help please..!!

[Matt_H]

In reference to internal 3.5" hard drives in a 1200, this can be done with relative ease. I gave up on fitting a 2.5" drive in my rebuilt 1200 desktop model because I couldn't find a 44pin cable anywhere, and didn't want to pay to ship one from the UK.

You'll need a 44pin to 40pin IDE cable (a 2.5" to 3.5" kit should work, too), and the hard drive must be a slim-type (About the same thickness as a 3.5" floppy drive, less if possible). Get rid of the 2.5" drive cradle, and the drive will rest nicely underneath the keyboard ribbon. Don't forget to add some insulation between the drive and the RF shielding!

Also, for external CD-ROMs, you may need an updated device driver and a buffered IDE interface.  I use the IDEFix-97 package, but this isn't available anymore. Someone else can probably fill you in on what options are currently available.

One last option is a CD drive in the PCMCIA port. You can avoid all that IDE fussiness, but these are hard to come by, and you won't be able to use a network card in there. Since it seems like you're going the modem route, that might not be an issue.

Have fun, and welcome. :-)

[Ryu]

just a quick note, well 2 really...

1) you can use ANY modem, so long as it uses the serial interface, you can pick up a £5 secondhand 33k3 modem plug it in and off you go.. i might have a 56k modem laying around here if you want...

2) you can fit a 3.5" HDD into a desktop case easily, even the huge old style 3.5" HDD will fit, I have a very old very large 512mb IBM drive mounted in one of the A1200's I own, and it fits...

[DrBlue]

Hey there!

A 2.5' Hard Drive over 2Gig will actually work quite happily in an A1200 but only if it is seperated into partitions of no greater than 2Gig each.

I would advise a tower conversion as this gives you a boosted power supply and negates the need for external CD rom drives and stuff which can be a little expensive.  Eyetech do a decent tower kit for a little under 200 pounds.

If this is a too expensive then i would advise using an old A500 PSU with your A1200 as the standard A1200 PSU is a bit crappy and may not supply enough power to your Amiga to power your HD and CD rom.  There are two types of A500 PSU's one is quite light and one is about the weight of a house brick, it is this one you want.

An 030 is a fairly good Accellerator to use these can be found relatively cheaply, but an 040 or an 060 are better but can be difficult to find and expensive.  Be warned though, these boards may not work with newer RAM SIMMS (such as DDR, Eyetech supply Amiga Accellerator board compatible RAM for a price) and some only allow you to fit around 16 or 32mb of RAM.

If you buy an external CDROM drive, try to choose an IDE one rather than an SCSI one.  An SCSI one requires a piece of equipment called a Squirrell which plugs into the side of your A1200.  The Squirrell has problems with certain types of Accellerator boards when fitted with over 4mb of RAM and won't work.  An IDE one would be a better option (and cheaper) again Eyetech is really the place to go.

One last thing 3.1 ROM chips are definately a good idea, these can be found for around 30 pounds.

Hope i could be of some help :-D