Amiga 1200 rebuild, what should I do to this machine? WHDLoad?

[kreciu]

You need more then 4MB for Amiga... maybe for AmigaOS3.1 only and MagicWB will be fine, but if you want 3.9... 8 MB is "reasonable" minimum.

[paul1981]

OMG. Every single time this subject comes up you chime in with your hatred for 3.1. Softkickicking wastes precious RAM, and 3.1 ROM's cost less than $20 bucks. They contain many bugfixes over 3.0 and are required if the user wants to update, e.g., to 3.9.

Why do you hate 3.1 so much? SMDH  :p

Well, to be honest I like my ROM in RAM for a substantial speed boost - so 512K will be eaten anyway. If you like your ROM to be slow and not in Fast RAM, then each to their own I suppose - whatever tickles your fancy.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

and you might find upgrading to kick 3.1 introduces a bug where over 4mb you cant use the pcmcia slot

That's not a bug, that's fixing a memory conflict in the address space.  :p

Most decent accelerators won't have that problem anyway, it's only the cheapo "8MB + FPU + Clock" type boards that fit their ram into the same address space that the PCMCIA slot uses.  Thanks, Commodore!  

[BooBoo1200]

Like alot of these things I cant realy remember but I dont think this issue will affect pcmcia to CF etc so if you have such a card 8mb and kick 3.0 with PCMCIA 2CF I think your be ok.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

For that reason I thought about going with a CompactFlash that would be accessible from the outside, like this one:

Another option that I always liked:

http://www.kipper2k.com/cfadapters.html

Keeps your knockout port free and doesn't require a long cable.  Of course you have to trim the plastic above the PCMCIA slot a bit.

[JamesG]

If you are sending it to Acill, have him check the IDE header. The machine I rescued had the header almost completely corroded away by cap leakage; needed to replace it.

And yes, the CF to IDE adapter is the best thing ever. You are limited to 4GB (plenty) with OS 3.0.

[jltursan]

If you are sending it to Acill, have him check the IDE header. The  machine I rescued had the header almost completely corroded away by cap  leakage; needed to replace it.

An absolute must. I've seen this in two A1200, the IDE pins broke even before the motherboard gets damaged, it's extremely easy to pull the cable and find that some pins are still inside the connector

[RobertB]

I thought an 020 with fast RAM was sufficient for most games, am I wrong?

Heh, I've run WHDLoad with an Amiga 2000 with a 68000, OS 3.1, and 4 megs of Fast RAM.

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm
July 30-31 Commodore Vegas Expo v12 -
http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex

[paul1981]

Heh, I've run WHDLoad with an Amiga 2000 with a 68000, OS 3.1, and 4 megs of Fast RAM.

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm
July 30-31 Commodore Vegas Expo v12 -
http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex

I can beat that! I've ran it with a OS 2 68000 A600 with a 2MB SRAM card, I did for about a year anyway, before getting a Kipper 4MB upgrade. Had 2MB Chip as well. A number of slaves wouldn't work with the 68000 for which the original games were designed, but I think they've been slowly fixing that.
I even ran it at first with just 2MB Chip, but 2-disk games were very slow with the loading, small games were fine. But honestly, 4MB fast and 2MB Chip is the minimum I'd run it on (along with a 68020 or above due to the slaves which weren't 68000 tested).

[AmigaNG]

68030 plus you only need for the later games that came out on Amiga, say post 93, games like Gloom, alien breed 3D, the killing ground, foundations, on escape, napalm, etc, most of the classic stuff will run fine on stock Amiga.

[lassie]

True, my 2 Amiga 1200 runs perfect with 3,0 ROM, don,t understand why it has to be 3.1.

[som99]

I can beat that! I've ran it with a OS 2 68000 A600 with a 2MB SRAM card, I did for about a year anyway, before getting a Kipper 4MB upgrade. Had 2MB Chip as well. A number of slaves wouldn't work with the 68000 for which the original games were designed, but I think they've been slowly fixing that.
I even ran it at first with just 2MB Chip, but 2-disk games were very slow with the loading, small games were fine. But honestly, 4MB fast and 2MB Chip is the minimum I'd run it on (along with a 68020 or above due to the slaves which weren't 68000 tested).

Yeah you get far with just a 4MB SRAM card, ive ran most multidisk games on a A600 with 4MB SRAM in the past, as long as I removed the ;preload tag on big games most worked without issues

[kreciu]

One more comment about 030. Despite 030 being quite slow processor, I can do basically almost anything on my Amiga, similarly as on 040 or 060 (with exception of heavy lifting like mp3 decoding etc.).

It is not tragic cpu, considering fact that there is not that much software that really need something faster... (kind of).

[krashan]

And yes, the CF to IDE adapter is the best thing ever. You are limited to 4GB (plenty) with OS 3.0.

SD to IDE adapter is even better. SD cards are more reliable with Amiga. Also OS 3.0 does not limit the card to 4 GB, however it requires patched scsi.device and capable filesystem.

I use SD to IDE adapter as the main drive and cascaded PCMCIA to CF with CF to SD adapters for data exchange.

[Kremlar]

Motherboard is off to Acill to get recapped.  I asked him to check the IDE header and also to do any timing fixes that might be recommended for this board.  He also suggested removing the RF modulator which I agreed with.

While the board is bring recapped I am working on the case.  I submerged the top half in standard 3% peroxide and left it out in the sun for 4 days and these are the results.  The left half is still slightly more discolored, but not bad.  Going to work on the bottom half of the case now.

Still deciding on what upgrades to do.  Definitely going to stick with the standard 020 and RAM card I got with it for now.  Will probably go with Kickstart 3.1 for the heck of it.  I think I'd prefer an externally accessible CF card so I can easily move back and forth between the 1200 and WinUAE, but an internal DOM is tempting too.

[Thorham]

Definitely going to stick with the standard 020 and RAM card I got with it for now.

Yes, don't let anyone talk you into buying expensive accelerators that you don't need for Whdload.

Will probably go with Kickstart 3.1 for the heck of it.

I wouldn't bother. You get absolutely ZERO benefit from that for a Whdload system. There truly is no point.