Greetings, Newbie here

[Falfa]

Hello,

A friend had an A500 when I was growing up and only now have I managed to join the ranks of the Amiga Owners.

I have bought and A1200 and a 2gb hdd. Haven't put the hdd in yet as I need the cables.

Playing Dune II mostly but am having trouble with the most basic things.

I don't know how to restart the machine other than switching it on and off at the box.

When I install the hdd is it easy to install games onto the hdd to play them, the disk changing on Dune II is ... slightly annoying?

I'm planing on getting the CF pcmcia card expander thingy, is it easy to use? I see a nice looking guide here for it.

Thanks and looking forward to some fun in the community.

Falfa.

[Flashlab]

Welcome!

First of all resetting an Amiga is easy: just press CTRL left Amiga and right Amiga.

You can install games on HD with this program: WHDLoad.

[Daniele]

Welcome to this great community the ADF PCMCIA kit is very easy to use and migaKit is provider of software too.
You will have a lot of fun passing your .adf to floppy on your A1200.

Enjoy!

Cheers
 :-D

[Phantom]

Welcome aboard. It's nice to see new people all the time. It shows that they don't forget their big love. ;-)

[amigakit]

Welcome!

[Falfa]

Thanks very much for the welcome.

I'm enjoying going through all the guides, however, I have yet to find the idiots guide to Amiga.

I know PCs and Amstrad CPCs. Thats it. Workbench, drawers and fast RAM are not native to me at all. Infact I got confused tonight when Knight of the Skies asked me to backup the original disks to blank disks...

Its going to be a fun learning experience.

Do a lot of you use the Internet on the Amiga? I'm not planning on doing this, as the machine is right next to me now, but its possible I think I read.

[Rob]

@Falfa

I'm enjoying going through all the guides, however, I have yet to find the idiots guide to Amiga.

The Workbench manual should make it easy to get to grips with the basics.  If your A1200 didn't come with one they can be purchased from Amiga Kit.

I know PCs and Amstrad CPCs. Thats it. Workbench, drawers and fast RAM are not native to me at all.

Workbench is the Amiga equivalent of the Windows desktop and drawers are the same as folders.

The Amiga has two types of ram Chip Ram and Fast Ram.

Chip Ram is the memory that is built into your Amiga and is shared by the CPU and the Amiga's custom chips.  The maximum ammount of chip ram is 2MB, which is what the A1200 shipped with.

Fast Ram is memory that plugs into an expansion slot and is used by the the Amiga's CPU.  Typically the Amiga can have upto 8MB of Fast Ram, the A3000 and A4000 can have 16MB and some CPU cards with 68030/68040/68060 processors can access more.

Adding Fast Ram to your A1200 will practically double it's speed and and is handy for running games from hard disk with WHDLoad.

I'd certainly recommend getting a Fast Ram expansion or perhaps a 68030 card with ram.  They should be fairly easy to come across if you check Ebay regularly, but make sure that they work with the PCMCIA slot first as some cards effectively disable it.

Do a lot of you use the Internet on the Amiga? I'm not planning on doing this, as the machine is right next to me now, but its possible I think I read.

I currently use the Internet on my Amiga One with OS4 but prior to that I used a heavily expanded A1200 which I don't think I'd want to use for that purpose again.

My advice would be to stick to the A1200 for playing games and apps like Deluxe Paint and use your PC to download software to the Compact Flash card.

[rkauer]

 Just want to add some useful links:

 - http://aminet.net (no www. , nor .com): seminal! There you'll find almost anything you need to put your Amiga up-to-date. Programs, guides to make a lot of things in hardware and software, demos, shareware and freeware games, etc;

 - http://amiga.resource.cx : one of two Amiga hardware site to guide you thru hardwares you can buy (or not);

 - a huge bunch of other sites. Start googling!

 And welcome to Amiga.org!

[Zero]

Welcome!  :-)

[Retro_71]

Welcome!!!

[swift240]

Welcome to the group, stay a while, stay forever HAHAAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA

[adonay]

Welcome

When you get your harddrive up and running install WHDLOAD and get a memory expantion or acc board..  WHDload will patch all the games for running better it will also allow floppy less loading extremly fast. Most games are supported "orginal copy neded for installing".. If you have a hard time finding a affordable acc board i have a blizzard 1220 with 4 mb fastram i could sell you, it is a good card for the basic things...

[arkpandora]

You may always try to install a game by just copying the floppy disks' contents onto the hard drive, or use the install program they may provide.

But on the one hand, some game disks don't use any file system, so that they can't be installed.  And on the other hand, most Amiga games were designed for a basic Amiga from 1986-87, so that they don't run fine or don't run at all on more powerful or later systems.  That's where WHDLoad is useful : it will let you install games (and demos) that otherwise could not be installed, and will help you run games on any Amiga.


While WHDLoad is the best solution in most cases, some WHDLoad installers are still far from perfect, so that on some setups you will get better results without WHDLoad.  

[redfox]

@Fakfa

Welcome.

---
redfox

[Daedalus]

Dune II has an installer script on one of the floppies - when you have the hard drive installed and you boot the machine into Workbench, put the first floppy in. An icon will show up on the Workbench screen, just open that and run the installer. It's been literally 10 years since I've done that though so the installer could be on a different disk - some games put it on the last disk. Most games that are designed to be installed use non-standard installers, some of which require a basic knowledge of file and path naming conventions, as already pointed out, the Workbench manual is great for that.

Unfortunately you don't get all that many newcomers to the Amiga, so you won't find all that many beginners' guides around, but if you're stuck, just ask on here and someone's bound to help ya!

Welcome along :-)