1200. To tower or not to tower?

[runequester]

Pondering if its worth putting my 1200 in a tower ?

How much work and fuss is it ?
Any significant gains ? I imagine the biggest deal is that its easier to cram stuff in there.

How much money am I looking at ?

[Gulliver]

Pros of towering:
-Lots of space for expansions of all sorts
-Overheating is no longer a big issue
-The power supply is more than enough for everything on an expanded system

Cons of towering:
-Expensive
-It looses its distinctive appeal as an Amiga, and may be confused by an ordinary PC
-It requires some research on the proper fitting of different expansions. Not all towers allow all expansion combinations
-It nearly always requires lots of adapters for devices like keyboards, floppy drives, PSU, etc.

Bottomline: If you have enough economic resources at hand or you are a very handy DIY guy, go for it.

About costs:

Example one, the "DIY" el cheapo way:
1.Pc tower with PSU - $30
2.PSU adapter - some soldering and patience
3.Modding the backplate for the conectors to match - a metal plate and some cutting and drilling tools
4.Keyboard extension cable mod and new casing for the original A1200 keyboard (I made one with thin wooden panels).

Total $50 plus time, patience and skills



Example two, "My way":
1.Micronik Tower and Amiga adapted PSU (from evilbay)- $100
2.Lyra2 keyboard adapter + PS2 keyboard - $50
3.PCMCIA right angle adapter 35

Total $185 plus shipping costs



Example three, "Elbox way":
1.D-BOX 1200 and PC-key 1200 interface - 240.95
2.PSU 230W A1200 - $46.95
3.Generic PS2 keyboard - $5
4.Elbox right angle pcmcia adapter - 45.95

Total $338.85 plus shipping costs

[strim]

Pondering if its worth putting my 1200 in a tower ?

In my opinion, no sense in putting working A1200 into tower.

If you want to have a tower system, just buy spare A1200 mainboard, as it is only thing you'll take from desktop A1200.

[Jiffy]

I'm not a big fan of putting the A1200 in a tower. In my opinion, the only good reason would be if you wanted to use PCI-cards. And some turbo boards need extra cooling, which is easier with a towerized A1200.

Otoh, a classic A1200 can also be heavily expanded. Most turboboards (I use a Blizzard 1260 with SCSI-card) work like a charm in a standard A1200. Likewise with the Indivision AGA, while I also replaced the standard psu with a heavy duty one. And I use a 4-drive SCSI-tower for my external drives.

All in all, I have a heavily expanded A1200, but find no need for towerizing it.

[koshman]

In my opinion, a towerized A1200 loses its charm. The only reason I would tower one would be to use a graphics card (which is actually a pretty good reason, but I think it's still better to buy a A3000 or A4000 in that case), since the only one you can theoretically put in a desktop case, AFAIK, is a BVision, but even that is very complicated (and, of course, you would need a Blizzard PPC for that).

[runequester]

thanks for the advice guys. I think I'll pass on this, and maybe look for a 4000 once I have more money

[theformula]

i towered my amiga, Its still not finished after like 5/6 years. If you have a lot of money its good to do but If you are poor like me it becomes a long term task.

[Darrin]

Pondering if its worth putting my 1200 in a tower ?

How much work and fuss is it ?
Any significant gains ? I imagine the biggest deal is that its easier to cram stuff in there.

How much money am I looking at ?

I have 2 x A1200 towers gathering dust.  To be honest, if you want easy expansion of your A1200 then get a USB controller and hook it up to your clockport.  You can hang ethernet, hard drives, DVD-RW drives, memory sticks, SD/CF card readers, sound cards, etc off that.

Now, if you want to upgrade your graphics then I would go for the tower but only if you want to add a PCI busboard (Mediator, etc), although I'd still get the USB controller too.  I stuck a no-name Virge card ripped out of an old PC into my A4000 Mediator and the speed on Workbench for opening folders, displaying icons and sliding windows around is fantastic.

[stevieu]

It would depend what you want to put into the tower.

I started off with a bog standard A1200, started upgrading and went the tower route. As people say, it does seems to lose its charm, but that's why I bought another A1200 years later ;-)

I have two towers now (a Power Tower and an EZ Tower) containing a Mediator, FastATA and PPC card etc and the other with a BVision, etc.

I recently stuck the second PPC card I have in a tower and am planning on customising it (i.e paint it black, get the dremel on it and make it personal to me).

All good fun, whichever route you choose :-D

Steve

[koshman]

I stuck a no-name Virge card ripped out of an old PC into my A4000 Mediator and the speed on Workbench for opening folders, displaying icons and sliding windows around is fantastic.

That's interesting - when I bought a Mediator and installed a Voodoo3 I haven't noticed any significant difference in WB speed (but it might be because before I was running it in 640x512 and now in 1680x1050 ). The most dramatic speedup in WB was when I upgraded from A3640 to a Cyberstorm 060.

[Darrin]

That's interesting - when I bought a Mediator and installed a Voodoo3 I haven't noticed any significant difference in WB speed (but it might be because before I was running it in 640x512 and now in 1680x1050 ). The most dramatic speedup in WB was when I upgraded from A3640 to a Cyberstorm 060.

I was using the Indivision4000 to give me a 1024x768 25 colour Workbench and while it is usable (the 1280x768 is too), when I tested the Virge card it was like the difference between night and day.  The net result is that I use Workbench and certain applications on an RTG graphics card (I've gone back to using my CV643D right now while I wait for Elbox to send me a Radion 9200 PCI card) for speed and then flip to a nice rock-solid native display using the Indivision for playing games.

What I'm having fun and games with at the moment is getting P96 modes to select properly.  I've always used CGX4 before and that was more or less self configuring with the CV643D.  I'm using a 24bit 1024x768 screen with the CV643D, but whenever the disk drive is accessed the graphics "flicker".  Very strange, but I'll get to the bottom of it...

[haywirepc]

I would really like to make a 1200 tower some day. I have a spare 1200 motherboard because I don't want to mess with my main 1200.

I need a keyboard adapter and a I think I'd just prefer to get one of those pre-made ready cases and an atx/1200 power adapter. Just been broke lately  I also need a 3.1 rom because I think that motherboard has a 3.0 rom. If I could get those then I'd think about rtg card and either a zorro or pci adapter thingie so I can use a rtg card.

I think if you customize the case a bit, it can be a beautiful thing. Its like making an amiga the way A inc probably should have but didn't.

Steven

[koshman]

I was using the Indivision4000 to give me a 1024x768 25 colour Workbench and while it is usable (the 1280x768 is too), when I tested the Virge card it was like the difference between night and day. The net result is that I use Workbench and certain applications on an RTG graphics card (I've gone back to using my CV643D right now while I wait for Elbox to send me a Radion 9200 PCI card) for speed and then flip to a nice rock-solid native display using the Indivision for playing games.

What I'm having fun and games with at the moment is getting P96 modes to select properly. I've always used CGX4 before and that was more or less self configuring with the CV643D. I'm using a 24bit 1024x768 screen with the CV643D, but whenever the disk drive is accessed the graphics "flicker". Very strange, but I'll get to the bottom of it...

I'm also using Indy for games and demos - I could actually never test it in 1024x768, because mine is unstable in higher resolutions, but for my use it doesn't really matter (don't want to mess with it and damage it or something).
Btw, good luck with P96, I still remember how much fun I had when I was trying to get 1680x1050 to display correctly on my Samsung LCD (which is rather shitty for Amiga anyway, won't sync at 50Hz etc.) - and what was the funniest part - when I connected a different computer through the analog input, the LCD "autoset" itself to the new signal and after that my A4000 Voodoo3 output for whatever reason displayed a 3cm black border on the right!!! So the tuning all over again... Ah, the good old days

[TheGoose]

* Makes a lot of sense if you have PPC Blizzard and SCSI and other crap.

* Makes sense if you want to use a regular PC CDROM with the stock IDE bus.

[kvasir]

Pondering if its worth putting my 1200 in a tower ?

How much work and fuss is it ?
Any significant gains ? I imagine the biggest deal is that its easier to cram stuff in there.

How much money am I looking at ?

Looks like everyone here beat me to the forum. What I get form dismembering my computer for upgrades. :-D Anyway, I towered my 1200, and the only thing I've regretted is the "Charm" factor. Theres some (minor) compatability probs too, but nothing that can't be fixed. If you have the $$$, an A4000 would have AGA as well as space for gfx cards and whatnot. I think you can even get USB on one. Me, I towered the 1200, was rather disenchanted with its "standard" look, and luckily found a guy on craigslist who needed to get rid of his old A1200. Saved that machine from the curb, and now run both. (Mostly the tower, the console is mostly used by my SuperFrog addicted 3yo daughter) I don't think I'd like to go without a console based Amiga, even with the tower. Personal preference though, really.
Towering is expensive, and can be a pain. I spent ~800-1000 US$ (Not including the odds and ends I already had), most of which was on the Mediator. Though I feel it was worth it, as long as I have my "spare" when I feel like using a keyboard with no windows keys, an extra "blank" key or 2 that I have yet to figure out why they're there (Useful for assignin hotkey combos to, though), and the "Wedge" all-in-one design thats so distinctive.