What is the most powerfull Amiga setup for gaming? Beyond A500?

[sharpie]

Thanks for all the great info. Seems like the HD for the A500 is doable but would be better with the KS2.1 which as it happens might not be compatible with all classic games that came before it, creating somewhat of a problem?

Does this problem exist for the 1200 as well?

Also, I heard there is somekind of switcher to allow you to switch your A500 between the 3 different KS versions, is this easy to operate,aquire, etc.?

I think I am going to cover both bases and get both the 1200 and 500. Is there any advantage to getting a 500 that has ECS instead of OCS? And does anyone recommend a certain hard drive for it?

Thanks again for the stellar info.

[that_punk_guy]

There are a couple of ways to switch ROMs on an A500. The first is to get a hardware ROM switcher - for that, you need both ROMs, and I think there's some keyboard shortcut or something to switch to the desired ROM.

Another way is, if your A500 is expanded with fast RAM, to get a softkick program which will load the alternate ROM into memory. This takes up a lot of memory, especially on a 1MB Amiga, however. Also, legally a bit dodgy.

Basically the further away you move from the Kickstart 1.3, the 68000 CPU and OCS, the harder it gets to run the old games, so A1200 has the A500/KS2 compatibility problems and more.

But I gave my A500 away when I got an A1200 some time ago, and I never had much trouble playing the games I wanted to play. I'd say get an A1200, and if the price is right, and you have the space for it, an A500 with KS1.3 and some fastram to complement it :-)

For the A500, I used a GVP HD for a while. There's two models I remember, the Impact II HD8+ series, which gave you a HD and allowed for further memory expansion, or the A530 Turbo, which gave you a 40MHz 68030 processor on top of that :-D

Edit: sp

[lempkee]

sharpie: your best option for a amiga games machine is an Amiga 1200 with a 030 card and a HDD , and i can safely tell you that all your fav games will work no matter what (if u have that config) but for some old and dogdy made a500 games well then u have to resort to stuff like WHDLOAD and thats not a downside at all.

as for an hdd on a500 , sure thats dooable i had one and i still do, but seriously ks1.3 aint really that good for a hdd, 2.04 and up is better but still annoying so i would yet again say...get an Amiga1200 and a 030 and a hdd (any hdd will work (ide) .. , 2.5 hdds fits nicely inside the desktop normally but since theese are rather pricy well normal 3.5 hdds are cheaper and bigger (physically) and might not fit inside the a1200 case, but its possible and btw you need a HDD cable set for such which consists of a powercable and a 44pin cable to 40pin cable(flatcable) , all of it is possible to make on your own but if you cant/wont then there is always some amigashops who have theese cable sets in stock still..

hope this helped..

http://www.whdload.de

thats the link to the whdload thingy i talked about, atm over 1600 games works with whdload.
 

[bloodline]

Of course if the Gentleman has a PC, then he could buy the "Amiga Forever" package... THat reall is the "Ultimate" Gaming Amiga... since one can run all Amiga games on that (I've not found any that don't work yet) and it's a whoel lot cheaper, less messy and less likely to die than real hardware

To try it out download WinUAE... Of course you will need Amiga Forever to get the Amiga ROMs/

[CU_AMiGA]

It's times like this that i am glad i got my A1200! :-)

The A1200 i think is a very compatiable machine. I have had almost no trouble playing the old games. Before i got the PPC and HD i used to boot up the disk but also changed to OCS mode and clicked on "nocache" on the early startup menu. That basically solved most of the problems.

Now that i have an HD and PPC i mainly use JST and WHDLoad to play them good ole games. Not only do most of the games work, but you can now play them on Workbench (without quitting), instead of booting up the disks. Which, i'm sure many people will agree, makes life a lot easier and is what everybody wants. Of course, i can still boot up disks, as if the A1200 was stock, by holding the 2 key when booting up. The next thing i need to get is a sd/ff so i can view these on my monitor, not tv!

So as you can see the A1200 is a very good gaming machine. I get the best of both worlds. I play games ranging from Lemmings and Speedball 2, to Quake and Wipeout 2097! I can very much recommend on A1200 to anyone, even though a certain someone detests them!  :-?