Tips to revive my Amiga and backt to the scene!

[MarZ]

Dear Amiga fans,

I have been using Amiga 500/A1200 till 2000 and was quite advanced user on it After 11 years the Nostalgia came back, turned on the A1200 and worked fine. I have an A1200 with Blizzard Card 1230 accelerator and SCSI Unit. My WB says that I have 16MB RAm, (not sure if its true)

I have a couple of hardware questions which I am placing for now in one post.


1) I bought the PCMIA + CF tranfer card and later I read that it may not work due to the accelerator board. Further on, I learnd that there is a boot menu on kicking (both mouse buttons pressed) and CC0 was showing as a bootable option. Does this mean that I can use the transfer card without probs?


2) I bought mouse adapter (USB-Mouse port) and it worked fine even with my logitech cordless mouse. Is there a similar thing for joystck so as to use a USB joystick?


3) I have a scsi box with 1Gb harddisk and CD-ROM. I wish to replace them with better drives, such as DVD-Writer and y old 30Gb quantum which are both IDE - can these be used in the SCSI box, or I need only SCSI (outdated) stuff?

An alternative to my SCSI HD, are the internal IDE -> memory cards option.

4) There are arguments on the forum that CF cards are much better then SD wrt reliability and compatibility. Is this true?
 
5) Another argument was that not all CF (or SD) cards are compatible due to speed, and some that work are Transcend and SanDisk. Is this true or -> in another post, a guy had this kind of issue, then he tweaked something in HDToolkit an set max transfer rate to a certain limit, and things then worked fine. So, the CF/SD incompatibilities / problems / issues are becasue of this transfer rate, or it is also true that certain 'cheap' cards do not work well whatever the transfer rate is set? I have Kingston 256Mb and Lexar 256 Mb CF cards, and Sandisk 512/1000/2000mb SD cards all waiting to be used in the amiga! In few words, what gives best results an IDE-CF adapter or a SD-IDE adapter.


Your kind patience in replying would be greatly appreciated. Another Amiga soldier will be back in the scene - was know as dr.Who )Part of INFECT) back in the golden days!

Thank you

[Kawazu]

16mb ram not gb

[SamuraiCrow]

Be sure to keep at least one IDE device connected to the internal IDE controller so that Kickstart 3.1 won't delay 5 seconds on the boot time waiting for a non-existant harddrive to spin up on it.

[MarZ]

16Gb to 16Mb edited - TNX

[MarZ]

Be sure to keep at least one IDE device connected to the internal IDE controller so that Kickstart 3.1 won't delay 5 seconds on the boot time waiting for a non-existant harddrive to spin up on it.

 
Thanks for the tip - I will.... I am sure that with a SCSI HD, the boot is also immediate / fast since I never owned an IDE HD but a SCSI one.
 
 
===========================================
I wish to have specific replies to my questions 1 to 6 though!  :angry:

[Cosmos Amiga]

Welcome back...

Amiga Classic still King of computers, believe in me...

[orange]

I think CF is 'natural' choice as its already IDE. the adapter has no electronics so there is no additional latency.

[Ryu]

My A1200 has now been running without a reboot for 127 days! and it has an 030 with 32MB installed.

To add some relevance to your post I use a CF to IDE adaptor and I've also used a PCMCIA 2 CF adaptor to move files around before switching out the IDE HDD. Nowadays the PCMCIA slot is populated with an ethernet card.

[MarZ]

Thanks folks,
:afro:

From the last replies it seems that I have to go for a CF-IDE, so at least I know what I can order from ebay.  Would be great if I get further replies re other points namely 2 and  (3) and 5.

I hope I will soon get back to some challenging music ripping as the old 199x days.

[orange]

Thanks folks,
:afro:

From the last replies it seems that I have to go for a CF-IDE, so at least I know what I can order from ebay.  Would be great if I get further replies re other points namely 2 and  (3) and 5.

I hope I will soon get back to some challenging music ripping as the old 199x days.

well here goes, but I don't think you'll like the replies:
2) there is no much point in using (analogue) USB PC joystick in Amiga, as most games are made for 'digital' joystick. if you referred  to competition pro USB, you should simply hack it and connect standard 9pin connector.

3) you can't use IDE device on SCSI host adapter without an expensive adapter.  it has been discussed here a lot, search for 'acard'.

5) yeah, you need maxtransfer set correctly "0x1FE00".  I never had problems with CF, but used only sandisk so far.

[MarZ]

Thanks Orange
 
I did not understood your tip re joysticks, being still a newbie on revive yr Amiga world. Is there a hardware method that you can use a USB PC joystick to the AMiga port.
 
Some time ago I bought a PC-Joy adapter, used an old PC joypad (that with 12-16 buttons) and di not work. I wonder if the adapter isfaulty, or it is not meant for these kind of joypads. (PC action pad from logic 3)

[mechy]

Thanks Orange
 
I did not understood your tip re joysticks, being still a newbie on revive yr Amiga world. Is there a hardware method that you can use a USB PC joystick to the AMiga port.
 
Some time ago I bought a PC-Joy adapter, used an old PC joypad (that with 12-16 buttons) and di not work. I wonder if the adapter isfaulty, or it is not meant for these kind of joypads. (PC action pad from logic 3)

you canstill buy joysticks that work on amiga.Amiga uses digital sticks,whicle pc are analog. Why not just go get a proper amiga joystick. you can still buy them.  i think amigakit.com sells the competition pro.
discreetfx.com may have some too.

mech

[orange]

Thanks Orange
 
I did not understood your tip re joysticks, being still a newbie on revive yr Amiga world. Is there a hardware method that you can use a USB PC joystick to the AMiga port.
 
Some time ago I bought a PC-Joy adapter, used an old PC joypad (that with 12-16 buttons) and di not work. I wonder if the adapter isfaulty, or it is not meant for these kind of joypads. (PC action pad from logic 3)

I think you should open up that 'PC action pad logic3' and re-wire it. (presumably its digital type)

But since you're newbie, why not simply buy standard, Kempston type of joystick? I think they are still being  sold new, even today at shops like vesalia or amigakit . this one is pretty durable:
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=52&products_id=331

hm, I've just seen they have this adapter:
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=285

Is that the one you tried?


edit: getting slow.. :/

[Cammy]

You could get a couple of these for $4.55 each http://www.dealextreme.com/p/additional-gamepad-controller-for-sku-28970-30530

I use them on all my Amigas, they work perfectly as 2-button controllers.

[stefcep2]

+1 for the Sega clones pads that Cammy mentioned.

Only thing is if you play driving games some use up on the d-pad to go forward so steering left and right on the d-pad is awkward.  I opened one up and basically soldered a wire from one of the button pads on the circuit board to the up pad on the circuit board so that the button functions as up, and I can still steer left and right.  Not sure if that's The Right Way, but 2 years later its still working.