Personal Amiga renaissance - should I buy an Amiga 1500?

[zylesea]

Hi:

This is my first post on this site. I am an avid Amiga fan having owned an A500, A600 and A1200 whilst growing up in the 90s.

I am looking at getting an A1500 to re-live my computing youth and there appears to be a good offer on one at the moment - system, monitor and tonnes of software for £100.

My idea is that I will buy this, junk/sell on the original monitor and connect it to my flat screen with an adaptor.

My questions relate to the technical limitations of the A1500 - I know it is an old machine yet that it was marketed as a business machine also, thus whilst it will not run AGA games, is it feasible that I could update the kickstart rom, install a HD, possibly even a CD drive, more RAM etc piece-meal or not really?

Can these be networked via a suitable ethenet adaptor for the internet?

Yes I know that I should buy an A4000 but I cannot justify the expense for something that is basically going to be a toy.

100GBP for the lot seems to be a fair price, but you should consider whether your main interest is the computer itself or the old games. For the latter I think (Win)UAE is the way more convenient solution - you can play virtually everything more or less everywhere.
But if you mainly like to tinker around with the old gear I'd say go for it.

[zylesea]

Hi:

Could someone paraphrase the recent Amiga developments for me please? I am still going to get the 1500 but am I right in suggesting that any new Amiga is a machine that effectively emulates an Amiga like how you can run windows on Macs now?

Thanks

Graham

- UAE: software emulator for Commodore 68k Amiga (runs virtually everywhere and everything) (free, but you need ROM files)

- AROS: x86 (and 68k, ARM, ppc) operating system featuring a reimplemenation and extension to the Commodore AmigaOS API. Not binary compatible to 68k applications itself, but comes with a tight UAE intergartion (free)

- MorphOS: ppc operating system featuring a reimplemenation and extension to the Commodore AmigaOS API. Binary compatible to 68k Amiga applications (as long as they don't hit the custom chips). Improved in many ways over Commodre Amiga OS 3.x Runs on many G4 Macs and some other ppc boards. Demo is free, registration is 111 EUR.

- OS4 by Hyperion: ppc operating system featuring a reimplemenation/recompilation and extension to the Commodore AmigaOS API. Binary compatible to 68k Amiga applications (as long as they don't hit the custom chips). Requires custom hardware. No demo available, costs about 150 EUR.

Edit: forgot the fpga solutions, see next post for that.