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[sweetface]

Het there

When I was very young I had a Commodore Vic 20(still have it in the attic), then I had a Commodore 64(the bulky one), then my dad traded it in for an Amiga 500+. After that we traded that in for an Amiga 1200+. I now have two Amiga 1200s and I want to get one up and running properly eventually. The last one I bought on eBAY was upgraded to ?GB can't remember how much and it came with and a cd rom drive, but with no cable.

Loads of games and I'm letting the kids get playing with it now.

It's good to be back - Amigas are the best.

Crystal. :-)  :-?  :lol:

[Homer]

Welcome back :-)
Amiga is a lot of fun, and will keep you busy for the next 20+ years !! Ask all the questions you can think of, there is always someone with the answers, oh and have a :pint: with us  :lol:

[McVenco]

Welcome!

[sweetface]

Hi and thanks. I do have a lot of questions. hmmm where shall I start? :lol:

[sweetface]

How do I check what the exact spec of my Amiga 1200 is?
Basic stuff like what OS, Workbench.... how much RAM, what size HDD?

I bought it on EBay 2 years ago and the kids have been playing games on it. I'd like to upgrade it a little but I need to start from the top (if you know what I mean). :lol:

[McVenco]

You can easily find out your Kickstart and Workbench version:

Start up to workbench (either from floppy disk or harddisk), right click your mouse button and go to the menu-option Worbench-About.

You'll probably have Kickstart 39.106, which is 3.0

How much RAM? Easy as well. Just click anywhere in the Workbench and look at the top of the screen. You should see around 2MB of Chip RAM (graphic memory). If you also have other memory, then you have some sort of RAM add-on.

[amiga_3k]

To get even more information on the machine you can use ShowConfig, it should be on your system. As I always keep forgetting where it is I normally start it using the AmigaShell  (Press right Amiga and the E key together, a window opens where you can run a command, type NewShell, a new AmigaShell should open, from that AmigaShell type ShowConfig and enter... and you get all the info about the Amiga it can find).

[sweetface]

I had a look at the machine. First of all when it starts up I get a message saying

driver 3.2 "I can't find 4xEIDE Buffered Interface"
I click 'ok' twice and then everything gets back to normal.

ShowConfig gave me this information:

Processor: CPU 68020
Custom Chips: AA PAL Alice (id=$0023), AA Lisa (id=$00F8)
Vers: Kickstart version 39.106, Exec version 39.47, Disk version 40.42
RAM: Node type $A, Attributes $703 (chip), at $400 - $1FFFFF (~2.0meg)
Boards: None

At the top of the workbench screen: 1,521,272 graphics mem 0 other mem.

I delved into the drawers I could find and the Hard Drive says SCSI Toshiba MK1403MAV D3.0

Monitors drawer has in it icons for A2024, DblNISC, DblPal, Euro36, Euro 72, Multiscan, NTSC, Super72, VGA Only.

It seems the HDD is spilt into two:
1. 44% full 97M free 77M in use
2. 1% full, 1,189M free, 11M in use

There are some programs already on the drive but I'm not sure what they do:

Spectrum Emulator v2.0
XCopyPro
MagicWB v2.0
CygnusEd Professional v3.5
MountPC Ed 2.00
SpeedTester
MUI - Magic User Interface version 3.8
and Theme Park (although I couldn't get this to work)but I have my own disks for that game :-)

Is this a good setup? Could someone tell me how much MB the Hard drive has, and actually how much graphics memory as the long numbers confuse me a little. And also what the different progrmas are for.

Thanks

[McVenco]

For the size of the harddisk you just have to add the amount of used+free: 97+77+1189+11 = 1374MB, so somewhere around 1.3GB.

And as for RAM: Showconfig says it all: 2.0 meg - this is standard for the Amiga 1200.

Finally, you have Kickstart 3.0. I suggest that you upgrade to 3.1 if you want to expand your Amiga a bit further.

The programs:
-CygnusEd is a text-editor, with lots of functions (ideal for programming in quite a few languages)
-MagicWB and MUI are Workbench-enhancers: you can tweak the looks of Workbench in a lot of ways using these 2 programs.
-XCopyPro is a program to copy disks. Mostly used in the past for illegal copying of cracked games.
-Spectrum Emulator sounds like an emulator for Spectrum computers I presume :-)


However, if I were you I'd just format the harddrive and do a clean install of Workbench. You can get most of the programs from Aminet, or at least decent equivalents. This way you also get rid of a lot of (memory eating) junk that still might be on the harddisk...

[sweetface]

Thanks Technoid.
Ideally I'd like to be able to put some games and programs I already have onto the HDD. I'm not sure how to do this yet, and I'm thinking I'm gonna need a bigger HDD for that.

If there are any useful programs (there are a few more) on the HDD already is there a way I can save these before I format it?

Another question, it came with a CD-ROM Drive but without a cable. What cable should I get for it? I thought a SCSI Squirrel might do the trick, but as I'm not sure if this is the only option I haven't bought anything yet. Also, would I need extra software to play CD32 games on it?

[amiga_3k]

Normally, 1.3 GB should be enough to keep you busy the next couple of months. Remember that most Amiga games don't eat-up more space than 2 to 3 MB. There are a few that consume a little more, there are a lot that consume less.

Make sure the CD-ROM is working before getting any additional hardware to connect it to the 1200. If it's not working you might be cheaper to find a solution to hook up a bog-standard IDE CD-Drive.

Saving usefull software can still be done on floppies (yikes). You might investigate a Sernet solution to load the data off on your PC (assuming you've got one, a Mac should do as well too). There seems to be a flash-card reader/writer solution for A600/A1200 these days, but I'm not too sure what that's capable of.

[sweetface]

By bog standard ide cd drive, do you mean it's the exact same drives as pc ones? I may have a spare cddrive at my parents house if this one doesn't work. How do I test it?

I've seen a compact flash converter that plugs straight into the side but if I use that where would I plug the cd drive?

[sweetface]

I seem to have found a program installed called MountPC. It looks like if I get the right cable I can connect it to my PC. I have AIAB on my PC too. Is this what MountPC program is for?

[krize]

Yes, standard IDE drive (same for cd/hd).

You need to mount the cdrom, install some software to do this: idefix or AsimCFS.. Search aminet for this

[amiga_3k]

Sorry, lost track of this thread a little bit.

The A1200 has an internal IDE controller, the connectors of it are for direct connection to 2.5" IDE devices, the kind you'd normally find in laptops.

It is possible to connect 3.5"/5.25" IDE devices, the kind found in desktops and towers, to it as well, you'd only need an adapter cable (judging from the size of your internal Harddrive chances are you already have 3.5" harddrive and adaptercable to match).

Now, to test the CD-drive you've got, you'll have to find out if it's SCSI-flavour or IDE-flavour. The IDE ones normally are rather easy to identify due to the jumpers for selecting SL (Slave) MA (Master) or CS (CableSelect). The SCSI ones are not too dificult as they should have some jumpers for setting the SCSI adress (and sometimes it's even spelled out on the label ;-)). If it is SCSI you need access to a SCSI controller, if it is IDE you can easily hook it to a PC to check it.

If you've got a SCSI version you'd need a SCSI-controller, which are (hardly) available for PCMCIA-slots. Note that I vaguely remember that those controllers tend to get useless with certain accelerators, so if you're planning on getting an accelerator it's a nice option to no pick-up.

I'd put my money on getting an IDE CD-drive. The biggest dare would be hacking it into your A1200's case (near impossible) or do some nice DIY where you create an external IDE solution. (or you could do the same I did when I was still a student, runnning an A3000 and just route the ribbon-cable and powercable out of the case and leave the drive exposed to the environment).