I want an Amiga. Which one?
Discussion
I would love an Amiga, I grew up on Atari Sts (and still have a few) but haven't really had much to do with Amigas.
I've done a bit of research but compatability isn't too obvious on the research I've done, what I have realised is the cd32 makes a lot of sense as it will go under the TV with assorted other consoles and give a good retro gaming experience, however the controller looks poor and your at the mercy of finding the discs, so as well as a cd32 I would like to get hold of a "proper" Amiga too.
I don't want a 600 as its a cut down 500, will a 1200 play all 500 games? I don't mind fitting modifications as some of the Atari games needed switcher boards for Roms to be able to work, but I don't want to buy either a 500 or 1200 and find only half the catalogue of games works. What's the situation with storage? I've seen Amigas with a side or rear mounted flash card or pcmcia card, are these original or mods? Can a load of games be loaded on and it used as a hard disk? I've also seen Amigas with built in hard discs, is this a practical way to use the machine? My experience of the Ataris is that the machines work well still but the floppy drives are all starting to die, often working short term then old age catches up once they start being used again.
I suppose my question is if you were going to go out and buy an Amiga (I don't want an emulator btw. I like the old hardware) which one would you buy and what would you do to it?
I've done a bit of research but compatability isn't too obvious on the research I've done, what I have realised is the cd32 makes a lot of sense as it will go under the TV with assorted other consoles and give a good retro gaming experience, however the controller looks poor and your at the mercy of finding the discs, so as well as a cd32 I would like to get hold of a "proper" Amiga too.
I don't want a 600 as its a cut down 500, will a 1200 play all 500 games? I don't mind fitting modifications as some of the Atari games needed switcher boards for Roms to be able to work, but I don't want to buy either a 500 or 1200 and find only half the catalogue of games works. What's the situation with storage? I've seen Amigas with a side or rear mounted flash card or pcmcia card, are these original or mods? Can a load of games be loaded on and it used as a hard disk? I've also seen Amigas with built in hard discs, is this a practical way to use the machine? My experience of the Ataris is that the machines work well still but the floppy drives are all starting to die, often working short term then old age catches up once they start being used again.
I suppose my question is if you were going to go out and buy an Amiga (I don't want an emulator btw. I like the old hardware) which one would you buy and what would you do to it?
I was about to say use a reasonable PC and an emulator then you should be able to run pretty much anything but then I read the last bit of your post.
I'm about to list my old A500 on eBay which I've hung onto for way too long. We're getting our loft converted in a few months so everything has to go
Problem with that one is the internal floppy drive is knackered and there is no easy way to get it to boot from an external one. I have seen kit that you can solder in in place of the floppy drive which will then emulate it with data being held on a USB memory stick but then you kind of think what's the point, might as well just run an emulator on a PC.
I'm about to list my old A500 on eBay which I've hung onto for way too long. We're getting our loft converted in a few months so everything has to go
Problem with that one is the internal floppy drive is knackered and there is no easy way to get it to boot from an external one. I have seen kit that you can solder in in place of the floppy drive which will then emulate it with data being held on a USB memory stick but then you kind of think what's the point, might as well just run an emulator on a PC.
The 1200 will play most things, and is a bit more compact than the 500 too. It's also a fair bit faster, which helps with 3D games like Frontier or F1GP.
I think the thing to do these days is get a compact flash card adapter plugged into the HD connector inside the machine. There is then a program called "WHDload" which lets you launch all your old disk games from the flash card drive.
One problem is that this uses a bit of memory, so you might not be able to run all A1200 games this way - which I think is part of the reason why A1200 memory boards and accelerator cards are still going for big money on ebay.
I wouldn't bother with the CD32 - you can kind of convert it into an A1200 by adding a floppy and keyboard, but there weren't many games on CD for it.
I think the thing to do these days is get a compact flash card adapter plugged into the HD connector inside the machine. There is then a program called "WHDload" which lets you launch all your old disk games from the flash card drive.
One problem is that this uses a bit of memory, so you might not be able to run all A1200 games this way - which I think is part of the reason why A1200 memory boards and accelerator cards are still going for big money on ebay.
I wouldn't bother with the CD32 - you can kind of convert it into an A1200 by adding a floppy and keyboard, but there weren't many games on CD for it.
Another Amiga fan here, ive got a collection of all the most commons machines (A500,600,1200 and CD32) and i know a fair bit about them.
Beleive it or not the Amiga still has a pretty decent following and you can even buy brand new developed hardware for it, theres a community still activiely working on it. Whichever one you choose you have a lot of options.
The CD32 is a good choice, you can download the game ISO's directly off the web and burn them. The Amiga community has also created CD bundles of A500/1200 games which you can also download. The lasers can be a bit sensitive to the types of CD's it will read (Verbatim's work well). You can also still buy the (Sony) laser units for about £12, i had the replace the lasers in both my CD32's. The standard pads are a bit crap, but there is a Competiton Pro (Honeybee) pad which is excellent, they go for good money on Ebay (£30+ usually). There is also an expansion card in development which will add on an RGB and Keyboard connection (Standard they have RF or S-Video only) and also eventually an add on card that will allow addition of a HDD and extra RAM so you can make it basically into an Amiga 1200 and open up a load more options.
The 1200 is the best option, it has RGB as standard and AGA graphics chipset and you can add an accelerator or RAM expansion easily, Also you can add a CF HDD memory card as a harddisk for about £20. With that you can use a fantastic bit of Software on Workbench called WHDload. This gives you access to pretty much every single game ever made on the Amiga which have all been patched for compatabilty, directly loaded off the HDD in seconds. To play all the games it needs more RAM as it loads the game into memory, an accelerator will speed up some games and make them more playable. You can also add a scandoubler which gives HDMI/VGA or DVI connectivity. An accelerator will cost anywhere from £80 up to £600, ram cards go for £50-100
You can also add RAM/HDD to the A600 and theres some interesting new hardware on the horizon to allow more expansions.
There's also a cheap floppy drive replacement available now (Google Amiga Gotek) which can be flashed to allow you to load up floppy images (ADF's) off a USB memory stick, this can be added to any Amiga and is the cheapest way of not messing around with unreliable floppies.
If you need anymore info PM me, i might even let one of my machines go
Beleive it or not the Amiga still has a pretty decent following and you can even buy brand new developed hardware for it, theres a community still activiely working on it. Whichever one you choose you have a lot of options.
The CD32 is a good choice, you can download the game ISO's directly off the web and burn them. The Amiga community has also created CD bundles of A500/1200 games which you can also download. The lasers can be a bit sensitive to the types of CD's it will read (Verbatim's work well). You can also still buy the (Sony) laser units for about £12, i had the replace the lasers in both my CD32's. The standard pads are a bit crap, but there is a Competiton Pro (Honeybee) pad which is excellent, they go for good money on Ebay (£30+ usually). There is also an expansion card in development which will add on an RGB and Keyboard connection (Standard they have RF or S-Video only) and also eventually an add on card that will allow addition of a HDD and extra RAM so you can make it basically into an Amiga 1200 and open up a load more options.
The 1200 is the best option, it has RGB as standard and AGA graphics chipset and you can add an accelerator or RAM expansion easily, Also you can add a CF HDD memory card as a harddisk for about £20. With that you can use a fantastic bit of Software on Workbench called WHDload. This gives you access to pretty much every single game ever made on the Amiga which have all been patched for compatabilty, directly loaded off the HDD in seconds. To play all the games it needs more RAM as it loads the game into memory, an accelerator will speed up some games and make them more playable. You can also add a scandoubler which gives HDMI/VGA or DVI connectivity. An accelerator will cost anywhere from £80 up to £600, ram cards go for £50-100
You can also add RAM/HDD to the A600 and theres some interesting new hardware on the horizon to allow more expansions.
There's also a cheap floppy drive replacement available now (Google Amiga Gotek) which can be flashed to allow you to load up floppy images (ADF's) off a USB memory stick, this can be added to any Amiga and is the cheapest way of not messing around with unreliable floppies.
If you need anymore info PM me, i might even let one of my machines go
Edited by paul99 on Tuesday 25th August 13:17
Well any will be fine. Older 500's would need memory upgrades most likely to play all the games.
No real reason to avoid the 600, same spec as the 500+ iirc (or maybe better), just physically more compact without the extended keyboard. Hardly a chore if all you want it for is gaming.
Top spec 1200 is obviously the more capable. But I don't think any games ever required anything higher than the 600. That said, wasn't there a CD32 type addon for the 1200's?
No real reason to avoid the 600, same spec as the 500+ iirc (or maybe better), just physically more compact without the extended keyboard. Hardly a chore if all you want it for is gaming.
Top spec 1200 is obviously the more capable. But I don't think any games ever required anything higher than the 600. That said, wasn't there a CD32 type addon for the 1200's?
I have no idea what they go for these days but surely the A4000 is worth looking into too? I bought one many, many, moons ago in the early 90's before moving onto Silicon Graphics hardware (I make games) Syndicate, Cannon Fodder and Hired Guns used to run like a dream on it.
At the time I expanded my desktop machine with RAM (50 quid a meg in 1993!) and an Opal Vision 24bit gfx card, we also bought a couple of A4000 towers that were pimped up with 060 processors and network cards, from what I remember we used them till the early 2000's on some 2D projects (Deluxe Paint and Brilliance were our main tools)
At the time I expanded my desktop machine with RAM (50 quid a meg in 1993!) and an Opal Vision 24bit gfx card, we also bought a couple of A4000 towers that were pimped up with 060 processors and network cards, from what I remember we used them till the early 2000's on some 2D projects (Deluxe Paint and Brilliance were our main tools)
A4000's are pretty expensive nowadays and dont seem to come up for sale that often, and because of leaky capacitors and batterys a lot of them are damaged and require some pretty extensive repairs.
The A4000T is very rare and valuable now, if you have one of those tucked away in the loft its your lucky day
The A4000T is very rare and valuable now, if you have one of those tucked away in the loft its your lucky day
I had a 500+ growing up, cartoon classics pack which included Captain Planet, Bart vs the Space Mutants, Lemmings and Deulux Paint 3. Bought from Tandy, remember them?
I seem to remember the 500+ had a few issues running the older games, but you could get software to emulate the older 500 Workbench.
I think mine is still in my parents loft, might dig it out and waste hours on Lotus Challenge 2!
I seem to remember the 500+ had a few issues running the older games, but you could get software to emulate the older 500 Workbench.
I think mine is still in my parents loft, might dig it out and waste hours on Lotus Challenge 2!
Edited by Richieboy3008 on Wednesday 26th August 11:08
paul99 said:
Beleive it or not the Amiga still has a pretty decent following and you can even buy brand new developed hardware for it, theres a community still activiely working on it. Whichever one you choose you have a lot of options.
As in actual new Amiga computers or peripherals for the classic models?paul99 said:
A4000's are pretty expensive nowadays and dont seem to come up for sale that often, and because of leaky capacitors and batterys a lot of them are damaged and require some pretty extensive repairs.
The A4000T is very rare and valuable now, if you have one of those tucked away in the loft its your lucky day
I had an A3000, which was the same as the A4 with a 030 processor, i.e. an 040 which the maths co-pro had failed the QA test.The A4000T is very rare and valuable now, if you have one of those tucked away in the loft its your lucky day
Nice machine at the time, although the Mac killed them off in the creative industry.
I always wanted a video toaster at the time but I remember them being eye wateringly expensive.
rhinochopig said:
I had an A3000, which was the same as the A4 with a 030 processor, i.e. an 040 which the maths co-pro had failed the QA test.
Nice machine at the time, although the Mac killed them off in the creative industry.
I always wanted a video toaster at the time but I remember them being eye wateringly expensive.
Different graphics and chipset too - A4000 was AGA, A3000 was the older ECS setup.Nice machine at the time, although the Mac killed them off in the creative industry.
I always wanted a video toaster at the time but I remember them being eye wateringly expensive.
8bit said:
rhinochopig said:
I had an A3000, which was the same as the A4 with a 030 processor, i.e. an 040 which the maths co-pro had failed the QA test.
Nice machine at the time, although the Mac killed them off in the creative industry.
I always wanted a video toaster at the time but I remember them being eye wateringly expensive.
Different graphics and chipset too - A4000 was AGA, A3000 was the older ECS setup.Nice machine at the time, although the Mac killed them off in the creative industry.
I always wanted a video toaster at the time but I remember them being eye wateringly expensive.
I had an Amiga 500+ but the 1200 was the Amiga to get. IIRC the A1200 played more games. Some memorable games were Pinball Fantasies, Superfrog, Super Street Fighter 2 (came on 8 discs!), F1 World Grand Prix and Gloom? (Doom rip off)
I'm sure they were going to release Ridge Racer on the Amiga platform but don't know much about this.
I'm sure they were going to release Ridge Racer on the Amiga platform but don't know much about this.
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