A1200 minimum upgrade recommendations

[duga]

Fast RAM.

[paul1981]

On a budget, a 4meg fastram card with RTC. Even those cards can fetch silly money these days, but you may be lucky. Obviously you'll need a pcmcia network card, wireless if you like. Then take your choice regarding storage. Personally I have many spare laptop hard drives and you may do as well. Why fork out for a flash storage solution if that is the case...

If you want to play games like AB3D and Gloom Deluxe or flight sims etc then one of Individual Computer's ACA 68020 cards might be a better purchase, as you'll get a bit more cpu power and added bonus of more fastram with pcmcia compatibility.

An A1200 with hard drive and fastram does make a really nice WHDLoad machine.

[Zardoz]

Yes, SD cards are more reliable, also easier to handle (my laptop has built-in SD reader). As for putting them inside my A1200 I do it this way:

http://krashan.ppa.pl/articles/hardware/img/ka47_view1_576.jpg

Or even this way (you can see Indivision AGA on this photo as well):

http://krashan.ppa.pl/articles/hardware/img/ka60_view1_576.jpg

holy crap I want that KA 47 adapter. thats awesome!!1 thanks for the link...

[mechy]

Yes, SD cards are more reliable, also easier to handle (my laptop has built-in SD reader). As for putting them inside my A1200 I do it this way:

http://krashan.ppa.pl/articles/hardware/img/ka47_view1_576.jpg

Or even this way (you can see Indivision AGA on this photo as well):

http://krashan.ppa.pl/articles/hardware/img/ka60_view1_576.jpg

Nonsense,Where do you guys come up with this stuff?  More reliable than CF? nope.. CF is true IDE and takes no conversion through the pcmcia slot or ide on amiga. Its straight through,making them utterly more reliable with minimal access time. SD requires adaption from the parallel ide to serial style the sd card is which requires a custom chip, this not only adds latency(slower access time-although not that noticeable),but it one more conversion.
Not to mention flash ram is flash ram basically,addressed serial or parallel.
Introducing more complex chips into the equasion doesn't make it more reliable than a cf that plugs straight in,wired one for one with no conversion chips.

If you think cf is unreliable,don't buy cheap no name ones and or ones that are counterfeit off ebay/china etc. many sandisk extreme even have a lifetime warranty and you can reg them online.

[mechy]

On a budget, a 4meg fastram card with RTC. Even those cards can fetch silly money these days, but you may be lucky. Obviously you'll need a pcmcia network card, wireless if you like. Then take your choice regarding storage. Personally I have many spare laptop hard drives and you may do as well. Why fork out for a flash storage solution if that is the case...

If you want to play games like AB3D and Gloom Deluxe or flight sims etc then one of Individual Computer's ACA 68020 cards might be a better purchase, as you'll get a bit more cpu power and added bonus of more fastram with pcmcia compatibility.

An A1200 with hard drive and fastram does make a really nice WHDLoad machine.

Let me answer that  Flash is way faster than most laptop ide drives. It has almost zero access time, versus say the laptops 5 to 12ms access.

Its ultra low power and dead silent,and makes virtually no heat,which are all good for amigas,especially ones with anemic stock psu.

Transfer speed is usually slighly improved depending on the cf. Workbench feels fast and snappy. 8GB cf will hold all of whdload pretty much as well as apps etc.

A 8gb CF card in sandisk is like $14USD  worst case and the ide to cf adapter is all of $3-5USD.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=1012244&gclid=CPbkwsfH8csCFQmqaQodZQYAdw&Q=&ap=y&m=Y&c3api=1876%2C92051677562%2C&is=REG&A=details

Even a poor person like me can afford CF setup. I've actually ran 32Gb cf's in my 4000 for over 10+ years and now 64Gb cards as well as samsung ssd's.

[Gulliver]

But for interoperability, SD cards beat CF hands down.

[krashan]

More reliable than CF? nope.. CF is true IDE and takes no conversion through the pcmcia slot or ide on amiga. Its straight through,making them utterly more reliable with minimal access time. SD requires adaption from the parallel ide to serial style the sd card is which requires a custom chip, this not only adds latency(slower access time-although not that noticeable),but it one more conversion.

You are right in theory, but in practice getting Compact Flash card working with Amiga is a lottery. I've read endless threads about which cards work, which do not, there are even some working in CF2IDE, but not working in CF2PCMCIA or the other way around. SD cards just work. Any brand. They are also smaller, so easier to fit, especially when you have internal scandoubler, turbo board in A600 and so on.

[mechy]

You are right in theory, but in practice getting Compact Flash card working with Amiga is a lottery. I've read endless threads about which cards work, which do not, there are even some working in CF2IDE, but not working in CF2PCMCIA or the other way around. SD cards just work. Any brand. They are also smaller, so easier to fit, especially when you have internal scandoubler, turbo board in A600 and so on.

stick with a quality sandisk card, it works every time. Many people in these reports buy bootleg ebay or used cards is why they have headaches.
not all sd to ide adapters work on amiga in my experience.

[amiman99]

On my A1200, I'm using 4GB Micro drive as a HD, and multiple CF cards from 128MB to 4GB with PCMCIA-to-CF Adapter (Sandisk).
Works every time, not even one issue.
My 4GB CF card is some unknown "pq1" brand. Main card for transferring files between Amiga and PC. I even have a Shapeshifer HD image on it and the access time is better then the FFS on the IDE port. It means that the SS boot time is way faster then from the IDE hard drive.

[TheMagicM]

Yes, SD cards are more reliable, also easier to handle (my laptop has built-in SD reader). As for putting them inside my A1200 I do it this way:

http://krashan.ppa.pl/articles/hardware/img/ka47_view1_576.jpg

Or even this way (you can see Indivision AGA on this photo as well):

http://krashan.ppa.pl/articles/hardware/img/ka60_view1_576.jpg

That looks pretty good!   Nice, compact and out of the way.

[Zardoz]

cursorily for people that have CF card drives. what do you get in sysinfo for speed. I would like to start with putting some numbers up.

with my IDE2SD with FFS i am getting ~1.34MB/s

[ArKay]

At the IDE transfer rates of an A600 or even the A1200 I don't think the "speed advantage" of a CF card matters at all.

Should you ever want to install a Vampire 2 or a Furia accelerator in your A600 the SD card adapter doesn't get in the way.

[mindprober]

I'm sold on the idea of external access above the PCMCIA and the Kipper2K CF adapter is the popular choice:

http://kipper2k.com/cfadapters.html

Do not get me wrong, I really like the Kipper2k products but this looks a little too home made to me. I much prefer this one I found:

http://retro.68k.pl/category/a1200/

However, no one seems to be talking much about it and I do not believe it passes through activity to the built-in HDD LED. Not sure how its own LED will be visible.

[kreciu]

I looked at the Indivision..looks like I'll need to somehow mount my CF hard drive somewhere since it'll run into the CF.  The indivision cable goes to the far right of the A1200 in the empty "bay/slot" cover area.  

Where do people usually put the HD when they use the Indivision?

Instead of indivision get yourself SCART cable, then SCART to HDMI converter and HDMI to DVI cable and you are set, for half (or less) price. Good for start IMO. When you start doing something interesting with you Amiga then you can try something else, but for playing games on HDMI TV this solution is great.

[kreciu]

At the IDE transfer rates of an A600 or even the A1200 I don't think the "speed advantage" of a CF card matters at all.

Should you ever want to install a Vampire 2 or a Furia accelerator in your A600 the SD card adapter doesn't get in the way.

In case of an Amiga it is not about SPEED but also about ACCESS time, HDD will have the same "raw" speed, but when I switched to CD/SSD solution my Amiga boots INSTANTLY.

.

For an Amiga software HDD speed is not that important. Why? Because most of Amiga software is relatively small. Speed will make a difference when you want to transfer 1000Mb of mods to your Amiga... then 1Mb/s... IS slow.

[krashan]

with my IDE2SD with FFS i am getting ~1.34MB/s

SD2IDE here too, 1.8 MB/s with 68020@28.