Pull the A1200 to a limit?

[cgutjahr]

The A1200 has three expansion ports that you can use without putting it into a new case:

1. The PCMCIA port at the left side of the case

You can put a standard PCMCIA-NIC in there. The drivers are available here, check the documentation for a list of supported cards.

Another option would be to use this port to read CompactFlash cards (using a suitable adaptor). Drivers and more information can be found here

Third option: An external CDROM-drive connected to the PCMCIA port. The most famous one would be the "Squirrel". A review is available here. Please note that a CDROM-drive connected this way will be slow and you may encounter problems when using certain accellerator cards.

2. The internal Clockport

Intended to be used for a real-time clock, but all accellerator boards and memory expansions come with a RTC on board, so it was never used for its original purpose.

You can connect a Highspeed-serial device to this port ("SilverSurfer", a brilliant device), or a soundcard ("Melody 1200", there's another one, but I can't remember the name).

3. The "Trapdoor"

Use this to mount either a RAM expansion or an accellerator (which always includes a RAM expansion). Recommended accellerators are the "Blizzard" range from Phase5, either get a 1230 (there are four different revisions, Blizzard 1230 - 1230 IV) or a Blizzard 1260. Blizzard accellerators carry one SIMM slot which can take up to 64 MB RAM, they can be equipped with a (pretty good) SCSI Add-On which has another SIMM slot (for additional 64MB RAM). Adding SCSI-hardware requires a bigger case (i.e. a Tower case), but many people simply used small SCSI-towers for their SCSI-hardware and didn't remove the A1200 from its original case.

Theoretically you could fit a BlizzardPPC accellerator (these have both a 68040 or 68060 CPU and a PPC CPU), but I don't know if the original case will be able to cope with the heat generated by these cards - and it will be a tight fit anyway.

That's about it, if you don't want to remove the computer from its original case. There's no way to add a graphics card to the system (again, you could theoretically add a BlizzardPPC accelerator and a BlizzardVision gfx card (which plugs into the BlizzardPPC) into the trapdoor, but this will be a very tight fit and such a combination will run very hot.

If you think about building a tower setup, get a PowerTower/Elbox Tower (they are the same), they're pretty good. Stay clear of Micronik Infinitiv towers - they look cool but they are crap - the Micronik "Classic" tower is pretty good, but pretty rare aswell. Or build your own tower, there's a myriad of ways this can be done. It can be a pretty easy job if the tower case is large enough (the larger, the better).

Using a tower case, you can use more harddrives, CDROM/CD-RW drives, a PPC accellerator (and a BlizzardVision if you're fancy). And there are PCI expansion boards that will give you access to standard PCI Hardware (USB stacks, gfx cards, sound cards, NICs).

Always keep in mind that a somewhat decent setup (PCI, PPC accelerator, even if you just want to have a 68060 CPU) is extremely expensive.

A very good source for more information about available hardware is The Big Book of Amiga Hardware.