Need New System Advice!

[Linchpin]

Hey people! Im pretty new to this Amiga site, Nice to meet you all! I was an amiga user untill a couple of years ago when my trusty A2000 bit the dust! I am looking to get into a new system as PC is really starting to get to me. Any advice? I am from the UK and am looking at getting quite a high spec machine, i am also wondering about LAN Cable modems, can they be used? Sorry about my ignorance, i dont know a great deal about these new systems, damm i still have my A500+ :-) Any help or advice would be well appriciated, looking foreward to rejoining the Amiga community! Kevin :-P

[Jaruzel]

Hi there Kevin, Welcome to Amiga.org!

It all depends what you want and how much you want to pay?

If you  don't (at this stage) want to splash out several 100 dollars/pounds/euros on a new AmigaOne then I'd recommend an A1200 with an acellerator card and Hard Disc, that will get you back onto the road to amigaville, and from that basic set-up, you can re-aquaint yourself with the amiga world, and fiddle and up grade it etc. while you wait for the AmigaOne to a)come down in price a bit and b) for AmigaOS 4 to be released.

Well.... thats what i'm doing anyway.... ;-)

-Jar.

[Quixote]

;-) To answer your question, the new AmigaOne has a RJ45 LAN port as standard, so using a cable modem shouldn't be any problem.

:pint: And welcome aboard!

[Linchpin]

Hey guys thanks for the welcome! I think i will wait for OS4 or whatever the new OS is. Howabout the availibilty of device drivers ETC? Thanks :-?

[Quixote]

;-) As I understand it, Amiga OS 4.0 will be released with a list of supported hardware.  The philosophy at this time is that they would prefer to support a narrow range of hardware well, than a wide range of hardware, badly.

A number of Amiga.org members already have the AmigaOne, and are happy with them.  OS 4 hasn't been released just yet, but it's just a matter of time.

There is a version of OS 4 for the existing PPC processor cards, such as the CyberStorm, etc.  That version will be released first, with the AmigaOne version to follow.  As my A4000 is equipped with a CyberStormIII, I'm champing at the bit for OS 4.  After I am able to run it for myself, I'll decide whether to order the AmigaOne hardware as well.

[Linchpin]

Suppose the driver thing seems to make sence, so let me get this right. I can get a standard a1200 ( there is a dude in work who will sell me the NON hdd version for £30 so thats no problem, and upgrade it to hell and back and get a half decent system out of it? :-D

[alx]

That's kind of the same route I took ro re-aquaint myself with Amiga - got an A1200 030/50 ; hardly the fastest thing around but it works well, and manny people I know hardly believe it's an Amiga (newicons makes a big difference to how a WB looks :-) )

You could expand it enormously (put it in a tower, add PPC, RTG, soundcard, PCI) and it could possibly run OS4 then.  But I'd be very expensive and less reliable/fast than an A1.  I'd just expand it moderately to get used to the Amiga way, and if you like what you see consider an A1.

[Linchpin]

A1200 030/50 ?? whats that 030/50 thing about?

[alx]

The bog-standard CPU in the A1200 is a 68020E at 14Mhz.  You can put an accelerator into the trapdoor slot with a faster processor.  I happen to have a 68030 (030) at 50Mhz (actually, it might be 40Mhz).  Other, better CPUs include the 68040 and 68060.

[Linchpin]

So... a 50hz amiga is fairly quick then? Sorry to be mister stupid this is all very much appriciated i promise you. How can i tell if one of theese amigas is an uprated model? also what about RAM? Upgrades in the usual way? Thanks again.

[alx]

So... a 50hz amiga is fairly quick then?

50Mhz isn't bad for a "classic" Amiga - but AFAIK the 68040 and even more so the 68060 are far more "efficient" processors, and would thrash my  68030.  Note that Amigas also use PowerPC processors (the A1 only uses PPC), but older versions of the operating syetem (3.9 and below) run on the 68k processors.

If you look at the bottom of an A1200 there is a plate that comes off - the accelerator (if there is one) fits under there.  But the easiest way to check what spec is to download a benchmarking utility like Amiga Intuition Based Benchmarks (using this just now, I confirmed that my CPU is 40Mhz).  I seriously doubt that there will be any other expansions if there isn't even a HDD - and the seller would probably know about them.

[Linchpin]

I got you, so they all start off the same and the additional processor is on the expanision card in the trapdoor.. right. What about a non HDD machine, can i put a hard disk in it? I think that the bloke in work with me selling the A1200 its a bog standard non HDD model as its been in his loft since day 1 really. Thanks!!! (Im getting there - its been a long time since i used this platform!) :-P

[alx]

The A1200 uses a laptop-sized HDD - not the standard type.  I've heard of people who have managed to squeeze normal ones in, but there can be problems with airflow etc, and you'll need an IDE adaptor - there's a bit about it in this faq.

[Linchpin]

Crap. cant access that page in work, its denied for some reason. So i can get a laptop HDD, any restriction on size, type etc? What about this adaptor thing? Thanks :-?

[alx]

This is what the link pointed to:

Many people would prefer to use a 3.5" instead of the smaller 2.5" drives as the former are much cheaper. This is possible, but you need a special cable to connect the drive to your IDE controller. Additionally you should put some isolating material between the drive and the main board. Some people report termic problems but I did not notice anything.

Some dealers offer a set which contains the cable, isolating material.

If you are going to install an IDE-harddisk, regardless if 2.5" or
3.5", you should always consider that the it may not work flawlessly, if the drive and ROM-version have not been tested and approved by Commodore. Regarding the A1200, one should also remember that this Amiga has not been designed to hold 3.5" harddisk drives. The 2.5" drives, which are mainly thought for portable computers, may have some advantages (for example in power consumption, heat emission or shock
resistance) that could pay off because of the small keyboard case of the A1200 and the limited power supply. With the larger 3.5" drives, ventilation inside the computer might also be disturbed. If it is necessary to remove some shielding inside the A1200 to make the drive fit inside, even radio interference may occur.

To sum it up: if 3.5" harddisk drives could really be used in the
A1200 without any problems, you could be sure Commodore themselves wouldn't have used the slightly more expensive 2.5" drives in the A1200-HD.

AmigaOS could only recognise 4GB drives, but there are now ways around this - for instance upgrading to OS 3.5 will give large-drive support.  If you want to go the 3.5" route, an adaptor like this could probably do it - but check with someone who knows more first :-)