Planning new A1200 purchase, any must have upgrades?

[pkupcik]

Hi,

I'm going to be buying A1200 primarily to use for games. Are there any  must have, or recommended upgrades that I should consider. I already  settled on the Indivision AGA scan doubler, but have not yet decided on  anything else. Please provide your opinion on what do you think makes  sense for gaming, possibly to support decent performance in workbench  when using high resolutions and the Indivision AGA scan doubler.

Here are some of the items I can think of, but am not really sure and  would appreciate your opinion, advice. Whatever upgrade I do I want to  make sure that games still play correctly and I don't have any ugly  components hanging out the back of the Amiga.

CPU Upgrade - is this easy, how would I benefit from it.
GPU Upgrade - is it possible, easy, what is it good for.
Memory Upgrade - why, how much more memory
Flash Storage - This one is probably a must have. What's the recommended  solution here that's user friendly and makes it easy to load games,  applications from PC onto Flash and easily load the games into the  memory. I'm not interested in HDD solutions.

Anything else I'm missing. The only reason I would upgrade to anything  is, because it can offer some tangible speed, feature benefits, or  simply because it's cheap enough to do and I better do it now than in  the future when parts may no longer be available. I'm hoping not to  spend more than $500 for upgrades.

If there are some good articles that already talk about it, please post  them and I'll do my reading.

I will be probably ordering everything from AmigaKit, so if they stock  some of these parts the better.

Thank you.

[pkupcik]

We also have 68030 accelerators in stock

Amigakit,
can you please point me to the specific 68030 accelerator on your website. I found "E-Matrix 1230/40Mhz Accelerator ", but that looks like it goes into the PCMCI socket, which means I wouldn't be able to use the Flash PCMI adaptor, correct. Unless I simply plug, unplug them as needed. Is there maybe some other accelerator, CPU upgrade I missed. Is there maybe such a thing as simply replacing the CPU on the motherboard? I found 68040 on your site, can that be used? Forgive my confusion about this.

Thank you.

[pkupcik]

No that one is going into the trapdoor, it is PCMCIA friendly meaning you can still use the PCMCIA slot.

Got it. I think I got confused when I read that it's PCMCI compatible, it meant I can still use PCMCI and not that it uses PCMI.

[pkupcik]

Thank you everyone again for your advice. So far I'm planning on the following:

New PAL A1200 from AmigaKit with US powersupply/adapter.
IDE to CF card kit with 4GB CF card from AmigaKit
PCMCIA CF Kit from AmigaKit for file transfer between PC and A1200
Indivision AGA - when it becomes available again
2x Joystick from AmigaKit

Now, I do want accelerator as well, just can't decide on which one
Blizzard 1230 vIV - hard to find, expensive
e-matrix 1230/50,32MB - available at http://www.vesalia.de/e_ematrix1230.htm for $246 - runs at 50MHz and has 32MB RAM
GVP-M Typhoon A1200 030 40MHz  - available at http://www.softhut.com for $200 with 32MB RAM, runs at 40MHz
E-Matrix 1230/40Mhz 16MB - available from AmigaKit for $217, runz at 40MHz, has 16 MB RAM

I think I'm leaning toward the GVP-M Typhoon from softhut.com as the price is right and ships from US (cheap). The eMatrix 1230/50,32MB from vesalia.de is interesting because it runs at 50MHz, but is more expensive and ships from Europe, which means higher shipping cost.

Ultimately, the most important thing will be compatibility, stability. Which one of these do you think I should go with. 16MB vs 32MB RAM is not a big deal for me.

[pkupcik]

Thanks everyone again.

I purchased the GVP-M Typhoon A1200 030 40MHz 32MB from SoftHut

and the following from AmigaKit:

 1 x PC to Amiga Joystick Adapter Cable (ADAJOY001)
 1 x Amiga Technologies A1200 (New Old Stock) (ATAMI1200)
    Region PAL (UK, Europe, Australiasia)
            Power Supply Unit North America Adapter (115v)
       
  1 x 10 X AMIGA FORMATTED FLOPPY DISKS DSDD (FDMAMI001)
  1 x Amiga RGB to VGA Monitor Adapter (ADAMON001)
  2 x Competition Pro Joystick (Amiga/C64) (JOYAMI006)
  1 x 4GB CF IDE HARD DISK (HDDIDECF4)
  1 x EasyADF PCMCIA Compact Flash Transfer Kit (ADAPCMCFL)

        Memory Card 4GB CF

[pkupcik]

Hi Cammy,
thanks for all your comments.

To be honest I didn't know about the 2-button joystick. When I had A500 15-20 years ago all I had was one button joystick. What two button joysticks would you recommend that I can plug into the A1200? I bought the joystick adapter just to have it, in case I ever want to use it in the future. Don't want to take a chance that one day I may need it and it won't be available.

For video connectivity, ultimately I'm planning to buy a scan doubler, but it's out of stock until Q3. For now I have ordered a converter that accepts 15khz RGB signal and outputs NTSC S-video  (http://www.ambery.com/rgrgtotvcosc.html). It specifically says that it's compatible with Amiga 15khz RGB output. Hopefully it works, I'm also planning to use the same device with my soon to be arriving ZX Spectrum +2/A with RGB output.
As a backup, I have Pioneer Kuro plasma TV that accepts PAL composite signal. I also have a composite PAL to NTSC converter at home. Basically I'm hoping that at least one of these connections will work until I get the scan doubler.

[pkupcik]

Thanks for the Joystick suggestions. Btw. is there a way to connect USB  joysticks, game-pads from PC?

I will let you guys know how the converter box works when I set it up.  My guess is the A1200 will not arrive to my door step until late next  week or even later, since Monday is a holiday. I can't wait.