Personal Amiga renaissance - should I buy an Amiga 1500?

[Graham1982]

Hi:

This is my first post on this site. I am an avid Amiga fan having owned an A500, A600 and A1200 whilst growing up in the 90s.

I am looking at getting an A1500 to re-live my computing youth and there appears to be a good offer on one at the moment - system, monitor and tonnes of software for £100.

My idea is that I will buy this, junk/sell on the original monitor and connect it to my flat screen with an adaptor.

My questions relate to the technical limitations of the A1500 - I know it is an old machine yet that it was marketed as a business machine also, thus whilst it will not run AGA games, is it feasible that I could update the kickstart rom, install a HD, possibly even a CD drive, more RAM etc piece-meal or not really?

Can these be networked via a suitable ethenet adaptor for the internet?

Yes I know that I should buy an A4000 but I cannot justify the expense for something that is basically going to be a toy.

[runequester]

You can update the 1500 quite a bit, so yeah, go for it!

You'll need to hunt down an accelerator card that gives you SCSI or IDE interface, but that way, hard drive and CD ROM are very possible.

[commodorejohn]

Unless you're talking about the Checkmate A1500 (a desktop-conversion kit for the A500,) the Amiga 1500 is just a 2000 minus the hard drive plus a second floppy, so that should be a "yes" to all the above.

[Graham1982]

Hi:

Thanks for the prompt replies - I will take the plunge.

With regards to SCSI - I know nothing of this standard - I understand that an expansion board will need to be bought (are these available on here or ebay readily?). Also would the Amiga recognise IDE drives and could I recycle PC IDE drives?

Thanks

Graham

[runequester]

You can use IDE stuff and its likely to be cheaper and easier to find. SCSI was a big thing in the period the amiga was around.

Either way though, you'll need an expansion card though.

I'd check the trade forum here and on amibay http://www.amibay.com/ and Im sure someone can sort you out.


Other things to look for are some sort of accelerator / RAM upgrade. Some will include IDE or SCSI interfaces, some don't.


Whats the end goals of the machine? What do you want to do on it?

[ElPolloDiabl]

Any Amiga 2000 cards (called Zorro 2) will fit in it. It also has an 86 pin CPU upgrade slot.
If you find an RTG (graphics) card as well I believe you can play most of the AGA games too.

[Graham1982]

Hi:

Don't really have an end goal for the machine - I would like to play some of the games from my past on it such as It Came From The Desert and Cruise for A Corpse.

Other than that if it is possible to use it as one would use an Ipad - i.e. to browse Facebook and news sites it would be quite novel. I use PCs for work and wouldn't dream of trying to replace a PC with an Amiga for real work.

Expansion cards were well out of my price range when I had a 1200 - but now are cheap enough - what is the potential amount of RAM that one can install in a 1500 and does it come to a point where the benefits are negligible?

Thanks

Graham

PS Sorry if this is a silly question but if I tried to run Workench 3.0 on a machine without updating the Kickstart I guess it just won't work?

[TheBilgeRat]

Any Amiga 2000 cards (called Zorro 2) will fit in it. It also has an 86 pin CPU upgrade slot.
If you find an RTG (graphics) card as well I believe you can play most of the AGA games too.

Can someone confirm or deny this?  Cos this would be a game (pardon the pun ) changer for me.

EDIT:  the AGA part, not the Zorro II part :roflmao:

[Khephren]

Only an AGA machine can play AGA games.
If you have a graphics card (one that uses picasso96 or cybergraphics) you can play games that use utlise those two RTG systems.

[Graham1982]

Hi:

I imagine you cannot take the AGA out of a A1200 and put it in the 1500 - that would be far too simple.

Thanks

Graham

[klx300r]

Hi:

Don't really have an end goal for the machine - I would like to play some of the games from my past on it such as It Came From The Desert and Cruise for A Corpse.

Other than that if it is possible to use it as one would use an Ipad - i.e. to browse Facebook and news sites it would be quite novel. I use PCs for work and wouldn't dream of trying to replace a PC with an Amiga for real work.
 

hi, & welcome

unfortunately cruising the net on an old ECS/OCS classic like the 1500 won't be much fun today...I suggest you keep it as a retro games machine and play around with workbench etc.

If you want a more modern Amiga experience then you'll have to get into new or used hardware such as a PegII, Sam440ep/flex etc. that can run the latest AmigaOS4.1 update 2 (all these options would probably be cheaper than getting an A4000 with PPC card)
 
You can also try out AROS which is an Amiga inspired OS that runs on many x86 PC's.  If you have an old Mac lying around then you might want to try out MorphOS.  Anyhow you have quite a bit of options if you want to try the more modern route else just enjoy the retro goodness:afro:

[DCAmiga]

I imagine you cannot take the AGA out of a A1200 and put it in the 1500 - that would be far too simple.

Yep that would be far to simple but would be nice if it could be done
 
Well if you are after a AGA Amiga 1200 you could always purchase a refurbished one from amigakit.com for 117.43 GBP, with the options to upgrade the Rom etc. Also check Amibay.com you will find prices alot more resonable avoid ebay if you can, and I wish you luck.
 
Or you can even run an Amiga emulated on Windows (WINUAE) http://www.winuae.net/

[ElPolloDiabl]

Check here for RTG games:

http://hol.abime.net/hol_search.php?&af=A&N_ref_hardware=16

The max RAM is 9MB.
You should be able to do pretty much anything except the internet on 5MB.
Memory that's in a zorro 2 slot/card will be 16-bit (slower). Memory on a CPU card will be 32-bit.
I think if you have a 68040 or 68060 they can have 128MB RAM on them.

[Graham1982]

Hi:

Could someone paraphrase the recent Amiga developments for me please? I am still going to get the 1500 but am I right in suggesting that any new Amiga is a machine that effectively emulates an Amiga like how you can run windows on Macs now?

Thanks

Graham

[zylesea]

Hi:

This is my first post on this site. I am an avid Amiga fan having owned an A500, A600 and A1200 whilst growing up in the 90s.

I am looking at getting an A1500 to re-live my computing youth and there appears to be a good offer on one at the moment - system, monitor and tonnes of software for £100.

My idea is that I will buy this, junk/sell on the original monitor and connect it to my flat screen with an adaptor.

My questions relate to the technical limitations of the A1500 - I know it is an old machine yet that it was marketed as a business machine also, thus whilst it will not run AGA games, is it feasible that I could update the kickstart rom, install a HD, possibly even a CD drive, more RAM etc piece-meal or not really?

Can these be networked via a suitable ethenet adaptor for the internet?

Yes I know that I should buy an A4000 but I cannot justify the expense for something that is basically going to be a toy.

100GBP for the lot seems to be a fair price, but you should consider whether your main interest is the computer itself or the old games. For the latter I think (Win)UAE is the way more convenient solution - you can play virtually everything more or less everywhere.
But if you mainly like to tinker around with the old gear I'd say go for it.