help please..!!

[souledout]

Ive got got my hands on a spanking new(ish.. :-D )
a1200...and im completely new to the whole modern amiga scene..its completely bare bones and i was wondering if anyone had any advise on how i should tweak this little baby..??
Plus any advice on how to get online(in the UK) would be lots of help too..!!

[bloodline]

THat depends how much money you have to burn and how far you want to go... the fist thing you have to do is get a Hard drive in there.

I suggest a small (couple of gig) second hand laptop drive.

[Brian]

First of you need to get hold of at least a few things to such a baby, 1st is a decent sized 2.5" HDD (4Gb to start with is superb as you won't have much trouble with filesystems not able to acces the hole drive), 2nd is a 030 turboboard with at least 16Mb of memory and if you want to get on the internet you will have to get hold of a PCMCIA ethernetcard that is compatible with the Amigas 16bit PCMCIA port and the drivers you can find on AmiNet. I sugest you get hold of a 2.5" -> 2.5" -> 3.5" IDE cable aswell so you can plug in a CDRom.

Got that and you are well on you're way... then when you are more confident in you're Amiga choise and abilities there's PPC cards, graphiccards and soundcards, newer OS etc to go for aswell. :-)

[souledout]

ive got a budget of about 300£ at the moment, but Im getting pretty nostalgic about the whole project..so who knows where its going to go..!
I didnt know you could use laptops drives though..!!

what sort of HDD sizes will the a1200 support..??

[bloodline]

souledout wrote:
ive got a budget of about 300£ at the moment, but Im getting pretty nostalgic about the whole project..so who knows where its going to go..!
I didnt know you could use laptops drives though..!!

what sort of HDD sizes will the a1200 support..??

Technically you can use any size of drive, but you will need to install a patch (which you can download from Aminet) to use drives bigger than 4gig

[alx]

@souledout

Welcome to A.org :-D

I didnt know you could use laptops drives though..!!

In fact, they're what the A1200 is designed for.  You can modify it to accept normal ones, but it's a bit messy.

what sort of HDD sizes will the a1200 support..??

By default, there's a limit of something like 4Gb (check with someone else - I'm unsure), but a later version of the OS or a patch can be used to get round that.

---edit---

Looks like Bloodline beat me to it :evil:  :-P

[souledout]

Ok great, how easy is it to install the drive once i get one......can anyone reccomend a good beginers guide to this sort of thing, so i dont have to bug youa ll with all these anoying questions.. :-D

[George]

Hello there.
Firstly, your in the UK, so a couple of handy websites;
Amibench
Pretty much the best place to find 2nd hand amiga bits for sale.
Also,
Eyetech
Are one of the best places to get new Amiga bits  :-)

Okay then. As others have said, the easiest thing to do is buy a second hand laptop hardrive. These use a smaller, 2.5", IDE connector, whilst CD-ROM drives and ordinary PC hard drives use a larger 3.5" connector, which you can still use in your a1200, but you'll need an adpter, and probably to modify your case so that it'll fit :-) Finally ,you really want a hard drive thats 4gb or les, as the built in filesystem can't handle bigger drives, so you'd have to sort that out. You can always add a bigger harddrive later and copy over your install and ad a new FS.

EDIT: Damn, 2 people beat me to it! :-P

RIghty then. Next, as others have said, an accelerator. The built in CPU is to frank ,rubbish nowdays.
Amigas use Motorola processors numbered 680x0. the built in one is a 68020 with no maths processor. I'd recommend at least a board with a 68030 and an FPU (maths processor) and that it has or you get hold of at least 16mb RAM for the board. Although a 68040 with built in FPU would be better. Still at least 16mb RAM though.

For getting on the net, you need a PCMIA modem that works with the amiga.
The site mentioned above, Aminet
is the biggest source for amiga shareware, freeware, drivers, etc so i'd look there to see what cards work.
Oh, this isn't meant to put you off, but go to Sabrina Online
click 'Archive' and look at the oldest comic going to see what your up against trying to get on the net ^_^  :-D
I'm sure it's easier than that lets on though, and there's people here to help as well  :-)

Well, hopefully this will help a bit :-)

[bloodline]

souledout wrote:
Ok great, how easy is it to install the drive once i get one......can anyone reccomend a good beginers guide to this sort of thing, so i dont have to bug youa ll with all these anoying questions.. :-D

Quite easy. Just open up the case and pop the drive in the cradle that you will see.

You might need a cable though... but they are really cheap.

[souledout]

This is all great stuff...!!! Thanks for your help,
i never realised the amiga had no only survived..but infact thrived
Ill go on the lookout for a HDD asap.....ive been offered an 80meg one for 10£ but im guessing that would be a bit of  waste of time
Ill try and get my hands on a modem asap, as i can see this is going to be the EASIEST way to get my hands on the software im going to need,also it seems slot of the stuff is pretty easy to get going..!

[bloodline]

souledout wrote:
This is all great stuff...!!! Thanks for your help,
i never realised the amiga had no only survived..but infact thrived
Ill go on the lookout for a HDD asap.....ive been offered an 80meg one for 10£ but im guessing that would be a bit of  waste of time
Ill try and get my hands on a modem asap, as i can see this is going to be the EASIEST way to get my hands on the software im going to need,also it seems slot of the stuff is pretty easy to get going..!

I forgot to say:-

Welcome to Amiga Org, you came to the right place :-D

[George]

Aah, indeed, good point!

Welcome to the board :-)

Getting a modem may not be the easiest. If it's only little bits you need to transfer, Amiga can read 720K PC disks :-)
Hooking up a CD-ROM drive and using CD-R (or RW's if amiga can read them, I think it can) may be easier on the short term :-)
Somebody else here though could tell you which should be the route to go down though

And the amiga is definately still kicking!
It will survive!  :-D

[souledout]

Ok...getting a cd-rom might be the answer ! Ive seen some advertised on the site that was recommeded, Im really looking forward to getting my hands on some of the old calssics i used to play when i was a kid
Im also looking forwrd to seeing how it performs compared to my PC, i know amigas were always better at multitasking and now with all the exapnsion available it should be eve more interesting..!!

[bloodline]

souledout wrote:
Ok...getting a cd-rom might be the answer ! Ive seen some advertised on the site that was recommeded, Im really looking forward to getting my hands on some of the old calssics i used to play when i was a kid
Im also looking forwrd to seeing how it performs compared to my PC, i know amigas were always better at multitasking and now with all the exapnsion available it should be eve more interesting..!!

Classics eh?

http://www.back2roots.org

[George]

Before you do buy a CD-ROM drive, you will still need to transfer over by some other method a CD filesystem, which can be got from Aminet. However, this is small enough to fit on a 720K floppy disk if I remember right, so it'll be the only time you have to do it.
And any PC CD-ROM drive wil work pretty much.
I'd wait for some other members to confirm what i'm saying as well, been a while since I messed with my amiga