Which is the best Amiga and why?

[Tenacious]

@ Redfox

No sweat!

@ Sim085

There is no rush.  Trying all the software you can find will help you know how to proceed.  Probably, 90% of Amiga software was designed to be runable on an unexpanded A500.  Browsing, Mp3s, and movie trailers usually require more horsepower or special expansions. (Try Googling "Amiga MasPlayer".)

Also, there are many here who have greatly expanded systems, and others who have large collections.  The secret is to bide your time and wait for good (or free) deals.  Instant gratification is what makes Amigas expensive.

[darksun9210]

thinking about it, if i calmed down on my "to the max" ideas :-) and actually spent some time sorting just one machine out software wise, some of the other posts reminded me that, most amiga software is very happy with one or two megs of ram. and going back to the day, how i would have killed just for a hard disk for monkey island2 or ledgend of kyrandia :-D

the A1200 seems to be the best for basic expansion.
you can find accelerators/ram cards with little to no fuss.
internal IDE for cheap hard disks.
and a PCMCIA port for network cards/compact flash adapters for easy copy files from PC.
and of course, their relatively ubiquitous availability.

otherwise, asking people here for "the best amiga" will lead to a variety of opinions :-D

[ZeBeeDee]

The 'best' Amiga is the one or ones YOU personally own.

[Nlandas]

If you are looking at just getting into Amiga. The most common application for it is retro-gaming. I'd recommend an accelerated A1200 with hard drive and a license of WHDLoad for that. (I'd also buy a new AGA flixer fixer for it from AmigaKit so you can use a modern VGA display.)

Using an Amiga as your primary machine versus a cheap modern PC is not likely to be the experience you'd expect.

As for what is the best Amiga - I'd say the A3000+ prototype A3000 with AGA, of course it was never mass produced.

[tokyoracer]

Id say the 1200, doen't cost you an arm and a leg (or your whole body for experimental tests) and it's massivly expandable. Oh not to mention that it also has AGA which is a great bonus. Not only that, it brought modern affordable comuting to the masses, though a little too late sadly.

[T3000]

sim085 wrote:
 ...the best Amiga...

One that still works...  :-D

[Tenacious]

I think all of mine work, or, at least, none have died of old age.

A 1200 and a 600 suffered mishaps from previous owners.

[Dandy]

alexh wrote:

sim085 wrote:

Said that it seems that the A500+ could be upgraded to actually match the A1200. Although I do not think that the A500+ could take an AGA card!

No AGA. No PCMCIA. All upgrades cost 2x-3x more.

An prototype AGA expansion (AGA Go! kit; DCE?) for OCS Amigas had been presented/demoed at one of the Amiga trade fairs in Cologne/Germany in the early ninetees.
But it never went into production, IIRC.

[Dandy]

A4000_Mad wrote:

Sim085 wrote:

As much as I know the A1200 is not a PPC

The A1200 can have a Blizzard PPC card fitted and the A3000 & A4000 can have a Cyberstorm PPC card fitted. The cards will cost you an arm and a leg now, but you would have a machine of up to a whopping 240Mhz and be able to run AmigaOS 4.0 Classic :-)
...

Well, I'm not aware of the current second hand prices, but back in November 1997 - the first day ever the Phase5 CyberstormPPC cards were available at the Amiga trade fair here in Cologne - I payed 2400 DM (= 1200 €) for it with only 64 mB of RAM.
The CybervisionPPC (8 mB) was around 570 DM (= 285 €).

[Dandy]

redfox wrote:
@Sim085

...  
Not sure if there are add-on parts for USB and network connections.  
...

AFAIK you can get an clockport (like the A1200 has) interface for the A500 ( A500 clockport interface ), to which you can connect either an ZorroII Highway card or clockport Subway card from E3B.
____________________________________________________________
EDIT:
-----

I forgot to mention that a minimum requirement for the "Subway" is a 68030 CPU @ 25 mHz. So if you want to have USB in an A500, you gotta get hold of an A500-accelerator with at least an 68030 @ 25 mHz.

____________________________________________________________

I could very well imagine that there are USB-NICs available that basically should enable your A500 for broadband access
(if browsing the web is much fun with those specs remains to be seen - in case you try it your report would be very welcome here, I think).

As driver serves the Anaiis USB stack for limited Amigas:
anaiis.readme

EDIT:
There's a thread on this topic at amigaworld.net

[TNovosel]

Natami!!! http://www.natami.net/  8-)

[darksun9210]

Natami!!! http://www.natami.net/  

as excited as i am by the natami project, it doesn't exist yet to the general public outside of some awesome dev boards, and no news on the hardware since february... how is it going? :-? i'm worried it might die a death before ever seeing a production run  :-(

[sim085]

I read the Natami specifications a little and I have a single question;

Doesn't the Natami risk to be out of date from day one?

Or the new Natami will be so advanced that it could possibly replace today's pc?

[amigadave]

sim085 wrote:
I read the Natami specifications a little and I have a single question;

Doesn't the Natami risk to be out of date from day one?

Or the new Natami will be so advanced that it could possibly replace today's pc?

It won't replace today's PC, but that is not what it is intended for.

It will be a great replacement for Classic Amiga hardware that is getting old and perhaps starting to have some component failures.  It is also aimed at being the best 680x0 style Amiga ever produced.  I hope there is nothing that stops this project.

[cicero790]

Yes, the NATAMI is like the next model of a beautiful vintage car, a model that was originally never built, and that’s what’s makes the whole project so amazing. I saw some guy over at the NATAMI forum trying to mock the specs and compare it to PC boredom. I thought you poor soul; you can’t see it can you. You really can’t see how brilliant this project is and how unlikely this is.

I also hope that the finished NATAMI comes in a case that design vise is like a continuation of the original cases, so one feels completely at home.
 :-)

[Darrin]

A2000 all the way!

Simple test:

Pick up an A2000 and drop it from about 3 feet onto an A1200 and note the damage to the A1200.

Pick up an A1200 and drop it from about 3 feet onto an A2000 and note the damage to the A2000.

How much more proof do you need?  ;-)