Hard drive question from a noob

[maff20]

hello all
first let me say that i feel completely dumb in comparison to the intelligence levels i am witnessing on these forum pages, i joined the site as i have a fair interest in amigas but you guys are off the scale, so much knowledge!!!

i had an amiga years ago but couldnt afford decent upgrades or even a hard drive due to being to young to work  :-D
so anyway, now i have a 1200, a 600 and a 500. the 500 is just for nostalgia's sake but the 1200 and 600 were going to be projects. i only have a standard 20mb drive in the 600 and a 120mb in the 1200.

And finally the question;
do i need extra ram in the 600 to successfully run any installed game? is some of the ram in use running workbench in the background?
also is the same true of the 1200 or would i get away with say cannon fodder installed as it only needs one megabyte?
i know the whdload requires loads of extra ram (unfortunaltely as thats my ultimate goal) but whats the deal with what i can and cant run on standard machines?
any help greatly appreciated.

i do want to ask about what screen is best for games on the amiga but after reading some of the posts relating to monitors im scared {bleep}less  :-?  :crazy:

thanks for taking the time to read my waffle

just remembered another question, sorry.
is it possible to boot the 1200 as a 500+ or 600 with the rom version 2? i can only find 1.3 kick

[Matt_H]

The 600 will definitely need more RAM. Workbench will use part of the default 1MB, leaving you with very little - probably not enough for even the lightest of the lightweight WHDLoad installs.

You can do a bit more with 2MB, but it's still tight - you'll need to turn off the WHDLoad preload option in most cases, which will be a big performance hit for disk access speed.

I've got a total of 6MB in my 600 and it's enough for most WHDLoad stuff.

is it possible to boot the 1200 as a 500+ or 600 with the rom version 2? i can only find 1.3 kick

Yeah - look for SKick on Aminet. There's no reason to, though. I'm not aware of any software that runs on 2.x but not 3.x. Plus, you'll lose access to your hard drive - the driver isn't in the 2.x ROM (I think).

[brianb]

Your original post had a lot of questions...  You may be better off in future posts to limit it to one.  ;-)

If you plan to go the WHDLOAD route (which ROCKS), I would suggest at least 4MB of expansion memory on your A1200.  I have 4Mb in mine and it can handle just about any "classic" game using WHDLOAD.  Cannon fodder and many more work great.  It's great not waiting and swapping disks...

The 1200 is nice cause it can do NTSC or PAL selectable at bootup so most games will play fine.  Keeping in mind your monitor can handle the demand.  I have a Commodore 1960 multisync monitor and it works great w/ NTSC or PAL... I eventually like to upgrade into a Indivision AGA card with a plain old LCD.  

EDIT:  You mentioned projects...  I would highly suggest swapping those tiny hard drives for a solid-state Compact Flash drive and an IDE interface such as this (or similar)...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110347055534

I now have 2GB, leaving plenty of space for games, demos,  music, and apps.

[Amiduffer]

maff20 wrote:

i do want to ask about what screen is best for games on the amiga but after reading some of the posts relating to monitors im scared {bleep}less  :-?  :crazy:

thanks for taking the time to read my waffle

just remembered another question, sorry.
is it possible to boot the 1200 as a 500+ or 600 with the rom version 2? i can only find 1.3 kick

Nah, stick with 3.x ROMs when using the 1200. Just hold down both mouse buttons when you boot. From the boot screen, you can choose either the Original Chipset (A1000/500), Enhanced Chipset (A3000), or AGA, the choice of NTSC/PAL (depending of the program), plus if you boot older games from floppies, its best to click on "no cache", and it'll "emulate" the earlier machines.

There's nothing to be frightened about, if you use C= monitors. It'll handle the basic screen modes that Workbench offers with little input from you needed.