Advice for a newbie?

[sammyfox]

(I'm not sure if this is the right place to post it so if it's not then sorry!)

Hi there, my name's Sammy and I'm one of those dreaded french Canadians (although as you can note, my English is nothing to sneeze at)

I've been wanting to get an Amiga 1200 for so many years, and now that I finally have a job (video game tester, I get minimum wage but that's still three times better than welfare), I can afford to get one.

The thing though, is how much should I be expected to pay for an amiga 1200?

Basically, This is my current roadmap for now:

- Get an amiga 1200;
- yay.

I figure I should get one of those usb floppy disk emulators things I see on ebay too so I don't have to bonk my head against a wall. I know that it's the 500 model people get for all the games you can play on it but for some reason I don't really know how to explain I'm more attracted to the 1200, especially for the expansion boards you can throw into it.

Ultimately, this is gonna sound dumb but I'd like to be able to connect to the internet, and play quake on the one I'd get so...

What other things should I look for? and how much would I be realistically expected to pay for them?

I'm kinda giving up on ebay for this because everybody sells even crap stuff (think the worst of apple's 90s computers) at a premium, and since I'm Canadian, and from Quebec of all places, I doubt I'd be able to find one of these in a yard sale so where else could I look?

[sammyfox]

Hey welcome!

You could try the Amibay web site - you may find something there. Lots of buying and selling by Amigans. You will likely find something if you are patient for less than the crazy ebatty prices.

http://www.amibay.com/content.php


Cheers!
Greg
(another crazy Canadian on the left coast)

That sounds neat owo thanks!

[sammyfox]

PS - you're going to be spending a lot of money on hardware if you want to be able to play Quake, even at minimum settings. While I would never want to discourage anyone from pushing old hardware to its limits, if you just want to play Quake, specifically, use an emulator (WinUAE, etc.).

Oh y'know, emulators are nice but I wanna have a feel of the real thing :3 but I don't just wanna play quake. I'm sure there's a lot of other things I could run on a souped up 1200. Hell, I even heard of a port of firefox to amiga os and that's pretty sweet for something this old (I'm running tenfourfox on my old 2004 ibook g4 and that's pretty neat too)

As for modern screens, I was thinking of looking around for an amiga monitor, unless they're not worth the price?

[sammyfox]

Timberwolf.  No longer being developed.  Again, you're going to have  to spend a heck of a lot of money to run that on a classic system:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timberwolf_(web_browser)

This is a debatable topic, again just IMHO Chris's version of NetSurf is the most advanced browser for classic systems, but it's slooow and needs a lot of memory.  Ibrowse is probably the best balance of speed & compatibility (I use that term "compatibility" pretty loosely, as you're not going to be updating your Facebook from it, or anything like that).  I've found it's mostly good for reading news sites and downloading from Aminet.  It hasn't been updated in over 10 years but occasionally a whisper comes up about some kind of update for it.



Not to me, but some people swear by 'em, especially for retro gaming.  I guess if you like using a flickery 13" screen and pretending like it's 1992 all over again, have at it.  LOL.  But if you want to run modern applications at high resolutions, they're not going to cut the mustard.  

You might want to think about this plan a bit and try to figure out which way you want to go.  Do you want a stock or mildly expanded system, with an old school monitor for retro gaming, or do you want a "pimped out" system capable of playing Quake, Timberwolf, etc.?

Also, what's your budget?  Not trying to pick on you but you mention "minimum wage" and "barely being above welfare"... a high-end classic Amiga system can easily run $1,000+, depending on the parts you chose for it.  Maybe an A500 or A600 would be cheaper for you, and with those you'll have the option of using one of the new Vampire accelerators, which give improved graphics and speeds exceeding even the 68060.  No idea when (or if) the Vampire 1200 will ever come out.

Quite frankly I'm certainly not gonna be going around on twitter or anything with that, just like with tenfourfox on my ibook, but it's still an option and that's fine by me.

There are high-resolution programs for amiga computers? I don't really mind CRT screens. I was pretty much born around them (1988).

Minimum wage over here is 10.75$ per hour. I work five days a week full-time so that's 40 hours. after the taxes and such are taken I have around 730 dollars left, so about 1460 dollars per month and I only pay 520 dollars for my rent (1 room appartment, electricity, heating and hot water paid for) and after food and such, I got about... 600 dollars left for miscelleanous stuff? mind you, that's 600 canadian dollars so... about 450usd, or 369gbp, or 412 euros. That's why I'm looking for a regular, unmodified unit first since that way I'll be able to do my own little mods piece by piece while keeping things affordable.

I don't know if that makes sense to any of you but I'm fine with that plan

[sammyfox]

OR, if you are using a PC anyway, play the PC version of Quake, which is going to work better anyway.

It was an exemple but since we're sticking on it, I like the thrill of getting something this resource-intensive running on older hardware. Sure I can play it on the pc and god knows I have (I even have it on steam) but where's the challenge in that?

[sammyfox]

$520 Canadian dollars for rent?
Oh hell, time to move north.
Minimum wage in Canada, with health care, doesn't sound so bad.
BTW - The iBook will run MorphOS.

Perhaps, but just like how I can get a snes emulator and all the roms I could possibly want online, I'd still rather have the real thing.

I've tried winuae, I've tried aros, they're fun but I feel something's missing just like I tried zsnes, I tried bsnes and snes9x but it just doesn't compare to having the actual console and cartridges and holding that venerable gamepad in your hands while playing, say, mortal kombat 2 on an old television via RF.

Had I been satisfied with either aros or winuae, I wouldn't be looking for an amiga 1200. I wouldn't be willing to put forth what is gonna be a relative ton of money in the long run for such an old computer.

[sammyfox]

To heck with that. Find out how much dovegrace wants. When it comes to buying Amiga hardware, I've always gotten my best deals by talking directly with the owner.

I did :3 and if his machine still works (he told me in pm he'd test it first), I'll definitely buy it <3

[sammyfox]

He'll even send pictures once he's done cleaning it

Full disclosure, though: the A1200 I'm offering has not been recapped.  While the system runs like a top and looks pristine on the inside, it's also over 20 years old and it's only a matter of time until the capacitors go.

I haven't used his services (yet), but I hear Acill does great work in this area.  You may want to take that into consideration.

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?

[sammyfox]

Just curious but are PowerUP accelerator boards any good?

[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?

[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?

[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