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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Antiriad on January 12, 2005, 08:59:02 PM
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Guys
I need your opinions regarding on which Amiga model(s) are you considering a MUST for somebody who wants an Amiga(s) for nostalgic reasons. My personal favorites is the Amiga 500(Small, most compatible with old software) and 1200 (small, Amiga 4000 AGA-Lite). I do not believe a Desktop Amiga(s) are in my selection list since they are bulky for the average home user and they hold valuable space. Plus I am not planning to do any serious computing with them.
Even today's computers are considerably bulky...but I haven't seen anything as small and "powerfull" as the Amiga was it it's days. Maybe with the new Mini-ITX and Micro-ATX technologies computers will be compacted considerably.
How impresive was it that the Amiga 500/1000 did exactly that almost 20 years ago...
Any opinions are strongly encouraged...
Thanks
Mike
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As far as collecting goes, then every single one of them.
As far as actual usability, then probably A1200, A3000, and A4000 would be top choices.
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Antiriad wrote:
Guys
Even today's computers are considerably bulky...but I haven't seen anything as small and "powerfull" as the Amiga was it it's days. Maybe with the new Mini-ITX and Micro-ATX technologies computers will be compacted considerably.
Refer to SFF based PCs.
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a1200+1gighd+1230+16mb ram and all the whdloaders+ games and all old games are 100% compitable
thats what is a must have when it comes to retro gaming..
a500 are crap not worth looking at when you can have it all on a a1200....
________
Expert Insurance (http://xpertinsurance.com/)
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Except from compatability issues...
(how dare you to insult my sweetie A500! (http://www.amiga.org/images/subject/icon8.gif))
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c64_d0c wrote:
a1200+1gighd+1230+16mb ram and all the whdloaders+ games and all old games are 100% compitable
thats what is a must have when it comes to retro gaming..
a500 are crap not worth looking at when you can have it all on a a1200....
Actually you could just as well use UAE. If it works nice with that setup then it probably works onUAE.
A clean A1200 and a A500 with extra memory and then spend the rest on extra diskdrives and joysticks, you know the parts that tend to wear out.;-)
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1200 with an accelerator + extra ram, big hard drive and OS 3.9 and most importantly WHDLoad to store and load hundreds of classic games.. :-)
Most desirable gaming system, CD32 SX-32 Pro, OS 3.9 and WHDLoad installed. The Ultimate retro gaming machine..:-D
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My wife accused me of collecting all the Amiga models until I started recounting how many there were, eg A3000, A1200, A2500, etc. I have three A2000's, one vanilla original, one with an '030, one A2000HD w/'030. Then I have an '040 A4000D for graphics, an A4000D for parts and an A4000T w/Cyberstorm PPC for making me crazy. I very much like the original A2K, even with it's 7.5 cpu it never fails to boot, makes excellent animations and has lots of room for cards and expansion. I'd pop one in a tower to make more room on the desk, but since I usually have one or two machines open for examination the desktop is never very clear anyway. Besides, you can always use those little feet thingys and place it on it's side. I'd have to say the A2000 is a sturdy beast for games and graphics and the '040 A4000D for any serious Amiga work.
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If you want a small collectors item how about the Access (http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=39)? 8-)
I still wonder why nobody made an Amiga laptop out of it, maybe that could have financed the Boxer?
Otherwise there is also CD32 and CDTV.
But a real collector would get all of them, there isn´t that many. Prototypes are hardcore however.
Mini-ITX, it´s sooo old. It´s nano-itx now :-P Via is closing in on pc-104+, check out other industrial formats like the 3,5" pc 8-)
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Nostalgia and collecting are different things.
For Nostalgia, it’s any Amiga you have a fond memory of using.
For collecting, it’s a boxed Amiga 1000 system, since the original of any platform is generally the most desirable.
The 500 could also be considered collectable, as it goes right along with the Atari ST and the C64 as one of the most influential home computer game consoles of all time.
Other Amigas can be very desirable to collectors based on their condition and their relative rarity. For example, An NTSC Amiga 600 complete in box is surprisingly rare in the US, but a PAL 600 complete in box is common. The 3000UX and the Commodore-Amiga 4000T are also rare.
There’s no real set value range for any Amiga, despite eBay auctions. The 4000 is still generally the most expensive, since it’s still used as a daily PC. In 15 more years, we’ll have a much better idea about which Amigas are hard to find (and fetch top dollar from collectors.)
As I think I alluded to in another thread, sometimes it’s the add-ons that are most desired by collectors. I paid more for my circa 1985 Los-Gatos Amiga “boing” logo plate (the badge that is affixed to the 1080 monitor’s bezel) than I did for a circa 1985 new-in-box 1080 monitor
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I went from A1200/30 to A600/30 the A1200 was too slow and common, and the 600 with '30 processor is great fun. I think if you like the 1200 you need it maxed with CD ROM, HDD, 060&PPC, and LEFT IN ITS ORIGINAL CASE :)
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I'd have to go with the A1200 here (of course in the original desktop case)
Small footprint - the second smallest Amiga
Standard Features - AGA, color composite, IDE interface, etc.
Expandability - accellerators, memory, HD, NIC, USB, etc. all in a desktop package.
Of course, I built one with this in mind. a1200 might find it commonplace, but I've only seen a couple others as outfitted as mine still in the desktop case. (Although, I still have a free clockport so there's always room for expansion)
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@adolescent
USB and a free clock port? PCMCIA USB card? Model? :-D
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For me, nostalgia is the A1000.
A friend of mine got one when we were in Highschool, I think it was about 1987 or so. I remember it well, his parents bought it for him. They brought it home at about 2am. We were up playing Dungeons and Dragons, and when they got home, we were just stoked! Well, it was a "refurbished" unit, and lo and behold, there were no disks in the box. Since kickstart comes on a floppy disk for the A1000 (no ROMs), it was completely useless. The nearest Amiga dealer was 200 miles away, we were dead in the water. It was so depressing. Anyway, he finally got the disks about a week later, and he also got "Barbarian", which we actually thought was a really cool game. Another one he had was some kind of track and field or olympic game that you had to rapidly wiggle the joystick left to right to make the character run. It was the butt of many juvenile jokes because to get maximum power, you had to hold the joystick in your lap, and kind of hunker down over it. It really looked bad if you walked in the room and saw a person in that position making those motions... :lol:
He eventually got a 2000, and sold me the A1000, which I still have. The college he went to offered free internet connection, but you had to dial in. He got a modem and would download stuff off of wuarchive, put it on disks and mail them to me out in the sticks. Good times, good times.
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You can start out with the one you like the most, then when you get hooked you can start collecting other models. One thing to keep in mind is if you want to transfer ADFs to it you will need some extra RAM and a easy way to transfer them from PC to Amiga. So maybe a Accelerator with Fast RAM and SCSI would be cool that way you can transfer files on a PC Zip disk or something. A HD would also help out too so you can work easier on the Amiga. Also if you like games you will definately want to use WHDLoad. There are a ton of games you can run from WB, but again you need OS 2+, Fast RAM and a HD.
I myself have a A4000D and A3000T on my home LAN, so I can transfer or download ADFs to the Amigas to transfer to real disks and play most games with WHDLoad...
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..and once you complete the collection, you can start in on collecting the spiritual ancestor of the Amiga - the Atari 8-bit.
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Well, soon the A1 SE will be old and so will the XE so be prepared to collect some more ;-) . Especially the SE will be a hard to get machine.
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the A600 of course. :-D
its the smalles and good-looking computer I ever had.
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Here's my 2c.
Basic Nostalgic Setup: A1200, 030/50 (optional SCSI), 4GB HD, 32MB mem, PCMCIA Ethernet & Beafy PSU.
Why? Well the A1200 can be made compatible with almost every A500 game trough software, the 030 offers speed needed for more hungry AGA games without loosing it's compatibility with older software. It's smaller than the A500 and offers more expansion possibilities inside for a neater look. 4GB HD will save you from all the hassle of patching and selecting other filesystems (although the newer FS are often much better) and there's a hole bunch of software available for it if it goes bad. It beats any "UAE" setup in nostalgic kick anyday... nothing like playing DJ in front of the real thing. With the easy solution Ethernet you can setup the system to go online and collect a hole bunch of old ADF games for free... or if you want you can set it up to run Samba together with the PC to save storage space on the Amiga. If you opt for SCSI you get the chance to access a hole bunch of extras like Scanners, External SCSI HD/CD's etc... having a hole bunch of SCSI hardware connected sure isn't neat but you probably doesn't have to keep it connected all the time right? Finaly a beafy PSU is needed to drive it all. A50W A500 PSU will possibly do but these days with increasingly powerfull Micro PSU's you should be able to get hold of a 150W PSU not much larger than the original one for extra safety. :)
There, I'm done... :pint:
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Nostalgia? Must be the A500...
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I so hate to say this and it fills me with guilt to do so, but my ultimate nostalia Amiga is a PC running UAE...
If only for the fact it's the only Amiga (out of 5) that I own that can be persuaded to run every single piece of software in my collection.
Moreover it takes up a small amount of space on my desk and doubles as somewhere to run my PC software too...
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for Software Nostalga, it has to be UAE... For Hardware nostalga, it has to be an Amiga 500.
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For me it would be an A1200 with an 030 board.
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My first amiga was an a1000 with 1 meg of ram. I goofed around with that till it died. May she rest in peace.
So that would have to be my favorite or most nostalgic amiga ever.
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I'd have to vote A500. It was (finally) the computer I could avoid back then, after reading so much great stuff in Amiga World about the A1000, while still using my C=64. As I recall, we'd waited so long for the 'Lorraine' to hit the market when it was announced for the very first time, and when it did, as the A1000, we were both amazed, and saddened, because none of us could afford it! :-?
Then the A500 came along at a very accessible price, and all of the sudden, the thing was in my house, looking at me! :-o And it did not disappoint. It was my second computer, and, sadly, the last Commodore machine I would use for a very long time, since right after that, I moved to PCs.
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Simple. The A500. Why? It was years ahead of its time.
And the A1200. That was also years ahead of its time.
You could say the 2000 and the 4000 but they didn't make any kind of real impact allthough they were superior machines aswell.
The A500 plus, and A600's were only slightly better than the A500. The A1200 was a big jump. Just like the A4000 was to the A2000.
Other models were still good for their time, but nothing compared to the A500 and the A1200. I ignored the A1000 because almost nobody bought one.
Its just a shame that some people seem to think they are still superior to everything else now
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Minion wrote:
Simple. The A500. Why? It was years ahead of its time.
And the A1200. That was also years ahead of its time.
You could say the 2000 and the 4000 but they didn't make any kind of real impact allthough they were superior machines aswell.
The A500 plus, and A600's were only slightly better than the A500. The A1200 was a big jump. Just like the A4000 was to the A2000.
Other models were still good for their time, but nothing compared to the A500 and the A1200. I ignored the A1000 because almost nobody bought one.
Its just a shame that some people seem to think they are still superior to everything else now
Though you don't have a location under your screen-name, I can safely guess you are not from the USA. Over here, the 1000 was too expensive, but generally in wide use (enough for several magazines) and the 2000 (and even to a lesser degree the 3000 and 4000) were not-uncommon small business machines.
I guess my point is that Amiga peaked in enthusiasm in the USA well before it did in Europe. So the skew in the US may be towards the older and/or big box Amigas, where Europe has fonder memories of the newer and cheaper console style Amigas.
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FastRobPlus wrote:
Though you don't have a location under your screen-name, I can safely guess you are not from the USA. Over here, the 1000 was too expensive, but generally in wide use (enough for several magazines) and the 2000 (and even to a lesser degree the 3000 and 4000) were not-uncommon small business machines.
I guess my point is that Amiga peaked in enthusiasm in the USA well before it did in Europe. So the skew in the US may be towards the older and/or big box Amigas, where Europe has fonder memories of the newer and cheaper console style Amigas.
Correct :-)
Some of the big box Amigas were bought in europe, but I remember being at school when you asked what computer people had about 3/4 had an Amiga (A500, plus or 600 back then)
My suggestion all comes down to the popularity of them here, less so based on what I think of them technically.
I remember when I had my A1200 I would have murdered for an A4000, especially when the Cyberstorm 060 came out and for a short time put the Amiga back at the top of Personal computer performance (IIRC a Pentium 60 was the fastest PC processor at the time)