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Offline Cammy

Re: Planning new A1200 purchase, any must have upgrades?
« Reply #29 from previous page: May 27, 2010, 10:54:45 AM »
Quote from: XDelusion;561308
You know, I love throwing lawn darts at children just as much as anyone else, but what the hell is all this Missile business? I thought you were joking, but no, they actually make USB Missile Launchers.

So what is this, an office toy to shoot your co-workers/cat with or something?


I guess if you want to build the ultimate computer, it won't be complete without missile launchers. Just like Gus' computer from Superman III - http://meatfighter.com/superman3/part4/index.html

They're great for shooting at cats and visitors. My cat found the blind spot where it can't reach him, right behind it - http://www.flickr.com/photos/24340362@N08/4463504749/

He jumps up and tries to grab the missiles if I fire them at him, and he makes that sound that me makes when he sees birds outside.
A1200 030@28Mhz/2MB+32MB/RTC/KS3.1/IDE-CF+4GB/4-Way Clockport Expander/IndivisionAGA/PCMCIA NIC
A1200 020@14Mhz/2MB+8MB/FPU/RTC/KS3.0/IDE-CF+2GB/S-Video
CD32 020@14Mhz/2MB+8MB/RTC/KS3.1/IDE-CF+4GB
A600 030@30Mhz/2MB+64MB/RTC/IDE-CF+4GB/Subway USB/S-Video/PCMCIA NIC/USB Numeric Keypad+Hub+Mouse+Control Pad
A500 000@7Mhz/512kB+512kB/ROM Switcher/KS3.1+1.3/S-Video

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Offline pkupcikTopic starter

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Re: Planning new A1200 purchase, any must have upgrades?
« Reply #30 on: May 27, 2010, 03:55:03 PM »
Thank you everyone again for your advice. So far I'm planning on the following:

New PAL A1200 from AmigaKit with US powersupply/adapter.
IDE to CF card kit with 4GB CF card from AmigaKit
PCMCIA CF Kit from AmigaKit for file transfer between PC and A1200
Indivision AGA - when it becomes available again
2x Joystick from AmigaKit

Now, I do want accelerator as well, just can't decide on which one
Blizzard 1230 vIV - hard to find, expensive
e-matrix 1230/50,32MB - available at http://www.vesalia.de/e_ematrix1230.htm for $246 - runs at 50MHz and has 32MB RAM
GVP-M Typhoon A1200 030 40MHz  - available at http://www.softhut.com for $200 with 32MB RAM, runs at 40MHz
E-Matrix 1230/40Mhz 16MB - available from AmigaKit for $217, runz at 40MHz, has 16 MB RAM

I think I'm leaning toward the GVP-M Typhoon from softhut.com as the price is right and ships from US (cheap). The eMatrix 1230/50,32MB from vesalia.de is interesting because it runs at 50MHz, but is more expensive and ships from Europe, which means higher shipping cost.

Ultimately, the most important thing will be compatibility, stability. Which one of these do you think I should go with. 16MB vs 32MB RAM is not a big deal for me.
 

Offline LoadWB

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Re: Planning new A1200 purchase, any must have upgrades?
« Reply #31 on: May 27, 2010, 04:20:16 PM »
Quote from: Cammy;561314
They're great for shooting at cats and visitors. My cat found the blind spot where it can't reach him, right behind it - http://www.flickr.com/photos/24340362@N08/4463504749/

He jumps up and tries to grab the missiles if I fire them at him, and he makes that sound that me makes when he sees birds outside.


I was going to exclaim those are the exact uses.  Anyway, I may have mentioned this to you before, but I had a black stray who wandered into my apartment and never left.  He came round a couple of weeks before Halloween so I was going to name him something like "Magic" or "Black Magic" but was not satisfied with the idea, so I followed the logical links from magic to Merlin, then Merlin's "pet" owl in "Sword in the Stone," Archimedes. :)

I think it is absolutely hilarious that the rocket launcher controller is included in Poseidon!
 

Offline drewz21

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Re: Planning new A1200 purchase, any must have upgrades?
« Reply #32 on: May 27, 2010, 06:27:38 PM »
Well, I have the GVP-M Typhoon A1200 030 40MHz - available at http://www.softhut.com for $200 with 32MB RAM, runs at 40MHz that I purchased a couple of months ago.  It's been great and the price was right.
Amiga - The fun computer!

Amiga 500 - 3MB, A590, 250MB HD, SupraTurbo28.
Amiga 1200HD - 32MB, 4GB CF-Card, GVP 68030-40Mhz.
Amiga 600HD
 

Offline pkupcikTopic starter

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Re: Planning new A1200 purchase, any must have upgrades?
« Reply #33 on: May 27, 2010, 09:25:16 PM »
Thanks everyone again.

I purchased the GVP-M Typhoon A1200 030 40MHz 32MB from SoftHut

and the following from AmigaKit:

 1 x PC to Amiga Joystick Adapter Cable (ADAJOY001)
 1 x Amiga Technologies A1200 (New Old Stock) (ATAMI1200)
    Region PAL (UK, Europe, Australiasia)
            Power Supply Unit North America Adapter (115v)
       
  1 x 10 X AMIGA FORMATTED FLOPPY DISKS DSDD (FDMAMI001)
  1 x Amiga RGB to VGA Monitor Adapter (ADAMON001)
  2 x Competition Pro Joystick (Amiga/C64) (JOYAMI006)
  1 x 4GB CF IDE HARD DISK (HDDIDECF4)
  1 x EasyADF PCMCIA Compact Flash Transfer Kit (ADAPCMCFL)

        Memory Card 4GB CF
 

Offline Cammy

Re: Planning new A1200 purchase, any must have upgrades?
« Reply #34 on: May 28, 2010, 12:19:51 AM »
Hey Archimedes is a cool name for a cat, it even reminds me a bit of Acorn computers. My cat was named Black Magic when I got him from the animal shelter, but it suits him. I used to have a stray cat that would visit from time to time, stay the night and have a meal, then leave the next morning. He was lanky, grey and old looking so I named him Gandalf.


pkupcik, those two joysticks you ordered from AmigaKit will only work with 1-button games. You really should look into getting a 2-button joystick/control pad (Sega style) or a proper CD32 pad.

The Competition Pro has four buttons that all do the same thing. It has a switch that disables two of the buttons. I can't think of anything so stupid, why can't that switch change it to 2-button mode? You need to modify these joysticks for them to be any good for a lot of Amiga games. They're more useful for Commodore64 users.

I'm glad you got the accelerator with 32MB RAM. You definitely wouldn't want 16MB if you want to try some of the more recent Amiga games, make sure you download Total Chaos in advance, ready to copy over to the Amiga and extract.

That RGB-VGA adapter will be useless unless you have an old multisync monitor. It will let you display Workbench in 640x480 on a regular VGA monitor, but you won't be able to play any games with it, you'll need to have your Amiga plugged into a TV or something for that.

The PC-Amiga adapter is only for using PC Analogue joysticks with the Amiga, which is okay but there aren't many games that support analogue controls on the Amiga. Look out for racing games that allow you to use the mouse as a control, those games should work (No Second Prize for example).

What kind of display are you planning on using with the A1200? Since you don't have an Indivision, you will need something that supports PAL/NTSC 15khz inputs like a TV or old RGB monitor, or a multisync monitor. Most LCD TVs will work, but Composite can be pretty blurry to use. If you're going to use a TV as your display, I'd recommend either using Scart (if the TV has that input) or getting a RGB-to-S-Video adapter for the Amiga which will give you a much sharper image with no dot crawl or colour bleeding. If you want to use a regular VGA monitor, you can get these litle boxes now that have three inputs (S-Video, Composite and VGA) and one VGA output. You can plug the Amiga into one of these and it will scan-double and flicker-fix the output for displaying on VGA monitors. If you use one of these, again it's better to use the S-Video than Composite, but since you have that RGB-VGA adapter you could plug this in as well as Composite, and just use the controls on the box to switch between Workbench (VGA) and games (Composite). Unfortunately if you were to use an external S-Video adapter, you couldn't also use the VGA adapter since they both plug into the RGB port, but since the PAL 640x512 screenmode runs faster than the VGA 640x480 screenmode and the external box would be fixing the flicker anyway, you'd just be better off sticking to using PAL all the time if you had an S-Video adapter. The only good thing about using a VGA screenmode is you get a smaller mouse pointer.
A1200 030@28Mhz/2MB+32MB/RTC/KS3.1/IDE-CF+4GB/4-Way Clockport Expander/IndivisionAGA/PCMCIA NIC
A1200 020@14Mhz/2MB+8MB/FPU/RTC/KS3.0/IDE-CF+2GB/S-Video
CD32 020@14Mhz/2MB+8MB/RTC/KS3.1/IDE-CF+4GB
A600 030@30Mhz/2MB+64MB/RTC/IDE-CF+4GB/Subway USB/S-Video/PCMCIA NIC/USB Numeric Keypad+Hub+Mouse+Control Pad
A500 000@7Mhz/512kB+512kB/ROM Switcher/KS3.1+1.3/S-Video

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Offline illy5603

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Re: Planning new A1200 purchase, any must have upgrades?
« Reply #35 on: May 28, 2010, 12:30:13 AM »
Yeah without the indivision AGA you will want to seek out either an old Commodore 1084 or get a Multisystem TV. I grabbed one off of Craigslist for $40 and it has SCART and works great with the 1200 and my PAL CD32.

 
 

Offline pkupcikTopic starter

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Re: Planning new A1200 purchase, any must have upgrades?
« Reply #36 on: May 28, 2010, 12:32:03 AM »
Hi Cammy,
thanks for all your comments.

To be honest I didn't know about the 2-button joystick. When I had A500 15-20 years ago all I had was one button joystick. What two button joysticks would you recommend that I can plug into the A1200? I bought the joystick adapter just to have it, in case I ever want to use it in the future. Don't want to take a chance that one day I may need it and it won't be available.

For video connectivity, ultimately I'm planning to buy a scan doubler, but it's out of stock until Q3. For now I have ordered a converter that accepts 15khz RGB signal and outputs NTSC S-video  (http://www.ambery.com/rgrgtotvcosc.html). It specifically says that it's compatible with Amiga 15khz RGB output. Hopefully it works, I'm also planning to use the same device with my soon to be arriving ZX Spectrum +2/A with RGB output.
As a backup, I have Pioneer Kuro plasma TV that accepts PAL composite signal. I also have a composite PAL to NTSC converter at home. Basically I'm hoping that at least one of these connections will work until I get the scan doubler.
 

Offline illy5603

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Re: Planning new A1200 purchase, any must have upgrades?
« Reply #37 on: May 28, 2010, 12:35:35 AM »
Quote from: pkupcik;561480
For video connectivity, ultimately I'm planning to buy a scan doubler, but it's out of stock until Q3. For now I have ordered a converter that accepts 15khz RGB signal and outputs NTSC S-video  (http://www.ambery.com/rgrgtotvcosc.html). It specifically says that it's compatible with Amiga 15khz RGB output. Hopefully it works, I'm also planning to use the same device with my soon to be arriving ZX Spectrum +2/A with RGB output.
As a backup, I have Pioneer Kuro plasma TV that accepts PAL composite signal. I also have a composite PAL to NTSC converter at home. Basically I'm hoping that at least one of these connections will work until I get the scan doubler.

I know I speak for a few others in the states when I ask this. Please let us know how each of these works out for you. I debated over what to do with my CD32, thought about the converters you mentioned and just went with a PAL compatible TV which is working out OK.

 
 

Offline Cammy

Re: Planning new A1200 purchase, any must have upgrades?
« Reply #38 on: May 28, 2010, 01:47:51 AM »
Hey, that RGB to VGA converter box should be perfect! I'm curious to see how well it works since you should get a cleaner signal through that RGB-VGA adapter than through Composite or S-Video. Looks like you may have a winning combination there.

As for 2-button joysticks, anything that is designed for the Sega Master System or Sega Genesis/Mega Drive will work as a 2-button controller on an Amiga. You can still buy these brand new 6-button controllers (only two buttons are of any use on the Amiga though unless you modify them) and they're pretty cheap. DealExtreme have some, but you can get better ones with turbo/autofire options if you look around. I use these on several of my Amigas http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.30530

There are some pictures of some common 2-button Amiga controllers and a very short list of games that support them in one of my older posts: http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=559321&postcount=24

I use a QuickShot Python as my main A500 joystick, which is switchable between 1-button and 2-button mode, and has an Auto-Fire switch.
A1200 030@28Mhz/2MB+32MB/RTC/KS3.1/IDE-CF+4GB/4-Way Clockport Expander/IndivisionAGA/PCMCIA NIC
A1200 020@14Mhz/2MB+8MB/FPU/RTC/KS3.0/IDE-CF+2GB/S-Video
CD32 020@14Mhz/2MB+8MB/RTC/KS3.1/IDE-CF+4GB
A600 030@30Mhz/2MB+64MB/RTC/IDE-CF+4GB/Subway USB/S-Video/PCMCIA NIC/USB Numeric Keypad+Hub+Mouse+Control Pad
A500 000@7Mhz/512kB+512kB/ROM Switcher/KS3.1+1.3/S-Video

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Offline pkupcikTopic starter

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Re: Planning new A1200 purchase, any must have upgrades?
« Reply #39 on: May 28, 2010, 01:53:21 AM »
Thanks for the Joystick suggestions. Btw. is there a way to connect USB  joysticks, game-pads from PC?

I will let you guys know how the converter box works when I set it up.  My guess is the A1200 will not arrive to my door step until late next  week or even later, since Monday is a holiday. I can't wait.
 

Offline Cammy

Re: Planning new A1200 purchase, any must have upgrades?
« Reply #40 on: May 28, 2010, 02:46:05 AM »
If you get a Subway USB card for your A1200 you can use USB control pads and joysticks, but only with system-friendly software, so that throws out 95% of games. You can get Playstation 2 to Amiga/CD32 adapters, these are the best thing you could want, but you either have to build it yourself or bug this guy named Paul to make one for you. Here's his YouTube channel, which seems like the only place to contact him. Unfortunately my messages haven't been getting through to him for a while so I dunno if YouTube is playing up or if he blocked me.

http://www.youtube.com/user/paulwillingham4d79
A1200 030@28Mhz/2MB+32MB/RTC/KS3.1/IDE-CF+4GB/4-Way Clockport Expander/IndivisionAGA/PCMCIA NIC
A1200 020@14Mhz/2MB+8MB/FPU/RTC/KS3.0/IDE-CF+2GB/S-Video
CD32 020@14Mhz/2MB+8MB/RTC/KS3.1/IDE-CF+4GB
A600 030@30Mhz/2MB+64MB/RTC/IDE-CF+4GB/Subway USB/S-Video/PCMCIA NIC/USB Numeric Keypad+Hub+Mouse+Control Pad
A500 000@7Mhz/512kB+512kB/ROM Switcher/KS3.1+1.3/S-Video

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Offline LoadWB

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Re: Planning new A1200 purchase, any must have upgrades?
« Reply #41 on: May 28, 2010, 03:57:39 AM »
Quote from: Cammy;561504
If you get a Subway USB card for your A1200 you can use USB control pads and joysticks, but only with system-friendly software, so that throws out 95% of games.


What about under WHDLoad?
 

Offline Cammy

Re: Planning new A1200 purchase, any must have upgrades?
« Reply #42 on: May 28, 2010, 04:02:16 AM »
Unfortunately WHDLoad conflicts with Poseidon and won't allow you to use USB devices in WHDLoad-installed games.
A1200 030@28Mhz/2MB+32MB/RTC/KS3.1/IDE-CF+4GB/4-Way Clockport Expander/IndivisionAGA/PCMCIA NIC
A1200 020@14Mhz/2MB+8MB/FPU/RTC/KS3.0/IDE-CF+2GB/S-Video
CD32 020@14Mhz/2MB+8MB/RTC/KS3.1/IDE-CF+4GB
A600 030@30Mhz/2MB+64MB/RTC/IDE-CF+4GB/Subway USB/S-Video/PCMCIA NIC/USB Numeric Keypad+Hub+Mouse+Control Pad
A500 000@7Mhz/512kB+512kB/ROM Switcher/KS3.1+1.3/S-Video

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Offline XDelusion

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Re: Planning new A1200 purchase, any must have upgrades?
« Reply #43 on: May 28, 2010, 04:22:40 AM »
He is writing people back, he just wrote me. That was going to be my suggestion is a PS2 adapter! Those videos just make me drool. Using a PSX Mouse in place of a Joystick, or using as PS2 Controller in place of a CD32 controller really makes this sound like the must have tech of the year, or close to it! :)

Anyhow, Cammy, I had a feeling you were a cat lady. Black Magic looks like the male counter part to my oldest and very ancient cat Toob, aka Oob, aka Ms. Kitty, aka Hello Kitty, aka Poop. And yes she responds to all those names including the other aliases I've forgotten over time. :)



Quote from: Cammy;561504
If you get a Subway USB card for your A1200 you can use USB control pads and joysticks, but only with system-friendly software, so that throws out 95% of games. You can get Playstation 2 to Amiga/CD32 adapters, these are the best thing you could want, but you either have to build it yourself or bug this guy named Paul to make one for you. Here's his YouTube channel, which seems like the only place to contact him. Unfortunately my messages haven't been getting through to him for a while so I dunno if YouTube is playing up or if he blocked me.

http://www.youtube.com/user/paulwillingham4d79
Earth has a lot of things other folks might want... like the whole planet. And maybe these folks would like a few changes made, like more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and room for their way of life. - William S. Burroughs
 

Offline LoadWB

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Re: Planning new A1200 purchase, any must have upgrades?
« Reply #44 on: May 28, 2010, 05:45:59 AM »
Quote from: Cammy;561516
Unfortunately WHDLoad conflicts with Poseidon and won't allow you to use USB devices in WHDLoad-installed games.


That sucks. I wonder if this is something Chris and the WHDLoad team could work to fix.  Just a quick sort-of-off-topic thought.