Hey there, from Sheffield, UK

[Oli_hd]

Hi,

Was just wondering how easy it is to get an Amiga on the net..We have both Ethernet and wireless in the house..

Well dial-up internet is easy, Ethernet is a bit harder as the Amiga doesnt do DHCP so you have to manually give the Amiga an address, tell it the naming server etc, but we can help you with that if you have trouble. OS3.9 comes with Genesis which is what I use on my miggy to connect and its great.

Hardware wise, well you say your A1200 is towered, does it have Zorro or PCI slots? PCI is easy (Specially with the Mediator PCI bus boards), Zorro is costly but easy.

If you have a bare motherboard with CPU card then PCMCIA is your only option, Amigakit sell wireless cards and you can get wired cards easy enough, all those cards must be PCMCIA (Not cardbus, which lots of ones advertised as PCMCIA actually are) If you go for wifi there are drives for wifi cards but I would say go for the Amikit package as it comes with software to make setting up easier.

But what OS can be run on an A1200/065 with 64mb of ram?

You could run 3.9 (as you are lacking a PPC) and it will run nice and fast on an 060 with 64meg of ram.

Btw before any ask's the i upgraded the Accelerators crystal ages ago to 65mhz. It actually did improve benchmarks..

Then you should put what CPU it is, when people put /060 its not running at 60Mhz its a 68060 CPU. If you are running a 68040 at 65Mhz then thats going to be slower than an 060 at 50Mhz but will still run OS3.9 dead fast

[Oli_hd]

But what wifi cards work?

The Amiga supports (with extra software) any card using the Prism2 chipset, the software for the card is available here

Firstly look at the cards and any with a gold strip on the end wont work (They are cardbus) then you should search the net to see what chipset the remaining cards you have use. (I think there is a list somewhere of what cards use the prism2 chipset but I cant find it at the moment)

At the moment i think it's running WB 3.1 with lots of little hacks ect..    Can they handle the net ok?

3.1 does not come with any internet software so you can either download demo programs from aminet.net or buy OS3.9 (Make sure you have kickstart 3.1 and not 3.0 installed as 3.9 needs kickstart 3.1) as that comes with the net software.
If you are happy with demo's Miami will get you on the net and Aweb is a free internet browser. YAM is a great free e-mail program and there are a few IRC and other chat programs to pick.

i have a couple of old mac's and they struggle on java..How does the Amiga fare?

The Amiga can not do Java (even OS4.0) and cant do flash (below 4.0, but even 4.0 isnt as smooth as on any other platform) and struggles with javascript (throws up errors), The browsers cant do CSS either so sites may look a little different. Also install AmiSSL for secure web surfing on HTTPS: sites.

Basically the Amiga doesnt do websites well, e-mail and IRC its happy with though.

[Oli_hd]

Nice setup, the scan doubler makes using the miggy so much easier.

The one thing thats been putting me off using the Amiga is how bulky it is..It weighs a ton in that full tower lol

The one thing I would say is you are going to need a CD-Rom drive, adding one to a wedge Amiga is a pain in the arse where as with a tower and the IDEfix97 its a piece of cake.
And a CD-Rom is a must have Im afraid.
(OS3.9 comes on CD for example, as does 3.5)

It all depends on how good a tower case you have is, if the motherboard is held in place with plastic ties then yeah its time for a new case and you can get external CD-Roms for the miggy, its just not cheap. (SCSI card + SCSI CD-Rom)

Soo have there been any good programs/games come out in the last few years while i've been away? I saw heratic in an Amiga Active mag and Freespace..but they need PPC i think.

Ok, if you are late enough to remember Freespace then no, no games have come out full stop. It sucks but anyone who can code have been put to use doing drivers/video players/internet programs and there just havent been any good games.

One thing you have to try though is some of the demoscene stuff, you missed The Black Lotus do an amazing demo that would run great on your machine. go here and download TBL's Starstruck.
As for games there is Quake 2 but it would hurt like hell to play it on a none PPC miggy (I do think there is a 68060 binary but it needs a 3D card to even get 10fps)

Back when i was using my system, 2.5" drives wheren't really afforable in the 1+ gig range.

Hehe, dont sound so old! I remember wanting the CDTV harddrive, that was 60meg and cost more than the CDTV did!

[Oli_hd]

Oops i forget to add that to the list..The Mig does have a x16 LG CDRom drive

Ahh thats ok then

My last Amiga news was from the Amiga Active magazines..not sure if they are still going..

No, they turned into a mobile phone magazine and were shocked and angered when everyone pulled their subscriptions. (I did and they tried to explain that its still an Amiga mag cause it covers DE, lol)
After that Total Amiga picked up (It was Clubbed, a news letter for the SEAL user group) and became a great great magazine but then closed when members needed some time. Subscriptions from that were transfered to the new English Amiga Future which is still going strong.

All i remember is that Amiga had been bought off Gateway and there was hopes for a future..As it had been bought buy people interested in developing a computer platform.

Yeah, the MMC, that was a sweet time to be an Amiga user but when they dropped that a crash started that hasnt really stopped yet.

As for the external CDRom drive..you dont need to go SCSI to do that..A friend of my dads, who worked for Commodore came up with a clever idea around that.

Yeah, as you say though, an external PSU is needed, the CD-Rom isnt in a case so looks funny and you have an IDE ribbon leading out the back, that is like towing a caravan using a load of string, ick.

And yeah EIDE97 made the IDE switching thing out of date but mehh SCSI is a cooler interface anyway, you can connect scanners to it. ;-)

I've not talked Amiga in AGEEES!!

Remember a.org runs an IRC chat room where we all hang out, you can chat for as long as you want on it.
(eu.synirc.net #amiga.org)