What is the best Amiga in your Opinion?

[takemehomegrandma]

Hello everybody what is your favorite Amiga and why

i like my amiga 4000 and amiga 600 the best, i find that almost all games run good on them. but i also like my old amiga 2000 that old girl still keeps going :-)

While the Amiga 500 was the most successful one, and definitely the one who meant the most for the Amiga's success, I like the A1200 better. But IMHO it arrived a couple of years too late...

[LoadWB]

It's easy to forget how costly an '040 was back in 1993. However I do agree that both the A1200 and especially the CD32 should have come with fast RAM by default, and the A1200 should have been configurable out of the box with 4MB and 6MB options (an easy upsell from the base price). A 20MHz '020 would have made a difference, but I guess the CPU selected was restricted by Motorola's pricing at the time.

Mind that this was also during a time when the competition was paying a tonne of money on custom-designed consoles with not-so-inexpensive processors: the Sony PlayStation, the Nintendo 64, and the ill-fated Sega Saturn.  While everyone was clamoring for more powerful consoles, the Sega Genesis still held quite a field four years after release with its 68000 processor and Z80 co-processor.  As well, the NeoGeo was still a powerful game machine with the same processor specs as the Genesis.  The CD32 could have been much more than it was when released, IMO.

It amuses me that Atari was approached by both Nintendo and Sega to market their consoles and Atari couldn't agree with either.  Whoops!

[rayt]

I liked my A4000D a lot. I just love the case, as I don't like large towers. It was nice to see everything fit in from my CSPPC to the Mediator and PCI cards. Originally I built it to try OS4 but then I sold the most "valuable" parts (csppc, mediator) even before it came out.

Nowadays I quite like my A1200/030, which was my second amiga after the A500+ back in the early 90s. Again I like how many expensions fit in the nice looking case. Today I use it for some whdload retro gaming using an Indivision and a flash card. Its cool to have a completely silent computer after all.

So even if they were by far not as technically ahead of their time anymore(probably even slightly oudated) as the original amiga when it came out, from my personal "amiga experience"  A1200/A4000D are the best.

[Crumb]

Hello everybody what is your favorite Amiga and why

An A4000 or A4000T as both are quite expandable without sandwitch cards. A1200 is great if you don't plan to add too many cards: e.g. just accelerator and flickerfixer... it's kinda "portable" too. When you start to add PCI/Zorro slots to 1200 I prefer to use A4000 as it's more stable and expansion is much better OOTB.

If I only could have one miggy I would probably have a desktop A4000D: it offers me RTG, 060, USB2.0, network, enough space for a pair of HDs and DVD... all in a nice case.

[AAACHIPSET]

i  love  my a1200  ..has everything i need  aga  upgraded 030 heaps  ram ..runs  everything i throw at it ..more or less ..love  my cd32  cause  it can play movies  with the fmv card ..which for its time was a very good bit of hardware ..before  dvds came along..but for most time just playing with my computer has to be my a500  ...still got my original  workbench 1.3  model bought for 800.00  aust dollars  brand new ..have added harddrives  ..dvd drives superfat agnes wb 2.04  an now 3.1  ..ran pctask  an got 286 games  plodding along  ..games  till  4am some nights  ..still in fully working condition ..a500  had the most  ports you could do anything to it it seems..vortex pc emulator  a570 cdrom  parnetted  networked  even put it online  ...best computer  a500 ....most used  now  a1200  ..

[lassie]

Mind that this was also during a time when the competition was paying a tonne of money on custom-designed consoles with not-so-inexpensive processors: the Sony PlayStation, the Nintendo 64, and the ill-fated Sega Saturn.  While everyone was clamoring for more powerful consoles, the Sega Genesis still held quite a field four years after release with its 68000 processor and Z80 co-processor.  As well, the NeoGeo was still a powerful game machine with the same processor specs as the Genesis.  The CD32 could have been much more than it was when released, IMO.

It amuses me that Atari was approached by both Nintendo and Sega to market their consoles and Atari couldn't agree with either.  Whoops!

Hi yes i think the Amiga cd32 is a cool console, i have 2 myself :-) but it is a shame that it was mainly old Amiga games they put out on it ( not that they are not good ) but i think they could have make some cool games for it. mayby it was because commodore went under 7 months after the released that they did not make new games for it. But still i think its a fine console, and i have almost all the old consoles from sega and nintendo. take sega cd, the amiga have 4 or 8 times the ram the sega cd has, and 20 times the colour.

[lassie]

i  love  my a1200  ..has everything i need  aga  upgraded 030 heaps  ram ..runs  everything i throw at it ..more or less ..love  my cd32  cause  it can play movies  with the fmv card ..which for its time was a very good bit of hardware ..before  dvds came along..but for most time just playing with my computer has to be my a500  ...still got my original  workbench 1.3  model bought for 800.00  aust dollars  brand new ..have added harddrives  ..dvd drives superfat agnes wb 2.04  an now 3.1  ..ran pctask  an got 286 games  plodding along  ..games  till  4am some nights  ..still in fully working condition ..a500  had the most  ports you could do anything to it it seems..vortex pc emulator  a570 cdrom  parnetted  networked  even put it online  ...best computer  a500 ....most used  now  a1200  ..

Hi i dont have fmv card in my amiga cd32 but i have it in my Philips cdi so i watch old movies on that :-) yes its quite cool to see movies on a cd 5 years before the dvds came along

[duga]

It a shame commodore went under in 1994, one would think they could keep it going with all the machines they sold over the years. but i think they made some bad choices. The amiga cd32 was a good console, but i think they should have shipped it with 040 cpu and 4 mb ram, so it could compete with the new pc and playstation. it was a time where 3d games took of

No way they could've used 040 in a console in 1993. 020 was good for a console but they should've used 1 MB Fast RAM instead of Akiko. Remember that Playstation was released more than one year later than CD32. You should compare CD32 to SNES, MegaDrive, PC CDROM and CDi.

CDTV and A600 shouldn't have been released at all, with a extended availability of the A500 Plus 6-12 months longer.

A1200 should have been configurable to 2 MB chip or 1 MB chip and 1 MB fast (expandable to 2 MB chip and 4 MB fast).

I agree that A3000 was released when Commodore/Amiga peaked.

[duga]

Interestingly there's also support for the 68020 on A4000 motherboards, which shows just how little idea Commodore had about what to do with the machine.

Doesn't change the fact it rocks though.

I guess the plan was to have a really cheap 020-based A4000 (or a big box A1200, maybe called A1400 if you want) but as the A4000 was based on A3000 (which used 030) they lately discovered how much changes they would have to do on the cpu card and/or motherboard.

[james666]

I have to vote for the A500. It was the cheapest of all Amiga models, so it really brought Amiga to the masses.

Agreed.  The A500 is the winner by a mile if the criterion is contemporary price/performance ratio.  Never again would the the Amiga have such a crushing advantage over the competition as in 1987.  The 2000 had a nice big expansion case but was very expensive relative to the 500 (more than double the price in Europe).

[Hattig]

Mind that this was also during a time when the competition was paying a tonne of money on custom-designed consoles with not-so-inexpensive processors: the Sony PlayStation, the Nintendo 64, and the ill-fated Sega Saturn.

There were massive leaps made during the mid-90s for consoles, the CD32 was just a little too early and underpowered (the RAM configuration really didn't help), and AGA wasn't good enough for a mid-90s console, especially as it was a full bitmap display compared with the competing Genesis and SNES tile-based graphics, and then underpowered compared with the Saturn, Jaguar and Playstation. Then again, AGA was a hack because AA was dead. The nature of computer games was changing at the time and adding a chunky "byteplane" mode would have really helped for the Doom-likes and 3D games.

As for my favourite Amiga, it would have to go to the A500 - the one that brought the Amiga to the masses. I had a KS1.2 Amiga 500. Then an A1200, which didn't have the same feel to it. I just wish that the A1200 had also come in a more expandable A1000 style case.

[psxphill]

Agreed. The A500 is the winner by a mile if the criterion is contemporary price/performance ratio. Never again would the the Amiga have such a crushing advantage over the competition as in 1987. The 2000 had a nice big expansion case but was very expensive relative to the 500 (more than double the price in Europe).

The A500 was perfect for 1987. The A2000 wasn't good enough to justify the extra price.
 
By 1989 they needed one Amiga board with at least 8 bit chunky graphics modes. The all in one computer was out of date by then & it killed the market having two ranges of expansions.
 
Milking the a500 until 1991, when it was only marginally upgraded to the a500 plus was commercial suicide.

[lassie]

No way they could've used 040 in a console in 1993. 020 was good for a console but they should've used 1 MB Fast RAM instead of Akiko. Remember that Playstation was released more than one year later than CD32. You should compare CD32 to SNES, MegaDrive, PC CDROM and CDi.

CDTV and A600 shouldn't have been released at all, with a extended availability of the A500 Plus 6-12 months longer.

A1200 should have been configurable to 2 MB chip or 1 MB chip and 1 MB fast (expandable to 2 MB chip and 4 MB fast).

I agree that A3000 was released when Commodore/Amiga peaked.

Hi yes your are right when i think about it, 040 cpu in 1993 was quite expensive i can imagnine, but if they change the ram as you talked about, do you think they could run doom clones better? still with the 020 cpu.

[Hattig]

Hi yes your are right when i think about it, 040 cpu in 1993 was quite expensive i can imagnine, but if they change the ram as you talked about, do you think they could run doom clones better? still with the 020 cpu.

Not really - maybe with a 28 MHz '020. Chunky graphics would also have helped. Even with this, getting textured floor/ceilings probably wouldn't have happened, as they're a CPU hog in a ray-casting engine.

[matt3k]

I have owned almost every amiga over the last 20+ years and to me the best is the Amiga 3000 Desktop.

It has the best quality feel of any Amiga.  Some of the reasons already mentioned are great ones, here are a few more reasons:
1.  The 3000 Keyboards were the best that commodore ever made, Even a 4000 Tower Keyboard, which looks almost identical, doesn't have the same quality mechanism.  IMHO, the 3000 keyboards feel the best.
2.  The footprint and look of it, I owned a 3000T and I still prefer the Desktop.  It seems the right size to me.
3.  The metal, buttons, screws, and all the components were a better quality.  It feels like quality in using one.

It is a very subjective thing, but to me a decked out 3000D is the perfect package for an Amiga computer.  

Lastly, if a user properly cared for a 3000 from the beginning they will last forever.  Sadly many 3000's have battery damage.  Leaky batteries will hurt a 3000, faster than most any other Amiga because of where the battery is located.  

3 Tips for a 3000D owner.
1.  Don't let the battery leak.
2. Keep powersupply and vents clean for good airflow.
3. Keep in open area with good cool air.  Lifting a 3000 on it's rubber legs will better cool the bottom.

[amiga-penn-wchester]

I have owned all models except for A3000T, so I can't speak to that model.

IMO the A2000 & A1200 were the best models.  The 2000 because of its expandability and reliability - a beast of a machine, the 1200 because of its price point (after its initial release cost was lowered).  You got AGA and soon after the ability to expand in many ways if you wanted.

The desktop A3000s and A4000s - they were nice, but weren't much of a departure from standard Amiga fare, really, other than the bus speed / processor slot architecture.

I had an A1200T/blizz060/ppc in a tower - was only zorro II, but I ran many of the same things comparably fast in relation to A3000/A4000.  Only thing that made it choke was that Picasso IV wanted more bus.

Even if you look at it from a Toaster standpoint - The A2000 sort of wins as the toaster 4000 wasn't that much of a different beast than toaster 2.0/3.x or what not.  Essentially a video switcher + effects. AGA aside, to me, you're basically in the same video land with the Toaster 2000 + some 030 or above processor.

Although the A3k and a4k offered easier access to graphics enhancements, 24bit was becoming commonplace around that time, and although Amiga had the upper hand with great gfx/paint software (TVpaint, many others), it was easy to see even as a user at the time that RTG and graphics addons for the amiga was a dead end.