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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Marketplace => Topic started by: irishmike on March 27, 2006, 07:50:08 PM
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Hello:
I have not made up my mind fully yet, but I have semi decided that I should go with 2 A1200's instead of my A3000.
That being said, I would be willing to trade my A3000 for a couple of A1200's the catch being shipping if the interested parties are not here in the Metro KC area... mind you, I am only considering the possibility right now. The other thing to note is that at this time, I do not have the keyboard and mouse for the A3000, but will be buying them soon, so if I decide to do this (gauging interest from other members) it would be included at that time.
I would prefer that the person is local for shipping reasons, and so we could see first hand the condition of each other's machines, but I am at this point unsure.
Thanks,
Mike
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I take it I have no takers on this idea? Anyhow was seeking advice as well. I think the A3000 is a great machine and I would love to have two of them instead, but the cost is way beyond me once you talk about some necessary upgrades, so I thought the 2 1200s route would work out dandy.
Anyhow, give me your thoughts if you like. :-)
Thanks,
Mike
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I almost forgot: If you have an A1200 you would like to sell, not on ebay -- I would be interested in what you need to get for it and the shipping to Independence, MO USA 64055. Needs to be in great condition and NTSC.
Thanks,
Mike
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I've got a PAL one I could let go pretty cheap. :)
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@drewz21
As stated above, it needs to be NTSC. Thanks though.
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Sorry don't mean to ruin the perfectly nice dream you are having, but you will be hard pressed to get ONE NTSC A1200 for a A3000, let alone two!!! A1200's are hard to come by in the US.
That being said, you could very well get two or more more PAL A1200's from Europe as they are easily found and cheap, and A3000's are very rare over there... :)
Here is a nice NTSC A1200 (http://cgi.ebay.com/RARE-NTSC-Amiga-1200-HD-games-software-extras_W0QQitemZ8788166624QQcategoryZ4598QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem), I would do yourself a favor and hit that nice little buy it now button! ;)
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1200s and 3000s go for about the same on ebay and 3000s for slightly more on most used computer sites. i wanted a staight-up trade for my 1200 about a year ago and got no takers so i sold the 1200 and bought a 3000 with the money. my 1200 had an accelerator and monitor.
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@tjlazer
Wow, $300... too rich for my blood... paid $100 for my A3000 and definitely don't plan on spending much more on the A1200.
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You may want to look at Amigakit (http://www.amigakit.com/) for an NTSC 1200 and sell your A3000 on ebay.
Thats your best option.
$300 is a good deal! and you wont likly fine a A3000 for any less.
good luck with your quest.
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Greetings All:
I guess I need to be clear. I need to run 2 Amigas I would love to run 2 3000 for what I am trying to acomplish, but I thought two A1200s would do the job instead of trying to buy another A3000. I either need 2 1200s or 1 1200 that I would buy, but I can not spend a lot of money on it.
I need to go the cheaper route to acomplish my goal... if an A1200 is not in cards, I will seek another A3000 -- most likely from a source I know and I will not go the eBay route on this again. They do need to be NTSC.
Thanks and thoughts are welcome... so if the A1200 is really that rare, I will look into another 3000.
Thanks,
Mike
BTW: The dream is not to trade for two A1200s, it is to run my project ;-)
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ooh, an twin-cab Knights Of The Sky 2-Up arcade machine?!? I'll build the box for the right price! ;)
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irishmike wrote:
Greetings All:
I guess I need to be clear. I need to run 2 Amigas I would love to run 2 3000 for what I am trying to acomplish, but I thought two A1200s would do the job instead of trying to buy another A3000. I either need 2 1200s or 1 1200 that I would buy, but I can not spend a lot of money on it.
Thanks and thoughts are welcome... so if the A1200 is really that rare, I will look into another 3000.
Thanks,
Mike
BTW: The dream is not to trade for two A1200s, it is to run my project ;-)
Why do the computers have to be the same model?
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@tonyvdb
I already have an A3000 that is in near perfect shape that I bought for $100... it takes persistance and watching for the right opportunity, but I assure you, it can be done as I did it exactly one month ago.
It is going to cost me total $160 after the keyboard and mouse ;-)
@everyone
The project is small and for educational purposes and I both limited by my disposable income and my wife on what I may spend on a machine that is over 15 years old. I know you all feel the way you feel about your machines, heck I would not sell my A3000 for less than $200 myself because someone WILL pay that. Not I however... I have a source and I will keep it to myself for the time being because I need to spend $150 or less on a second machine (shipping included). After I obtain my second machine I will be glad to share my source.
Again, if I can not trade for two machines with my one A3000 then I have to buy a second machine but I am limited on the amount of money I physically have to spend. I think $300 is outrageous for any Amiga because I have found several for around $100. This is my opinion, it is backed by folks who may or may not be aware they could get more out of a machine, but one such person is interested in helping me because of the project's purpose. I would use my A3000 for the project IF I wasn't needing to run a BBS too.
Anyhow, the project is going to be a labor of love and likely beyond pittance donations, will make no money, so I am not inclined to spend a lot on it. The value of a piece of equipment is only set if people will pay the price and I can get it cheaper by NOT buying off Ebay so I will pursue those avenues... anyone would :-)
Thanks for the advice but never say "that can't be done" to someone who consistantly proves that it can be done ...
Just hoped to spend no additional money and trade someone a very nice A3000 for two A1200s for my project and for my everyday Amiga machine... since I have no takers (which is fine) I now know how I am going to have to proceed.
Everyone have a great day :-)
Obiviously, the answer is I am going to have to seek a second Amiga and hold onto my A3000... this will obviously be the less expensive route.
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@motrucker
I have specs I want to adhere to. I like my A3000 and would want like specs. I also have limited space so 2 A1200's made more sense than two A3000's, but the reason they must be the same model is that I want them to be a minimum of an A1200. It has to do with the specs I wanted to accept and the availability of upgrades.
Otherwise, no real reason.
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Best of luck to you irishmike. I wish my spare A1200 wasn't a PAL so I could help you out.
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@drewz21
Thanks my friend. I appreciate it.
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..so what is the core meaning of your project? What are You going to use your 2 miggies for? :getmad: :-)
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@MASACREWILL
My core project requires one of the two miggies. I am going to run a BBS for nostalgia and as an educational venue for the generations that have *heard* of a BBS, but never experienced one. I chose Amiga for the platform even though I ran a RemoteAccess 2.x bbs through 1993 and co-sysop'd another RA board through 1996. The A1200 I am seeking is for this purpose.
My current A3000 is for my own "day to day" use and to play the old games I missed (like Kings Quest and Space Quest) on... the original idea was (mainly due to space) to obtain 2 A1200's in place of my one A3000 or whether or not to just buy a second machine...(the original intent of this thread).
Hope that clears it up a bit. Can use support for this project which is going to incorporate both my old BBS's one on PC and one on AMI.
Thanks for asking :-D
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I currently run a BBS and have been looking for the DLG software for Amiga to run on one of my miggys but sadly I cannot find it.
I'm curious though - what are the specs on that 3000? What specs are you looking for on the A1200? I know someone who might be interested (and we all live fairly close to you).
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@icbrkr
I decided to run CNET since it is apparently still fully supported. It was the defacto BBS software in this area back in the day... in doing research, I found that all the BBS's here ran it... including the C64 or C128 based boards.
The specs on the machine are:
16 MHZ processor
40 MB SCSI hard drive
1 floppy
factory specs the rest of the way
You may pmail me with more details on the person here in KC.
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This is for your BBS project, right? I thought common wisdom used to be that a big-box Amiga (2000, 3000, 4000) was the ideal for a BBS. 2000's were the most common. They're good workhorses and shouldn't be underestimated. :)
-David
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Hi,
If you get a PAL model, take a look there at the bottom :
http://wonkity.com/~wblock/a1200/a1200.html
connecting pin 41 of the Alice custom chip to ground causes the A1200 to default to NTSC, while pulling this pin high (disconnecting it from the motherboard and connecting it to +5V through a 4.7k resistor) will make the default power-up state PAL. I would point out that making a modification like this on a surface-mount chip is difficult at best, and you may end up needing an expensive motherboard replacement, or, at worst, a dead A1200 that needs an expensive replacement motherboard available. In most cases, using the boot menu (obtained by pressing both mouse buttons on power-up or reset) to switch to PAL is sufficient. However, with some games, the hardware patch will be necessary to insure proper timing (changing to PAL via the boot menu might make a 50 Hz game run at 60 Hz timing, or vice versa).
:idea:
I also suggest you A2000 that could have cheaper HDD.
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irishmike wrote:
I have not made up my mind fully yet, but I have semi decided that I should go with 2 A1200's instead of my A3000.
Even with the A3000 being at 16mhz, it has better expansion. (ie: the zoro slots.) You will need a highspeed serial card to run a BBS. The A3k can take the punishment far better than a A1200 can/will.
When I ran my two line bbs on the amiga (before I switched to PC and Ezycomm) the standard serial port's couldn't keep up. The asdg serial card was a great peice of hardware. The system got expanded over about a two-three year period to be one beefed up Amiga 2000. (I think it had 8 or 16mb of ram, a GVP '030 combo card, three or four harddrives, a 4cd stacker and other things I can't rember)
You should think hard about running a bbs on a phone line. The internet has taken it all away from the bbs's and unless you got heaps of calls it'd be better making it accessable from the net.
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@vk3heg
That may be true and that is actually why I bought the A3000 in the first place. The main issue is that I want to dedicate a machine to the BBS and therefore need another (second) Amiga for my games and such. I would prefer to have another A3000, however, I will have to solve a space issue to use another 2000 or 3000 and I would entertain a A2500 as well to dedicate.
@dnelsonfl
I believe that I will be able to make the BBS net accessible, though the project is to preserve the original experience which means dial up, but the plan has always been to have one line for dial up and several nodes for Telnet. I am sure that we can tweak the CNET software for Telnet and I also understand that this is being built in to their next version. I have not ruled out an A2500 box for the BBS.
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I ran a CNet/3 BBS on my A3000 for several years. Honestly though, if you're going to run more than 2-3 lines you're going to need more than an 030/16MHz. (I had an 040/35MHz with 40MB of Fast RAM and even that choked when things got busy.
If I were to run an Amiga BBS today, I'd just run it on WinUAE. It's faster, and saves the wear and tear on your old valuable hardware.
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@adolescent
Yes, you could run it on UAE or Cloanto AF, however that would not be the scope of the project. Heck you could set up a DOS emulator on a PC and run RA too. THis is not what my project is to entail.
Sure I will probably do the whole config in Cloanto, but I plan to then transfer the whole BBS to the machine.
The education part of my project requires showing the Sys-Op end as it would have been "old school" style, this is why the other BBS has to be a 486/66 or max Pentium 100 mhz... the RA machine is also going ot be "old school".
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@irishmike
Ok, fair enough. I still think the 030/16MHz will be a limiting factor. Especially since you're talking about telnet ports. (Make sure to reduce the color depth to 4 colors to increase the speed a bit...)
Good luck with your project.
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@irishmike,
If you're not in a hurry due to money being tight and don't mind piecing it together little by little, here's a few thoughts to consider. The 3000 is a very decent Amiga, and it has the slim case design. You could stack two 3000's on top of each other and use a small 2 or 4 port KVM switch to use a single keyboard/mouse/monitor with the two Amigas. This is kind of what I did with my gear. I bought a sturdy metal closet storage rack thingy at Lowes and put it in the closet. I put the PCs and Amigas on each shelf and connected them to the KVM. I use one monitor, one keyboard, and one mouse to control all seven. Now everything is out of sight and nicely stacked up taking up a tiny fraction of the space it used to. Makes my wife happy and keeps her from complaining about my insane hobbies. :)
Just food for thought. I think if your projects are very ambitious, you might be better off with the big box Amiga. :)
-David
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@dnelsonfl
That doesn't sound too bad. Not sure how the Miggies will like the Flat Panel monitor I am ordering though. Was keeping my Dell 17" CRT for use with them ;-)
Keeping the hobbies out of sight is a great diplomatic tool with the wife :-)
Thanks for the suggestion!
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@irishmike,
The Amigas don't mind flat panels so long as you're using a display mode that the monitor can synch to. With the 3000's built-in flicker-fixer, that's never a problem. Another plus for the 3000. :)
-David
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That is cool. I have actually traded a guy in Virginia for his A1200... it has a blizzard board in it and sounds really very nice. Now I will have to find an adapter for the VGA... what one should be used?
Plus I plan to pick up another 3000 in the future with a little more horsepower.