New amigan

[SamuraiCrow]

A 1080 monitor will do just fine.  Most software runs in the PAL scan rate used in European televisions so a VGA monitor won't help you much unless you get an expensive scan-doubler.

In order to program an Amiga in C you'll need the Amiga Developer CD if you can find one.  Version 2.1 is the latest for the classic Amigas.  Beyond that I'd reccommend downloading VBCC as your compiler since it has fewer bugs than Storm C++ version 3 that comes on the Developer CD.

Once you get your A1200, the first upgrade you'll want will be some sort of accelerator card since there is no RAM expansion sockets on the motherboard.  If you can find a Blizzard 1230 that will do well.  Put about 16+ megabytes of memory on it and you will do well.

Welcome to Amiga.org!

[SamuraiCrow]

Great catch!  Just be sure you take the case off of the computer and blow an electric fan on the Video Toaster 4000 card while running it.  The fan in the A4000 desktop's power supply is quite weak.

[SamuraiCrow]

Don't plug a serial device into the mouse ports of an Amiga.  Amiga mouse ports are a derivative of the old Atari 2600-style game ports and are a totally different pinout and you could fry your complex interface adapter chip that way.

There is a serial mouse driver on the Aminet that may work with a serial mouse compatible tablet (plugged into the 18-pin serial port presumably with a 9-pin adapter).

Also, you might have to remove the Video Toaster 4000 card to install a graphics card into the A4000 depending on what graphics card you get.  A Video Toaster 4000 is a desktop video editing package which was used for a long time in television studios across the country.  You may even have the Video Toaster software installed on the hard drive.