In awe and in need of assistance.

[Chris_R]

Wow, this is fantastic.

My Amiga 600 broke during on my 15th birthday seven years ago. Havaing moved recently I have been routing through old boxes and low and behold I discovered my childhood friend's corpse gathering dust.

I also discovered my hundreds of discs and ridiculous amount of peripherals that I am hoping still work (although I'm sure despite being properly stored many of the disks will probably have been corroded.)

With a little bit of money to spend after christmas I began looking to see if I could make the put off jump up to the Amiga 1200 so I was over the moon to find a site like this.

Now all I need is some advice in getting an A1200. I want one with a reasonably sized hard drive, CD ROM and the ability to handle e-mail. I have found the shop Amigakit.com and saw their built for order section but I am a little unsure as to what componenets I actually require.

Thanks very much for all your help in advance and it is great to find such a brilliant site such as this.

[meega]

I think you will want some RAM and a faster processor to get the best from an A1200 - another £50-100 on a decent accelerator card will provide both.

[Chris_R]

Which accelerator card would you recommend?

Would amigakit be able to fit these for me?

Or would installing them be a simple case of just slotting it in like upgrading PC components?

[downix]

Anything 030 or better would be fine for email and low level web work.  Likely they could, but even if not putting in most accelerators in an A1200 is not difficult.

What is wrong with your A600 anyways?  And would you be willing to part with the case?

[spirantho]

What's wrong with your A600? Some of them have the same problem and are very easy to fix if you know which end of a soldering iron to hold..

I've fixed 2 A600s that just stayed on a black screen with the Caps Lock light glaring at me...

[IndyJones]

...very easy to fix if you know which end of a soldering iron to hold.

And if you don't, you find out right quick!  :-D

[meega]

Chris_R wrote:
Which accelerator card would you recommend?

Would amigakit be able to fit these for me?

Or would installing them be a simple case of just slotting it in like upgrading PC components?

This one. Or something like it. Or something even better.

[orange]

I'd say forget CDROM and go for PCMCIA Ethernet card. You probably have some PC to use as server, and there are better ways to listen to audioCD..
Just keep in mind getting PCMCIA friendly turbo card.

..and try to fix A600 like a real Amiga fan  ;-)

amigakit is ok if you got deep pockets.. otherwise try to find some friend, lot of people threw away valuable Amiga hardware  :cry:

[Chris_R]

The problem with the A600 was that disks were getting stuck in the disk drive.

I thought to myself, easy problem to fix this, took the thing to pieces, took the disk out. Put it all back together, then went to turn it back on and it didn't work.

I wouldn't trust myself with a soldering iron, I barely trust myself building a pc. I will hang onto the A600 as a future project, but for now I'm just after something that works.

Cheers for all the help guys.

[downix]

Did you check if you'd put the power plug or floppy cable in backwards?

[taunusand]

spirantho wrote:
What's wrong with your A600? Some of them have the same problem and are very easy to fix if you know which end of a soldering iron to hold..

I've fixed 2 A600s that just stayed on a black screen with the Caps Lock light glaring at me...

I have one of theese.. What did you do to fix it??  :-)

[arnljot]

Chris_R wrote:
low and behold I discovered my childhood friend's corpse gathering dust.

I'd call the police about that.

Chris_R wrote:
Now all I need is some advice in getting an A1200. I want one with a reasonably sized hard drive, CD ROM and the ability to handle e-mail. I have found the shop Amigakit.com and saw their built for order section but I am a little unsure as to what componenets I actually require.

I'd look for either a Blizzard or Apollo accellerator from ebay. I was myself a Blizzard fan back then. Mark IV 030 or preferably a 040 or 060. PPC is top model, but go for crazy prices now.

[spirantho]

taunusand wrote:

spirantho wrote:
What's wrong with your A600? Some of them have the same problem and are very easy to fix if you know which end of a soldering iron to hold..

I've fixed 2 A600s that just stayed on a black screen with the Caps Lock light glaring at me...

I have one of theese.. What did you do to fix it??  :-)

It's a problem with the power regulation, caused by old capacitors - usually one under the floppy drive. When they get old they leak and/or go furry. I just found the furry culprit (note: not very furry, just "extra hair" around the bottom), ripped it off 'carefully', and soldered a bog standard 2p-from-Maplin electrolytic with the same rating back in its place.

Of course it doesn't look quite as neat as the caps on the motherboard are surface mount, and electrolytics aren't, but it works much better now!

[leirbag28]

@Chris R

Buy from AmigaKit.com and stop wasting time!

seriously.....they are very good to deal with and you will be enjoying your Amiga sooner.

Im sure your A600 probably still works though....I suspect you left some screw inside or something making contact with metal, that may or may not have totally screwed up your Amiga.

Never leave any metal touching other metal or chips, or wires.

Also I recommend getting a Subway USB card for your A600 or A1200.....it will only work on the 600 if you have the clockport adaptor and at least a 68020 I think, but it works great on the A1200 and gives you Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, many more options of devices you can attach and 1 BILLION times easierto transfer files from a PC or a Mac to your Amiga. I personally consider any Amigan who doesn't have USB on their Amiga yet, a professional nutcase and have no clue what they are missing. I say this jokingly, but the Subway definitely defintely defitely is a must have to the 3rd power multiplied by 7.

Get one!

also get yourself a MASPlayer MP3 decoder if you want to play 18bit MP3's on your Amiga............get the Pro Version ifyou can find one as the normal one seems to use like 60% CPU even though they say it doesnt.

And if you really really want to do alot of things for your Amiga.......get yourself SCALA MM300 or MM400 and if you are creative, you will do everything with this app......even things that it cannot do you can make it do. Like use Commands from your C directory, and Arexx, and icons to run stuff and integrate it into itself.

[crass84]

ther is an expanded amiga on ebay with hard drive and 030 expansion card