What's the best Amiga setup for gaming?

[littleblakkitty]

Sorry if this is a topic that has been beaten to death.
I am thinking of buying an Amiga system and am just curious to hear people's opinion of what's "the best" way to go. Really I can't see myself using it for anything besides playing old games.  I have a bundle of floppies and it would be nice to be able to transfer them all onto a hard drive to play whenever I want. So I'm looking for something that would be compatable with the widest selection of old games. I don't own any AGA games now but it would be nice to be able to play those if I get any. Also, is there a "simple" way to transfer files from a PC to an Amiga? I mean besides on a floppy, like is there a way to network a PC to an Amiga for file transfer or is that asking too much?

[Flashlab]

I guess you should try to get an A1200 with a harddisk and maybe some extra memory.

You can use network cards in the PCMCIA slot on the side with the A1200.

[A4000_Mad]

For AGA games you need an A1200 or an A4000.

For transfering stuff you've got networking, 'AMI-PC link up' kits, Zip & Jaz drives plus the PCMCIA Compact Flash adapter (and probably more that aren't springing to mind)

Oh! A PC floppy and fat95 or CrossDos in the Amiga too :-)

A4000 Mad

EDIT - and what Flashlab said  :-)

[Mucker]

Good news, there is a good ole fashioned way to connect amiga to pc, and thats with an old but of hardware, called parnet, and the software is on amiserve.

You might be able to get a lead from amigakit.com

Not many amiga`s will play all games.

A500+ won`t play all A500. Same as the A600.

The machine htat played nearly all non aga games would be a kick 1.3 a500 with 1meg.

If you want to play aga games, then a1200 is really the only viable option.

Both machines are cheep on ebay or car boots.

Incidently i got a kick 1.3 a500 boxed for sale, was gona put it on ebay next week.

Make me an offer if you like. don`t 4get the postage. i`d have to get it weighed to find a price on that.

Hope this helps mucker :lotsacoffee:

[littleblakkitty]

I have a 500 but it seems that the floppy drive has died because it won't read anymore.
Thought I would take this opportunity to upgrade to something with a hard drive where I can transfer all my old games before those old floppies go bad.
I don't spend a whole lot of time playing the old Amiga games anymore but every now and then I get a craving to revisit Shadow Of The Beast, Battle Squadron, Deluxe Galaga, etc.
It's fun to have a running classic machine to show people too. There's some young'uns I run into sometimes who actually don't know anything about the existence of Amiga computers, if you can believe such a thing.  :-)

[Flashlab]

The excellent program WHDload will let you install floppy games on a HD.

[keropi]

you said the best so here it is IMHO:

A4000D + OS3.9
picassoIV rtg card
HD/CD
lancard for transfering files
cpu card with 040 or 060 , cyberstorms preffered.

[littleblakkitty]

Sounds like what I need! Is WHDload pretty easy to use?

[cv643d]

If you want the best games Amiga get an A1200 and a hardrive for it. Then get a 020/030 board with some fast-mem. Thats a good setup for games.

[kzin]

Its Kinda sad, but the best amiga for games is a PC running UAE.

Just select the amiga config you want and the .ADF file and GO.

[littleblakkitty]

Yeah I can see that. For some reason though, I like having a piece of classic hardware in front of me. Out of... principle? Or something. I have an Atari 2600, a Super Nintendo and a Playstation 1 as well. Maybe I'll start a video game museum.

[Brian]

The best and cleanest setup would probably be:

1) A1200 - Small nice machine with AGA

2) Blizzard1230 - Best card there is with 030 also being most compatible, other 030 cards will also do though but make sure you stear clear of any Apollo card due to compability issues, GVP cards that requier special SIMMs that are impossible to dig up or any none PCMCIA friendly card.
Stick a 32Mb simm on it, any bigger simmsize usually means they might be hard to get to fit under the trapdoor.

3) FastATA - Speed up the IDE controller.
Stick to a 4Gb or less HDD.

4) Don't forget a bigger PSU (50W PSU form an old A500 should do).


Optional:
1) PCMCIA NIC - Allows access to internet and networks

2) Mouse/joy switch - Saves the mouseport from excessive wear and tear and also makes it easier to play 2 player games.

3) Paralell to 2 extra joystick ports addapter - Not used in many games but are usualy cheap so worth getting just to have just in case.

4) Scandoubler (internal preferred) - To be able to use regular monitors

5) BlizzardSCSI - Allow for an external SCSI CDRom wich is handy, squirrel interface is also an option though not as "clean" and not as fast.


For gaming there's not much else worth upgrading, at least not what I can think of right now.

[neuroflip]

littleblakkitty wrote:
For some reason though, I like having a piece of classic hardware in front of me

me too :-D

for me the best option it's an a1200 HD with 030 accelerator card, 8Mb+ of Fast Ram and PCMCia Lan/wifi card or PCMCiA CF adaptator for game files transfer.

and then get a pair of sega megadrive pads or CD32 pads  :crazy:

[jahc]

In my opinion, the best gaming Amiga is an A1200. I've heard reports that A4000's are terrible for running games. A lot of stuff just doesnt want to run. It's best to have a hard drive (500mb should be ample really) and a little bit of extra memory (an extra 4mb of fast ram for example), just so you can load up your Terminal program and download games to your hard drive comfortably. (You'd use a nullmodem cable between the PC and the A1200). It takes about 15 minutes to send 1 disk though. Actually, you might not even need the additional memory, but when I tried to run hard drive installed games on my A600 awhile ago, I think most of them failed with only 2mb ram. (a1200 comes with 2mb as standard too).

If you want to play a few of the first person shooters, then an 030@50mhz accelerator will provide a nice experience without going all out for an 060 (which are more or less top of the line). And these 030's can usually be disabled on startup for games that choke on them.