Amiga 2000 3000 or 4000

[dougal]

As VingtTrois says, the A500, A500+, A600 and A2000 are all 68000 machines in standard form and are for most of the time almost 100% compatible.

A slight exception is the A500+ and the A600 which both have Kickstart 2.0 as standard and about 85% of games are compatible. But it can take 2 roms (using a switcher) or use Relokick and becomes 100% compatible.

The A3000 is 68030 and kickstart 2.0, so it may not be as compatible as the other models.

The A1200 and A4000 are AGA as VingtTrois said and Kickstart 3.X, so they are even less compatible than the older Amiga's. The A4000 for some reason is even less compatible for games than the A1200. Again Relokick helps in both these machines.

If you want a "big box" Amiga like the A4000, you can always install WHDLoad which installs almost any Amiga games to your HD and patches them for compatibility with newer faster Amiga's.

[dougal]

The A4000 and 1200 will play almost all the games.  1200 and 4000 use th AGA chipset, but some of the older games such as shadow of the beast will only play on an a500, 2000 or 2500 because they require the OCS (original chipset) and AGA will start the game but it will freeze shortly after start up.  A few games I know will not work on and AGA(A4000 or 1200) or ECS (A3000) is Shadow of the beast and Defender of the crown.  If you have an A500 and A4000 to say you will be pretty much covered.  Also to note Amiga CD32 games will work on an Amiga computer, but requires the AGA chipset.

All these games and practically any game WILL WORK on the A4000/A1200 if you have WHDLoad installed. An A1200 is pretty cheap to buy and all you really need is a cheap 2.5" laptop hard drive and maybe a 68030 accelerator.

You don't need an A4000 unless you want to use RTG graphics etc..

[dougal]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for all the information you've given me!

Only two games that don't seem to work on the A4000. That ain't too big of a deal.

But as Dougal stated :
The A1200 and A4000 are AGA as VingtTrois said and Kickstart 3.X, so  they are even less compatible than the older Amiga's. The A4000 for some  reason is even less compatible for games than the A1200. Again Relokick  helps in both these machines.

If you want a "big box" Amiga like the A4000, you can always install  WHDLoad which installs almost any Amiga games to your HD and patches  them for compatibility with newer faster Amiga's.    

That contradicts what amigakid stated.
Me confused now.

I did gather that using WDload solves most of these issues.

All i can say is that i have never encountered any problems with games not being compatible once i have installed them using WHDLoad on my A4000T. The only thing i can recall not running was the Jesus on E's demo on it. Same with the A1200 (Though Jesus on E's worked fine on that).

I have loads of old 1987-1995 games installed and they all run with no problems using WHDLoad. You will want to register WHDLoad or else besides the nag you will encounter some games that dont run on an unregistered version of it.

Having said that, loading games from floppy (like you would on a stock A500) is a totally different story with the A4000 having quite a lot of compatibility problems, even more than an A1200. But WHDload solves all that.

Another thing to note is that WHDLoad may have some problems when being used on a non accelerated A500/A600/A2000/A1000 as quite a few installs require a 68020 processor and/or 2MB chip ram.

So i can conclude that if you intend to use an Amiga just for running games from floppy disk and not HD then an A500 is your best option followed by the A600 and A1200 in that order.

If you want to use WHDLoad for installing games and running them of HD then you want minimum an A1200 with a hard drive. An accelerator and some extra ram will be nice. Or you can opt for an A4000. Both have AGA which means modern games will run.

Another option for WHDLoad would be an accelerated A500/+ or A600, but accelerators for those machines are pretty rare and expensive especially for the A600 and you still won't have AGA which means no compatibility for newer AGA games. Same goes for the A3000 which is powerful enough but no AGA.

[dougal]

@CoreAmigaFan

My advice is to get an A1200 or A4000.  But whichever you get, get 32MB or 64MB or 128MB ram for it.

I personally own an A3000 and an A1200 and I gave away my A4000.  My A1200+FlickerFixer is waaaay better than my A3000.

Agreed! An A1200 (Cheap) + HD or IDE2CF (Cheap) + Extra Ram and/or Accelerator (Reasonable price) = An excellent WHDLoad machine.

A flickerfixer/Scan doubler will be nice but not necessary