Advice for a newbie?

[James1095]

IMHO if you want to play Quake, just get a modern-ish PC, it's going to be a lot cheaper and provide a much better experience. If you want the really authentic retro PC gaming setup look for something like a Pentium-200 with a Voodoo2 card and a 19" CRT, that was my dream system back in the day. The charm of the Amiga is all the awesome classic games, most written for the A500 but they'll run on the other models too. Personally I'm a huge fan of CRT monitors, the classic stuff just looks wrong on a modern LCD but CRTs are getting hard to find.

Something you might consider if you're on a budget is something like the MIST FPGA based retro computer or other similar platforms that support the Minimig core. It's pretty reasonably priced compared to a real Amiga, under $250 I think and it's all brand new hardware so there's no messing around with vintage stuff in unknown condition. I personally like tinkering with old hardware but it's not for everyone and it tends to not be cheap.

[James1095]

I'll still get to try it out before getting it recapped :3

How much does it cost to get an amiga 1200 recapped? o:

And is it a widespread problem amongst amiga computers?

It's a widespread problem amongst virtually all electronic equipment of a certain age, especially anything with surface mount electrolytic capacitors. Late 80s-early 90s Macs are full of them, I've re-capped dozens of those. SMT electrolytic capacitors and memory backup batteries are ticking time bombs that have destroyed countless vintage machines. They leak and eat the traces off the boards.

[SACC-guy]

Best advise ever!

Find and join and contribute to a Amiga User Group!

[sammyfox]

Just curious but are PowerUP accelerator boards any good?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Just curious but are PowerUP accelerator boards any good?

Of course they are, for what they do.  They're also ridiculously $$$$$.  Make sure you know what you're getting, and what you want to do with your Amiga, if you decide to start down that road.  A bit of googling will help get you started:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerUP_(accelerator)

[James1095]

My personal opinion is that the Amigas are best enjoyed in something resembling stock form. Most of the classic games were written with the stock A500 in mind and do not benefit from hopped up systems. Even the most drastically upgraded classic Amiga is still extremely slow compared to a low end modern PC.

[Tygre]

Welcome Sammy!

I am also French Canadian and Amiga everyday user You got great advices in this thread but please PM me and we could even try to meet! I could help you set up (I even have a spare Amiga 1200)...

Cheers!

[paul1981]

My personal opinion is that the Amigas are best enjoyed in something resembling stock form. Most of the classic games were written with the stock A500 in mind and do not benefit from hopped up systems. Even the most drastically upgraded classic Amiga is still extremely slow compared to a low end modern PC.

Yes but only because modern web pages keep 'moving the goal posts' defining how fast a computer should be. It's pothetic. Joe Public keeps on replacing their computers just so that advertisers can feed them more intricate CPU draining crap.

Sorry, that was a bit off topic. As for Amigas, I find all Amigas that have a hard drive and some Fast RAM to be enjoyable to use.

[giZmo350]

Apologies for another off topic post but, Paul is CORRECT! And the #1 culprit destroying the internet today is JAVASCRIPT!!!! I get around JS by using an old version of Firefox on my Windows and OSX machines and disabling JS (with one click). At least I can read the news in a timely fashion - 1000X faster!

[James1095]

Yes but only because modern web pages keep 'moving the goal posts' defining how fast a computer should be. It's pothetic. Joe Public keeps on replacing their computers just so that advertisers can feed them more intricate CPU draining crap.

Sorry, that was a bit off topic. As for Amigas, I find all Amigas that have a hard drive and some Fast RAM to be enjoyable to use.

I agree there, but for surfing the web the architecture and operating system are largely irrelevant. Wintel, MacOS, Linux PC, Linux on something like a Raspberry Pi, it's all essentially the same experience, Web surfing and email don't make use of any of the uniqueness offered by the Amiga.

[sammyfox]

Of course they are, for what they do.  They're also ridiculously $$$$$.  Make sure you know what you're getting, and what you want to do with your Amiga, if you decide to start down that road.  A bit of googling will help get you started:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerUP_(accelerator)

But what do they do exactly? What are their upsides and downsides?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

But what do they do exactly? What are their upsides and downsides?

They allow you to run software written for them.  I would've thought this would be self-explanatory.    Amiga Amp, M.A.M.E., and many other applications as well as datatypes (WarpDT's) have versions specifically written to take advantage of them.  But the software has to be specifically written to take advantage of the PPC processor, so before you ask, no, it's not going to speed up some hardware-banging game from 1987.   :roflmao:

Here's a list to get you started:  http://aminet.net/search?query=PPC

[sammyfox]

They allow you to run software written for them.  I would've thought this would be self-explanatory.    Amiga Amp, M.A.M.E., and many other applications as well as datatypes (WarpDT's) have versions specifically written to take advantage of them.  But the software has to be specifically written to take advantage of the PPC processor, so before you ask, no, it's not going to speed up some hardware-banging game from 1987.   :roflmao:

Here's a list to get you started:  http://aminet.net/search?query=PPC

Do these require an OS other than workbench?

Also earlier in the thread, wifi was mentioned. I have an old Xircom RBE-100 Ethernet PC card. would that work with the amiga 1200?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Do these require an OS other than workbench?

Have you been reading the links?  3.9 or 4.1 Classic should work fine with a properly equipped PPC Amiga.  You'll need a lot of RAM if you want to run 4.1 Classic.

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1222

Also earlier in the thread, wifi was mentioned. I have an old Xircom RBE-100 Ethernet PC card. would that work with the amiga 1200?

Does it have a Prism2 chipset?  You need a card that's compatible with this:

http://aminet.net/package/driver/net/prism2v2

See the guide included in the archive for details of compatible cards.

[sammyfox]

Have you been reading the links?  3.9 or 4.1 Classic should work fine with a properly equipped PPC Amiga.  You'll need a lot of RAM if you want to run 4.1 Classic.

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1222



Does it have a Prism2 chipset?  You need a card that's compatible with this:

http://aminet.net/package/driver/net/prism2v2

I'm talking about an Ethernet pc card here, no wifi. As far as I know, Prism is a wifi card thing