Recommend an Amiga

[CritAnime]

AmigaKit do refurbished systems. Ebay would be a good place to look but beware of people charging rediculous amounts for one. Another option is to simply scoure second hand markets and shops. Sometimes they popup and you can grab one for a small fee.
 
Do people still use craigslist?

[bjjones37]

What country are you in?

I am in the US.  I looked at amigakit, but they seemed to be out of stock as far as I could tell.  And they only seemed to sell PAL systems.  Will PAL even work in the US?  If they do have something I can use, I would certainly be interested.

[pVC]

If you want a completely new A1200, you can buy one from Petro.

[magnetic]

I am in the US.  I looked at amigakit, but they seemed to be out of stock as far as I could tell.  And they only seemed to sell PAL systems.  Will PAL even work in the US?  If they do have something I can use, I would certainly be interested.

If you are in North America DONT get a PAL unit. For one thing, the composite video output will always be in black and white on NTSC displays. If you have a 1080 or 1084, 1950 or 1960 commodore monitor you should be able to display both PAL and NTSC.  And there will be guys to follow this post saying get a PAL unit. Trust me man go NTSC. Oh, just thought of another reason you wont be able to use genlocks and other rgb devices with NTSC signals.

[ChaosLord]

If you can get a PAL Amiga, then get one.  PAL Amigas are better.

Nobody cares about composite video output because composite went out of style back in the mid 1980s and nobody uses it.  The picture quality of composite output is total garbage and you will hate your Amiga if you use that.  No way in hell will you write code on a composite monitor.  You would either go blind or insane.

Commodore went to a lot of trouble and spent the big bucks to give every Amiga Computer a perfecty quality RGB port for crisp non-blurry clean gfx.  So use it.

It would be really really stupid to buy an RGB computer and then just refuse to use the RGB.  That is like buying a computer with a hard drive connector and then just refusing to use a hard drive.

The thing is since 90% of all Amiga games only work correctly in PAL mode, when you use an NTSC Amiga you have to PAL boot every single game in order for the game to work.  Why bother?  Just use a PAL Amiga to start with.

I have several NTSC Amigas.  The NTSC A3000s have a special jumper on them to allow you to flip a switch and set it to PAL or NTSC.   I set mine to PAL mode when I got them and I never flipped it back.  Why on Earth would I?  If I want to play an NTSC game I just NTSC boot the computer.  But that doesn't happen much.  Most hot games require PAL mode.

My other NTSC Amigas have no PAL/NTSC switch on them so I must waste 60 seconds of my life to PAL boot the computer every time I want to play a game on them.

My NTSC A1200 has been set to use a PAL Workbench since the 1990s.  That is almost 20 years that my NTSC A1200 has been in PAL mode.  The PAL video output is 100% perfect on every single one of my NTSC Amigas.  That includes A500s, A2000s, A1200s, A3000s, A4000.

If you get a PAL Amiga just make sure to flip the powerswitch into North American mode before you use it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Else you will set your Amiga and your house on fire.

Have fun.

[bjjones37]

How much should I pay for a used (or new) Amiga 1200?

[bjjones37]

If you want a completely new A1200, you can buy one from Petro.

If I order one from petro, will I be able to get it with a USA power supply?

[ChaosLord]

Petro's are all German with nonstandard keyboard layout.

I would not recommend one of those unless u r buying a Detatched Keyboard Adapter (Forgot what they are called) that let u use a standard PS/2 PC keyboard.  I use such an adapter on my A1200T for many years (15).

If u want to use an external keyboard I can help u choose one that is not a ripoff.  I have spent last 3 months studying Keyboard Science 24/7.

[Iggy]

The 1200 is nice, but I'd prefer a 4000D.
When you want to install PCI slots, its a lot easier to modify.

Then you add a PCI NIC, SCSI card, Soundblaster 128, or USB card.
Also possibly a Voodoo3 or Radeon 9200 video card or and Indvision AGA.

[bjjones37]

Petro's are all German with nonstandard keyboard layout.

I would not recommend one of those unless u r buying a Detatched Keyboard Adapter (Forgot what they are called) that let u use a standard PS/2 PC keyboard.  I use such an adapter on my A1200T for many years (15).

If u want to use an external keyboard I can help u choose one that is not a ripoff.  I have spent last 3 months studying Keyboard Science 24/7.

When you say nonstandard, does that mean the keys will not properly map out to an English OS, like pressing a 'D' and getting an 'L' or something of the sort?

I am looking possible issues in both keyboard and power supply. Is there anything else that might not be compatible for use in the USA? Will the OS be in German, menus and such?

[ChaosLord]

When you say nonstandard, does that mean the keys will not properly map out to an English OS, like pressing a 'D' and getting an 'L' or something of the sort?

Germany uses QWERTZ layout.

The rest of the universe uses QWERTY layout.

You can set your keymap to UK layout to fix the Y-Z issue but some punctuation symbols might get switched around too, donno.  UK has punctuation in different places than USA.

In any case, if you set your keymap to have the Y key in the normal place, the writing on your Y-key will stay say "Z".  At a minimimum its confusing.  If it was me it would be fantastically annoying.

Germany just decided to make up their own incompatible format incompatible with the whole entire rest of the planet.

I am looking possible issues in both keyboard and power supply.

I can't remember if the A1200 powersupply has a 110v / 220V switch on it or not.

Is there anything else that might not be compatible for use in the USA? Will the OS be in German, menus and such?

You set the language of the OS on any Amiga.  That is not a problem at all.


If you were going to buy Petro's super custom A1200 and put it into a Tower Case and use a real keyboard then all your keyboard problems disappear.  This is what I do.  I am using a brand new 2012 springloaded PS/2  keyboard.

You could buy a $3.00 set of stickers and cover up the Z key and the other key with the proper symbols.  If they swapped around any other symbols, punctuation, etc. maybe u could fix those with stickers also.  Dunno.  Depending on what they did it could get really complicated.

I only learned of German QWERTZ layout a couple of months ago.  Until then I just assumed everyone used the same layout.  HA!

[paul1981]

Another alternative is to buy a US or UK Amiga keyboard. Amigakit sells new UK ones for £18.95. There are some new ones on ebay as well.

[zipper]

Germany uses QWERTZ layout.

The rest of the universe uses QWERTY layout...
  HA!

AZERTY....what about?

[Wilse]

If you want a completely new A1200, you can buy one from Petro.

Ha - awesome!
:pint:

[AmigaBruno]

Keyboard layouts are different for different languages because of different letters being used more frequently or less frequently in different languages. I've only recently started using the Amiga again, so I've forgotten some stuff, but the German keyboard layout not only has the letters Z and Y reversed compared with English language keyboard layouts, but the characters you get when pressing SHIFT and some of the top row of keys (the number keys when not shifted) are also different. The German Umlaut characters (with two dots above them) are to the right of the L and P keys, while the Eszett character (which looks like the Greek letter Beta) is to the right of the number zero key. I don't know how many keys a German Amiga keyboard has, but it may well have more than a US Amiga keyboard, so no keys will be missing, but some keys won't print anything if you use a US keymap. You can see the different keymaps in one of the Amiga manuals, as well as by using the program Keytoy. Various other languages have different keyboards or keymaps. Apart from this, the same languages used in different countries also use different keymaps. I seem to remember the Portuguese keymap was the most different from QWERTY. Does anyone know if a Japanese Amiga keymap was ever produced?

Here's a link to a pic of a German A4000 keyboard.

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/download_photos/a4000keyb_german_big.jpg

[magnetic]

bbjones

LIke I stated earlier  you need to get a north american (NTSC) Unit. It will save you alot of headaches.  Yes lord chaos has some points (like I told you they would) but unless you are strictly a hardcore gamer DONT GET PAL.