A New Amigan here....Need help....

[cynkronyze]

Hey TEAM!!!,

I am a new Amigan (well a wannabe actually) here...and i have a C=64/C=128 still play games on them.....i need something more.....i have been doing a lot of reading and have to a decided to go in for an Amiga 1200( i have had it with pc's and pc clones.....)

Please tell me is this a wise desicion? I know that there are a lot of upgrades availible for the Amiga 1200.But can you guys suggest to me :-

1)where can i get a stock Amiga 1200 at a good price?
2)Can someone list out the best possible upgrades availible and where to get them
3)Can these upgrades help me get on the internet and check my emails and browse generally?
4)Is OS4 Availible for the Amiga 1200?
5)If OS4 is not avalible what is the next best OS that is availble.


Is there anything that i need to know...before i change platforms from the F@#$@#$ up intel based PC's or toilet seat glorified MAC's to what i gather the BEST COMPUTER EVER MADE(forget the age...its just the state of mind)

you can call me crazy but i have made up my mind ....i am definitley change platforms coz..at home i will be more than happy if ican watch movies or listen to music on or play the greatest games ever made.....i am sick and tired of all these first person shoot em ups....


PLEASE HELP ME

CYNKRONYZE......

[amigagr]

hi cynkronyze and welcome in our amiga company  :-)
here amigakit you can find a lot of amiga hardware/software stuff.
amiga os4.0 is not finished yet and maybe will not be available for classic amiga except of them installed with ppc boards, power up but i'm not sure about it.
the latest amiga os available for all classic amigas is os3.9

[leirbag28]

I would say Dont completely switch. Get the FREE OS for PC's
UBUNTU Linux!

Just order it on their website...its totally free! and it boots right off the CD


As Far as the best choice for Amigas.
Get the A1200

its the super easiest straight foward solution.
Forget Internet browsing unless your downloading stuff from AMinet.

You can hoever Use

Yahoo messenger (JabberWockey)
MSN Messenger (Epistula)
AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) (AmigAIM, JabberWocky)
IRC  (AmIRC, WookieChat, BlackIRC)
Jabber Wocky
ICQ  (StrICQ)
Gadu Gadu  (Gadami)
HotLine   (AmiCOMSYS)


Amiga is much more fun for chatting!
also the A1200 with WHDLoad is best for Gaming......get a 68030 @ 50mhz and 16 to 128Mb

also a wireless PCMCIA card (16bit)
add USB   (Subway USB at AmiKit)

and your good to go!

if you want something for viewing internet on Browsers..........then you need to spend tons of money and get an A4000 with Gfx card and 68060 minimum, or an AmigaONE

[AmigaMance]

 Yes, the Amiga 1200 is a wise decision. An Amiga 4000 would be ideal but much more expensive.
 You can get a stock one at several Amiga stores (check the links of this sites) and Ebay.
 The best possible upgrade that you can make is an accelerator card with some extra ram on it. The built-in CPU is too slow and the memory too low for anything serious.
 This will help you greately to connect to the internet. Web browsing will be limited to 256 colors, of course, so you may want to add a graphics card as a next upgrade.

[InTheSand]

Hi,

Welcome to A.Org!

cynkronyze wrote:
i will be more than happy if ican watch movies or listen to music on or play the greatest games ever made.....i am sick and tired of all these first person shoot em ups

For games, if you're into more of the old-school stuff then the Amiga is ideal for that, and a stock A1200 will do just fine.

If you want to listen to MP3 music, you'll need to expand that A1200 (hard drive plus CPU and RAM board), and even then, the experience may not be satisfactory due to the Amiga's ageing hardware.

For watching movies... well you can almost forget that on a classic Amiga unless you limit yourself to low-res AVI files with light compression.

I agree with Leirbag28 above - get hold of Ubuntu for your PC... You won't be disappointed and you can then say goodbye to Microsoft (or at least dual-boot with Windoze). It's one of the better Linux distributions, and installing new software is easy and done from a GUI if you're a Linux beginner. You'll then be able to watch movies, listen to music and use the Internet with a modern browser.

 - Ali

[AmigaMance]

 Oh, i forgot to mention a Hard disk. but this is considered standard.

if you want something for viewing internet on Browsers..........then you need to spend tons of money and get an A4000 with Gfx card and 68060 minimum, or an AmigaONE

You need all this hardware to be able to browse??
 I used to browse the web using an Amiga 1200 with a 68030 and AGA. It wasn't very fast or pretty. But still quite feasible.

[InTheSand]

It depends on how much you're prepared to put up with!

There's always the Amiga version of Lynx - and that'll work fine on a relatively unexpanded A500!

But for anyone used to modern browsers, anything other than an Amiga with 68060 plus graphics card is going to be a nasty shock to the system... Even with all that costly and old hardware, it still won't come close to even a basic a PC or Mac running Firefox or similar...

I guess it depends on some extent to the types of web site being used. Those that are mainly text-based and those that resize their width dynamically (such as A.Org and the low-graphics version of the BBC News site) will be tolerable, but so many won't be useable...

 - Ali

[dfreniche]

I'm a beginner in the wonderful Amiga World, but I'm learning quickly !
Recently (past December) I bought an A1200 with 80 GB HD and an IDE 4-WAY Splitter (with this, you can connect up to 4 IDE devices to the A1200). I had an unused PCMCIA Ethernet 10 Mbit/s card, so I plug it into the A1200.
This worked, but the machine was so slow, that I decided to go for a Blizzard IV, with a 68030/50 Mhz and 32 MB RAM.
Since then, this machine fies!
Two days ago I connected the A1200 with my Debian Linux server using smbfs. It works and it's so easy to use!
Where you can buy: I bought the A1200 at Vesalia, although Amigakit would be nice, too (and they participate in these forums, thanks, guys at Amigakit). It costs me > 300 Eur. (>300 USD, approx.)
Then, the expansion board, in Ebay, another 80 Eur.
I'm burning money at iridium rates with my A1200, but that's no problem: it makes me happy, don't have any collateral effect, so, where's the problem ? :-D

I'm writing here about my story with Amigas. Currently in Spanish only, but If someone asks for it, I will translate the whole thing into English. After all, you can watch at the photos.

As I'm a newbie, I use/fight with AmigaOS 3.5. I'm reading everything I can. I don't think I will switch to OS 3.9.

If you are tired of Microsoft Windows, give Linux a try. Use Ubuntu, as the wise guys here recommend. I only use Linux for 3 years now (well, and AmigaOS, and AROS, and CP/M, I'm a little bit freaky).

[InTheSand]

I'm curious - are you using CP/M in 2006?! What are you running it on?

 - Ali

[cynkronyze]

Hi,

I am not using CP/M well i tired but a long time ago i use the machines merely for retro gaming i tried my hand at programming taking an online tutorialin assembly buti gave up.....the people who make demos...hats of to them........


CYNKRONYZE......

[cynkronyze]

HEY THANKS TEAM.....



That was quicker than msot replies that i got for a similar kind of query.......

hey can i directly play roms that i down load of net and into the amiga?

or do i need amiga formatted disks?

thanks again.....

by the way there was a link which i have lost memory of but it seems there was a new upgrade or accelerator card for the Amiga and you dont even need a tower....cant remember the site....

[tonyvdb]

Hey, Welcome to AO.

As said before you have a fue options as to how you want to go. An Amiga 3000 tower an A4000 desktop or Tower and the A1200. These all will give you many years of enjoyment.
The A4000 is harder to find and more costly but well worth it because you can put a Graphics card and farly fast eccelorator in it The Cyberstorm PPC would also let you run some PC software as well but in my opinion its not worth it. The Cyberstorm MK II or III 68060 50 mHz. is a very good option.
It would be almost impossible to find a new A3000 or A4000 but there are some A1200 available.

[cynkronyze]

Hi thanks for replying to my query ...i need your help cos you look like you know what you are doing and you know what to buy...

did you buy a stock a1200(not the tower version) ?? and then buy the upgrades? if so fom where?

should i go in for the shark processor upgrade or the blizzard 403e ppc ?

and also pelase list out all that i need to get the A1200 online

p.s i do not want to towerise my system unless it is absolutley necassary.

thanks

[SamuraiCrow]

The Shark PPC has:
 1. never been released
 2. requires a PCI slot and therefore will only work in a towerized A1200.
 3. Neither AmigaOS 4.0 nor MorphOS ported to it due to item #1.

The Blizzard PPC is rare and expensive.  It will be difficult to find a user willing to part with one.  It would someday be able to run AmigaOS 4.0, however, and when used with the BlizzardVision graphics card works with MorhphOS currently.

The PowerVixxen LT is not released yet but will come with AmigaOS 4.0 when/if it does come out and will be a fair bit faster than the Blizzard and will come with a graphics card and enhanced sound capabilities as well.  This should work in a desktop A1200 although there is rumor that an A3000/4000 version will be better and faster (comparable to the Shark).

[InTheSand]

cynkronyze wrote:
pelase list out all that i need to get the A1200 online

The cheapest way, assuming you already have a PC that's networked in some way, is to get hold of an old PCMCIA Ethernet card and use free software from Aminet to work with this to get your A1200 online.

Have a look at the following:
AmiTCP 4.0 Demo (fully functional)
Cnet device - look at the readme file included to check for compatible network cards
3com 3c589 - again check the readme for compatible cards

Or, for a no-hassle all in one solution, check out AmigaKit's wired and wireless options...

Have fun!

 - Ali