Hi welcome back to the Amiga fold!
Now lets get down to business upgrading your 1200.
As your 1200 is in its old desktop case you are slightly limited as to what you can do to upgrade.
Upgrading your operating system: Is the current OS that comes with the 1200 OS3.0 or 3.1? if it is 3.1 then you have version 3.1 ROMs and you can upgrade to the latest AmigaOS version 3.9.
See:
http://os.amiga.com/3.9/?PHPSESSID=b0e4ed00ac9b9e958dc908ae0411c310(This comes on a CD so you will need a CDRom (see later)).
Towering your 1200: There are afew tower systems for your 1200 such as Elbox`s PowerTower or the newer Mirage Tower system and Eytechs Z4 tower. Elboxes towers provide a cable which converts the At power plugs to the Original power supply plug that goes in to the 1200 power port. Im not sure about Eytechs towers
See:
http://www.elbox.com/products/mirage_1200.htmlAND
http://www.elbox.com/products/e_box_1200.htmlAdding CDRom and HardDrives: You can do this with the original 1200 port but you risk blowing out the Motherboard as the port is NOT buffered. There are a few different ways of expanding the port you can use either an IDE splitter or A PowerFlyer (from Elbox) which greatly speeds up hardrive access. Both of these solutions alows you to add upto 4 devices on the ports e.g. 2 HardDrives and 2 CDRoms. To add these dives thpugh its best to get a tower for the space and the power supply it can give you. To add the devices you need the correct cabling which can be bought cheeply from any PC supplier. (The cabling needs to be 3 way with 40 holes for the pins)
See:
http://www.elbox.com/products/fast_ata_1200.htmlAND
http://www.powerc.com/cgi-bin/psearch.cgi?code=635-0005&rn=39&aid=&uid=ssWNnrgkR/6oGts&sid=&cid=4&act=gpageYou add your Hardrive to the fist port through the cable with its Jumpers set to Master and the CDRom can go on the last cable port on the same cable with its jumpers set as Slave. You connect there power with the ones provided with the tower At supply.
Problems with HardDrives: Previous Amiga OS`s could not use Hardrives great than 4 Gig so if your not planing to upgrade your OS to 3.9 then yopu can only use a 4 Gig HardDrive with your 1200.
Adding an Accelerator Card: I am assuming that the 1200 only has its original 020 processor? This is no way near powerfull enough in the Amiga Market today and you should consider upgrading to a least an 040 40MHz or an 060 50MHz. These now depending on the model of card allow you to add more memory to your Amiga via SIMMs either EDO or FPS. Depending on the card you can add either 674 or 128 MB of memory in 2 Simms.
I would recomend a Viper 060 50MHz processor from PowerComputing in the UK or Vesalia In Germany(?)
See:
www.Powerc.comAND
www.Vesalia.deThey sell both the Accelerators and Memory
These cards add on to the "Trap Door" expansion port which when your 1200 is towerd you can see clearly at the "top" of the motherboard. Just be carefull when sliding the card onto the conectors that you dont damage them.
Using PC Monitors: Unless you have a good television using a th original RF cable is going to hurt your eyes after awhile. If you just want to use a television then I sudgest getting a scart cable for your Amiga from a suitable vendor as this will improve the picture quality. But it will not be as good as using a PC monitor. Unless you have access to a MultiSync Monitor the only 2 otpions available are the purchase of a sandoubler and flicker fixer (Internal/External) or the use of a graphics card with which you will need to buy a PCI expansion board.
If you need any more help such as sudjestions to adding PCI expansion ports and related PCI cards just contact me over PM and I will send you a text file with all this info on and more!.
If someone tels me how I will try and make it into an AmigaGuide file on 1200 Upgrading.
Bye for Now
Mark
Prowed 1200 owner :-D
