Best Amiga to "Modernize"?

[BillHarrison]

Hey all, looking to build up an amiga, would like to be able to play older games as well as bring it "Up to speed" and atleast run 3.1 or 3.9 quickly enough to browse the web, email, dtp, word processing, etc.  

I currently have a NOS Amiga 2000 still New in the box, and an amiga 1200 tore apart, it had a mouse problem I recently figured out.  The amiga 1200 is missing various screws etc from being passed around dissassembled, but all the main components are there, floppy, mb, power supply (Actually from a 500 but it works) etc.

My question is, which of these are better for what I want to do?  How important is AGA?  I will likely want an RTG card in either case.  So does AGA really matter?

Or am I better off with a 3000 or 4000?  I could always ebay these and buy one of those with the proceeds?  

I guess, if you had it all to do over, what would be the best starting point?  What has the most "Available" upgrades?

[ZeBeeDee]

An A1200 with either 4mb or 8mb in the trapdoor will suit your needs if it is only to be a games machine.

You can always 'downgrade' the A1200 back to an A500 using something along the lines of Relokick for those stubborn games that refuse to run on anything but the A500.

[ddniUK]

Forget Relokick, buy WHDLoad and your A500 to A1200 compatibility problems are fixed....! Not to mention minimal loading times, no floppy disks and many thousands of games all ready to play from hard drive!

[melott]

I personally favor the A3000.
Gennerally excepted as the best Amiga built.
It has all the expandabilly you want and will
do everything mentioned in the other posts.
Sell the NOS A2000 to a collector, dump the A1200
and get an A3000 (thats my opinion  :-D ).

[tokyoracer]

I'd say the A4000, it has the most power (and AGA) and just as much expandability, at a cost mind.

[ZeBeeDee]

The A4000 is definitely going to be the budget buster no matter how you look at it.  But as tokyoracer said, it does have the AGA chipset built-in as standard and is the most powerful of the Amiga lineage.

One factor you also have to consider is space. If it's not at a premium then the A4000 is the one to go for.


*Addendum to my previous post*

Yes, WHDLoad should also be considered so a bigger hard drive and the possibility of an external CD-RM (to store the games on) should be factored into the price.

[Flashlab]

If you really want to surf the web and do other "serious" stuff with it with some speed then you need an graphics card, ethernet card and an 040 or better still an 060 accelerator. You would need a big box Amiga for its Zorro slots. On a 3000 and 4000 there are Zorro3 slots which are faster than Zorro2 slots found in the 2000. This especially counts for graphics card performance. So for optimal performance you would need a 3000 or 4000.

The 3000 is a very nice looking machine but lacks AGA (only needed for some games and applications), has some problems with some hardware upgrades (depending on Buster chip revision and the INT2 problem) and has no standard room for a CD-ROM drive. It does have SCSI as standard though.

The 4000 has room for a CD-ROM drive, AGA and more expansion space. Its case is not as nice as the 3000 though and it lacks SCSI. But with the right accelerator you can get SCSI and even faster transfer speed than with the standard 3000 SCSI. Then again this can also be done on the 3000 itself.

So I would opt for the 4000 if you want real hardware; I did this myself. Be aware though that collecting all the gear needed is very expensive and time consuming! If you really need a very fast Amiga with all the options your best bet may even be WinUAE. It's cheap, available and the fastest solution you can get.

[Fransexy_]

The best Amiga to modernize is A1200.The most expandable and is the amiga that have more expansions on the market (even new ones).You can even put zorro or pci slots and have even more expansion options

My ideal setup:

Amiga 1200 desktop
BlizzadPPC and blizzardvision (if you can get them)
Wireless pcmcia card
Subway USB contoler for clockport
Indivision AGA internal flickerfixer

[Flashlab]

He he pretty consistent advice here in this thread!

Anyway don't use a 500 or 600 ;-)!

[BillHarrison]

I agree!  I expected like an overwhelming "1200" or 2000 or etc, but I see there are many colors in the amiga rainbow!

 :-D  :-)  :-(  :-o  :-?  8-)  :lol:  :-x  :-P  :oops:  :cry:  :evil:  :roll:  ;-)  :idea:  :angry:  :madashell:  :boohoo:  :getmad:  :crazy:

[jupo42]

The 2000 is my favorite but I'm biased, it was my first computer and I have a bunch of expansions for it already.

You can find accelerators, RTG cards, networking, and so on, for either one. The 1200 has a couple advantages - new things are still being developed for it, so what's available uses newer tech. A lot of it requires converting the thing to a tower case, though.

What's the best solution? If cost is no object, get a 4000, 060+PPC, a PCI busboard, some fancy graphics card, and so on. If cost is a limiting factor (and when isn't it?) then you need to just look at what you can find for both and evaluate how much you're willing to spend.

As far as AGA goes, if you expand the A2k and still need AGA for games and such, keep the A1200 around just for that (maybe with a RAM expansion, as mentioned earlier).

-Jupo

[persia]

UAE is a good option.  It provides speed and flexibility and doesn't take up space.  It's also a good way to get an Amiga laptop.  I find myself running non-virtual hardware less and less.

[doctorq]

My ideal setup:

Amiga 1200 desktop
BlizzadPPC and blizzardvision (if you can get them)
Wireless pcmcia card
Subway USB contoler for clockport
Indivision AGA internal flickerfixer

I'd get an A4000D instead.
CyberStormPPC (all CSPPC has SCSI on them, as opposed to BPPC, and the SCSI is much faster than on a BPPC)
CyberVision64 (because of the build in monitorswitcher)
Ariadne I ethernet card (admitted, it's not wireless, but ethernet bridges has been invented)
Deneb USB card, with build in flashrom
Arxon scandoubler

Maybe even throw in a Toccata sound card, and connect a MAS player.

The above makes you ready for OS3.x, OS4, MOS and with a single screen setup.

I'd say the A4000 and A1200 is on par in terms of expandebility. Often it's easier to get parts for an A1200 though, and often cheaper too.

[amigadave]

Lots of different answers and all valid in one way or another.  I agree that you should eBay the NOS A2000 as that will get you the most money to expand any Amiga that you choose to "Build Up".

The cheapest and easiest way to go would be to put your A1200 into a tower kit with a Zorro board and perhaps a Mediator PCI expansion. With the PCI slots you can add the fastest Graphics  and Sound cards and a cheap network card.

Find an 060 or PPC accelerator for it and you should be all set.

WHDLoad will solve all compatibility problems.

The A3000T and A4000T are other good suggestions, but will cost you more and won't give you much more in the end.

[Zac67]

Best Amiga to start with?

Very easy: A4000T
- AGA
- Zorro III expandability
- large number of slots

Add a PCI busboard, Voodoo3 & an '060 and you're pretty set. Come on, no penny-pinching here...  :crazy: