Greetings

[thunderjaw]

Hello all

First post here.

I just bought my 1st ever amiga, an A1200!!!
Bought this machine specifically for graphics after seeing someone vj with 2 of them.

I've got some pretty fundamental questions.
How do I check to see how much RAM I have?  How do I know if I have an HD installed?  

And most importantly,

What sort of upgrades would you all recommend?

I've been using atari STs for a couple years now (MIDI) and have since come across sites that sell "new" and/or refurbished machines + accessories.  I assume there must be something similar for amiga?

Many thanks!

-J

[amigakit]

Welcome!

If you have a hard disk, you should hear it spinning away inside the A1200.  Additionally if it is *installed correctly and working*, as soon as the A1200 is powered on, it should start to load.  The hard drive light will flicker on/off as it accesses the hard disk.

To check memory, load the Workbench disk and look at the title bar- standard Amiga 1200's have 2MB graphics memory and no Fast Memory (other memory).  

[alx]

Welcome to A.org :-)

If you turn the machine on and it doesn't boot from the harddisk (you see a animation of a floppy disk being inserted) that doesn't have to mean you don't have a fully functioning hard drive.  On earlier model A1200s like mine, the machine doesn't wait long enough for the hard drive to spinup and so thinks it's not there.  Get around this by resetting; press control and the two Amiga keys (the keys either side of the spacebar that have a sloped letter "A" on them).

[thunderjaw]

Thanks for the info amigakit!

So, looks like I'm w/o a hard disk ... any recommendations?
I have some old win95 HDs laying around.  Can an A1200 use one of those?

My memory reading says ::

1,894,064 graphics and 0 other

that seems about right, eh?

One thing I noticed is that I don't have a Trash icon on the desktop.  Is this normal for a system w/o an HD?

Seems like quite a cool little computer
The OS feels nice and the mouse I have (it's an amiga mouse) is the best one I have!  It has a very nice feel to it.

I'm interested in getting this machine some upgrades.  What would you recommend?  Seems that a hard disk is important as well as some more RAM.  I guess the basics ... my main STe is as maxed out as possible w/o going for some serious upgrades (CPU, etc) which I kind of like.  
Though from what I've seen on this site, one can achieve some impressive results with a CPU upgrade to an A1200.  

Any information you all have is greatly appreciated!  

Best,

J.

[thunderjaw]

Thank you alx~!

Tried this out ... no luck :\

Looks like I'm set to open this baby up

[InTheSand]

Welcome to A.Org and Merry Christmas (nearly)!

A1200s are quite easy to expand. Inserting a hard drive just involves removing a few screws to get to the innards of the machine. Any old 2.5" laptop hard drive will do, though there are some issues (fixable) with drives larger than 4Gb.

Adding RAM is a case of plugging an expansion board into the "trapdoor" slot underneath the machine. You can get RAM-only boards, but your best bet for price vs performance is probably a second-hand 68030-based board, which will usually contain a standard SIMM slot and an appropriate SIMM.

If you really get the "Amiga bug" and decide to go further, the sky's the limit (if you have a big enough bank balance!) and you can add a 68060 CPU and/or PowerPC, SCSI-2, graphics cards, interfaces to use PCI cards, etc, etc...

Have fun!

 - Ali

[Amiduffer]

So, looks like I'm w/o a hard disk ... any recommendations?
I have some old win95 HDs laying around.  Can an A1200 use one of those?

If the HDs are IDE 2.5" laptop size, and you have the special 40 to 45 pin cable, yes. Amigakit has them if its not already in your 1200. To format them, you need a AmigaOS install disk, which has the HDToolbox program to format and partition new HDs. Did your Amiga come with Workbench disks?

One thing I noticed is that I don't have a Trash icon on the desktop.  Is this normal for a system w/o an HD?

You don't really need it. From the workbench, just click once on a file, press the right mouse button so that menu shows, and in the icon menu, choose delete. Although, if you so choose, WB comes standard with a trashcan. In the Icon menu, is a command called leave out, that if you click once on the trash icon and then choose leave out from the Icon menu, that will put the trashcan conveniently out on the WorkBench screen if you want. The empty trash command is also in the Icon menu.

Have fun!