What is the best Amiga in your Opinion?

[Digiman]

Amiga 1000, the only Amiga that was the best desktop computer, AND best looking, in the world on the day it was launched. Downhill all the way from A500 really.

A1200 once reduced to £299 was a good machine too, not at £399 without SIMM slots for fast ram though. 2.5" IDE was a classic cockup.

Rest were either ugly, overpriced, cheaply made or had zero improvements over A1000 OCS worth nothing.

The A4000/030 was a special dead turkey, all people wanted was a 28mhz 020 (same speed) with 2+2 memory in an Amiga 1000/3000 style slim case (for use of cheap 3.5 IDE drives) which Commodore could have produced for half the cost of A4000/030. Commodore gave us a 486 priced Amiga with 286 performance....nice!

A4000/040 was at least justifiable in 1991 on spec/price. Not in 92-94 though.

[Digiman]

I could not disagree more.  The Amiga 1000 looked very nice but was limited compared to the Amiga 3000 and 4000.

-No expansion slots/Zorro III
-Only 256k for Kickstart
-No CPU slot
-OCS only
-Side expansion was cumbersome
-No RTC

I could go on...

"Best Desktop"??  Not likely...

-P

It had an expansion slot.  On the side.  It wasn't Zorro III, but it was many many years before Zorro III.  That's like complaining that it didn't have PCI or AGP.  ;-)

You could softkick higher if you had extra RAM.

But there were CPU accelerators that attached to the CPU and/or side expansion.

No ECS is not really a big deal.  Not many people actually used those modes.
I do agree that the big drawback was that it was stuck with 512M CHIP, which is a problem..  Only solution I'm aware of to that is a motherboard replacement, and those are hard to come by...

That's a matter of opinion.  I like side expansions myself.. ;-)

That's silly.  Adding a RTC is easy.  Lots of expansions came with one.

And considering the jump in technology, the 1000 was a HUGE jump.  Most of the other Amigas were littler jumps, and it took way to long to get there..

For it's time, I still say the A1000 was the best.
For today, I'd have to say the A1200.  Cost, expansion, features...

The 3000 was great looking and had the built in flicker fixer.  Nice.  But no improved graphics.  (ECS doesn't count)
The 4000 had AGA and lots of slots, but lost the Flicker Fixer.

Nice machines, but no Amiga 1000..  ;-)

desiv

Desiv you pretty much covered all I would say.

The A1000 doesn't have the ability for 1mb or 2mb chipram no, but you can still put in an ECS Denise if you like. The side slot is called Zorro 1 and a small side expansion for 4/8mb RAM expansions is not exactly going to use up more deskspace than an A500 with 1084 still.

Anyway it is all opinion but for me seeing as even the A500 plus and A600 didn't improve the number of sound channels or the number of colours on screen in lo-res and lo-res lace it makes no difference. Hence I put A1000 first (does everything an A2000/500 does technically including half-brite and you could add hard drives, SCSI CDROM, 32bit fast RAM with upto 030 accelerators. even had it's own XT bridgeboard style expansion) for 1985 it was AWESOME IMO

And then A1200 mentioned as that was a good deal for £299 after initial launch price discounting kicked in by the following spring, to play Super Stardust on PC you needed a Pentium 100/120mhz vs plain vanilla A1200 @ 14mhz

edit: there was an internal 24bit video adaptor, from Germany I think, that plugged into Denise for A500 and that also worked in A1000 so you could even have 24bit graphics even if you discount the DCTV (which you shouldn't). Not saying these parts are easy to find today but then nor is an A2000 with massive upgrade spec easy to find for a price sane people are willing to pay so who cares

[Digiman]

Hi have any of you noticed that Commodore 128D looks a lot like Amiga 1000. i have a 128D but no Amiga 1000 :-( but from the pictures i have seen they look a lot like each other

The Commodore 128D (not metal cased model of course, just the plastic one) and the Commodore PC-1 look identical except for the keyboard. It's only an 8086 based PC but hell it's a lot more elegant than those IBM breeze blocks

The colour is different too I find. I have a brand new (was sealed when purchased) port cover for A1000 side expansion Zorro slot and it's is more white than the 64C or 128/128D plastics to me.  

Going back to 1985 A1000 vs 1987 A500/A2000 all are limited to 512kb chipram and 8mb fast ram AFAIK. The main difference with Amiga 500 is you didn't need to use the side expansion for a 512 chip + 512 fast ram using the trapdoor ram adaptors but on the A1000 512kb all chipram is max memory without Zorro 1 side expansion/internal acceleration. That's about it really in general, don't get me wrong I liked my A2000 too but the cool stuff like VLAB Y/C came out over half a decade later. Excellent keyboards on A2000s as well. They are damned noisy and don't fancy getting a hernia every time I need to switch an A500 on and off (even Atari STs had on/off switch on unit not PSU and C64 and Vic 20....)

In fact I am going to be selling two A2000 keyboards on pissbay soon, not like I will stumble on just a working motherboard cheaper than a complete yellowed A2000 anyway

The A4000's HD floppy drive did come in really handy in the 90s with cross-dos though, and you only get that on the A4000. The A1200 really could have done with that drive for a few pence more than the 880kb thing. Super SF2 comes on 8 floppies and needs constant swapping, it's a nightmare!!