Looking for advice going back to Amiga.

[drewz21]

Really?  Is Amiga Forever that good?  If so I'll buy it.  I've never really used emulators other than MAME but if it's that good I'll quit worrying so much about being compatible with my old stuff and just buy me a nice AMIGA for everyday use and use Amiga Forever to play my old games.  I've got several PC's at home already.

How do I get the disks onto my PC then to play the games?

Thank you again.

[Hyperspeed]

IBrowse2.3 is damn good and is very efficient. I bet it would still be good on '020 + 8MB. It can do SSL & Javascript, page layout is fantastic, image dithering is excellent, it's fast and resource friendly.

I would reccomend for web browsing something around '040 40Mhz. The '030 would be too slow for prolonged surfing but if you did so then IBrowse would be the browser for you. As for classic gaming then the '030 would be your BEST option as it is fairly sociable to older code.

Wordworth, Deluxe Paint, TurboCalc, Pagestream - all killer apps for Amiga.

Towering your Amiga has long been an issue of contention for many Amiga owners as the original case is so compact and you can simply plug things into the PCMCIA port (ethernet, CD-ROMs, SRAM, serial port, samplers etc.) - if you do tower then a Zorro busboard will allow you to put a nice GFX card in. A Piccaso-2 would be dirt cheap and would speed things up bigtime.

[amigagr]

i have amiga forever both versions 4 & 6 and recently installed the amikit with os3,9. both they are good but not good enough for me, i prefer the real amiga. if you buy an a1200 and amiga os3,9 you can use amikit (free) for pc emulation of amiga.

[amigakit]

Hi!

Please have a look at Amiga Forever 2005 product description to get a really good idea of how it works.  

You can transfer real Amiga disks over to it by installing a Catweasel MK4 in your PC as well.

BTW:  Amiga Forever 2005 has 2x really good Movie DVDs containing historical events for the Amiga as a bonus.

Any questions you have about this or 'real' Amigas, please get in touch

[amigagr]

@amigakit: oh boy, if in the days of commodore the internet was spread as today, and they was acting in the needs of amiga users as fast as you do, pcs would be droped dead by now and amiga sould be the wintel of today... :crazy:

[Argus]

If you've got $500-700 to spend, I'd personally just plunk down for an A4000D.  They are relatively plentiful in the US market second hand, there's far more accelerators for them here and you'll have ZIII slots for either a Zorro2 or 3 graphics card, ethernet, fast serial or even a toaster/flyer setup to fool around with desktop video production.  The A1200 is a nice machine with the pcmcia slot and all, but a close second choice would be an A3000, which is essentially an A4000 with scsi rather than ide and ECS instead of AGA chipset.  A graphics card is the great equalizer between an A4000 and A3000.  Still, if AGA is what you want, get the A4000D, you won't regret it.

[Tomas]

x56h34 wrote:
Amiga browsing experience would be comparable to using Netscape Navigator or IE v2.0 today on your PC. :-)

The later versions of aweb seemed more stable than netscape 4.x "whatever is the latest version for 68k mac" under macos8 for me. Netscape seemed to crash completly on like 50% of the sites while taking the OS with it in many cases.

[Tomas]

drewz21 wrote:
Do you think this person's Amiga items would be a good start for me?  He posted this in the Selling Forum.

"I am selling off ALL my Amiga stuff (not on eBay yet), and thought I would mention it on here before I do in case someone is interested. I can't remember everything off the top of my head, but will add to this when I get home.

1 x Amiga 1200 (NOS) - Perfect Condition
Accelerator Board w/ 8MB Ram
Mouse
Joystick
Power Pack
Disks with OS
OS installed on HDD

1 x Amiga 1200 - Good Condition
Mouse
Joystick
Power Pack
Disks with OS
OS installed on HDD

1 x Amiga 500 - Good Condition
Mouse
Extra external FDD
CD-Rom Unit
External Accelerator
Disks with OS

1 x 1084S Monitor - Good Condition
5 x boxes of software - literally 1,0000 Disks!"

I've chatted with him some via e-mail.  Just looking for feedback from the community.  Also what do you think would be a good deal for all of this?

Thanks again.

Too bad it does not specify which accelrator is included with the a1200.
If you want to easiest amiga to expand, then i would go with a a4000 of some kind. A1200 is ok as well, as long as it is towerized, as only a few 68k accelrators will fit in the standard casing.

[koaftder]

Honestly, spend the money on a PC, use winuae for your amiga crap. Ive got an a3000, and i would like to drive this lcd at it's native rez, but i cant. I wanted to get a picasso IV but you cant get one for less than $300 and i'll be damned if i spend that kind of money on one board for my crappy slow 25MHz amiga.

[drewz21]

Wow!  Thanks for the quick response.  I've built a few configurations today on your US AmigaKit website for the 1200 and based on your response just now I will be ordering my system from you.  I'll also get Amiga Forever from you when I place my order.  I've already used your website to subscribe to the Amiga magazine you offer.

I'm not sure if I can purchase the Catweasel card just yet as the 1200 will take up my budget to begin with.

As another poster said earlier companies like you will help Amiga to not only live but hopefully thrive.

Thank you very much.
Drew

[Tomas]

koaftder wrote:
Honestly, spend the money on a PC, use winuae for your amiga crap. Ive got an a3000, and i would like to drive this lcd at it's native rez, but i cant. I wanted to get a picasso IV but you cant get one for less than $300 and i'll be damned if i spend that kind of money on one board for my crappy slow 25MHz amiga.

Why exactly do you waste your time on a Amiga forum, when you believe the computer is so crappy and useless? I really think you should start hanging in a pc forum instead.

[drewz21]

@koaftder

I respect that everyone has and is entitled to an opinion about a particular topic.  However, I really would like the Amiga to be successful again.  I don't see any reason why the Amiga cannot co-exist with MS, Apple, Linux, etc...

If you don't appreciate the Amiga please sell the one you have to someone that will and then you can be happy with whatever computer platform you are using.

I've got several MS PC's and have been using them for years but none of them are as "fun" to me as my Amiga memories.  I would like to return to Amiga and see what it has to offer me.  I could be wrong about my idea that I will have fun with it but that's for me to determine.

Again, I thank all of those that have posted such useful information in helping me with my purchasing decision.

[amigadave]

drewz21 wrote:
Really?  Is Amiga Forever that good?  If so I'll buy it.  I've never really used emulators other than MAME but if it's that good I'll quit worrying so much about being compatible with my old stuff and just buy me a nice AMIGA for everyday use and use Amiga Forever to play my old games.  I've got several PC's at home already.

How do I get the disks onto my PC then to play the games?

Thank you again.

I have (actually my 12 year old son has) a AMD Athlon64 3000+ PC w/1gb RAM running AmigaForever 2005/WinUAE and it is the most compatible, configurable Amiga you can have in one box.  I also have well over a dozen "REAL" Amigas, that I enjoy and use, but AF2005 is worth having and using if you have one or more PC's that are at least 800mHz or faster.  Also have the Catweasle Mk4 card and recommend it as well.

Good luck and welcome back.  (didn't you say you already have an A500 and A2000 in the basement?  Just fix them up instead of buying someone elses used Amiga, unless you have to have the AGA chipset of the A1200 or A4000.)

[koaftder]

Tomas wrote:

koaftder wrote:
Honestly, spend the money on a PC, use winuae for your amiga crap. Ive got an a3000, and i would like to drive this lcd at it's native rez, but i cant. I wanted to get a picasso IV but you cant get one for less than $300 and i'll be damned if i spend that kind of money on one board for my crappy slow 25MHz amiga.

Why exactly do you waste your time on a Amiga forum, when you believe the computer is so crappy and useless? I really think you should start hanging in a pc forum instead.

I didnt say it was useless. For me it's a toy, it's a lot of fun to play with, but lets face it, it;s 25MHz and wb can only put ouy 16 colors are approx 640x480 or something. Ive got 2mb chip, 4 fast. I have no delusions that i will be doing anything productive on that machine.

I would love to get an accelerator, a better video card, ethernet board, os 3.9, etc. But it's not worth the money when you think about it. You could easily spend $1200 upgrading an a3000. And this is 15 year old hardware, anything can go poof at any time, then youve got a $1200 pile of junk you'll be hacking to pieces and peddling on ebay.

300 for picasso 1v
500 for ppc acellerator
100 for ethernet board
200 for pci expansion
96  for fast ram upgrade ( fill up 3 banks )
50 for kick 3.1 roms

for that money i could get a wicked fast pc and emulate. Si that video card really worth that kind of money?

All i'm saying is that for that money, it would be more bang for the buck to get a pc and emulate, or hold out until a machine comes out with aos4. Trokia or what ever is promising hardware this year.

[steve30]

It sure is expensive to upgrade amigas. I don't know why. Possibly due to the small demand for hardware?

I think however that alot of people are willing to pay though.  I was going to get the Escom A1200 from vesalia for £88. But icn shipping this became £105. With the blizzard 1230-IV 50MHz with 32mb fast ram for amigakit, that then became a total of £180 or so. I couldn't afford that, plus a network card, ethernet card, cd, buffered ide interface (to run cd and hd at the same time) etc.

I just bought a used A1200 complete with blixxard 1230 with 128MB fast RAM from effy for £110.

Network cards and HDs arn't exactly that expensive though as they are standard devices for laptops.

I also think of my A500+ as a toy because I use it to play games, and always have done. I don't think the A1200 will be like that though once it get all it's accessories.

I think if you have $500 you should easily be able to get a new A1200 and make it really fast and usable with a 68060 or PPC card.

[Argus]

@koafder

I think you're exaggerating the prices a bit.  You could get yourself a GVP Spectrum rtg graphics card for less than $100; a Cyberstorm MkII for probably $300; 128MB simms for the Cyberstorm for $30; and a XSurf ethernet card for $100-120 (new from Software Hut).  That and $30 for 3.1 roms (if you don't have them) gives you a pretty nice miggy for $500 or so.  I give you that you can get halfway to a nice Athlon 64 PC system for that price, but then you still need $50 for AmigaForever and $100+ for a Catweasel PCI card.  The amiga native A3000 solution lets you run most of the available software base, sans AGA, and it's actually cheaper than the AmigaForever solution brand new (since you already own an A3000).