Hi from the biggest Newbie ever

[carls]

CrossDOS is an integrated part of AmigaOS/Workbench 3.0. Your A1200 should have OS 3.1 or 3.0 so you're safe.

If the Amiga you bought came with manuals, check for the manual covering "Workbench". I know it's boring to read manuals but if you've never used an Amiga before, this is actually a good start. Among other things, it tells you how to use CrossDOS.

Regarding the hard drive, the A1200 has an internal 2.5" IDE connector so if you can get your hands on an 2.5" drive (normally these are used in laptops) this would be a good start. It really doesn't need to be bigger than a couple of gigabytes so if you're lucky you can get an old PC laptop really cheap and just use that hard drive.

If the hard drive is bigger than 4GB you will have to use some third-party software to utilize the extra space unless you just decide to keep the total size of all the partitions below 4GB.

You can also use 3.5" IDE hard drives but then you need to do some (pretty simple) hardware modifications.

You can also pick up a few pointers here:
http://wonkity.com/~wblock/a1200/a1200.html

[carls]

If you get a 2.5" (laptop) drive it should fit perfectly. I've actually never bought an A1200 without a hard drive so I don't know if the cradle was shipped with non-HD models as well. Just open the computer and check for it, it should be located to the upper left of the MoBo, partly covered by the keyboard.

[carls]

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

This is pure genious.

[carls]

kiniki wrote:
Superb. This is going to be great.

Managed to get Wing Commander and Elite 2 running last night.

So excited being at the beginning of a new (yet old) adventure.

Some older games may not work so well on the A1200 but you can make most of them work by using the Early Startup Control.
By pressing both mouse buttons while booting the computer you should be presented with this screen:
http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/images/wb_30_1.gif

In Boot Options, you can then disable the CPU Caches (this slows down the computer somewhat to make older games run at a better speed):
http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/images/wb_30_2.gif

In Display Options you can turn off AGA by selecting "Original" (A500) or "Enhanced" (A500+/600/3000) graphics:
http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/images/wb_30_3.gif

These settings will be restored to normal the next time you reboot your computer.

[carls]

kiniki wrote:
Is it a case of unscrewing it to get at all the insides? Or is there something that pops open.

I had a look at it last night an opened a door at the bottom, but it revealed an empty space

To fit a hard drive you have to unscrew the case. The little trapdoor on the bottom of the case is for fitting accelerator cards or memory expansions.

Actually, I'd strongly recommend you to get at least a memory expansion because just adding some extra memory (fastmem) makes the computer about two times as fast and you'll have more sound and graphics memory (chipmem) available.

[carls]

kiniki wrote:
I will have to look for one on ebay I guess... or Amigakit!  ;-)

I ran Lemmings last night and it said something about "Using expansion" just before the game went to the menu screen.

Any idea what this could be?

Lemmings is a rather old game, from the A500 time. The A500 came with 0.5 megabytes of memory but most people expanded it to a full 1MB. Since your A1200 has 2MB of memory Lemmings just thinks it's a memory expansion and lets you know that it's making use of that whopping extra 0.5MB!

[carls]

kiniki:
I hadn't hard of AmigaKit.com until I saw it in this thread, but you can probably buy a new mouse from there. Another option might be to get a PS/2 adapter which lets you use cheap PC mice on the Amiga.

Regarding expansions which makes the computer go faster, I'd recommend you to try to get ahold of a Blizzard accellerator. If you'd like to surf the web, fool around with image processing and even play MP3 music or emulate a classic Macintosh I'd recommend you to get an accellerator with either an 040 or 060 CPU. The 060 CPU is the fastest processor available for "classic" Amigas and a Blizzard 1260 card will fit in your A1200 without any modifications. With an 060 CPU you'll even be able to play MP3 music on your Amiga.

Until then, I'd recommend you to get a copy of Personal Paint (from Aminet), or even better Deluxe Paint AGA if you can find it. They are both classic graphics programs of the kind that were used to create graphics for all the old Amiga games. They're very fun to play around with.

[carls]

kiniki wrote:
To be honest, I want to upgrade as much as I can without having to make case modifications or move it to a tower.

I want to keep it looking normal.  :-)

In that case a 2.5" hard drive is almost a must, and as was said earlier go for the affordable Blizzard 1230 accellerator if you don't need the power offered by a 1260. Apparently AmigaKit has a Blizzard 1230s as well, complete with memory fitted.

If you get an accellerator, make sure it has memory fitted or that you can get a 72-pin EDO SIMM (memory module) for it. Without the extra memory an accellerator is pretty useless.