Which Amiga to get...?

[WhyreByter]

I'm looking for some opinions/advice on which Amiga model is the "best one for me", given what I want to do with it.

I've had a fully decked out A1200, and a mostly decked out A4000, but didn't really enjoy either of them. I don't care to try to use an Amiga as a modern PC replacement; I just want to play games.

The A4k was fun to restore, but seemed like overkill for what I want to do, plus there's compatibility issues, etc.. The A1200 was my best hope, but, honestly, I utterly failed at getting whdload to work.

What I'd love to do is get a machine, and get a really good floppy emulator and make images (either .adf's, or .ipf's) of the disks, and use those, but can stand to use the physical disks if that's the way to go.

A couple of people have recommended the A2000, and one other the A1200. I guess I could use an A1200, without whdload, but I believe that still has kickstart issues, yes?

Anyway, hoping someone can give me some solid rationale for one model or the other. (And, no, having one of each isn't going to work )

Thanks!
Robert

 

[Gouldin]

If games are all you want and don't want the hassle of setting up Workbench, then the cheapest setup would likely be an A500 and buy the HXC floppy emulator. Job done and hassle free, only games you won't have access to are the AGA games for the 1200's etc, but there aren't many of them and the improvements are never huge.

It also helps that most games were designed for the A500 with kickstart 1.2/1.3

 

[AndyLandy]

An A1200 with a hard disk and a trapdoor card (anything from 4MB FastRAM to a fast '030 accelerator with 32-bit addressing) would be the ideal gaming rig. WHDload is really a must if you want to do the job properly and you should be able to get lots of support from folks on here if you've having trouble getting it to play ball.

Failing that, if you really want the 'classic' Amiga experience, get an A500 with a 512k trapdoor RAM expansion and boot from floppy (or use an HxC thingy)

Big box Amigas are all well and good, but if you're not going to fill them full of Zorro cards and disk drives, there's very little point.

Just my 2p on the matter!

 

[Ed.D]

If it's games your looking to play I suppose you could narrow down your preference by deciding if you want to play OCS, ECS or AGA based games. If it's AGA then I'd suggest an A1200 with accelerator and loads of memory (or for flight sims an A4000). I'm sure someone with more experience will be along shortly to offer some further advice.

Good luck in whatever you decide.

 

[johnim]

Also the 500 is having some love from jens and kipper2k

jens
https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=32411

kipper2k
https://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=32896

so for your gaming needs this is fine

but if you still want a 1200 with whdload that can be worked out

 

[duga]

A600 or A1200 with 3.1 ROM, 2 MB chip ram, some fast ram, RTC, Compact Flash card and PCMCIA ethernet card.

 

[ubermick]

Andy is spot on.

A1200 with an accelerator and a compact flash hard drive. Get yourself a copy of Amiga Forever Plus (giving you the ROMs needed for WHDLoad and legit copy of workbench 3.1).

I had my issues with getting everything going as well, but the people on here helped me out immensely. If you have access to a PC, then setting everything up in WinUAE (using your compact flash card in a cheapo reader) with ClassicWB (which has WHDLoad already preconfigured) is the best way to go.

 

[rkauer]

Some A1200 accelerators have their own problem with WHDLoad. The most compatible and faster is the Blizzard 1230 mkIV. Then some more cards, including the new ACA range.

But just for pre-AGA games this is an overkill. A simple 4Mb RAM card will suffice in most cases. Only a few AGA-only "3D" games (Nemac4, Alien Breed 3D and a few others) will run on uprated machines with 030 onwards. Oh, and TFX and stumbles in 020 Amigas.

But for AGA-less games a common A500 with 1.3 ROM, 512kb RAM upgrade and a HxC floppy emulator will cover all your bases. This setup will let you play around 85 to 90% of all Amiga games ever launched.

 

[ratfink]

If you just want to play games, why not an emulator?

 

[commodorejohn]

I'm with AndyLandy - a moderately-expanded A1200 isn't too pricy, and with a PCMCIA CF adapter and/or NIC, it's a breeze to get games onto it.

 

[ubermick]

If you just want to play games, why not an emulator?

That's actually fair enough. Especially since I just noticed the original poster is in the States, where it's bloody difficult to get your hands on Miggy gear (speaking from experience). Just snag yourself Amiga Forever Plus, and a USB Competition Pro?

 

[Oge]

I would recommend an A500+ or an A1200. The first one plays most of the oldies without the need of additional RAM while the second one will play later titles and AGA games.

Cheers,
Oge

 

[morcar]

I'm looking for some opinions/advice on which Amiga model is the "best one for me", given what I want to do with it.

I've had a fully decked out A1200, and a mostly decked out A4000, but didn't really enjoy either of them. I don't care to try to use an Amiga as a modern PC replacement; I just want to play games.

The A4k was fun to restore, but seemed like overkill for what I want to do, plus there's compatibility issues, etc.. The A1200 was my best hope, but, honestly, I utterly failed at getting whdload to work.

What I'd love to do is get a machine, and get a really good floppy emulator and make images (either .adf's, or .ipf's) of the disks, and use those, but can stand to use the physical disks if that's the way to go.

A couple of people have recommended the A2000, and one other the A1200. I guess I could use an A1200, without whdload, but I believe that still has kickstart issues, yes?

Anyway, hoping someone can give me some solid rationale for one model or the other. (And, no, having one of each isn't going to work )

Thanks!
Robert

From what you have said in your post it sounds like you should have an Amiga 500 with the floppy emulator as that should sort you out in everything you need.

 

[bl1tter]

If you are mainly interested in games, an A500 with 512 KBs expansion + floppy emulator would be enough for playing non AGA games, and avoid the need to mess with floppies. (Though I love the sound of the disk drive on my A500 )

Greetings.

 

[joe384]

Would you want to play AGA games or just OCS games?

Also remember you only need a little extra memory than the target system for whdload. eg. an Amiga 600 with 1MB expansion and a CF Hard disk would make a great whdload machine for OCS games because most games only use 512KB/1MB.

Emulation is another option if you want the least hassle.

 

[WhyreByter]

I think that I'd like to keep the option to play AGA games; I've got a few on disk already.

The advantage of a 2k/3K/4K is that it would integrate more nicely with my existing computer setup (just move keyboards around; my plan would be to ultimately hook it up to my LCD monitor which has a variety of inputs), vs. the 1200/500 which would basically need to be set up/torn down between uses, which means I'm much less likely to use it. If I went that way, then I'd use my emulator/PC for the AGA games.


In a way, I guess, I'm regretting selling my 4k, though it was really more than I needed, and it went to someone who would really use it.

Thanks for the feedback guys!
Robert

 

[FastRobPlus]

I made this a while back to help with the question of "which Amiga to get?"

 

[quarkx]

Looks like you are in the USA, which voids a lot of options, because parts are so scarse here in North America.
If you go the A500 route, be prepared to spend BIG money on any upgrades period. I know there are some stuff coming, but even though the price of an A500 is pretty (or was) decent, Upgrades are hard to come by and most of the time you will have to order stuff from the UK and pay outrageous postal and exchange rates.
The A2000 OTOH is a very good choice for a "Starter" unit. The base price is pretty decent, and the upgrade cards are fairly well priced. Remember you can get a decent A2000 on the other bay full of "Cards" because half the sellers have no clue of whats inside. I know that too some, the A2000 is an ugly monster, but it is actually the most affordable unit in North America to upgrade. IMHO you have the best of all worlds, as you can add a CD ROM and have tons of room, the down side is you have to put up with SCSI, because the very few IDE cards are well, very hard to get.

The A3000 is a bit overkill for the first time user. Its a great machine, but it is smaller than an A2000, so working inside is cramped and the only CD solution is an external- Again, you are stuck with SCSI (which I despise) but you can hook up a regular monitor to the A3000.

The A4000 is the big one, but a bit of a waste for the newbie. If you are given one -go for it, but I would get familiar with a few machines first.

The A1200 is increasingly becoming hard to find (although not imposible)- a North American Model anyway. Its a fine machine, but again, very pricey for upgrades here.

The NTSC A600 is probably the hardest unit to find. I lucked out (one found me) after I had order 2 Piece by piece for the UK. other than the upgrades AmigaKit sells, there is nothing to be found in the US for upgrades. I believe (and I could be wrong) the A600 was sold in small numbers in Canada.

I hope this helps, coming from a North American- oh, and you will probably never find a NTSC A500+.

 

[TjLaZer]

Hey there. Sorry to hear you sold that A4000. I would use the A1200 as it has AGA and great as a games machine! Not sure what problems you are having with WHDLoad but if you want some help I can help you out (if your still local to Seattle/Tacoma.). I have lots of games on my A1200 and they all work great.

Other than that a nice A500 with 1MB and Kick 1.3 can't be beat! You can use a big box Amiga with CD/DVD drive to write out ADFs to real disk and your set! (copy all your ADFs to a CD/DVD)

 

[rkauer]

Beside the fact the A2000 is a huge beast it also is an excellent platform to gaming in.

One with an inexpensive SCSI controller and 4Mb or 8Mb memory is much cheaper than an A500 in the very same configuration. It just is not portable, lol.

Upgrading the kickstart to 2.0x (it will accept one unwanted 2.05 A600 kickstart) will let the beast able to run all OCS/ECS games.

So, A2000, SCSI, 2.0x ROM, 4 or 8Mb RAM and the A520 (to have colour composite to a TV) or a 15kHz monitor and done.

Also, using a SCSI or IDE controller might make this beast able to use a CD-ROM unit, enabling it to play CDTV titles and play music. Not a bad trade at all!