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Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: bjjones37 on January 25, 2013, 10:50:05 PM

Title: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: bjjones37 on January 25, 2013, 10:50:05 PM: Seriously guys, I want to buy an Amiga.

Don't mean to start the Amiga Wars all over again, but I would like some recommendations. If I have, say, $300-$400 to drop on another Amiga, what can y'all recommend? I know...I know, it depends on what I want to do with it. First and foremost, I want to explore the AmigaOS. Of course gaming is sort of a given. Perhaps some light programming. And somehow network it to my Windows box - NIC, serial, parallel, Flash card, whatever. I am strictly a hobbyist so a little of everything without too much of any one thing. I do not require a lot of speed but I do insist on a hard drive. Oh, one more thing, I do not want to buy an Amiga that is going to die a month after buying it. My Atari 800XL and Commodore 64 still work fine for goodness sake.

I have WinUAE, but it just is not the same to me as using an actual Amiga.

Any thoughts?
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: Methuselas on January 25, 2013, 11:13:16 PM: I really can't recommend an Amiga. I mean, if that's what you're into, I'd say go for it, but Spanish Lesbians are a lot to handle (I know a few, living in California and Texas). They drink excessively, smoke and are prone to psychotic outbursts. They also, like their straight counterparts, have high skill levels in iron skillet and knife throwing.

If you REALLY want one, you could probably find one for around $300-$400, but that's only for a few hours and you can't be sure of the quality you're gonna get. Hope this helps!

Just my 2p.

-M

;P
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: bjjones37 on January 26, 2013, 12:09:51 AM: I was hoping for an experienced opinion, and I guess I got one. Just not in the arena I was hoping for.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: rdolores on January 26, 2013, 12:13:11 AM: I'd recommend an Amiga 1200. Many will come with hard drives. Even if you had to add one, you could use any 2.5" IDE hard drive. For networking, you could get a PCMCIA Ethernet card (or wireless). The 1200 still has alot of available add-ons via processor/memory trap door, clockport (ie. Subway USB) as well the aforementioned PCMCIA slot.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: Matt_H on January 26, 2013, 12:18:36 AM: I agree. 1200 sounds appropriate for what you'd like to do. And there's a fresh batch of accelerators on the market now - get 'em while you can.

1200 is good for gaming, easy to network, and it's easy to add a CompactFlash card as a hard drive.

You could probably get a 1200, accelerator, network card, and CF hard drive kit for well within your budget.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: gaula92 on January 26, 2013, 12:20:27 AM: I recommend you a Minimig computer. It's new Amiga hardware, with SD card holding all your floppy images and hard disk drives, it's compatible with 99% Amiga OCS/ECS software, just way faster (it has a 50MHz 68K onboard). Get it with 4MB Ram to get the best from Whdload.
No aging hardware, no unreliable floppies or noisy HDDs... it's a good choice.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: NovaCoder on January 26, 2013, 12:30:12 AM: Yep, gotta go the 12
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: k4lmp on January 26, 2013, 12:46:27 AM: Another vote for the 1200. I don't have one, I have two A2000HDs, and an A500+, and I love them both, but wish I had a 1200 to add to the collection. Maybe someday. :)
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: Lurch on January 26, 2013, 12:47:07 AM: Was waiting for all the A4000 supporters from another forum post to post here :-)

I started with the A500 for nostalgia, looking back that was a costly mistake. Finally purchased another A1200 and haven't looked back.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: klx300r on January 26, 2013, 02:38:45 AM: get a 1200 with an 030, either a real 2.5 " HD or CF card, and some fast ram and you'll be in Amiga heaven & WHDLoad bliss:knuddel:
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: CritAnime on January 26, 2013, 02:42:58 AM: Or you could take out the floppy drive and install the HxC and run images from a virtual drive. My 1200 has this setup in it at the mo and i don't need the accelerator.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: magnetic on January 26, 2013, 02:43:07 AM: Quote from: Lurch;724038
Was waiting for all the A4000 supporters from another forum post to post here :-)

I.

Nah for this particular case a1200 is certainly the way to go. The main thing is the PCMCIA port. Big advantage over a4k for non power users. You can xfer files with a pc with CF cards and/or use cheap pc ethenet laptop cards. So 1200 for sure the way to roll
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: bjjones37 on January 26, 2013, 02:50:55 AM: Thanks for all the feedback. I'm sold. So can you recommend a vendor or is ebay the way to go?
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: magnetic on January 26, 2013, 02:51:26 AM: Quote from: bjjones37;724055
Thanks for all the feedback. I'm sold. So can you recommend a vendor or is ebay the way to go?

What country are you in?
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: CritAnime on January 26, 2013, 02:53:26 AM: AmigaKit do refurbished systems. Ebay would be a good place to look but beware of people charging rediculous amounts for one. Another option is to simply scoure second hand markets and shops. Sometimes they popup and you can grab one for a small fee.

Do people still use craigslist?
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: bjjones37 on January 26, 2013, 03:10:14 AM: Quote from: magnetic;724056
What country are you in?

I am in the US. I looked at amigakit, but they seemed to be out of stock as far as I could tell. And they only seemed to sell PAL systems. Will PAL even work in the US? If they do have something I can use, I would certainly be interested.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: pVC on January 26, 2013, 09:15:30 AM: If you want a completely new A1200, you can buy one from Petro (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=715974&postcount=188).
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: magnetic on January 26, 2013, 10:44:24 AM: Quote from: bjjones37;724059
I am in the US. I looked at amigakit, but they seemed to be out of stock as far as I could tell. And they only seemed to sell PAL systems. Will PAL even work in the US? If they do have something I can use, I would certainly be interested.

If you are in North America DONT get a PAL unit. For one thing, the composite video output will always be in black and white on NTSC displays. If you have a 1080 or 1084, 1950 or 1960 commodore monitor you should be able to display both PAL and NTSC. And there will be guys to follow this post saying get a PAL unit. Trust me man go NTSC. Oh, just thought of another reason you wont be able to use genlocks and other rgb devices with NTSC signals.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: ChaosLord on January 26, 2013, 02:30:05 PM: If you can get a PAL Amiga, then get one. PAL Amigas are better.

Nobody cares about composite video output because composite went out of style back in the mid 1980s and nobody uses it. The picture quality of composite output is total garbage and you will hate your Amiga if you use that. No way in hell will you write code on a composite monitor. You would either go blind or insane.

Commodore went to a lot of trouble and spent the big bucks to give every Amiga Computer a perfecty quality RGB port for crisp non-blurry clean gfx. So use it.

It would be really really stupid to buy an RGB computer and then just refuse to use the RGB. That is like buying a computer with a hard drive connector and then just refusing to use a hard drive.

The thing is since 90% of all Amiga games only work correctly in PAL mode, when you use an NTSC Amiga you have to PAL boot every single game in order for the game to work. Why bother? Just use a PAL Amiga to start with.

I have several NTSC Amigas. The NTSC A3000s have a special jumper on them to allow you to flip a switch and set it to PAL or NTSC. I set mine to PAL mode when I got them and I never flipped it back. Why on Earth would I? If I want to play an NTSC game I just NTSC boot the computer. But that doesn't happen much. Most hot games require PAL mode.

My other NTSC Amigas have no PAL/NTSC switch on them so I must waste 60 seconds of my life to PAL boot the computer every time I want to play a game on them.

My NTSC A1200 has been set to use a PAL Workbench since the 1990s. That is almost 20 years that my NTSC A1200 has been in PAL mode. The PAL video output is 100% perfect on every single one of my NTSC Amigas. That includes A500s, A2000s, A1200s, A3000s, A4000.

If you get a PAL Amiga just make sure to flip the powerswitch into North American mode before you use it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Else you will set your Amiga and your house on fire.

Have fun.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: bjjones37 on January 26, 2013, 03:19:27 PM: How much should I pay for a used (or new) Amiga 1200?
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: bjjones37 on January 27, 2013, 05:39:52 PM: Quote from: pVC;724082
If you want a completely new A1200, you can buy one from Petro (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=715974&postcount=188).

If I order one from petro, will I be able to get it with a USA power supply?
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: ChaosLord on January 27, 2013, 06:03:20 PM: Petro's are all German with nonstandard keyboard layout.

I would not recommend one of those unless u r buying a Detatched Keyboard Adapter (Forgot what they are called) that let u use a standard PS/2 PC keyboard. I use such an adapter on my A1200T for many years (15).

If u want to use an external keyboard I can help u choose one that is not a ripoff. I have spent last 3 months studying Keyboard Science 24/7.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: Iggy on January 27, 2013, 06:29:46 PM: The 1200 is nice, but I'd prefer a 4000D.
When you want to install PCI slots, its a lot easier to modify.

Then you add a PCI NIC, SCSI card, Soundblaster 128, or USB card.
Also possibly a Voodoo3 or Radeon 9200 video card or and Indvision AGA.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: bjjones37 on January 27, 2013, 07:45:26 PM: Quote from: ChaosLord;724292
Petro's are all German with nonstandard keyboard layout.

I would not recommend one of those unless u r buying a Detatched Keyboard Adapter (Forgot what they are called) that let u use a standard PS/2 PC keyboard. I use such an adapter on my A1200T for many years (15).

If u want to use an external keyboard I can help u choose one that is not a ripoff. I have spent last 3 months studying Keyboard Science 24/7.

When you say nonstandard, does that mean the keys will not properly map out to an English OS, like pressing a 'D' and getting an 'L' or something of the sort?

I am looking possible issues in both keyboard and power supply. Is there anything else that might not be compatible for use in the USA? Will the OS be in German, menus and such?
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: ChaosLord on January 28, 2013, 06:32:04 PM: Quote from: bjjones37;724310
When you say nonstandard, does that mean the keys will not properly map out to an English OS, like pressing a 'D' and getting an 'L' or something of the sort?
Germany uses QWERTZ layout.

The rest of the universe uses QWERTY layout.

You can set your keymap to UK layout to fix the Y-Z issue but some punctuation symbols might get switched around too, donno. UK has punctuation in different places than USA.

In any case, if you set your keymap to have the Y key in the normal place, the writing on your Y-key will stay say "Z". At a minimimum its confusing. If it was me it would be fantastically annoying.

Germany just decided to make up their own incompatible format incompatible with the whole entire rest of the planet.

Quote
I am looking possible issues in both keyboard and power supply.
I can't remember if the A1200 powersupply has a 110v / 220V switch on it or not.

Quote
Is there anything else that might not be compatible for use in the USA? Will the OS be in German, menus and such?
You set the language of the OS on any Amiga. That is not a problem at all.

If you were going to buy Petro's super custom A1200 and put it into a Tower Case and use a real keyboard then all your keyboard problems disappear. This is what I do. I am using a brand new 2012 springloaded PS/2 keyboard.

You could buy a $3.00 set of stickers and cover up the Z key and the other key with the proper symbols. If they swapped around any other symbols, punctuation, etc. maybe u could fix those with stickers also. Dunno. Depending on what they did it could get really complicated.

I only learned of German QWERTZ layout a couple of months ago. Until then I just assumed everyone used the same layout. HA!
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: paul1981 on January 28, 2013, 07:22:31 PM: Another alternative is to buy a US or UK Amiga keyboard. Amigakit sells new UK ones for £18.95. There are some new ones on ebay as well.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: zipper on January 28, 2013, 09:31:26 PM: Quote from: ChaosLord;724457
Germany uses QWERTZ layout.

The rest of the universe uses QWERTY layout...
HA!

AZERTY....what about?
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: Wilse on January 28, 2013, 09:39:37 PM: Quote from: pVC;724082
If you want a completely new A1200, you can buy one from Petro (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=715974&postcount=188).

Ha - awesome!
:pint:
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: AmigaBruno on January 28, 2013, 10:15:04 PM: Keyboard layouts are different for different languages because of different letters being used more frequently or less frequently in different languages. I've only recently started using the Amiga again, so I've forgotten some stuff, but the German keyboard layout not only has the letters Z and Y reversed compared with English language keyboard layouts, but the characters you get when pressing SHIFT and some of the top row of keys (the number keys when not shifted) are also different. The German Umlaut characters (with two dots above them) are to the right of the L and P keys, while the Eszett character (which looks like the Greek letter Beta) is to the right of the number zero key. I don't know how many keys a German Amiga keyboard has, but it may well have more than a US Amiga keyboard, so no keys will be missing, but some keys won't print anything if you use a US keymap. You can see the different keymaps in one of the Amiga manuals, as well as by using the program Keytoy. Various other languages have different keyboards or keymaps. Apart from this, the same languages used in different countries also use different keymaps. I seem to remember the Portuguese keymap was the most different from QWERTY. Does anyone know if a Japanese Amiga keymap was ever produced?

Here's a link to a pic of a German A4000 keyboard.

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/download_photos/a4000keyb_german_big.jpg
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: magnetic on January 29, 2013, 12:38:17 AM: bbjones

LIke I stated earlier you need to get a north american (NTSC) Unit. It will save you alot of headaches. Yes lord chaos has some points (like I told you they would) but unless you are strictly a hardcore gamer DONT GET PAL.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: ChaosLord on January 29, 2013, 02:22:05 AM: The only reason to not get a PAL Amiga would be if you want to directly record your Amiga video onto a NTSC VHS video tape.

Do you want to make NTSC VHS videtapes with your Amiga?
If Answer$="Yes" THEN
Buy NTSC Amiga
ELSE
Buy any Amiga at all
END_IF

Do you want to make PAL VHS videtapes with your Amiga?
If Answer$="Yes" THEN
Buy PAL Amiga
ELSE
Buy any Amiga at all
END_IF
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: bjjones37 on February 02, 2013, 02:36:31 AM: After all was said and done, I seemed to have ended up with an Amiga 3000. It has a bad internal drive but it came with an external drive and has two scsi hard disks inside. It has 2MB Chip RAM and 7.5MB Fast RAM.
So can somebody tell me what I have ended up with? What is it best for? Is it a good hobby machine? Does it have good compatibility with most Amiga software? Can it play games?
Actually the bad internal disk drive seems to be good now that I have blown massive clouds of dirt out of it with an air compressor. The question is, how in the world did the power supply EVER work with all of that dirt in it.

Of course the first thing I did was to cut off the battery that had already started to leak. I think I caught it in time. Then I took it outside and blew all the dirt out of it. Then I plugged it in ... and prayed and fasted ... and turned it on with fingers, toes, and eyes crossed. Amazingly, it came on. So I am hopeful that I now have an Amiga that will last more than two months.

At long last I begin the pleasant journey of learning the Amiga OS.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: ChaosLord on February 02, 2013, 03:19:39 AM: All my Amiga 3000s have bad internal floppy drives too! Its the 3rd thing to break after the keyboards and U202 PAL chips.

Maybe if I blasted some compressed air in there it would work. Donno.

A3000 is an awesome retro games machine. Datz what I use mine for. It has a slightly faster cpu than an A500. Its not a speed demon or anything but it gives a much better frame rate to Stunt Car Racer and Hired Guns especially when having a party with 4 players at once!

And it is ez to find a monitor for it since it uses Amiga or PC monitors.

It does most everything except for you can't play any of the awesome AGA games on it.

If you wanted to do serious stuff on it you could buy a Mediator for it and add a 256MB gfx card and an ethernet card and so forth.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: ChaosLord on February 02, 2013, 03:21:21 AM: How did u cut the battery out?!?

My batteries are in all my Amigas and they are all probably dead now :(
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: bbond007 on February 02, 2013, 03:23:12 AM: Its pretty nice system with excellent software compatibility and has good monitor compatibility with built in flickerfixer. The only snag is no AGA...

You should look into getting some whdload games and registering whdload.

Possible upgrades
convert the SCSI drives to compact-flash
maybe this USB controller (don't know much about it)
http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=39995
Indivision ECS
PS/2 Mouse converter and modern mouse.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: ChaosLord on February 02, 2013, 03:29:26 AM: Quote from: bjjones37;724992
Does it have good compatibility with most Amiga software?

To me it has 100% compatibility with all OCS and ECS software.

But I have the version of A3000 that loads kickstart off of the Hard Drive. So I can change my kickstart any time I want. hehe

Quote

Can it play games?

It will play at least 10,000 different games perfectly.

And its an A3000 so it is dead ez to install a hardware PAL switch. It might have come with one if you see a funny switch sticking out of the back installed by the previous owner.

Quote

Actually the bad internal disk drive seems to be good now that I have blown massive clouds of dirt out of it with an air compressor. The question is, how in the world did the power supply EVER work with all of that dirt in it.

Its an antique. The dirt is probably what was holding everything together :D
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: ChaosLord on February 02, 2013, 03:34:52 AM: Quote from: bbond007;724997

PS/2 Mouse converter and modern mouse.

+1000

Get one of those!

Also I flatly refuse to believe that your Amiga 3000 keyboard works. All mine broke within around 6 years.

Once you realize your keyboard is broken then I recommend you to get a brand new PS/2 keyboard adapter.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: barney on February 02, 2013, 04:35:23 AM: I'm surprised nobody mentioned the good old Amiga 2000. Perfect all around machine. Good expandability and great for games.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: bbond007 on February 02, 2013, 05:00:15 AM: Quote from: ChaosLord;724999
+1000

Get one of those!

Also I flatly refuse to believe that your Amiga 3000 keyboard works. All mine broke within around 6 years.

Once you realize your keyboard is broken then I recommend you to get a brand new PS/2 keyboard adapter.

I'm actually using a lyra2 and ps2 mouse converter to usb->ps2 converter to Logitech wireless back-lit KB and laser mouse(unifying driver),

my 1200 stays out of direct light.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: bjjones37 on February 04, 2013, 02:06:05 AM: My A3000 keyboard is working great. I was mistaken about the disk drive though. It appeared to recognize a disk after I blew it out, but I could not write any files to it.

It has Kickstart 2.04. I was going to remove the 120MB and 240MB SCSI drives and replace them with a 1GB. Then I was going to install Workbench 3.1. Will it be compatible with Kickstart 2.04? Do I have to put WB2.1 back on?

And finally, what is WHDLoad?
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: ChaosLord on February 04, 2013, 02:34:21 AM: Quote from: bjjones37;725259
My A3000 keyboard is working great. I was mistaken about the disk drive though. It appeared to recognize a disk after I blew it out, but I could not write any files to it.

It has Kickstart 2.04. I was going to remove the 120MB and 240MB SCSI drives and replace them with a 1GB.

If 1GB is all u have laying around then.... I guess it could be halfway ok...
But it is quite small.

I bought a 4GB SCSI drive in 1997. Back then SCSI drives were a great size at a great price.

It should be really easy to find ancient used SCSI drives in the 4GB to 20GB size range. But its all up to u what u want to do.

If u wanted to do a full WHDload install then that is something like 10GB in a single day.

In case nobody told u, the A3000 has an AWESOME SCSI hard drive controller that blows away the lame IDE controller that came out 2 years later in A1200 and A4000. The A3000 SCSI just magically flows data into your computer with DMA so it frees up your CPU and provides great performance.

Since the hard drive controller is so awesome, it would be a shame to cripple it with a tiny sized drive. It just makes sense to put some sort of decently large drive on it.

But if all u have laying around is a 1GB then you could set that up as your "boot drive" and add a 2nd drive later.

About the kickstart:

I advise you to upgrade to a 3.1 Kickstart. That is what everybody uses since 1990s. Its very good and reliable.

Is ur A3000 using a real Kickstart ROM chip?
Or does it have the "ROMtower" thingy that lets you load the kickstart off of your hard drive?

Look in your harddrive under DEVS:Kickstart/ and see if there are any files in there.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: bjjones37 on February 06, 2013, 01:31:27 PM: Quote from: ChaosLord;725265
Is ur A3000 using a real Kickstart ROM chip?
Or does it have the "ROMtower" thingy that lets you load the kickstart off of your hard drive?

Look in your harddrive under DEVS:Kickstart/ and see if there are any files in there.

There is a Kickstart file in the Devs directory on the WB2.x volume. Is this a correct configuration? If I press both mouse buttons it gives me a menu to load either kickstart 2.04 or 1.4. When I try to install Workbench 3.1, it fails with an error that I need kickstart 3.0.

I read that there are problems with the ROM version of Kickstart 3.1 on the Amiga 3000. For instance, I would need to drop my cpu speed from 25MHz to 16MHz. Is there a way to install WB31 on this system or should I stay with WB21?

I did succeed in transferring the OS to a larger hard disk. I set the drive up as two 512M partitions. Should I isolate the OS in a small partition of it's own? I do not mind repartitioning to get it right. It is a little tricky as I cannot boot off a floppy at all.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: Nlandas on February 13, 2013, 09:30:47 PM: Quote from: Lurch;724038
Was waiting for all the A4000 supporters from another forum post to post here :-)

I started with the A500 for nostalgia, looking back that was a costly mistake. Finally purchased another A1200 and haven't looked back.

I realize this is an older thread but I too vote A1200. I for one bought 4 different Amiga 4000 setups including one in a tower and all of them died within a few months. My A1200 still works after all these years. I'm not saying that the A4000 wasn't a cool machine but I just haven't been able to acquire one that was in good shape.

Personally, I wish someone would come up with new hardware that was backwards compatible with the AGA chipset and I'd buy one. I agree emulation is not the same as hardware. I just wish I could boot even a PC directly into AmigaOS.

-Nyle
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: danwood on February 14, 2013, 02:29:42 AM: Quote from: ChaosLord;724457
Germany uses QWERTZ layout.

The rest of the universe uses QWERTY layout.

You can set your keymap to UK layout to fix the Y-Z issue but some punctuation symbols might get switched around too, donno. UK has punctuation in different places than USA.

In any case, if you set your keymap to have the Y key in the normal place, the writing on your Y-key will stay say "Z". At a minimimum its confusing. If it was me it would be fantastically annoying.

You set the language of the OS on any Amiga. That is not a problem at all.

You could buy a $3.00 set of stickers and cover up the Z key and the other key with the proper symbols. If they swapped around any other symbols, punctuation, etc. maybe u could fix those with stickers also. Dunno. Depending on what they did it could get really complicated.

I only learned of German QWERTZ layout a couple of months ago. Until then I just assumed everyone used the same layout. HA!

Or you could just pop the key tops off and swap the Y and Z around... Too simple?
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: ChaosLord on February 14, 2013, 04:09:43 AM: Quote from: danwood;726297
Or you could just pop the key tops off and swap the Y and Z around... Too simple?

Oh isn't that sweet :D

Someone so naive and innocent that they don't realize how completely vile and evil the keyboard industry is. :)

The plastics companies who actually make the keycaps always lie to the CEO of of whichever company is making keyboards. They trick them into buying keycaps that are unswitchable-aroundable. This is to prevent ppl from doing exactly what you have proposed. And to stop ppl from switching to Colemak layout which is massively superior to silly QWERTY.

But there is a flaw. Their evil trap doesn't work as long as the 2 keys you are switching around are on the same row. But if the keys are on different rows you can forget about it.

Give it a try if you don't believe me.

99% of All normal (non-laptop) keyboards have keys where every single row of keys is
1. A different shape.
2. A different height.
3. A different angle.

Yes all 3 at the same time!

This is what I call "Screwball Profile". It is a total scam ripoff. That is the world we live in.

Y and Z are on completely different rows on my keyboard. Switching their places screws up everything badly.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: magnetic on February 14, 2013, 04:20:09 AM: Quote from: bjjones37;725545

I read that there are problems with the ROM version of Kickstart 3.1 on the Amiga 3000. For instance, I would need to drop my cpu speed from 25MHz to 16MHz. Is there a way to install WB31 on this system or should I stay with WB21?

Hmm dont know where you heard this but not accurate. I've never heard of dropping the cpu speed. If you put 3.1 roms you will be fine. If you have the rare softkik amiga roms (1.4) you Can boot 3.1 from it. I had a desktop 3000 that was setup like this.
Title: Re: Recommend an Amiga
Post by: ChaosLord on February 14, 2013, 04:22:41 AM: Quote from: bjjones37;725545
There is a Kickstart file in the Devs directory on the WB2.x volume. Is this a correct configuration? If I press both mouse buttons it gives me a menu to load either kickstart 2.04 or 1.4. When I try to install Workbench 3.1, it fails with an error that I need kickstart 3.0.

You have the kewl version of the A3000! The A3000 with kickstart as a file on the HD. A super user-friendly machine by Commodore Business Machines!

I totally forgot about that menu!

I haven't used my A3000 regularly since around 1994. AGA had taken over everything by then.

The way I switch my kickstarts around is I have all 3 of them in that DEVS: directory named appropriately and then just copy whichever one I want into the default name. I can't remember the default name ottomh. I guess "Kickstart". I have a Kickstart 1.3, 2.04, and 3.1 (and maybe others I can't remember).

Quote

I read that there are problems with the ROM version of Kickstart 3.1 on the Amiga 3000. For instance, I would need to drop my cpu speed from 25MHz to 16MHz. Is there a way to install WB31 on this system or should I stay with WB21?

100% total complete nonsense!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Use Kickstart 3.1 on my A3000 for countless years! It is the best kickstart and it works on all Amigas!

Whoever had a problem either was using a corrupt kickstart or they were using the wrong kickstart for their machine. You can't just copy over an A500 3.1 kickstart or an A4000 3.1 kickstart. Each model of Amiga has its own kickstart if u want everything to work 100% correctly.

All my Amigas operate at 25 Mhz and ONLY 25 Mhz. Some guys tried to sell me one of those lame-O 16 Mhz models and I refused.

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I did succeed in transferring the OS to a larger hard disk. I set the drive up as two 512M partitions. Should I isolate the OS in a small partition of it's own? I do not mind repartitioning to get it right. It is a little tricky as I cannot boot off a floppy at all.

Partitioning your drives is up to you. If u start a new thread about it I am sure a lot of ppl will give you their opinions.

It partly depends on what kind of person you are and how you intend to use the machine.

Rather than worry about the partitioning I think you should focus on getting a 3.1 kickstart that works (if you don't already have one). You probably have one in your devs: Or use the search function to scan your whole hard drive. Whoever had the puter b4 u might have had it in a weird place.