could finally stop using slow IDE drives.
3. MAS Player, to keep the old A1200 busy as a jukebox..
4. InfraJoy (the CU Amiga kit) for keeping me busy for 10 minutes on a cold day, and to control the A1200.
5. Highway USB card, cos my PC kept crashing whenever I plugged my camera in ! On the Amiga, never had a single problem with it.

[6]

A500 gear:
C=1084S, A590 w/ 2 megs, A570, A501 w/ Chip RAM conversion, trac-ball


A1200D gear:
40X CDROM, SurfSquirrel, C=1950, Blizzard 1240/040/40 W/ scsi, Viper 1260/50, external steel-towered hard drive cabinets, Intuous serial graphics tablet (thru the surfsquirrel serial port)

[Matt_H]

Hmmmm... Tough one.

1. GVP A530 Turbo - what a difference this made back in 1991! Good accelerator, and GVP SCSI. What more do you need?
2. I think I'd die without my Blizzard 1260 on my A1200.
3. And my Delfina Lite! I'm extremely reliant on the MPEG decoder driver.
4. Kickstart 3.1!