Curious Atari Freak Seeks Amiga For Experimentation! :)

[Muphex]

Hello Amiga Users,

I'm a long time Atari freak so no doubt you will all embrace me with open arms.

Anyway thing is I've kinda got as far as I'm going with Atari related stuff as support for the Falcon is falling and it seems to be a dying platform (who knew !).

Anyway I always knew that the Amiga was the better platform in my heart and I am keen to get into another retro platform with current supports and updates. The thing is for me I like the fact that I can have total backwards compatibility (or as good as it can get)and I am bewildered by the number of options available for the Amiga. I'd buy an Amigaone but from what I can tell it's not backwards compatible with old 500 games am i correct in that assumption and if not what is the best machine that will?

I would like a computer that is as modern as can be (I don't mind spending money upgrading) can do lots of wizzo stuff but should also be able to play the old games.

I need your help Amiga World what should I be plumping for?

Thanks in advance!

[AMC258]

Some would say emulation..

But, I say, get a stock A500 for playing games, and get a A1200/A3000/A4000 with PCI bus, 68060 and PCI video card for everything else.

First time I heard an Atari user say the Amiga is better!  I still remember one Atari user telling me his Atari ST was better than my A500 because the Atari had a BLITTER chip!

[Amiduffer]

Hiya Muphex.

Its good that cost is no problem, because Amiga is an expensive hobby.

You have two choices if your goal is just games.

Amiga500 for strictly the old stuff. Dirt cheap mostly, but with this, I'd try getting an A500 that has some memory addition and the HD that fits in the side slot. Use the WHDload program as a lot of the old games are on floppy disks that are slowly degrading. If you can get an A2000 with a HD card at minimum, that can work too.

Amiga 1200, relatively cheap, and needed for playing games that require AGA, normally comes with a laptop size HD. Backward compatable with older games by pressing the two mouse buttons before booting up, and choosing OCS and nocache, although its recomended to get WHDload, mostly because it eliminates copy protection. All you need for a decent performance is one of the 68030 or 40 accelerators and a SIMM memmory stick.

[rkauer]

Or get a plain Amiga600, who is slightly different from an A500 in very ways:

- Have an internal IDE where you can put a HD (same way as A1200);

- Have a slightly better graphics chip (ECS vs OCS);

- Have a PCMCIA slot type II;

- Have 1 Mb internal, vs half in the 500;

- Have the same other chips of the 500, i.e.=almost fully compatible with an A500;

- Is a lot SMALL than an old A500;

And requires less power to run (23W vs 45W on a plain A500).;-)

[a1200]

I would say, if you have a Falcon, you should get an A1200. Better graphics, full size keyboard & many upgrade options (all the way through to PCI, RTG Graphics and PPC). Prices on ebay are reasonable and the A1200 can run pretty much all the old stuff without any or much reconfiguring.

[Marco]

@rkauer: Yeah an have half a keyboard and _very_ limited expansion options. Also ECS improves so little over OCS, they're basically the same.

Not to mention absolutely no games make use of ECS and with a 500+ you get the ECS, 1mb RAM and a proper keyboard plus enough space inside to actually use a turbo board without fearing the case'll melt.

My advice: if it's just games and you don't want to do emulation, get a 500/500+. If you actually want to use an Amiga as a serious computer then either a 1200, 3000 or 4000 is much easier to live with. Some people really trick out their 500s or 2000s but the accelerators are really rare these days for the older miggies and with one of the later machines you start of with something fairly useable anyway, though really some kind of turbo board is still preferable - especially for the 1200 which starts out with a lowly 68EC020.

[X-ray]

@ Muphex

If you want an Amiga that can run a lot of software and is 'backwards compatible' then you should get an A4000 with a PPC accelerator. If you already have a PC then I can't see a reason for you to go looking for an AmigaOne.
Stick with the classic Amiga. There is much more software and hardware available for it, and it has the true spirit of Amiga to boot!

[Crumb]

A CyberstormPPC??? why? the PPC is almost unused. A 060 is much more important than the PPC chip.

If he is interested in demos and AGA stuff an A1200+060 would be enough (but not a tower one since these are big and ugly)

If he wants some expansion an A4000+Cyberstorm MKII will be nice.

I wouldn't waste my money with a PPC accelerator. You can get a MKII/060 with that money and if you really want PPC you can get a second hand Pegasos and crush any A4000 in performance.

[Amigaz]

Crumb wrote:
A CyberstormPPC??? why? the PPC is almost unused. A 060 is much more important than the PPC chip.

If he is interested in demos and AGA stuff an A1200+060 would be enough (but not a tower one since these are big and ugly)

If he wants some expansion an A4000+Cyberstorm MKII will be nice.

I wouldn't waste my money with a PPC accelerator. You can get a MKII/060 with that money and if you really want PPC you can get a second hand Pegasos and crush any A4000 in performance.

Couldn't agree more, a PPC is overkill imho if you don't want to run MorphOS PowerUP or wait for OS4
After owning a CS PPC card for some time now and started using a CS MKIII more I come to the conclusion that I could live with a fadt '060 card instead

[Tomas]

A accelerated a1200 or a a4000 is probably your best bet when it comes to being compitable with both classic and more recent amiga games.

An 1200 with a accelerator and HD will work with 90% of a500 games as well, when installing the games to a hd using a program like whdload. This will also mean no floppy swapping and very fast loading times. A pre aga machine like the a500 will not be able to use newer games that use the much more modern aga graphic chip. So the a1200 is a much better bet in my opinion.
The a4000 is basically the same, just that it is more easily expandable thanks to it being in a bigger case with expansion slots. The a4000 is however more pricy and the a1200 can be expanded just as much if you tower it.

[justthatgood]

Seriously, we need to get a serious production of the 68060 accelerators for classic systems.

[justthatgood]

The prices as they are right now are just too outrageous.

[Dandy]

Crumb wrote:
A CyberstormPPC??? why? the PPC is almost unused. A 060 is much more important than the PPC chip.
...

I'd say that depends on what he intends to do.
I have a CSPPC in my A4k and I have software to take full advantage of the PPC for image processing, scanning, playing movies and the like.

With a plain 68060 card + 68k only soft such tasks take significantly longer.

Furthermore I don't want to miss my UW-SCSI ever again...