Hi from the biggest Newbie ever

[amigakit]

Welcome!

[amigakit]

If you are in need of hard disk, we have pre-formatted Amiga hard drives

A good way of transporting data between your Amiga and a PC is a PCMCIA Compact Flash adapter or even a network card with EasyNet for the A1200!

[amigakit]

May be worth opening the amiga mouse and checking the two mouse button contacts, they may be worn out though.  

[amigakit]

The PS/2 adapter is made by Elbox and is called the Cocolino. Its a good way of using your favorite PS/2 mouse with the A1200.  Also supports scroll wheel as opposed to the official Amiga mouse that is two-button (no scrollwheel)

[amigakit]

The Cocolino is something you only have to invest in once though as opposed to mouse has a shorter life span.

You can tell what Kickstart ROMs you have by looking at the disk animation when you switch on the Amiga.  It should say something like Kickstart 3.0

The latest ROMs are Kickstart 3.1 - useful if you want to use bigger than 4GB hard disks or want to upgrade to AmigaOS 3.5 or 3.9

[amigakit]

Does it go into NTSC mode (about a 7% smaller screen) than PAL

You can test this: hold down both mouse buttons while resetting to go into the Early StartUp Menu - you can toggle between NTSC and PAL by hitting the Space bar. Watch how the screen is affected by the different modes  

[amigakit]

Only games that support the lowlevel.library can be used with a USB mouse (basically modern games)

USB on the Amiga is very useful (USB printers, Flash Drives, USB hard disks and scanners).  The Subway USB controller is probably the best way to add USB to your machine.