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[sweetface]

Het there

When I was very young I had a Commodore Vic 20(still have it in the attic), then I had a Commodore 64(the bulky one), then my dad traded it in for an Amiga 500+. After that we traded that in for an Amiga 1200+. I now have two Amiga 1200s and I want to get one up and running properly eventually. The last one I bought on eBAY was upgraded to ?GB can't remember how much and it came with and a cd rom drive, but with no cable.

Loads of games and I'm letting the kids get playing with it now.

It's good to be back - Amigas are the best.

Crystal. :-)  :-?  :lol:

[sweetface]

Hi and thanks. I do have a lot of questions. hmmm where shall I start? :lol:

[sweetface]

How do I check what the exact spec of my Amiga 1200 is?
Basic stuff like what OS, Workbench.... how much RAM, what size HDD?

I bought it on EBay 2 years ago and the kids have been playing games on it. I'd like to upgrade it a little but I need to start from the top (if you know what I mean). :lol:

[sweetface]

I had a look at the machine. First of all when it starts up I get a message saying

driver 3.2 "I can't find 4xEIDE Buffered Interface"
I click 'ok' twice and then everything gets back to normal.

ShowConfig gave me this information:

Processor: CPU 68020
Custom Chips: AA PAL Alice (id=$0023), AA Lisa (id=$00F8)
Vers: Kickstart version 39.106, Exec version 39.47, Disk version 40.42
RAM: Node type $A, Attributes $703 (chip), at $400 - $1FFFFF (~2.0meg)
Boards: None

At the top of the workbench screen: 1,521,272 graphics mem 0 other mem.

I delved into the drawers I could find and the Hard Drive says SCSI Toshiba MK1403MAV D3.0

Monitors drawer has in it icons for A2024, DblNISC, DblPal, Euro36, Euro 72, Multiscan, NTSC, Super72, VGA Only.

It seems the HDD is spilt into two:
1. 44% full 97M free 77M in use
2. 1% full, 1,189M free, 11M in use

There are some programs already on the drive but I'm not sure what they do:

Spectrum Emulator v2.0
XCopyPro
MagicWB v2.0
CygnusEd Professional v3.5
MountPC Ed 2.00
SpeedTester
MUI - Magic User Interface version 3.8
and Theme Park (although I couldn't get this to work)but I have my own disks for that game :-)

Is this a good setup? Could someone tell me how much MB the Hard drive has, and actually how much graphics memory as the long numbers confuse me a little. And also what the different progrmas are for.

Thanks

[sweetface]

Thanks Technoid.
Ideally I'd like to be able to put some games and programs I already have onto the HDD. I'm not sure how to do this yet, and I'm thinking I'm gonna need a bigger HDD for that.

If there are any useful programs (there are a few more) on the HDD already is there a way I can save these before I format it?

Another question, it came with a CD-ROM Drive but without a cable. What cable should I get for it? I thought a SCSI Squirrel might do the trick, but as I'm not sure if this is the only option I haven't bought anything yet. Also, would I need extra software to play CD32 games on it?

[sweetface]

By bog standard ide cd drive, do you mean it's the exact same drives as pc ones? I may have a spare cddrive at my parents house if this one doesn't work. How do I test it?

I've seen a compact flash converter that plugs straight into the side but if I use that where would I plug the cd drive?

[sweetface]

I seem to have found a program installed called MountPC. It looks like if I get the right cable I can connect it to my PC. I have AIAB on my PC too. Is this what MountPC program is for?

[sweetface]

Thanks for your patience in explaining all this to me :crazy:  I've got an idea of what I want to do. I would prefer it to be IDE (less complicated) as you said.

When I open up the unit to check whats there, will I know if the HDD is SCSI in the same way like the cd drive?

I don't mind the CD drive being external, so would I be able to connect an external IDE cd drive like that?

I do want to get an accelerator (nothing too drastic) and more RAM but the thing is to find hardware upgrades that work with each other as I don't have much clue about compatabilty yet, but I'm starting to get the jist. :idea:

Actually ,my dad has a brand new IDE cd drive sitting waiting to be installed in his PC for nearly a year - I might nick for my own needs, he may not even realise it's gone :ponder:

When I look inside the unit and check out the cd drive, I'll get back on here. Any more ideas appreciated!

[sweetface]

I haven't had a chance to open the machine up just yet. At the moment I'm using an almost dead commodore 1084 monitor, but I've been doing some searching on net regarding lcd tv with rgb scart socket/amiga scart cable.
I'll have to take a chance as to whether that will work cos hubby won't let me bring the Amiga home from my parents house with the old monitor :madashell: I'm based in london uk so yeah it's PAL. I don't really want to shell out for scandoubler cos I can use that money for other important upgrades :-)

[sweetface]

The thing with my old monitor is that the picture squishes into itself, so you can't see the display and will 'sometimes' get back to normal after pressing the power button on the front on/off 100 times. It's been doing this for years but turning knobs doesn't help. When I bring the unit home from my parents house(without the monitor), I'll probably hook it up to our big LCD in the living room temporarily. It has two RGB enabled Scart sockets, so shouldn't be a hassle.

[sweetface]

amiga_3k wrote:
Mostly internal Amiga A1200 harddrives are IDE versions. For SCSI a controller is needed, but that one should also show-up in your ShowConfig result, and it didn't.

I haven't had a chance to open the 1200 yet. ShowConfig did say that the HDD was SCSI. But I looked up that spec HDD Toshiba MK1403MAV and they are all IDE 2.5" laptop ones so the Amiga is confused. Can anyone shed any light on that?

[sweetface]

Thanks. I'll never have to worry about that again then :-)