Power Tower availability?

[AlanN]

Hello everyone. I'm new to the site, but thankfully not the 'miggy. I've been feeling guilty recently about neglecting the old girl*, so i'm looking to give her a new cage and some friends to play with.

A friend of mine mentioned the Power Tower, but it looks like Power Computing are either out of stock, or have discontinued them. Where can I find one? Is there an alternative? What upgrades would you recommend, and where can I purchase them from?

Ta!

Alan

*Stock 2MB A1200, 320MB(hah!) HDD retrofitted

Edit: I should really mention that i'm in the UK.

[Amigaz]

The Power Tower was made by Elbox.
The model is discontinued now but they have replaced it with other models.

check www.elbox.com

[AlanN]

Wonderful! That'd explain why I couldn't find it, then Any other suggestions for upgrades?

Thanks again, Amigaz.

[Amigaz]

AlanN wrote:
Wonderful! That'd explain why I couldn't find it, then Any other suggestions for upgrades?

Thanks again, Amigaz.

Depends on what you want to use your Amiga for...games? websurfing etc?  :-)

[AlanN]

Well, if I had to break it down:

65% - Games
25% - Trackers
5% - Aminet
5% - Coding

[Amigaz]

Guess you don't need any PCI busboard then.
I would try and get my hands on a Blizzard 1230 MKIV turbocard  and put at least 32mb fast ram on it.

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/search.pl?dir=a1200proc#blizzard1230mk4

Does your Amiga have 3.1 roms?

[AlanN]

Unless they're stock, then nope. It was one of the first A1200 releases in the UK if that's any help...

How can I check?

Edit: I've found somewhere with that board in stock. Would it be worth upgrading with the 1260 instead? Or is that going to kill a lot of games?

Would you still recommend putting this in a tower (I'd guess so, after seeing the fan on the 1240!)

[Amigaz]

The version number is on the insert disk boot screen when you turn the machine on.
I would recommend installing 3.1 roms in your machine

[AlanN]

Thanks - i've just found them on the same site.

So to clarify, I need:

-The Kickstart 3.1 ROM chips
-Some sort of A1200 tower
-An accelerator/Fast RAM card, min. 32MB
-An ATA/IDE interface to add a CD-ROM drive/large 2nd hard drive

Does that look about right? How about a soundcard upgrade - I guess the Busboard would come in handy there; would a PCI soundcard help with any of the tracker (protracker, OctaMED) software?

[Colin_Camper]

Well, in the U.K. don't forget to check;

Amigakit

They do towers, USB, Accelerators for A1200.

Hopefully there are exciting times coming soon for the old A1200!

The Elbox Dragon accelerator (OS3.9) and the ACK PowerVixxen (OS4.0) are meant to be shipping very soon!  :-D

[AlanN]

Aye, i'm currently putting together a basket on there to save for later :-D

Think I should hang on for the OS4 board, then?

[Amigaz]

If you run OS4 you'll have to run games and such in UAE since you cannot use the AGA chipset.

[Legerdemain]

Edit: I've found somewhere with that board in stock. Would it be worth upgrading with the 1260 instead? Or is that going to kill a lot of games?

Really... if you're going for the games, I'd NOT go for the 060.

There are some few newer games that are programmed to run fast on the 060, but many of them... (Napalm, Quake and some others) are way too demading to play well even on the 060. And, concerning the older games, they all (but moste of the 3D ones) will play just as fine on a 030.

Unless you are about to play MP3's, run some of the more demanding demos and toy around in Workbench (using a GFX-card)  together with some GFX apps and other a bit power demanding applications, I can't not say that the huge difference in price between, say, a Blizzard 1230 and a Blizzard 1260 is worth it. Really.

[amigakit]

@AlanN

Welcome to Amiga.org


The Power Tower is discontinued, Elbox have replaced it with the D-Box 1200 MK-II

The Blizzard 1260 is the fastest 68K accelerator for the Amiga, however it is not as compatible with *old* games, so for legacy gaming, a Blizzard 1230 is better.

[nasty]

LOL I must own one of the stupidest Amiga setups of all time, my specs Amiga1200 in power tower,60 gig hdd, bppc 060@50mhz/PPC@240mhz 144meg, mediator c/w voodoo3 2000,sb128, ps2 Cocolino adaptor,nec 4x4 changer and LiteOn cdr/DVD burner,17inch PC monitor and a 14 inch 1084s monitor(due to scan doubler breaking on Xmas) I call this setup stupid as I mostly play treasure island dizzy which i could of saved myself hundred of £'s by buying an a500 with half a meg to play dizzy. but i have to admit I like upgrading my Amiga and it has been fun and I've meet alot of good people thru upgrading. so unless your like me and are a complete upgrade nut I'd just get an dbox and 040 or an 030 and as much memory as possible as its all you seem to need.

well yet again thats my 2 Penny's :-D