Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: drewz21 on February 03, 2006, 04:24:54 PM
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Hello all. I've been reading the boards for a while here but just registered as I'm ready to take the plunge back to the Amiga. I've also subscribed to Total Amiga on the AmigaKit website.
I've got about $500-$700US to spend getting back into Amiga computing and I have several questions I would like help with. I've looked at Softhut and AmigaKit websites as well as on Ebay.
What would you buy coming back in today with the budget listed above? A new 1200 or a new 1200 tower system? A used 1200? Is there any benefit to getting a 4000? Will I be ok without an accelerator right now? Which accelerator should I get? 680xx or a PPC and which brand? Can I use some/most/any of my old Amiga software that I've had for years in storage, along with an A500 and an A2000, on the new systems?
And any other advice/suggestions you can give.
Thank you for your time and information.
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With that budget I would get a new A1200, they are around $200 shipped. I would go the Amikit route unless you want to butt heads with stubborn germans at Vesalia. lol (They canceled my order because I asked a question on here about them! And I was being nice too!)
Then get a nice Commodore RGB monitor and you will be set! You can easily expand the A1200 with a large HD, get a cheap accelerator card, and do all kinds of things like play vintage games or even go online!
In my A1200 I have:
Apollo 1240 68040 @ 33MHz card with 32MB Fast
IBM Travelstar 8GB Notebook HD
PCMCIA Network card
AmigaOS 3.9 Boing Bag 2
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TjLaZer wrote:
I would go the Amikit route unless you want to but heads with stubborn germans at Vesalia. lol
lol! i agree with you, i had a similar conflict recently with them:) i order about 500 euro of stuff for both my amigas last night from amigakit :-)
@drewz21: welcome home pal and welcome to amiga.org too:)
most of your softwear will work ok in one way or another in all of the amigas except those that need special hardwear that you will not have. as for the amiga it's as in pc world. the best and the faster. both 1200 in tower with pci/zorro slots or 4000 it's quite the same i think and the best choise. phase5 accelarators blizzard/cyberstorm is the best at my opinion if you can find any. from the other hand, i bought a second hand 3000 recently and love her too and i spend money to upgrate her. all this situation is a matter of luck, personal choise and budgged of course. good luck :-)
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Hi,
I was in PC land for about 5 years and then heard about
the AmigaOne and OS4. I bought a uA1-c in December 2004 and
its been the most awesome computer ever! I can run a large
number of old Amiga software (mostly apps) natively under
OS4, and of course just about everything works under OS4
UAE.
Unfortunately, AmigaOnes are not yet avaiable although
they soon shold be at a price within your budget. Check here:
http://www.troikang.com/index.html
And take a look at OS4 here.
http://os4.hyperion-entertainment.biz
Just my two cents worth!
Scott
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I'm also switching to amiga so I might be able to help you here.
The Escom A1200s (the ones that you can get new) do have some motherboard fixes, but the disk drives aren't very good (i think they're pc ones), but it would be possible to get a proper amiga one from somewhere.
As you have a lot of money to spens, I suggest you get the Escom one, and a 68060 or a PPC, and put it in a tower. Most software was for the 68k so a '060 might be better, but a PPC will be the only option if you want to use OS4.
The '030 is also a nice processor. It runs cool enough to be usable in the desktop case (I think the '060 is cool enough as well), but the '040 (which isn't very compatible with most sofware) and the PPC will need a tower.
There is plenty of room for expansion in a desktop, viathe Expansion slot (underneath), clockport (inside), PCMCIA (on the side), IDE (inside). You can also add PCI cards using an adaptor if you have a tower.
As I have very little money to spens, I bought a used commodore A1200 and a Blizzard 1230 MKIV 50MHz with 128MB Fast RAM. It runs really nicely, even from floppy. I expect it will be nice with OS 3.9 and an HD.
Another advantage of the Esom ones is that you will have Kickstart 3.1. This means you won't have to upgrade the 3.0 roms in the commodore A1200.
I have used AmigaOS 3.9 in Amithlon and it is very nice, so you will have to get a copy. Luckely it is about £40 - a third of the cost of windows.
Hope that was useful.
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SCabit wrote:
Unfortunately, AmigaOnes are not yet avaiable although
they soon shold be at a price within your budget. Check here:
http://www.troikang.com/index.html
And take a look at OS4 here.
http://os4.hyperion-entertainment.biz
Just my two cents worth!
Scott
in my country there is a saying: i was young and now i'm old...
all these years i've tired to wait all the promisses to become true, until now i didn't see quite anything, but i did not abandon the amiga and in every chance i upgrade fearther. if the os4-a1 come at full speed i'll bye one for sure but that's not stop me from use the amiga in the present situation/state
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Thanks for all the info. Can you recommend some good vendors to buy new/almost new from from personal experiences or just word-of-mouth comments?
I'm stil kinda torn between the classic case the the tower I've seen on Softhut too. Decisions, decisions.
Oh and what makes the web-surfing experience so bad on an Amiga? And is it just limited to the older machines?
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web browsing on the amiga is bad because non of the amiga browsers support the modern standards which most sites use. Hopefully this will change in the near futre though.
It is possible to browse most site OK, but they won't look like they were intended to.
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drewz21 wrote:
Can you recommend some good vendors to buy new/almost new from from personal experiences or just word-of-mouth comments?
give a try to :http://europe.amigakit.com/ they are ok for me
what makes the web-surfing experience so bad on an Amiga? And is it just limited to the older machines?
have you ever try the amiga browsers?... for irc, ftp, e-mail i prefer amiga softwear, it's better :-)
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Amiga browsing experience would be comparable to using Netscape Navigator or IE v2.0 today on your PC. :-)
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Surely he would be better off buying A Pegasos 2 ?
or .. Heaven forbid ..When/IF they become available, Amy05?
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@The_Editor:
Which ever way he decides to go, it's important to let him know of what to expect. For simply having fun and toying around with hardware/software, basically any direction that he takes is OK. If he's in it for serious work or something along those lines...he's better off looking in the direction of PCs or Macs.
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Do you think this person's Amiga items would be a good start for me? He posted this in the Selling Forum.
"I am selling off ALL my Amiga stuff (not on eBay yet), and thought I would mention it on here before I do in case someone is interested. I can't remember everything off the top of my head, but will add to this when I get home.
1 x Amiga 1200 (NOS) - Perfect Condition
Accelerator Board w/ 8MB Ram
Mouse
Joystick
Power Pack
Disks with OS
OS installed on HDD
1 x Amiga 1200 - Good Condition
Mouse
Joystick
Power Pack
Disks with OS
OS installed on HDD
1 x Amiga 500 - Good Condition
Mouse
Extra external FDD
CD-Rom Unit
External Accelerator
Disks with OS
1 x 1084S Monitor - Good Condition
5 x boxes of software - literally 1,0000 Disks!"
I've chatted with him some via e-mail. Just looking for feedback from the community. Also what do you think would be a good deal for all of this?
Thanks again.
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Well, Looking at the list my choice would be to go with the first one:
"1 x Amiga 1200 (NOS) - Perfect Condition
Accelerator Board w/ 8MB Ram
Mouse
Joystick
Power Pack
Disks with OS
OS installed on HDD"
as far as price I would find out what he wants for it but In my opinoin not more then $500-600 Remember you can get a PC for just a bit more and run Amiga Forever on it so you can play most of the games that way.
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Really? Is Amiga Forever that good? If so I'll buy it. I've never really used emulators other than MAME but if it's that good I'll quit worrying so much about being compatible with my old stuff and just buy me a nice AMIGA for everyday use and use Amiga Forever to play my old games. I've got several PC's at home already.
How do I get the disks onto my PC then to play the games?
Thank you again.
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IBrowse2.3 is damn good and is very efficient. I bet it would still be good on '020 + 8MB. It can do SSL & Javascript, page layout is fantastic, image dithering is excellent, it's fast and resource friendly.
I would reccomend for web browsing something around '040 40Mhz. The '030 would be too slow for prolonged surfing but if you did so then IBrowse would be the browser for you. As for classic gaming then the '030 would be your BEST option as it is fairly sociable to older code.
Wordworth, Deluxe Paint, TurboCalc, Pagestream - all killer apps for Amiga.
Towering your Amiga has long been an issue of contention for many Amiga owners as the original case is so compact and you can simply plug things into the PCMCIA port (ethernet, CD-ROMs, SRAM, serial port, samplers etc.) - if you do tower then a Zorro busboard will allow you to put a nice GFX card in. A Piccaso-2 would be dirt cheap and would speed things up bigtime.
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i have amiga forever both versions 4 & 6 and recently installed the amikit with os3,9. both they are good but not good enough for me, i prefer the real amiga. if you buy an a1200 and amiga os3,9 you can use amikit (free) for pc emulation of amiga.
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Hi!
Please have a look at Amiga Forever 2005 product description (http://shop.amigakit.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=315) to get a really good idea of how it works.
You can transfer real Amiga disks over to it by installing a Catweasel MK4 (http://shop.amigakit.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=206) in your PC as well.
BTW: Amiga Forever 2005 has 2x really good Movie DVDs containing historical events for the Amiga as a bonus.
Any questions you have about this or 'real' Amigas, please get in touch (http://contact.amigakit.com)
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@amigakit: oh boy, if in the days of commodore the internet was spread as today, and they was acting in the needs of amiga users as fast as you do, pcs would be droped dead by now and amiga sould be the wintel of today... :crazy:
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If you've got $500-700 to spend, I'd personally just plunk down for an A4000D. They are relatively plentiful in the US market second hand, there's far more accelerators for them here and you'll have ZIII slots for either a Zorro2 or 3 graphics card, ethernet, fast serial or even a toaster/flyer setup to fool around with desktop video production. The A1200 is a nice machine with the pcmcia slot and all, but a close second choice would be an A3000, which is essentially an A4000 with scsi rather than ide and ECS instead of AGA chipset. A graphics card is the great equalizer between an A4000 and A3000. Still, if AGA is what you want, get the A4000D, you won't regret it.
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x56h34 wrote:
Amiga browsing experience would be comparable to using Netscape Navigator or IE v2.0 today on your PC. :-)
The later versions of aweb seemed more stable than netscape 4.x "whatever is the latest version for 68k mac" under macos8 for me. Netscape seemed to crash completly on like 50% of the sites while taking the OS with it in many cases.
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drewz21 wrote:
Do you think this person's Amiga items would be a good start for me? He posted this in the Selling Forum.
"I am selling off ALL my Amiga stuff (not on eBay yet), and thought I would mention it on here before I do in case someone is interested. I can't remember everything off the top of my head, but will add to this when I get home.
1 x Amiga 1200 (NOS) - Perfect Condition
Accelerator Board w/ 8MB Ram
Mouse
Joystick
Power Pack
Disks with OS
OS installed on HDD
1 x Amiga 1200 - Good Condition
Mouse
Joystick
Power Pack
Disks with OS
OS installed on HDD
1 x Amiga 500 - Good Condition
Mouse
Extra external FDD
CD-Rom Unit
External Accelerator
Disks with OS
1 x 1084S Monitor - Good Condition
5 x boxes of software - literally 1,0000 Disks!"
I've chatted with him some via e-mail. Just looking for feedback from the community. Also what do you think would be a good deal for all of this?
Thanks again.
Too bad it does not specify which accelrator is included with the a1200.
If you want to easiest amiga to expand, then i would go with a a4000 of some kind. A1200 is ok as well, as long as it is towerized, as only a few 68k accelrators will fit in the standard casing.
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Honestly, spend the money on a PC, use winuae for your amiga crap. Ive got an a3000, and i would like to drive this lcd at it's native rez, but i cant. I wanted to get a picasso IV but you cant get one for less than $300 and i'll be damned if i spend that kind of money on one board for my crappy slow 25MHz amiga.
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Wow! Thanks for the quick response. I've built a few configurations today on your US AmigaKit website for the 1200 and based on your response just now I will be ordering my system from you. I'll also get Amiga Forever from you when I place my order. I've already used your website to subscribe to the Amiga magazine you offer.
I'm not sure if I can purchase the Catweasel card just yet as the 1200 will take up my budget to begin with.
As another poster said earlier companies like you will help Amiga to not only live but hopefully thrive.
Thank you very much.
Drew
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koaftder wrote:
Honestly, spend the money on a PC, use winuae for your amiga crap. Ive got an a3000, and i would like to drive this lcd at it's native rez, but i cant. I wanted to get a picasso IV but you cant get one for less than $300 and i'll be damned if i spend that kind of money on one board for my crappy slow 25MHz amiga.
Why exactly do you waste your time on a Amiga forum, when you believe the computer is so crappy and useless? I really think you should start hanging in a pc forum instead.
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@koaftder
I respect that everyone has and is entitled to an opinion about a particular topic. However, I really would like the Amiga to be successful again. I don't see any reason why the Amiga cannot co-exist with MS, Apple, Linux, etc...
If you don't appreciate the Amiga please sell the one you have to someone that will and then you can be happy with whatever computer platform you are using.
I've got several MS PC's and have been using them for years but none of them are as "fun" to me as my Amiga memories. I would like to return to Amiga and see what it has to offer me. I could be wrong about my idea that I will have fun with it but that's for me to determine.
Again, I thank all of those that have posted such useful information in helping me with my purchasing decision.
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drewz21 wrote:
Really? Is Amiga Forever that good? If so I'll buy it. I've never really used emulators other than MAME but if it's that good I'll quit worrying so much about being compatible with my old stuff and just buy me a nice AMIGA for everyday use and use Amiga Forever to play my old games. I've got several PC's at home already.
How do I get the disks onto my PC then to play the games?
Thank you again.
I have (actually my 12 year old son has) a AMD Athlon64 3000+ PC w/1gb RAM running AmigaForever 2005/WinUAE and it is the most compatible, configurable Amiga you can have in one box. I also have well over a dozen "REAL" Amigas, that I enjoy and use, but AF2005 is worth having and using if you have one or more PC's that are at least 800mHz or faster. Also have the Catweasle Mk4 card and recommend it as well.
Good luck and welcome back. (didn't you say you already have an A500 and A2000 in the basement? Just fix them up instead of buying someone elses used Amiga, unless you have to have the AGA chipset of the A1200 or A4000.)
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Tomas wrote:
koaftder wrote:
Honestly, spend the money on a PC, use winuae for your amiga crap. Ive got an a3000, and i would like to drive this lcd at it's native rez, but i cant. I wanted to get a picasso IV but you cant get one for less than $300 and i'll be damned if i spend that kind of money on one board for my crappy slow 25MHz amiga.
Why exactly do you waste your time on a Amiga forum, when you believe the computer is so crappy and useless? I really think you should start hanging in a pc forum instead.
I didnt say it was useless. For me it's a toy, it's a lot of fun to play with, but lets face it, it;s 25MHz and wb can only put ouy 16 colors are approx 640x480 or something. Ive got 2mb chip, 4 fast. I have no delusions that i will be doing anything productive on that machine.
I would love to get an accelerator, a better video card, ethernet board, os 3.9, etc. But it's not worth the money when you think about it. You could easily spend $1200 upgrading an a3000. And this is 15 year old hardware, anything can go poof at any time, then youve got a $1200 pile of junk you'll be hacking to pieces and peddling on ebay.
300 for picasso 1v
500 for ppc acellerator
100 for ethernet board
200 for pci expansion
96 for fast ram upgrade ( fill up 3 banks )
50 for kick 3.1 roms
for that money i could get a wicked fast pc and emulate. Si that video card really worth that kind of money?
All i'm saying is that for that money, it would be more bang for the buck to get a pc and emulate, or hold out until a machine comes out with aos4. Trokia or what ever is promising hardware this year.
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It sure is expensive to upgrade amigas. I don't know why. Possibly due to the small demand for hardware?
I think however that alot of people are willing to pay though. I was going to get the Escom A1200 from vesalia for £88. But icn shipping this became £105. With the blizzard 1230-IV 50MHz with 32mb fast ram for amigakit, that then became a total of £180 or so. I couldn't afford that, plus a network card, ethernet card, cd, buffered ide interface (to run cd and hd at the same time) etc.
I just bought a used A1200 complete with blixxard 1230 with 128MB fast RAM from effy for £110.
Network cards and HDs arn't exactly that expensive though as they are standard devices for laptops.
I also think of my A500+ as a toy because I use it to play games, and always have done. I don't think the A1200 will be like that though once it get all it's accessories.
I think if you have $500 you should easily be able to get a new A1200 and make it really fast and usable with a 68060 or PPC card.
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@koafder
I think you're exaggerating the prices a bit. You could get yourself a GVP Spectrum rtg graphics card for less than $100; a Cyberstorm MkII for probably $300; 128MB simms for the Cyberstorm for $30; and a XSurf ethernet card for $100-120 (new from Software Hut). That and $30 for 3.1 roms (if you don't have them) gives you a pretty nice miggy for $500 or so. I give you that you can get halfway to a nice Athlon 64 PC system for that price, but then you still need $50 for AmigaForever and $100+ for a Catweasel PCI card. The amiga native A3000 solution lets you run most of the available software base, sans AGA, and it's actually cheaper than the AmigaForever solution brand new (since you already own an A3000).
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This A4000 (http://cgi.ebay.com/Amiga-4000-Desktop-030-25mhz-18mb-Ram-4gb-HD-40xCDROM_W0QQitemZ8760454553QQcategoryZ4598QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem) seems OK, and leaves you with budget left over for postage, 3.1 roms, accellerator, etc. Not a lot of time left on it.
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Argus wrote:
@koafder
I think you're exaggerating the prices a bit. You could get yourself a GVP Spectrum rtg graphics card for less than $100; a Cyberstorm MkII for probably $300; 128MB simms for the Cyberstorm for $30; and a XSurf ethernet card for $100-120 (new from Software Hut). That and $30 for 3.1 roms (if you don't have them) gives you a pretty nice miggy for $500 or so. I give you that you can get halfway to a nice Athlon 64 PC system for that price, but then you still need $50 for AmigaForever and $100+ for a Catweasel PCI card. The amiga native A3000 solution lets you run most of the available software base, sans AGA, and it's actually cheaper than the AmigaForever solution brand new (since you already own an A3000).
*sigh*
You are right, i probably could get this a3000 pretty well upgraded for a little less. But hitting the native refresh rate on my 17" lcd ( of which i have 3 and a 21" lcd ) is pretty important for me. And i'd like to get there with at least 16bit color.
I have a few classic amigas, all stock except for memory upgrades, this provides me with lots of old school gaming and demo fun. But what id really like to top it off is something i could browse the web with and irc off of, and use as a personal system. Something i could keep my photo albums on and other personal stuff. Something cool, something fun and on Amiga platform. Something modern.
So from my point of view, if i want the high rez graphics and stuff, WinUAE gives me the best value on classic aos. I'll hold out for aos4, as that seems the best bang for the dollar. With aos4 and associated hardware, i can expect to interface to a modern monitor properly, ethernet on the board, a fast proc, audio, etc, probably for a similar price to getting a classic amiga upgraded to the hilt.
I'd like to get os 3.9 on my 3000, the kick roms and ram are cheap, but whats the point withouht a nice video card to boot, and thats the real cost there.
There is something inheriently geek cool about the a3000/4000 upgraded to the max, with the ppc accelerators though. A 15 year old machine, frakenstein upgraded to ppc with gobs of ram and accelerators with pci builtin for graphics cards, etc. Its like taking a pinto and putting on 4wd and hudge tires and throwing in a v8.
What i really wanted for my upgraded miggy setup was an a1200! Always wanted one, hard to come by in the US, europe got them all!
Sorry for my unarticulated previous post, which obviously made some think that i considered amiga to be a crap system. Personally i would like to see amiga gain in numbers again. For the same reason i think beos and osx are good to still be around. We need more computing diversity and open standards. It needs to get to the point where OS doesnt really matter. A computing monoculture is a bad thing. It leads to major security problems and content restrictions.
So, i have my classics for my fun time, my some what slightly antiquated pcs for emulation, and i think i'll hold on to my dollars for an aos 4 machine. Trokia seems likek they might have a system for sale some time soon. If they do they will get some of my money, and i will certianly be showing my friends my machine, which may lead to a sale or two...
I feel bad about not donating any time to aros. I wanted to take the bounty for the hdinstall project, but after spending 2 weeks looking at whats involved it was obvious that i just dont have enough free time to do it. And its not the bounty money anyway thats motivating ( cmon, the bounties are too small for the effort involved) if i could have done it i would have rolled the funds into another bounty ( of my choosing of coure ).
So to end this post, i say emulate if you want a killer setup, buy a classic and do a minimal upgrade if you are cool with the limitations and probably just want to relive the games, if you are going to spend a nice sum, wait for aos4 ( i may be a pessimestic {bleep}, but i still think its going to happen eventually) .