A1200 vs A500? (plus a few questions...)

[jbuonacc]

so, i just bought my first Amiga last week. it's basically useless without the Workbench disks and was missing a manual, so i bought a second A500 (with manual, disks, etc) a few days later. with the two of them i should have a nice system and a spare in case i need it. i'm quite partial to the desktop design of the A500, not keen on the pizza box variety for different reasons. the A600 seems like a dumb move, and the A1200 seemed like a far off dream. well, i landed a 1200 the other day, i think it should be a good thing. what i'm wondering though is if it's even worth having the A500's around now with the 1200. i figure i should keep one just for fun, but if there's a big difference somehow i may just keep them both. is there much software for the 500 that won't run on the 1200, if at all? i'll be using the Amigas mainly for music production, if it helps to know. here's some questions i've got...

- is the sound engine exactly the same on both? i've heard the 1200 engine is a bit more capable, has it been changed or did they just optimize things a little better by then>

- does the 1200 have the same gritty sample playback as the 500? (i see this as a very good thing...) or has the audio playback been updated at all?

- is it really best to use a 500 power supply for the 1200? are they built better?

- was the A1200 produced in the UK like the A600?

- will the A1200 take care of all PC transfer worries (even going from A1200 to A500), as it can read PC-format floppies? no modem cable needed?

- looks like it's got an 80mb HD installed. i'm sure this is more than enough for me, but what else is available? what's the max size HD that it can address?

- what are general RAM configurations on A1200's?

- any suggested upgrades in general?

- still need the a520 adapter if not using a monitor? looks like it's got a new (yellow?) RCA connector besides the monochrome, what's that used for? is that a straight composite out or am i seeing things? am i right in thinking i can/should just get a VGA monitor adapter to use with it?

thanks...

-justin.

[Brian]

Some A500 software wont run on the A1200 but chusing "Original" under "Display Options" in early startup menu will get some things running and use a Kickstart degraders such as ReloKick, Tude or the like will make most stuff run. On the other hand the A1200 have a sh*tload of stuff the A500 won't handle.

As far as sound is concerned I think they are alike.

The A500 have a 50W PSU where's the A1200 have a 23W or 25W one, this is just barely enough for a stock machine but uppgrades (even simply adding a few external floppydrive) will eventually kill of the original PSU.

The A1200 with stock OS3.x WB will read PC DD floppys. Apart from that it have a 16bit PCMCIA port that there's an abondant amount of old Ethernet cards available for and then you can network the A1200 with the PC.

The HD is a standard 2.5" IDE HDD and as such you can get a new drive for it even today though the original OS3.0/3.1 will only handle 4GB without special software. If upgrading to OS3.5/3.9 you can go for much bigger drives (100GB is no problem).

The A1200 comes stock with 2MB of Chipmem and have no standard socket for Fastram. One can use the PCMCIA port for upgrade up to 4MB fast memory but as this is only 16bit it's slow. If you need more memory there's quite alot of memory/CPU cards on the market that will let you upgrade the memory amount. Suggested upgrade is a 030 CPU card with 32MB memory.

The yellow port is composit and the brown connector is a RF connector so there's no need for an external FR Modulator such as the 520 in order to connect to a TV. Videoport to Scart cable us usually cheap and gives a better picture on the TV but for best performance a real Amiga monitor such as the 1084S is needed and these monitors are quite regulary available on ebay and the like and therefor also quite cheap.

[bloodline]

jbuonacc wrote:
- is the sound engine exactly the same on both? i've heard the 1200 engine is a bit more capable, has it been changed or did they just optimize things a little better by then

The sounds chip in the Amiga was never changed in all 11 years of it's production. It's the same chip in all models.

- does the 1200 have the same gritty sample playback as the 500? (i see this as a very good thing...) or has the audio playback been updated at all?

Audio quality is identical.

- still need the a520 adapter if not using a monitor? looks like it's got a new (yellow?) RCA connector besides the monochrome, what's that used for? is that a straight composite out or am i seeing things? am i right in thinking i can/should just get a VGA monitor adapter to use with it?

No A520 is required with the A1200, it's built in.

The A1200 is a better machine. Faster CPU, More RAM, Higher Bandwidth Chip Bus, Newer Operating system, IDE interface built in... plus far more expansion options.

Also they are newer machine so will have more years left in them.