May be getting an A1200 for christmas :) Recommend things I'll need.

[Insidious611]

Keep in mind my budget is fairly small. I'm looking at an Amiga 1200 refurb ordered from AmiKit, thus its going to be a PAL system. I'm already getting the mouse they offer and the 115v North American adapter (For here in NTSC-U land).

As far as display goes, what are my viable options? I have a small HDTV I use for my games consoles but I doubt it's going to accept a PAL signal over RF.

I understand the common method is to use a scandoubler/flickerfixer to output straight to a VGA monitor. However, apparently the Indivision AGA has been out of stock for a great while as they have been working on the new version. I've been looking around and have seen about 800 posts dating from as far back as 2 years ago saying the new version of the Indivision AGA is "coming out soon", so you'll forgive me if I don't hold my breath for that in particular. Any competing solutions?

Anything else you guys consider a necessity to add to a virgin 1200? I know adding more RAM is probably a priority but as far as I can see theres little way of doing so without buying an expensive card that also includes a better CPU and all that gumf I honestly don't see myself needing.

For what its worth, my main computer monitor is a Dell S1709W and the small HDTV I mentioned earlier is a Dynex DX-15L150A11

[Insidious611]

Woo, lots of replies:

runequester: Probably just going to do games via WHDLoad, maybe a couple floppy games if I can actually get my hands on them but its unlikely. Maybe some basic 'productivity' work, by which I mean I might do some design documents for a game I'm making on it, and I might IRC or surf basic websites on it.


ChaosLord: I'd considered a 1084S, but shipping for CRT monitors tends to get really expensive. All else fails, I may go for it though Thanks.

paul1981: I already have a 2.5" IDE hard drive lying around from an IBM T61 laptop that broke, so thats good news. It may be a bit too big though, its probably somewhere around 30-40GB and I hear there are issues with drives >4GB. Any advice regarding that?

Was definitely planning on getting myself a PCMCIA wireless card for it. I hear the Orinoco Silver/Gold cards are good choices?

As far as the 2MB fastram expansion, thats what I was thinking as far as RAM but I wonder if its possible to find one for less than an ACA1230 which would have more fastram anyway.

Was definitely planning on doing file transfers over network. Sneakernetting with CF cards seems... Terribly inconvenient.

NovaCoder:
Have addressed a lot of what you said already. Just want to agree that the ACA1230 seems like a good choice if I can't find something cheaper.

I wish I shared your optimism on the Indivision AGA Mrk2. If it does come out, I will certainly purchase it.

As far as a simple RGB-to-VGA adapter, thats why I posted the models of my main monitor and small hdtv. I've seen reports of people saying that recent Dell LCDs (of which mine is one, though not the model I saw referenced in that thread) can sync down low enough to actually play stuff like Cannon Fodder and run workbench in DblPAL mode, etc. I wanted to know if anyone had the same monitors and could provide confirmation.

Piru:
As far as accelerators, thoughts on the ACA1230? Thats the only one I can find still in production and people seem to sell out of production ones for... Well, multiple hundreds of dollars.

Also, I actually was considering using SCART with a SCART->ComponentYPbPr adapter. I'd seen some videos on youtube of someone using that with a PAL genesis on an american TV and it looking great, but the setup is a tad expensive.

[Insidious611]

I really don't know about "far less expensive" for the 1084S...

The results I'm coming up with on ebay are near the $300-$400 mark, and thats not counting shipping.

Whereas the Indivision itself may be somewhere around $100-$200, but I already have monitors for it.

So I don't really see what you're smoking there, to be blunt.

That being said, I can see myself getting one eventually simply for the authenticity.