Best place to learn all the hardware options for an A1200/A500+

[AmigaFan]

Since I am in the market for either an A1200 or A500, where do I go to find out what it is I need to run all the latest software. I hear all about Hard drives, accelerator cards, and RAM upgrades, but how do I find out what it is I really need to have an enjoyable Amiga experience?

I am really leaning towards an A500+ with max options (due to price and entry level), but an A1200 would be nice as long as I know what it is to look for. How do I know I am buying good options? How do I know what is a good price on the equipment. What is a range I should be spending to get such equipment?

Thanks!
Fred :-D

[xeron]

When buying the base machine, the A500 is cheaper (usually free if you know someone with one in the loft). The A1200, however, is much cheaper and easier to upgrade due to the relative rarity of A500 upgrades.

Look on http://www.amiga-hardware.com for info about specific upgrades.

[AmigaFan]

Thank you for that link! So I will go with an A1200 then and see what options are best for gaming.

Fred

[Argus]

For maximum games fun, I recommend a Phase 5 BlizzardIV 68030 board @50MHz with the optional SCSI 2 board.  Plop a nice big & fast 2.5" ide drive on the internal harddisk interface and use the scsi on the expansion board to run an external scsi tower with your cdrom, extra harddrives, scanner, etc.  You can mount a 64MB simm on the accelerator and a 128MB HP simm on the SCSI expansion board to give you more fast ram than you'll ever use.  Power the whole lot off of a PC AT or ATX power supply in the adjacent tower (you'll need to make or buy a power adaptor from Amigakit or elsewhere).  Put a Silversurfer or Twister fast serial card on the internal clockport and you can have a fast dialup internet connection for on-line gaming and downloads (but don't expect to play deathmatch Quake games).  Or if you have broadband, put a 3Com or other compatible type (wireless even) nic card in the pcmcia slot.

[keropi]

post removed by admin for the posting of links to pirated software.

[AmigaFan]

So how much am I looking for all of this? Can you give me a ballpark figure?

Fred

[Argus]

Price depends on whether you stumble upon a used system cheaply or buy on eBay or elsewhere where retro computer prices have skyrocketed.  On eBay, you could probably expect to pay $200+ for the system I described or individually much more to construct (i.e. $100 for bare A1200, $150+ for BlizzardIV, $80 for SCSI board, $20 for 2.5" ide drive, $15 for 12x scsi cdrom, $30 for Silversurfer/Twister board, $10 for 3Com pcmcia...not including s/h).

I've heard people have good luck putting ads in local papers offering to 'dispose/take care of' old Amiga stuff.  Probably worth a 20 cent personal ad.

[AmigaFan]

Looks like I am back to getting an A3000 for overall more usage then just a pure games machine. What it the RTG (?) all about?

Fred