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Author Topic: 1200. To tower or not to tower?  (Read 6346 times)

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Offline kvasir

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Re: 1200. To tower or not to tower?
« Reply #14 on: July 15, 2010, 09:22:54 PM »
Quote from: runequester;570463
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.
--
Amiga 1200T 68060 50MHZ 192MB Fast
 40GB IDE, 100MB Zip, CD/RW, DVD/Rom
 Mediator+ 4MBSVGA, Soundblaster, 100mbps Ethernet
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My full specs
 

Offline koshman

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Re: 1200. To tower or not to tower?
« Reply #15 on: July 15, 2010, 09:30:51 PM »
@ kvasir: Why did you get rid of your old avatar? it was awesome :)
- Radim
 
A600 - 68020/33, 10MB RAM, 3.1, 2GB SD
 

Offline scuzzb494

Re: 1200. To tower or not to tower?
« Reply #16 on: July 15, 2010, 09:32:31 PM »
I built my tower from loads of Amiga bits I had lying around. The tower is great with a scandoubler, buffered interface for hard drives, CD and ZIP plus you can fit the keyboard converter. You get the cooling and extra power but to take advantage of the tower you need a good accelerator. There is also the route of PCI. I have both an expanded 1200 tower and a trad 1200 with same kit but slotted in and sitting on the bench. I like my traditional 1200 cus of the keyboard, but the tower has its uses. Saying that, it would be easier still to expand the 1200 from the case than try to find all those bits to make the tower work.


http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz264.htm

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz185.htm

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz110.htm

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/car_0406/car_1606_230.jpg

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz30.htm

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/my_amiga_large.jpg

scuzz
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Offline kvasir

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Re: 1200. To tower or not to tower?
« Reply #17 on: July 15, 2010, 10:00:53 PM »
Quote from: koshman;570609
@ kvasir: Why did you get rid of your old avatar? it was awesome :)


It was a few years old, plus I live in city limits now. Looking @ my 6' potato gun while dealing with annoying neighbors could cause legal compications...
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Amiga 1200T 68060 50MHZ 192MB Fast
 40GB IDE, 100MB Zip, CD/RW, DVD/Rom
 Mediator+ 4MBSVGA, Soundblaster, 100mbps Ethernet
 Subway USB+ endless list of gadgets :-D
My full specs
 

Offline A1260

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Re: 1200. To tower or not to tower?
« Reply #18 on: July 15, 2010, 10:22:19 PM »
tower it!!
 

Offline bbond007

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Re: 1200. To tower or not to tower?
« Reply #19 on: July 15, 2010, 10:59:06 PM »
Quote from: TheGoose;570605
* 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.


I added a full external SATA blu-ray burner to my A1200 desktop using the stock IDE bus...

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Offline Retrofan

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Re: 1200. To tower or not to tower?
« Reply #20 on: July 15, 2010, 11:31:27 PM »
Why don't you tower it and use the Amiga as keyboard with a Keyrah interface? You could keep the feeling...:)
 
If you don't like the tower you could put it out of sight, under the table...
« Last Edit: July 16, 2010, 04:40:28 AM by Retrofan »
A1200, Lateral 32GB CF, internal Dvd, ACA 1230/56 with an MKII Fast ATA at 9,5Mb/s, another A1200 BPPC project in progress (more or less), and posting from my own/better C64x in my Tv using Hdmi.
 


Offline DBAlex

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Re: 1200. To tower or not to tower?
« Reply #22 on: July 16, 2010, 01:37:43 AM »
You need to tower, to get an A1200 tower of power... or just to get a Power Tower. ;-)
Machines:
- A1200, Blizzard 1260 w/ 64MB RAM, 1.2GB HD, PCMCIA WiFi, AGA w/ RGB Adapter, OS3.9
- Pegasos I, G3 600Mhz, 512MB, Radeon 9200se, 80GB HD, AmigaKit WiFi Card, MOS 1.4.5
- Mac Mini, G4 1.5ghz, 512MB (1GB Soon), Radeon 9200 64MB, 80GB HD, OSX 10.5 (Leopard)
- PCs, Laptops... *yawn*... :D
 

Offline NovaCoder

Re: 1200. To tower or not to tower?
« Reply #23 on: July 16, 2010, 02:55:24 AM »
Quote from: runequester;570463
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 ?


Don't bother it's a waste of time these days.   If you like classic then stick to the classic desktop....if you want more 'power' then either get a newer 'Amiga' or just a newer computer instead :)

The only real advantage to a tower over a desktop is better power-supply, more room (needed by some of the more powerful accelerators) and the ability to easily hook up a CDROM drive....all of which is not actually needed if you simply want to play retro games and demos on a 1200.

And don't even mention Mediators ;)
Life begins at 100 MIPS!


Nice Ports on AmiNet!
 

Offline smerf

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Re: 1200. To tower or not to tower?
« Reply #24 on: October 14, 2010, 03:16:49 AM »
Quote from: theformula;570572
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.


Hi,

Like WOW man, I know what you mean, I have been working on towering my Amiga 1200 for at least 6 years now. Using an old Gateway server case. Just finished cutting out the back end and installing the A1200 board. Now I have to hook up the power from the old AT power supply, hook up my Blizzard 604e card my keyboard board, and then my mouse board so that I can use a pc keyboard, and mouse. Can't wait till I am finished, thinking about buying a B vision card if I can find one.

By the way I bought the 604e card 6 years ago too.

smerf
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Offline magnetic

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Re: 1200. To tower or not to tower?
« Reply #25 on: October 14, 2010, 03:51:58 AM »
Look man, what makes the A1200 cool is the desktop all in one case. Now with pcmcia <> cf adaptors, PCMCI wifi/ethernet, cf<>ide adaptors a1200 is a nice box. If you tower it you are HACKING it (and not good hacking imo) and destabilizing it at the same time. If you want aga and a big box go a4000.
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Offline Franko

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Re: 1200. To tower or not to tower?
« Reply #26 on: October 14, 2010, 05:03:12 AM »
TOWER IT... :)

Don't understand why some folk claim it's expensive, I built my custom made A1200 tower case for less than 15 quid. I would never put an A1200 in a PC case though, the things are just too ruddy big.

Perfect dimensions for an A1200 tower case are, Depth = 25.5cm , Height = 44cm, Width =26cm.

Build it from MDF, some wood glue & can of spray paint and bob's you uncle, the perfect A1200 tower with space for all the goodies you could ever want... :)

 

Offline johnklos

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Re: 1200. To tower or not to tower?
« Reply #27 on: October 14, 2010, 08:51:00 AM »
The A1200 form factor is pretty unique and you can do a lot with the case as it is. 120 gig 2.5" IDE drives are easy to get and you can also easily run off of a CompactFlash card with an adapter. If I were you, I wouldn't tower it unless you were thinking of getting an expansion slot backplane.

I built my A1200 into a 1U rackmount case because I was using it as a full time server, but I did enjoy the A1200 form factor when it was in the original case. A 60 MHz m68060 with 80 megs of memory and an internal 4 gig SCSI hard drive was kick ass in 1995.

The modifications took a lot of work, but the machine's been 100% stable in the 1U:

http://lilith.ziaspace.com/
 

Offline Franko

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Re: 1200. To tower or not to tower?
« Reply #28 on: October 14, 2010, 09:06:55 AM »
@johnklos,

That's one pretty neat, compact & impressive solution... :cool:

http://lilith.ziaspace.com/
 

Offline gertsy

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Re: 1200. To tower or not to tower?
« Reply #29 from previous page: October 14, 2010, 01:12:33 PM »
Test your arm and loose the charm.
I thought about it once.. Then got an A4000.