Any Amiga Fans?

[Ze_ro]

Here's a little story, just for the hell of it...

My family was always a Commodore family. Our first computer was a VIC-20 which my older brother got as a gift... eventually, he got a C-64, and the VIC-20 passed down to me.... then he got an Amiga 500, and I got the C-64. My brother was a huge Amiga fan for a very long time, and the memories of the computer never left him, even though the computers are long-since obsolete. However, we still have the A500... and my brother also bought an Amiga 3000 a while back. The real turning point in all this though happened about a year or so ago when we found an Amiga 1200 sitting in a thrift store.

Just recently, my brother started making a concerted effort to get the machine into a usable state. Unfortunately, the hard drive was dead... so my brother pulled a 4 GB hard drive out of his old laptop to use in it... he also bought a 68040 accellerator card with 16 MB of ram, as well as a set of Kickstart 3.1 chips. The craziest part of all though, was when we found out that the PCMCIA ethernet card that he was also using in his old laptop actually worked in the Amiga! Good old 3Com cards. It must have been divine intervention that someone actually wrote a driver for those cards.

So, now I finally have a fairly powerful Amiga sitting in my basement, working well and ready to play. Once I get a long enough cable, I can even get internet access through it.

Anyone else here have a decked out Amiga? I've seen some people with some pretty insane systems... A4000's decked out with >100MB of ram... PPC/68k dual accellerator boards... enough stuff to almost pull them out of obsolence. Finding Amiga stuff always turns out to be rather expensive though, so a 68040 is probably as far as we'll go with the 1200 unless an amazing deal turns up.

--Zero

[icbrkr]

I've always been a Commodore fan.. I started with a C64, C128, Amiga 500, 600, and now 1200 (plus I have a CD32). My Amiga is fairly decked too:

68030 @50Mhz
32MB RAM (haven't spent the $19 for the 128MB SIMM yet)
6GB HD
52x external CDROM drive (using a 4 in 1 EIDE adapter)
Kickstart 3.1 (upgraded from 3.0)
Workbench 3.9
PCMCIA network card attached to my network.
VGA monitor and 1084 hooked up:

http://www.particles.org/amiga/a1200setup.jpg

I'm waiting to buy a scandoubler and a Amiga Serial->PS/2 adapter.

[Blendo75]

That is super sweet. I wish I had a 1200. I remember back-in-the-day (1990) I knew someone with an Amiga 2000 with a high-speed processor ('020 probably), 20 gig hd, video toaster, stuff like that - this was a monster machine back then. My Amiga 500 has 1 meg of ram (512k chip, 512k fast) with three floppy drives, that's right no hard drive. It was and is very painful to use. I also have a bare-bones Amiga 1000 which is probably the least decked-out Amiga in existence. The first computer I purchased, for myself, that had a hard drive was in the year 2000, no lie.

[robotriot]

Yay, Amiga :D I've got an A1200 in a tower case, with a 68060/50MHz accelerator, 64MB RAM, 3GB harddisk, 16x CD-recorder, Mediator PCI w/ 100mbit ethernet and a Voodoo3, hooked up to a 17" TFT and running OS3.9. I wanted to get a PPC, but there weren't any available new when I had the money :/

I've also got a 020 accelerator w/8MB RAM, IDE interface and Kickstart 3.0 for my A500, but I don't use it due to compatibility issues with games.

Blendo75: I doubt someone had a 20GB harddrive back in 1990, especially on an Amiga ;)

[Jorpho]

I was going to say, that would have been a whopping expensive drive.

I had no idea that Amigas were so compatible with PC hardware. All Amigas were built by Commodore, right? And they all take the same SIMMs, IDE drives, and PCI cards that PCs do? (What would you do with a 3DFX card in an Amiga, anyway?)

[Ze_ro]

I had no idea that Amigas were so compatible with PC hardware. All Amigas were built by Commodore, right? And they all take the same SIMMs, IDE drives, and PCI cards that PCs do? (What would you do with a 3DFX card in an Amiga, anyway?)
Well, it sort of depends on the situation. Different Amiga's use different stuff. Most Amiga's don't have regular SIMM slots... but accellerator boards usually (always?) have a slot or two on them. If you don't have an accellerator board, you might be stuck looking for "zip ram" (which is bloody expensive).

As for IDE drives, that's what most modern Amiga's seem to use. Some Amiga's don't come with a hard drive though (ie, the A500), so you're stuck trying to figure out something else. My brother actually had an IDE interface for his A500... it was a side-car that plugged into the left side of the 500. It's also worth pointing out that if you're putting a hard drive into a non-tower case (like the 1200), then you'll be looking for 2.5" hard drives like the kind in laptops... they're hard to find for a good price. And as far as I can tell, when it comes to CD-Rom drives, you're forced to use SCSI (Or is there some way to use ATAPI CD-Rom's that I'm not aware of?)

As for PCI, I think the A3000 has PCI slots... my 1200 certainly doesn't. I imagine you're pretty limited as to what cards you could use though. I honestly had no idea that they even made Voodoo cards for the Amiga until I ran across this (http://hol.abime.net/?id=3916). Were companies still making commercial releases like this as recently as 2001?? @_@ Check out the system requirements on the back of the box. Maybe it's just me, but somehow I always felt that a PPC Amiga wasn't really an Amiga anymore... the price you'll pay to get a PPC accellerator board is pretty much always more than it would have cost to get a normal PC that has a lot more power anyways.


I've also got a 020 accelerator w/8MB RAM, IDE interface and Kickstart 3.0 for my A500, but I don't use it due to compatibility issues with games.
Isn't that always the problem though? My brother and I were so happy to get a 1200 so that we could finally play AGA games, and now we're screwed for a lot of the older stuff like Dungeon Master and Ultima IV.

Of course, I guess there's always WHDLoad (http://www.whdload.de)... anyone have much experience with this program? Does it work as well as it sounds, or are there a lot of little catches along the way?

--Zero

[icbrkr]

WHDLoad works as intended. The only issue is that you have to edit the tooltypes of the game icon to configure each game (because everyone's hard ware setup is a little bit different). There are some games I haven't gotten to work even though they're supposed to. But I'll tell you this right now - loading games off the HD instead of floppy disks kick ass!

[robotriot]

Jorpho: Well, all Amigas were built by C=, yes, but most accelerator cards and add-ons were made by 3rd party developers after 1994. Some Amigas like the 1200 and 600 had a 2.5" IDE interface and a PCMCIA slot though when they came out of the factory.

Zero: You can use ATAPI CD-Roms with any IDE interface that supports 3.5" connectors, all you need is the IDEfix'97 driver :) And no, no Amiga ever had PCI slots by default, some had ISA slots though. The Voodoo3 is the normal PC version, but after the Mediator PCI board was released, drivers were written for Amiga. You can also use Soundblaster soundcards and TV cards with the new PCI boards :) And yea, PPC is way overpriced, generally all Amiga hardware is. But this is mainly due to the small production numbers of course. I can disable my accelerator by pressing 2 during boot-up, and my Amiga is immediately reverted into a basic 1200 with 2MB ChipRAM, so most AGA games work just fine :) I don't use it much for gaming though, I watch demos mainly. Have you seen some of the recent stuff? I'm recording demos from time to time as DIVX, check out the winner of this year's Breakpoint party, it's all 060/AGA, no PPC required =) http://breakpoint.gwendoline.at/Amiga%20Demo/tbl_-_silkcut_(divx_320x240).avi

[Flack]

I was a C64 owner from the mid 80's until ... well, now.

An old Commie buddy of mine upgraded to the A500 when it came out and I was blown away. I can remember how awesome we thought those graphics were. He had downloaded disk after disk of just pictures, and we would look at each one and go, "holy cow these are awesome graphics!!!" Seems dumb now.

A couple of years ago I bought an Amiga 500, complete with a whole bunch of stuff for like $50 off of eBay. Unfortunately I don't know the first thing about getting it to run.

Icbrkr, are you coming to OKGE? If you are I'm going to bring my Ami so you can tell me what I've got and show me at least how to play some games on it.

Oh, and I finally got an NTSC CD32 as well. Woot!

[robotriot]

A couple of years ago I bought an Amiga 500, complete with a whole bunch of stuff for like $50 off of eBay. Unfortunately I don't know the first thing about getting it to run.


Actually that shouldn't be difficult - you plug everything in, switch the machine on and insert a gamedisk, which will autoboot. That's all :)

[Blendo75]

Yay, Amiga :D I've got an A1200 in a tower case, with a 68060/50MHz accelerator, 64MB RAM, 3GB harddisk, 16x CD-recorder, Mediator PCI w/ 100mbit ethernet and a Voodoo3, hooked up to a 17" TFT and running OS3.9. I wanted to get a PPC, but there weren't any available new when I had the money :/

I've also got a 020 accelerator w/8MB RAM, IDE interface and Kickstart 3.0 for my A500, but I don't use it due to compatibility issues with games.

Blendo75: I doubt someone had a 20GB harddrive back in 1990, especially on an Amiga ;)

Yes I agree.. maybe it was 200 megs or something? I remember thinking at the time that it was a HUGE hard drive, more than anyone I knew had for a PC at time.

[icbrkr]

I was a C64 owner from the mid 80's until ... well, now.

An old Commie buddy of mine upgraded to the A500 when it came out and I was blown away. I can remember how awesome we thought those graphics were. He had downloaded disk after disk of just pictures, and we would look at each one and go, "holy cow these are awesome graphics!!!" Seems dumb now.

A couple of years ago I bought an Amiga 500, complete with a whole bunch of stuff for like $50 off of eBay. Unfortunately I don't know the first thing about getting it to run.

Icbrkr, are you coming to OKGE? If you are I'm going to bring my Ami so you can tell me what I've got and show me at least how to play some games on it.

Oh, and I finally got an NTSC CD32 as well. Woot!

I'm thinking of coming to the OKGE once I get a date and a price on how much a table is going to be! :) Jesse hasn't gotten anything set in stone so I'm not sure as of yet.

If I do go, I'll bring the 1200 setup in place of the Astrocade setup that didn't make it last year. Also, I'll look at bringing the CD32 again, and maybe some other odd setup that I haven't dragged out in public yet.

Just let me know what you need, and I'll be sure to have it with me :)

[Flack]

I'm gonna bring my cd32 and have it hooked up and ready for play. I'm copying all my cd32 games at the moment so it won't matter if they get scratched up/lost or anything else.

It's been a while since I did anything with my a500. If I remember correctly when you turn it on it comes up to the image of the hand with a disk in it. I have a workbench disk but when it boots up I don't know what to do once I get into workbench. I have some game disks that the people sent along but I couldn't get any of them to self boot.

Also, there is a panel missing on the bottom of the amiga because they upgraded something, but I forgot what it was now.

[robotriot]

You don't need the workbench to run games normally - if none of the games booted, but your Workbench does, the disks are probably all damaged ... what happens if you insert one? Does the drive start working, maybe display a white screen or something and then return to the Kickstart-hand picture? If so, the disks are probably not formatted for Amiga ... if the disks are formatted correctly, you should see the blue AmigaDOS screen and an error message.

You could try inserting the gamedisks after you booted the Workbench though and see if they're correctly formatted - although, if the games are Non-DOS, you won't be able to read them in the Workbench anyway. But if they won't boot, you can't damage much :)

The 'trapdoor' slot on the bottom is for RAM expansions, probably another 512KB for a total of 1MB of RAM.

[Ze_ro]

The 'trapdoor' slot on the bottom is for RAM expansions, probably another 512KB for a total of 1MB of RAM.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you also need to install the Fat Agnes chip to get the Amiga to do more than 512KB of RAM?

--Zero

[robotriot]

Zero: Afaik you only need that one if you want to install more than 1MB of Chip RAM, normal Fast/Slow RAM is no problem though with A500s (wich the 512KB expansions are, the A500+ had 1MB of Chip RAM installed though I believe).

[Ze_ro]

Ah, I see. I remember my brother installed a Fat Agnes in the A500 that we have.

By the way, does anyone know any sites that have Amiga games? Not in ADF format, but in compressed directories that will work with WHDLoad? Back 2 The Roots (http://www.back2roots.org) has some, but there are quite a few they don't have (Dungeon Master, for example). For that matter, I wouldn't mind finding images of the various versions of kickstart that some of these games need. I actually have legitimate kickstart chips for versions 1.3, 2.04, 3.0 and 3.1... but it's a pain in the ass to swap the chips in order to dump them.

--Zero

[Ze_ro]

Dammit... I'm having trouble with this accelerator board... It seems almost impossible to get it seated properly, so the computer doesn't start up properly... or on the odd chance that I *did* manage to get it to start up, it'll often just crash after a few minutes. I've tried cleaning the contacts in a number of different ways, but it doesn't seem to help. Anyone else had problems like this with accelerator boards? Without it, I'm stuck with only 2 megs of chip ram and a 68EC020... I can't even run NetHack with that.

--Zero

[robotriot]

I didn't have problems with mine yet, although you have to plug it in very firmly, I always feared it would break, but it didn't - you have to apply raw force to make it fit corretcly on an A1200 (at least that was the case with mine :).

[TNTPLUST]

I moved from a C64 to the Amiga when the 500 series came out. For a year I dreamed of owning one. There was a chain of electronic stores in Ca called Federated Electronics. I would go down and DROOOOOL all over the Ham graphics. I begged borrowed and stole to get one home and never regretted it. I still have it but it is stored away. A couple months ago I bought a 2500 at a garage sale from a guy who bought it and never set it up. Amazingly it works and sits in my classroom...I use it at least once a week.

[idrougge]

I was just writing some disks for my VIC-20 on my Catweasel-equipped Amiga 4000 (64 MB RAM, 80 GB hard drive, Retina Z3 graphics card). It was my main computer until 2003. I also have an AmigaOne with 750 MHz G3 CPU in another part of the town.

I suggest you investigate (and register) WHDload with the computer you have. It makes gaming a breeze, no more incompatibilities or disk swapping required.

[OldSchoolGamer]

I'm gonna bring my cd32 and have it hooked up and ready for play. I'm copying all my cd32 games at the moment so it won't matter if they get scratched up/lost or anything else.

What are you using to copy them? I tried various programs but it's pretty iffy, I know it's best to copy at slowest speed but I tried several programs and no matter how I set the burn speed it seems to default to max.......................

[Ze_ro]

I suggest you investigate (and register) WHDload with the computer you have. It makes gaming a breeze, no more incompatibilities or disk swapping required.
Well, since the time I started this thread, I've given up on the 1200 and instead I have an Amiga 3000 hooked up for general use. I also have both a PAL and NTSC CD32 for any AGA games that don't have an ECS version available. And I agree, WHDLoad is absolutely amazing. Well worth the money I spent to register it :)

As far as I know, CD32 discs are just regular CD's with an ISO9660 file system on them, and no copy protection, so it shouldn't take anything special to copy them.

It's weird to read my old posts in this thread that I wrote 2 years ago that I realize now are completely wrong. Why on earth would I think the 3000 had PCI slots???

--Zero

[Dave Farquhar]

Mmmm.... Amiga... I've still got my 2000 from way back when--it was my machine of choice from 1991-93. I'm not sure that I've had it powered up more recently than about 8 years ago though. I had it upgraded to an 030/25 MHz, Flicker Fixer, and lots of other goodies (most of them secondhand, because that stuff wasn't cheap back then). I keep meaning to get it back out and maybe put a bigger HD in it and stuff. I'd probably still use it a lot if A2000-compatible Ethernet cards weren't so rare and expensive.

I still make snide remarks from time to time when Windows blows up at work--"Well, Amigas could do that without crashing back in 1985..." Man, I wish Commodore had known what they had and what to do with it!

[Jorpho]

Anyone ever see one of those fancy PowerPC-based Amiga Ones?

[Blanka789]

Anyone ever see one of those fancy PowerPC-based Amiga Ones?

Which are those? I may be an idiot, but what would be the ultimate Amiga to buy, or is there one at all?

[robotriot]

These were released about 2 years ago, but they're really hard to come by, because right now, the company which produces them refuses to put out any more hardware until Hyperion finishes development of OS4, while Hyperion in turn will only release the final version of OS4 once hardware is available. You can only get them used, and you've got to be very lucky :)

[idrougge]

Anyone ever see one of those fancy PowerPC-based Amiga Ones?

I own one.

[Ze_ro]

Anyone ever see one of those fancy PowerPC-based Amiga Ones?
Which are those? I may be an idiot, but what would be the ultimate Amiga to buy, or is there one at all?
Well, there is the AmigaOne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOne), and the Pegasos II (https://www.pegasosppc.com/) machines... Both are based on G3/G4 processors running at 800MHz - 1Ghz. Whether you actually want one of these sort of depends on what you want to do with your Amiga. The AmigaOne machines run AmigaOS 4, and the Pegasos machines run MorphOS... the hardware and software differences between these machines and "classic" Amigas generally means that you can't run classic Amiga games and software on them (at least, not natively... UAE is available for emulation). There's also the Amithlon (http://www.amithlon.com/), which is basically a modern PC that boots right into UAE, functioning as a very fast Amiga... although calling this an "Amiga" is somewhat questionable.

If you want to use an Amiga to play all the games you used to love, then AmigaOne and Pegasos machines probably aren't for you. If you're a die-hard Amiga fan and want a modern Amiga to use for modern tasks, then these machines make a lot more sense. Both machines are very expensive though, far more expensive than an equivalent PC.

In my opinion, the ultimate Amiga would be an Amiga 1200 with a PowerPC/68060 accelerator and an RTG graphics card... enough power to run most Amiga software smoothly, yet still enough hardware compatibility to use older Amiga stuff. PPC/060 accelerators and Amiga graphics cards are bloody expensive though, so I'll settle for my A3000.

--Zero

[LocalH]

I always liked the A3000's scandoubler. Sure, it doesn't work with Super Hires, but it outputs a good image in other modes. The last CRT monitor I used with it ran fine in both PAL and NTSC.

[robotriot]

Here's a cool site with videos from games btw :)

http://recordedamigagames.ath.cx/

[robotriot]

Here's a cool site with videos from games btw :)

http://recordedamigagames.ath.cx/

[insinion]

Damn i miss my amiga. I had an amiga 3000 when i was around the age of 7. But thanks to my dad i have a big youth trauma left of it. What did he do? He sold the amiga 3000 incl 3 laundry baskets full of games because i had discs laying all over my room :eek 2: This thread reminded me of my trauma so now back to my corner to cry again :(

[Blanka789]

I've done some research, and man do I want one of those PowerPC Amigas, although I would like an OS on it. Is it ever gonna come out?

[AdamAnt316]

I still have a vintage Amiga 1000, well-equipped by mid '80s standards (2MB RAM, external HD). Used to use an Amiga 1200 to overlay graphics on a school news broadcast; wish I could find one of those.
-Adam

[courtesi96]

Damn i miss my amiga. I had an amiga 3000 when i was around the age of 7.

Damn dude! You were spoiled rotten!

[Ze_ro]

I've done some research, and man do I want one of those PowerPC Amigas, although I would like an OS on it. Is it ever gonna come out?
As far as I know, the Pegasos II boards are available right now, and come with MorphOS and FreeBSD.

The AmigaOne's are all sold out, and you'd have to wait for another production run if you want one... Lord only knows when that'll happen though.

As neat as these machines are, I could never really justify the cost for them... for half the price, I could get a very decent PC that does everything the PPC Amiga did, only better.

--Zero

[insinion]

Damn i miss my amiga. I had an amiga 3000 when i was around the age of 7.

Damn dude! You were spoiled rotten!

not really i was just lucky that my dad needed one for his work.

[sickdrummer420]

does anyone happen to have an amiga for sale? ive been in search for some time now. If so pm me please!!!!!!!!!!!

[icbrkr]

www.amibench.org is your friend.

And no, you can't have any of my miggies :)

[Pantechnicon]

Here's a little something of interest for you Amiga fans:

http://www.artdaily.com/section/news/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=18091

Who knows? This could lead to the Amiga making a 15-minute comeback.

[robotriot]

NASA sold their Amigas, you can get them on ebay now: http://www.amiga.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=34695&forum=22