New A1200 - some questions

[harrison]

1. Will I be able to play most old games like Giana Sisters, IK+, Bubble Bobble, Ports of Call, Defender of The Crown etc? I've heard there's some kind of boot menu that can trick the games to think they're running on an A500 and the likes of that machine. Does this work for most games? Or will I be better off buying an A500 if I want to play these games?

As mentioned by others in this thread, some games will not work because the A1200 uses a more advanced processor with more memory addresses and because it has more chip memory than the old Angus chips couldn't support.  

Many OCS/ECS games will work fine and some will need you to use the A1200's boot menu (by holding both mouse buttons down on booting) and some trial and error on switching options on/off is needed before the best option for each game is found.

And with a boot disk called ReLoKick 1.3, you can get more of them working fine. If you need a copy of the disk let me know by emailing me.

The games I have that won't work on an A1200 no matter what are:

Alien 3
Bubble Bobble
Cadaver
Chase H.Q
Fire Force
First Samurai
Full Contact
F16
F29
Hardball
Indyheat
Killing Game Show
Lotus Turbo Challenge 2
Lotus 3
Midnight resistance
Moonstone
Nitro
Shadow of the Beast
Super Off Road
Super Scramble
Swiv
Wolfchild
World Snooker

And out of the games you mentioned above, I know IK+ works fine and Bubble Bobble won't work on anything above a ECS machine with a 1.3 degrader.

2. If I want to add a HDD in the future, will I be needing some kind of interface to attach an ordinary IDE-drive or is it just to plug it in and boot?

To just add a HD, you will need to buy a 2.5" drive but if you wanted to fit the larger normal 3.5" HD's to a A1200, you will need to find a kit as it needs a cable to convert between the two connector types and power supply connectors.  Power Computing are still selling 1GB 2.5" drives for A1200's if you are interested.  There website is www.powerc.com

3. I've read about problems with the floppydrive in the late/relaunched A1200s. Any experience with these?

Yes, Escom used converted 1.4Mb PC drives that can't read some disks.  You could get around this by buying a second external drive and using that for the disks that don't boot. You can swap the drive boot sequence around in the A1200's boot manu for this.

[harrison]

For some reason I have had no problems at all with the Escom disk drive. Even the few really old games I have work fine.

When Escom took over the production of the A1200 from Commodore, there were many partly built machines still in the production plant as well as lots of components, including disk drives.

Therefore until the stock ran out, the Escom A1200 came with a proper Amiga floppy drive.  It's only after they coudn't source more supplies that they started using PC drives.

 

Lotus 2 and 3 never worked for me on my unexpanded A1200, but when I bought an 8meg trapdoor board they worked fine...I guess they just needed some fastram.

I have an expanded A1200 with 8MB Fast Ram and some of the games I listed will work sometimes but as it's not everytime, I use my A500 or A600 machines for these games as they are guaranteed to work.

have gotten all but one or two games to work on my 1200, the one I have a problem with is Mega lo Mania, it seems to crash after a bit, and I can't get Moonstone to work no matter what!

I forgot Mega lo Mania.  Great Game.  I coun't get that one to work on A1200 or A4000 either.  Seems to only like 1.3 the best.  Crashes a bit on 2.0 systems as well.  Moonstone freezes during booting and goes no further.

One thought, my Commodore A1200 has 3.0 Roms and Escom A1200's have 3.1 Roms.  This might lead to some games working on some machines and not others.  There were also some MoBo revisions.  The last being the worst if I remember correctly.

With an A1200 and fastram, I've gotten pretty much all of the old games to work, a few of them just need some extreme coaxing and combination of degraders. Sometimes hours of ridiculous trial and error just for a stupid old game I don't even play afterwards!

I know what you mean.  I used to spend ages trying to get games working with every combination I could think of.  The most annoying was when I couldn't get an HD installed game to work on either my A4000 or A1200.  And after so long I have forgotten how I got some of them to work which is really annoying.  

On my A4000, Worms won't run.  It gets so far and then just stops.  Not sure of the problem.  Not really bothered as I have Worms on  DC, GBA and PC as well.