Amiga 1200 build - Mediator pci, is it worth it?

[haywirepc]

I'm going to build or rebuild an amiga 1200 project. I have to choose between putting it in a tower case or not.

Seems to me that mediator would be awesome, but is it worth the money?

I already have to buy an accelerator, internet solution, scandoubler and more.

How does the system work with RTG when you use stuff that bangs the AGA built in video? Do I need to manually switch things with some kind of vga splitter or what?


What about stuff that uses the built in sound chip? do I have to Y cable the a1200 8 bit outs with the soundblaster plugged into the mediator?


If you bought a mediator, what did you like about it? What did you hate?

Not sure its worth it. I may just stick with wedge case, pcmcia internet and indivision aga. What do you guys  think?

Steven

[spirantho]

I've never been a great fan of towered A1200s, to be honest. If you're aiming to expand that far, I'd start with an A4000... it'll give you more options via its Zorro bus than just a mediator, and is likely to be rather more stable and definitely easier to maintain. You can use Zorro RTG cards with scandoublers so you don't need a VGA switcher.
That's just my opinion though!

[fishy_fiz]

RTG is much nicer than aga for most things. If you spend your time with system friendly stuff a lot its as indespensible as a decent accelerator.When my bppc died I was devestated, not because of the accelerator, but because it meant my grex, ergo rtg/rta was no longer usable.
It is fun tweaking a system using aga and some reasonable results can be achieved, but it really is like chalk and cheese. Dont make the mistake however that an indivision is a substitute (as seems a popular misconception). Nice bit of hardware, but its still pure aga, with all its limitations intact.

[adonay]

Its hard to go back to a "wedge" 1200 after useing a mediator 1200 simply becouse of the gfx card . You can do so much more in a desktop envirement when you are not limited to chipram for display . I used a TV card and ran the composite trough that so that i could display games and such trough the videocard . Having a real soundcard is nice as well . But if you only use the amiga 1200 for classic gaming there is no reason to use a mediator setup. If you plan on web browsing and such it does not make much sence either as any classic amiga does not have enugh power to do that. I enjoyed my setup and my amiga 1200 experience never became the same after i sold it. Not even with the bppc and bvision card.

[Rob]

I'm going to build or rebuild an amiga 1200 project. I have to choose between putting it in a tower case or not.

Seems to me that mediator would be awesome, but is it worth the money?

I already have to buy an accelerator, internet solution, scandoubler and more.

How does the system work with RTG when you use stuff that bangs the AGA built in video? Do I need to manually switch things with some kind of vga splitter or what?


What about stuff that uses the built in sound chip? do I have to Y cable the a1200 8 bit outs with the soundblaster plugged into the mediator?


If you bought a mediator, what did you like about it? What did you hate?

Not sure its worth it. I may just stick with wedge case, pcmcia internet and indivision aga. What do you guys  think?

Steven

What accelerator are you planning to buy?

If your monitor has multiple inputs, VGA/DVI/HDMI then you should be able have both RTG and native scan doubled plugged in at time. In some instances, when both AGA and RTG screens are active, you'll have to switch inputs manually on the monitor when chaning between signals.

RTG certainly makes a massive improvement to Workbench and other serious uses.  Higher resolutions, faster display and now slow down with higher numbers of coloursm, well you just go straight to using 32-bit anyway.

Am I right to think you're using MorphOS at the moment?  If you do, it might be worth using that alongside the A1200 for a while before you decide to go in the direction of PCI expansion and an RTG card.  I'm just saying that because most people tend to abandon there 68k Amiga for serious use once they have a NG system.

I used Y cables to mix the paula audio with that of the SB128 when I had a Mediator setup.

[matt3k]

imho if you enjoy classic Amigas and want to really trick one out, get a big box 2,3,or 4000.
Build from a system that was manufactured to expand.

Zorro slots are real nice to build off of and are more stable than a small box amiga with tons of add ons.  I had a 1200 and it was great for certain things and fun to play with, once I got into add on's it was a headache I didn't enjoy.  

Super Buster 11 is your friend for maxing out a system and the 3/4000 have a great bus to build from and make a huge difference if you want a fast performing system.  Not having a Buster with the mediator isn't worth it to me...

But hey this is an emotional journey, if you want to trick out a 1200 go for it... Lot of Amiga users do and enjoy the experience, I just never did...

About the only advantage for going pci is the better DVI output for graphics cards, but you loose the auto switching zorro cards.

[B00tDisk]

I think ultimately it's like all PCs builds - what do you want to do with it?

I built a pair of PCs for my kids, for homework, light web-browsing, light gameplay, and that's it period.

I got "budget" ASUS motherboards, Haswell dual-core processors, 8gb RAM and SSDs, and no optical drives in each one.  My system OTOH has better "stuff" because I'm a PC gamer/power user.

Different needs, you see.  In this context you might say I gave them a pair of 030 A1200s with 4mb Fast and 250mb hard drives in the desktop case because that's all they need.

So if you really see yourself needing that much "stuff" for high-end (for the Amiga) gaming, like playing Quake 1 and 2 (and possibly 3 if you manage to pick up a BPPC), lightwave renders/animation, photoshop through mac emulation or ImageFX, and so on, then the towerized A1200 is the way to go.

If, however, you're after a moderately snappier vintage gaming + modern-ish gaming arrangement plus want the ability to emulate a vintage mac with a reasonable amount of speed, then stick with an A1200 + accelerator + fast RAM.  For ease-of-file-transfer get either a network connector or (IMO, the better solution) a USB card and if you need tcp/ip, a network dongle for it.

I'm not a fan of wedge/desktop cases but I think if you want the latter that's your best bet, just stick with one of those...

[Lurch]

A1200 towered, is it worth it for the ultimate Amiga 1200 setup? Yes, RTG is hard to live without once you've had a workbench at 1920x1080 ;-)

There are frustrations with it, the 1200 starts to become a minefield. Unstable, with all the hacks/mods/patches/hardware.

Never working quite right. I've been battling with mine for awhile, still has a couple of niggles I can't solve.

Switching between RTG and AGA in WHDLoad is the most annoying. It should be easy going by what I've read but hasn't been the case for me after several rebuilds. Never mind I just switch to AGA with screenmode and then play.

Having the mediator also lets you use an ATI 9200 graphics card memory, which is great when you can add 256MB.

Networking is straight forward to, especially once I switched to roadshow.

Truckloads of cheap PCI cards to buy off ebay.

I had to upgrade to 600W ATX PSU however. If you do buy a mediator I'd buy an SX/TX version with the ATX switch.

Looking back, would I do it again. No, the frustrations and little bugs are not worth it.

Is it worth buying a Voodoo 5 5500, yes for the higher res and ADoom runs really well at 640x480. :-)

[Akiko]

It's definitely worth it if you are prepared to sacrifice the original case.

[XDelusion]

Again, I say, a GFX card that fits inside a 1200 would be utter bliss!

I don't want a tower because it consumes so much space. I like to try to keep things low profile if possible. I think the only exception to the rule will be my G5 (when I have one) for MorphOS because I'd need a sound card in order to have acess to MIDI, at least that's the theory.

[LaserBack]

I'm going to build or rebuild an amiga 1200 project. I have to choose between putting it in a tower case or not.

Seems to me that mediator would be awesome, but is it worth the money?

I already have to buy an accelerator, internet solution, scandoubler and more.

How does the system work with RTG when you use stuff that bangs the AGA built in video? Do I need to manually switch things with some kind of vga splitter or what?


What about stuff that uses the built in sound chip? do I have to Y cable the a1200 8 bit outs with the soundblaster plugged into the mediator?


If you bought a mediator, what did you like about it? What did you hate?

Not sure its worth it. I may just stick with wedge case, pcmcia internet and indivision aga. What do you guys  think?

Steven

not worth the money, A1200 towers are for frustrated incels
with the money you will waste on the A1200 T you can build a high end PC core I7 + geforce Titan

[carvedeye]

I have recently bought myself the LT4 and must say I'm loving it so far but I will be honest towering an Amiga can be a headache.

Its like the L'Oreal advert, because its worth it

[NovaCoder]

My personal take on it is that it's kind of pointless to stick a 1200 in a tower.

I can see the benefits (more room, more expandability) but I think you lose the 'retro' feeling of the classic desktop case.

If you really want to go RTG, then just go for a boxer (my personal fav is a 3000).

If I was rich and famous, I'd probably have both an 060 based A3000 and an 030 based A1200 AGA machine.

I'd use the A3000 for RTG stuff and keep the A1200 for playing WHDLOAD games.

[save2600]

No way in hell would I ever frankenmolest a 1200 into a tower case for any reason. Especially for the sole reason of introducing PeeCee crap to it, never mind all the headaches you'll encounter along the way. RTG or otherwise. Much better idea to violate the already ugly and sterile case of an A4000 for that purpose. Or better yet... get a MorphOS machine if you want to play around with a fancy hi-res Workbench that you'll end up bored with in a few minutes.  :lol:

[rdolores]

I see several places selling Mediator Bus boards for the A1200, but where are you finding the custom cases to install them into?  Are you just hacking PC cases?  If you are going to that much trouble and expense for RTG, WinUAE does it better and is more stable.