Welcome back to the AMIGA scene!
If you're looking to 'pimp' a classic AMIGA, then you've made an excellent choice - the A1200 is probably the most expandable AMIGA that was ever created.
Now, the thing is, you're going to have to give us a definition of 'pimp' because there are so many directions you can go and so much money you can spend. Completely maxing out an A1200 will cost you more than $1000. On the other hand, getting yourself a very useable machine that can boot the latest 68k version of Workbench, run a ton of applications and games, and give you many an evening of joy can be done for much much less.
Here are my questions to get us started on a line of conversation:
- Is your focus gaming or Workbench/Applications? If both, what is your % split here?
- If gaming, are we talking about general AMIGA games that would have run on a standard A1200 back in the day, or larger games that would have required an accelerated AMIGA? If the latter, let's have some examples of the kind of games we're talking about
- If you're into Workbench and AmigaOS applications, what are your specific interests in order of preference?
- This one is quite important because it gives us some direction about the kind of expansions that will be suitable for you: Do you prefer to keep your A1200 as a desktop or do you have a specific interest in putting it in a tower?
My generic advice, without having access to any of this information, would be for you to consider a suitable accelerator for your AMIGA first as that really opens the door to most of the other expansions you're going to want later on. There are some modern A1200 accelerators that were released within the last 5 years or so but even these can be difficult to find as off the shelf brand new items at the moment. So you're probably going to be looking at a used accelerator. eBay is an obvious source although I do often find that the prices go a bit crazy there. Try amibay.com as well.
In terms of which accelerator to buy, that really depends on some answers to the above questions but assuming you just want to give your Miggy a bit of a kick to make it into an enjoyable machine without getting too expensive, then you should consider a 68030 accelerator. I am a big fan of the Blizzard 1230 in this regard, but these are very old accelerators now so your mileage with one of these might vary. A more modern alternative is the ACA1230 or ACA1233. You find the ACA1233 available from new at some AMIGA retailers.
After you've got your accelerator the next step is surely going to be a hard drive or CF card expansion so that you can boot Workbench easily. Even if your interest is mainly gaming, Workbench is going to be a bootloader for your gaming experience because you can get hard drive installers for most of them. WHDLoad is your friend in this respect.
An alternative to this is to get a Floppy Drive emulator. This way you don't need to boot to Workbench. I don't own a floppy drive emulator but if I was in the market for one I'd look at the HxC range. There is also the Gotek, which I believe is a lot more popular.
In terms of Amiga retailers, I'm not sure which ones are popular in your location - perhaps someone else who lives near you can respond on that one. I would highly recommend AmigaKit.com, amigastore.eu and also Vesalia.de.
I'll leave it at that for now until you come back with some answers to the questions.
