May be getting an A1200 for christmas :) Recommend things I'll need.

[Insidious611]

Keep in mind my budget is fairly small. I'm looking at an Amiga 1200 refurb ordered from AmiKit, thus its going to be a PAL system. I'm already getting the mouse they offer and the 115v North American adapter (For here in NTSC-U land).

As far as display goes, what are my viable options? I have a small HDTV I use for my games consoles but I doubt it's going to accept a PAL signal over RF.

I understand the common method is to use a scandoubler/flickerfixer to output straight to a VGA monitor. However, apparently the Indivision AGA has been out of stock for a great while as they have been working on the new version. I've been looking around and have seen about 800 posts dating from as far back as 2 years ago saying the new version of the Indivision AGA is "coming out soon", so you'll forgive me if I don't hold my breath for that in particular. Any competing solutions?

Anything else you guys consider a necessity to add to a virgin 1200? I know adding more RAM is probably a priority but as far as I can see theres little way of doing so without buying an expensive card that also includes a better CPU and all that gumf I honestly don't see myself needing.

For what its worth, my main computer monitor is a Dell S1709W and the small HDTV I mentioned earlier is a Dynex DX-15L150A11

[ChaosLord]

If u can't get a flickerfixer then just get a Commodore 1084S monitor.  It will have better colors than your LCD monitors and it will make all your Amiga games look great!

[LaserBack]

If u can't get a flickerfixer then just get a Commodore 1084S monitor.  It will have better colors than your LCD monitors and it will make all your Amiga games look great!

I agree...the 1084s is ideal for games....in fact game developers on the era done and tested the games on those monitors....so colors and brighten effects are only accurate there...games do not look pixelated
the bad side of those 1084s monitors is that the image quality is not very sharp for workbench and applications

[paul1981]

For a WHDLoad gaming setup you'll want some fast ram and a hard drive of course. 2MB fast ram expansion will do fine for the majority of games. You should be able to get a 2.5" harddrive from an old broken laptop for nothing and it's certain to be 3gig or higher. Also, I would buy yourself a wireless card (16 bit & WEP) for the pcmcia slot (has to be 16bit card in Amiga600/1200 slot, not the modern 32bit 'cardbus' variant.  I use an MA401 card and it works like a charm.
Or if you don't want to downgrade your security on your wireless network to WEP then get a wired ethernet card instead.
Once you have your Amiga networked, you can transfer your software via FTP directly to your amiga over the network.  This I find to be more practical than using CF cards.
That's what I'd have as a bare minimum Amiga setup, and I'd be happy with that.

[runequester]

before people jump in with a bunch of tosh about "needing" 060 cards and graphics cards, what are you looking to use the miggy for?

[NovaCoder]

Keep in mind my budget is fairly small. I'm looking at an Amiga 1200 refurb ordered from AmiKit, thus its going to be a PAL system. I'm already getting the mouse they offer and the 115v North American adapter (For here in NTSC-U land).

As far as display goes, what are my viable options? I have a small HDTV I use for my games consoles but I doubt it's going to accept a PAL signal over RF.

I understand the common method is to use a scandoubler/flickerfixer to output straight to a VGA monitor. However, apparently the Indivision AGA has been out of stock for a great while as they have been working on the new version. I've been looking around and have seen about 800 posts dating from as far back as 2 years ago saying the new version of the Indivision AGA is "coming out soon", so you'll forgive me if I don't hold my breath for that in particular. Any competing solutions?

Anything else you guys consider a necessity to add to a virgin 1200? I know adding more RAM is probably a priority but as far as I can see theres little way of doing so without buying an expensive card that also includes a better CPU and all that gumf I honestly don't see myself needing.

For what its worth, my main computer monitor is a Dell S1709W and the small HDTV I mentioned earlier is a Dynex DX-15L150A11

Hiya,

If you just want to play some old games (WHDLOAD) then just an old RAM card or a new ACA will do just fine (the ACA gets my vote because it's new HW).

You'll need a HD of course, a CF card is the cheapest option (4GB is plenty).

You'll also want a PCMCIA transfer kit which allows you to copy stuff over to your Miggy with ease.

As for your monitor issues.   Yes the IndivisionAGA Mrk2 has been delayed but we have good reason to expect it to ship before the end of the year.

Your other option is a simple RGB-to-VGA adapter and just use a PC monitor (that's what I do), if you're lucky you might even find a monitor that syncs down low enough to play some old Amiga games (newer Amiga stuff like ScummVM AGA supports the AGA chipsets VGA mode so it's not an issue).

[Piru]

Personally I have the following:

• An accelerator (mine is a BPPC 060 but some 030 one will do just fine for most things) with 128MB ram (32 or 64MB will do just fine as well)
• CFIDE adapter (for example this one) and 8GB CF card as HDD
  
• Automatic mouse/joystick switcher (amigakit sells these)
• 4x multi-player joystick adapter (parallel), for some multiplayer madness (amigakit for example)
• SCART lead for connecting the amiga to my 47" LCD TV (unfortunately SCART is mostly missing from TV sets sold in USA)
• PCMCIA network card (3com)
• WHDLoad (licensed of course)
  

This thing is used for games and demos.

[Insidious611]

Woo, lots of replies:

runequester: Probably just going to do games via WHDLoad, maybe a couple floppy games if I can actually get my hands on them but its unlikely. Maybe some basic 'productivity' work, by which I mean I might do some design documents for a game I'm making on it, and I might IRC or surf basic websites on it.


ChaosLord: I'd considered a 1084S, but shipping for CRT monitors tends to get really expensive. All else fails, I may go for it though Thanks.

paul1981: I already have a 2.5" IDE hard drive lying around from an IBM T61 laptop that broke, so thats good news. It may be a bit too big though, its probably somewhere around 30-40GB and I hear there are issues with drives >4GB. Any advice regarding that?

Was definitely planning on getting myself a PCMCIA wireless card for it. I hear the Orinoco Silver/Gold cards are good choices?

As far as the 2MB fastram expansion, thats what I was thinking as far as RAM but I wonder if its possible to find one for less than an ACA1230 which would have more fastram anyway.

Was definitely planning on doing file transfers over network. Sneakernetting with CF cards seems... Terribly inconvenient.

NovaCoder:
Have addressed a lot of what you said already. Just want to agree that the ACA1230 seems like a good choice if I can't find something cheaper.

I wish I shared your optimism on the Indivision AGA Mrk2. If it does come out, I will certainly purchase it.

As far as a simple RGB-to-VGA adapter, thats why I posted the models of my main monitor and small hdtv. I've seen reports of people saying that recent Dell LCDs (of which mine is one, though not the model I saw referenced in that thread) can sync down low enough to actually play stuff like Cannon Fodder and run workbench in DblPAL mode, etc. I wanted to know if anyone had the same monitors and could provide confirmation.

Piru:
As far as accelerators, thoughts on the ACA1230? Thats the only one I can find still in production and people seem to sell out of production ones for... Well, multiple hundreds of dollars.

Also, I actually was considering using SCART with a SCART->ComponentYPbPr adapter. I'd seen some videos on youtube of someone using that with a PAL genesis on an american TV and it looking great, but the setup is a tad expensive.

[Iggy]

I'd definately second the recommendations for a Compact Flash or SD Card adapter (as a substitute for a hard drive).
 
As for accelerators, they're frequently offered on Ebay (although at steep prices).

[Karlos]

If you already have a router and home network, I'd definitely recommend a PCMCIA network card as you can get cnet.device compatible ones from ebay for next to nothing (If you aren't running OS3.9 you'll need to get appropriate TCP/IP software too, eg, AmiTCP) or you can get a complete package from amikit.

Since installing one in my main A1200, I've never had to fall back onto floppy or optical media since.

[runequester]

For an accelerator, definately get one of the ACA cards. They're cheap compared to ebay prices, and will do all you need.
I've been extremely pleased with mine.

[PanterHZ]

paul1981: I already have a 2.5" IDE hard drive lying around from an IBM T61 laptop that broke, so thats good news. It may be a bit too big though, its probably somewhere around 30-40GB and I hear there are issues with drives >4GB. Any advice regarding that?

This may not necessarily be a problem, because although the drive is 30-40GB in size, it doesn't mean that you have to use all the space on it. As long as the partitions is max 2GB in size, and you only use the first 4GB of the harddisk, there shouldn't be any issues.

But you can also use the rest of the disk space by installing a filesystem that can handle large partitions on the harddisk (SFS or PFS). In addition you must also use something that patches the system on startup, this can either be IDEfix or a newer scsi.device. Another thing that may be required is NSDPatch so that the system can "see" all partitions after the 4GB border.

That being said, like some others here I will also recommend a CF card + CF-IDE adapter solution.

[Buzzfuzz]

Forget the ACA's, if you want to do gaming and want your A1200 to be stable, get yourself a Blizzard 1230 with 16 or 32 MB ram, more than enough and FTW
 
As for display, like said above, get yourself a 1084, the new type, far less expensive than any monitor combined with an Indi.
 
Add that harddrive you got and you got yourself a kickass system.

[Insidious611]

I really don't know about "far less expensive" for the 1084S...

The results I'm coming up with on ebay are near the $300-$400 mark, and thats not counting shipping.

Whereas the Indivision itself may be somewhere around $100-$200, but I already have monitors for it.

So I don't really see what you're smoking there, to be blunt.

That being said, I can see myself getting one eventually simply for the authenticity.