General A1200 Questions

[pwermonger]

You can install Workbench 3.1 with Kickstart 3.0, IIRC. Issue is, you don't get the full benefits of 3.1. Remember, 3.0 released WITH the 1200/4000 and first release of anything, though this was also a continuation of Amiga OS, is not necessarily free of bugs. 3.1 was a lot more compatable with older software than 3.0 was. Not to say it was in any way fully compatable. Any game that has issues with systems faster than a 68000 has nothing to fall back on in a 1200 which comes with the 020. This was why most accelerators for the 500/2000 had an ability to be switched off and why the 3000 was looked down on by some Amiga owners though it was a MUCH better system than a 2500 with like processor and HD controller.
HOnestly, to play games you dont need more than 3.1 ROMS and workbench. You dont need 3.9 and wont be using anything it offers most of the time.
It is mentioned that the 3.1 ROM had bugfix improvements and RTG improvements over the 3.0 ROM. I dont recall what other defeciencies you have running 3.1 workbench with 3.0 ROMs but there was something.

[tomv1to]

Keep in mind that HD installable games are a very small %.

Is it not possible to copy all of the games from the disks onto the system? I do remember a friend of mine years ago at university putting a HDD from on old Toshiba laptop into his A1200 and then copying the games directly onto the hard drive because he had found that quite a few of his disks had degraded and would no longer run.

How easy is it to fit an accelerator card? Is it just a case of putting it into a slot like putting a PCI-E card into a X86 motherboard?

If you intend on using OS3.9 i would really recomend a Scandoubler as the older 1084 and Philips monitors do not support any decent resolutions without horrible interlace.

Yeah I think the monitor I have only goes as high as 800x600 or something like that :lol: I'll probably stick to 3.1 just for now but how easy is it to fit a scan doubler if I wanted to do that myself at a later date? I'm really paranoid that there i'll have to do some soldering or something.

Alternatively if I were to go down a tower route in the future and was looking at adding a MEDIATOR 1200TX PCI BUSBOARD could I use a GPU instead of a scan doubler? And is it only the older Voodoo cards that would be compatible with the busboard?

[Damion]

Is it not possible to copy all of the games from the disks onto the system?

Not directly, most floppy games aren't HD-installable... that's what WHDLoad is for.

How easy is it to fit an accelerator card? Is it just a case of putting it into a slot like putting a PCI-E card into a X86 motherboard?

Yes, plug and go.

Yeah I think the monitor I have only goes as high as 800x600 or something like that :lol: I'll probably stick to 3.1 just for now but how easy is it to fit a scan doubler if I wanted to do that myself at a later date? I'm really paranoid that there i'll have to do some soldering or something.

It's fairly easy, no soldering required, though you might have to be creative getting everything fitting nicely.

Alternatively if I were to go down a tower route in the future and was looking at adding a MEDIATOR 1200TX PCI BUSBOARD could I use a GPU instead of a scan doubler? And is it only the older Voodoo cards that would be compatible with the busboard?

This is where things start getting retarded - native video isn't routed through the Voodoo, only WB and so-called "system friendly" apps. This eliminates 99% of games and demos.

You'll need either a monitor switcher (and scandoubler), or two monitors... one for your Voodoo screens, and another (like your 1084) for games. Scandoubler + a monitor with two inputs is a tidy solution.

[tomv1to]

Cheers for the advice guys.

I rang up Amigakit today and placed an order for a 1200 with 3.1 roms, 4gb internal flash, OS 3.1 and I also got the CF card reader. I kept it pretty basic because I just wanted to keep things fairly simple for now as christmas is coming up. But I can see me upping the ante after christmas.

With regards to buying a couple of games, have people here used retrogames.co.uk? Any good?

My old Amiga mad friend used to buy games from ebay and he'd sometimes have to buy as many copies as there were disks because he couldn't find a complete version where all the disks worked. I can't even trust ebay for 360/PS3 games so i'm not a huge fan of buying from software from there.

[haywirepc]

Good luck with your new 1200. Wish I had the coin to spring for one. I've been using a dedicated emulation pc for a few months now.
 
On buying games from ebay, its a real crap shoot. Some time back, I bought perhaps 15 different boxed games for an amiga 500 I still have. Only about 3 of them actually worked, the rest all had disc errors.
I won't be buying anymore boxed games unless they are sealed, and even then some may be bit rotted.
 
Someday, I'll get myself a catweasel because just about every amiga game you can find on ebay you can find an adf file for online, and most are already cracked so you don't need the manuals because of that old annoying way they used to make you enter words from a certain page of the manual. If I had a catweasel I could make my own game discs for my 500, or a newer mig I'd eventually like to buy.
 
Steven