Well, I agree, REAL thing is where it's at...

[vic20owner]

After getting a SD/FF (I've had a SD and was not impressed) I can say that WOW my A1200 really shines in PAL HIRES LACE.  A mediator and voodoo would really be nice, but pal lace on the 19" monitor with no flicker is really all I think I need to enjoy my machine!  Us NTSC boys are limited in vertical resolution...to 422.  But in PAL, I get 720x546 and it makes a big difference... especially when you let the desktop scroll to 1024x768.

I've spent most of the night installing demos and playing games. My 6yr old played shadow of the beast 3 for about 2 hours.  

Tonight it suddenly set in... I remember what I loved about my Amiga 10 years ago.  Even today, (with a stable display) it continues to impress me.

I used to pull my Amiga out once a month... mess with it for awhile and pack it back up. But now, with the scan doubler it's earned a permenant place on my desk. I spent a few hours today making space.

I am hopelessly hooked on this old machine with a clunky desktop...

[keropi]

did you copy/paste your thread title from a spam email adverising  stocks/viagra?

[vic20owner]

hahah sorry.  The lady of the house is asleep (1:30 am) thus I am typing in the dark on a black keyboard down a few glasses of wine.  You are lucky you got what u got.

LOL.. Anyway.. my Amiga is clicking away and I am having too much fun to turn it off.  

[krize]

Yes, a good display is very important if you really want to enjoy the machine.

Congrats

[Housey]

Hi,

I've been meaning to get my old 1200 out of storage and see if it boots for a while.  After reading your post I did just that

I haven't got a good display to plug it into, its a Acorn RGB monitor (with in built speakers).

I plugged it all in and the screen came up yellow and then went black and then came back yellow.  I have a blizzard in the trap door slot and after pushing that in I turned it back on and it gave me the purple rom screen with the floppy disk animation.  Although it should have booted from the hard disk.  I could actually hear the hard disk spinning up so I took the case off and I unplugged the IDEFix board and pushed the hard disk cable directly onto the connector on the motherboard (probably the IDEFix wasn't connected properly).  Then it booted into Workbench! COOL!

So good to see my workbench after all this time.  I fired up  OctaMED and went through playing all my old mods.  Really great nostalgia.  Brought back loads of happy memories sat there tracking with it for hours and hours.  WinUAE is great but you can't beat the real thing.  I'm in two minds whether to sell it or not.  The keys were yellower than I remembered so i'd have to give it a clean if I were to sell it.

I don't have any games for it now either so it will probably go back in storage.

Sorry if this story was a bit long and boring, just wanted to share  :-D

[vic20owner]

Well I know the feeling... thats what I used to do.. pull it out and then put it back.

I think the key was picking up the floppies on there the other day. I received a box of around 300 floppies and a new SD/FF.  

The other important part was REMOVING my LCD from the amiga and using a 19" CRT.  The LCD doesn't even come close to the CRT... the crt is so much better it's like night and day.

So with 300 disks to go through and test, the monitor and solid display, my little A1200 is plenty of fun.

Without those things I admit it would probably go back into the closet once my eyes started bleeding.


 

[Housey]

Yeah.. must admit the screen I have for it is not usable full time, i'd have to get a good CRT or TFT.  Although that would also mean getting a flicker fixer.  Not sure I can warrant spending too much on it.

Just seen the spec you have looks pretty good.  Loads of fun to be had  ;-)

edit: In fact, if I had a wireless pcmcia card for it I would certainly use it.

[vic20owner]

You can get a wireless card pretty cheap... you can find the Microsoft MN520 which most people don't realize is a prism chipset, thus compatible with the Amiga 1200, apple newton, etc.  Plus, since it's "microsoft" brand nobody wants it

Unfortunately you'll need a lot of fast ram to browse the web, and even with my 68030/50 + 64mb fast it's too slow to be practical. It's ok for downloading apps from aminet and transferring between machines, but actually checking your ewb based mail or reading forums is nearly impossible unless you have all day to wait for it to render the images.

[motrucker]

A FF/SD makes a huge difference in an Amiga display to any good monitor. Too many people try to save a few dollars by getting just s scan doubler, and they don't cut it.
On my Amigas I don't use anything like Magic Workbench. I just display a graphic background (usually my car at the dragstrip), and use fairly fancy New Icons and a Start bar clone. That is pretty much what my Windoze machine looks like too.

[hamtronix]

vic20owner wrote:

...

So with 300 disks to go through and test, the monitor and solid display, my little A1200 is plenty of fun.

...

 

Make sure to download a virus checker from Aminet just to be sure. You never know what could be lurking on those little guys.

[murple]

Make sure to download a virus checker from Aminet just to be sure. You never know what could be lurking on those little guys.

What's a recommended one thats up to date (I suspect any Amiga virii are long since known and remedied)? I'd expect most online archives of software have been cleaned up of virii years ago, and purchased (or otherwise obtained) old floppy collections are the biggest risk vector these days.