Is the A1200 really that cool of a computer???

[barney]

I have this question that has really been bothering me for some time now.  I used to own every model of the Amiga at one time or another, except for the A4000.  I love the A3000, the A2000 and even the A1000.  There is just one thing that bothers me....everybody goes nuts over the Amiga 1200.  What is it about this computer that drives everybody crazy?  I own one and it sits and gathers dust.  I do turn it on every once it a while but I just don't get that warm, fuzzy feeling when I do.  Here is exactly what happens:

1.  I see my A1200 looking lonely in my closet, so I hook it up.

2.  I look at the screen and say... "ok, what now?"

3.  I play 2 games in WHDLoad then say...."now what do I do?"

4  In the end I turn the thing off and say to myself...."damn, I could have done all this on my A2000 or A3000"....Back in the closet it goes for another 6 months.

Am I missing something?  Sombody please tell me what the big hype is over this computer.  Some may say, "It has AGA man...it's totally awesome".  I have yet to experience anything extrordinary with AGA or maybe I am just clueless on how cool AGA could be.  Sombody please bring me up to par on this dillema.

Barney

[Vulture]

Try a few good AGA games like Banshee or Shadow Fighter.Or check how much faster most vector games like flight sims go, strategy games too like Civ. Also, try working with some programs on a 256 colors wb screen and then try them on an ecs machine. You'll see the difference then - that's of course unless you've got a gfx card on your ecs machine. If not, well...then I can't help you much.

[tone007]

"damn, I could have done all this on my A2000 or A3000"

..and an A1200 user, playing with an A2000 or A3000 could say "damn, I could have done all this on my A1200."

Some people don't want to be bothered with big boxes, and like a machine that'll run any game (AGA included) that they throw at it.  Cheap and easy PCMCIA expansion is also nice.

If you miss the big box, you can even put the 1200's motherboard into a tower with Zorro slots.  It's just another Amiga.

[Xanxi]

A1200 has several advantages over other models these days:
- onboard IDE compatible with cheap huge laptop drives
- PCMCIA port compatible with cheap CF, cheap network cards, cheap WiFi cards
- large numbers of accelerators or RAM expansions available on the second-hand market
- great expansions made for the clockport (clockport is so cool that manufacturers have made clockports for all other miggys too)
- modern reliable electronic design of the mobo
- cool form factor
- nice AGA chipset
- great pieces of hardware still developped such as Indivision AGA, etc
- modularity for towering, etc

The A1200 is then the modern mainstay of the amiga classics.
Some of these advantages are found in the A600, which is nowaydays more interesting than an A500.

Anyway, i still like my A500 Plus (first amiga) but i can't add easely a network card and it cost me a lot of money to buy it a Viper520CD which is less powerful than my A1230.
My A2000 has so much expensive hardware that it can be considered has my best amiga but i haven't the room for it on my desk for now and is unused.

[Khephren]

I have this question that has really been bothering me for some time now.  I used to own every model of the Amiga at one time or another, except for the A4000.  I love the A3000, the A2000 and even the A1000.  There is just one thing that bothers me....everybody goes nuts over the Amiga 1200.  What is it about this computer that drives everybody crazy?  I own one and it sits and gathers dust.  I do turn it on every once it a while but I just don't get that warm, fuzzy feeling when I do.  Here is exactly what happens:

1.  I see my A1200 looking lonely in my closet, so I hook it up.

2.  I look at the screen and say... "ok, what now?"

3.  I play 2 games in WHDLoad then say...."now what do I do?"

4  In the end I turn the thing off and say to myself...."damn, I could have done all this on my A2000 or A3000"....Back in the closet it goes for another 6 months.

Am I missing something?  Sombody please tell me what the big hype is over this computer.  Some may say, "It has AGA man...it's totally awesome".  I have yet to experience anything extrordinary with AGA or maybe I am just clueless on how cool AGA could be.  Sombody please bring me up to par on this dillema.

Barney

Ease of expansion is the best thing, but you have that. Cost and space is another. An A1200 is cheaper to buy, cheaper to expand, has higher availability, and with WHDload can play almost all Amiga games. Of course, you already own a few others, so many of these points don't count for you.

I bought mine for 3D/2D artwork, the extended colour pallete helped a lot. Generally AGA is not that hot, the base machine had neither the storage/ram or processor to use all it's modes, and AGA was hampered by no chunky modes. The A1200 was not the leap it should have been.

Game wise superstardust, slamtilt, banshee, x-com, liberation, xtreme racing, alienbreed tower assault, star trek 25th are a few that are nice for the base A1200, that OCS machines will miss out on. There are other AGA only games, and lots of others with better AGA and sound effects.  3D games get a speed up, and some had options to turn on more detail.

once you accelerate the A1200 that are more options for games, and the demoscene of course.

[ChaosLord]

4  In the end I turn the thing off and say to myself...."damn, I could have done all this on my A2000 or A3000".

No. You can't play Total Chaos AGA on your A2000 or A3000.

You need an A1200 or A4000 to do that.

[ElPolloDiabl]

If you are not using the extra colors then there is no difference. It's probably because they are more common, so therefore the A1200 community is more vocal and gets/wants more expansions.

[Buzzfuzz]

And all of the above could also been done with an Amiga 4000 :lol:
 
The 1200 is a looker, but once you add a Blizzard 1230/1240/1260 or BPPC to it and all other things, it gets hot, really hot :flame:
It's also because it has the most turbo boards availble for this platform.
 
The 1200 is nice to pack up and take it somehwere to a meeting or game event, that's going to be a bit harder with a heavy A2000/3000/4000 or tower version.
 
If you do WHDLoad games, take an A500+ and an A530, install a kickswitch in it with 1.3/3.1 and add a bigger harddrive in the A530 and your all set, same as an A1200 with Blizzard 1230 or Ematrix 1230.

[barney]

Thanks for the info.  I will definitely have to give some AGA games a try.  I am not running an accelerator on my A1200, so hopefully WHD load will work without slowdown.

Barney

[rvo_nl]

The cool thing about the a1200 is its ability to 'grow' with your demands. At first, its just as with the A500: a cheap alternative to the big box machines that can play all those cool new games. And believe me, there are loads of AGA games that you're not able to play on your old ECS machines. Then, after some time, you run some productivity stuff and find out you want a harddrive. After that, you get an accelerator, a tower conversion, graphics card etc etc. Each time it makes the machine even better than before, each time it is able to meet your demands.
 
Last year I had to decide between a stock a1200 and a stock a4000/040 and in the end I went for the a1200 route, selling the a4000. Its just much more fullfilling to have an entry-level machine expanded to the max, especially when you can keep it all in its original case.

[Franko]

Simple answer... Yup, it's sure is... :cool:

[stefcep2]

The cool thing about the a1200 is its ability to 'grow' with your demands. At first, its just as with the A500: a cheap alternative to the big box machines that can play all those cool new games. And believe me, there are loads of AGA games that you're not able to play on your old ECS machines. Then, after some time, you run some productivity stuff and find out you want a harddrive. After that, you get an accelerator, a tower conversion, graphics card etc etc. Each time it makes the machine even better than before, each time it is able to meet your demands.
 
Last year I had to decide between a stock a1200 and a stock a4000/040 and in the end I went for the a1200 route, selling the a4000. Its just much more fullfilling to have an entry-level machine expanded to the max, especially when you can keep it all in its original case.

Back in the day, I did all that A1200 upgrading, and eventually realised what I was trying to have was an A4000 with a graphics card.  And TBH I still think a souped up and reliable A4000 is the way to go for expansion, with the exception of not having PCMCIA networking if thats important to you.

If you want to do chipset graphics and sound, play games and have a cool-looking Amiga which occupies little desktop space, then get an A1200.  But IMO RTG and  CDROM is a lot less hassle and neater in an A4000.

[Crom00]

The A1200 is darn near perfect, it's the classic commdore computer.
Low cost but just enough features and modern amenities to make it cool.
rediscovering it in the past few years along with the new CF card reader functionality and CF/SD card to laptop adapters has made it fun.

Things I'd love to have seen in this class machine

A) Faster cpu as standard
B) Simm slot on the MB
C) Dsp
G) Chunk GFX mode with rom support for booting into VGA style display (not a clip on the AGA chip flicker fixer)

With the mediator series you have access to gfx cards.
With current tech it would be cool to see a Turbocard with say an 030-060 DSP slot, and GFX card embedded onto the turbocard. FPGA on the card would be cool too.

[Karlos]

One thing that appeals about the A1200 is the sheer "hackability" of the thing. I'd wager few, if any, of the original C= HW designers envisaged that we'd have soundcards/USB expansions etc. hanging off the clock port and have things like PCI via the trapdoor, never mind CPU expansions with around 17x the clockspeed of the base machine.

[marcfrick2112]

Short answer: Yes, it is that cool OK, ok, I'm a bit biased, I have 3 1200's .....

Well, Karlos hit the nail on the head for me... The 'hackability' of the 1200... (though you could say all miggy models have some 'hackability') All the strange things they make for the 'clock port', except that Real Time clocks for this port are somewhat rare... :lol:

The hinderance in making any 'super' Amiga is the availability/affordability of accelerators.... at least A1200 accels. show up on EPay often, not cheaply tho.....

Upgrading any Amiga ain't gonna be cheap..... I'm grateful that I bought the most $$$ upgrades for my 1200T years ago....when I had something resembling 'spending money' :roflmao:

And, this may be total BS, but an Amiga repair guy said to me years ago.... he said that in his experience, A1200 with an '060 and processor-local RAM was just slightly faster with Lightwave renders than a similarly-equipped 4000.....

Can't tell, don't have an '060 A4000, ATM......