Having trouble finding a new tower to tower an A1200 into.  Hoping for a Winner Tower or a Power Tower.  SoftHut is out, Vesalia does not get back to me nor does MrHardware.  /i think CompuQuick is out.

Anyone?  Thanks.



bp

Is that the full-tower that's aqua in color?  It's so large and IMHO unattractive that I'd been avoiding it...  Hmm.



blakespot

Yea...it's growing on me.  And it seems a safer bet as it's designed for the Mediator SX which has apparently replaced the regular 1200 Mediator.  May add PCI one day.

I e-mailed Vesalia twice about several items but get no answer.  I wonder if they speak English on the phone #'s?  I just e-mailed Livewire in CA to see if they have the towers.

Vesalia lists new NTSC A1200 mobo's for $69 EUR.  Not bad - would not mind a response from them.  They are where I got my 060 accel and flicker fixer back in '00.  We'll see.

Far harder to build up this system today than it was 2-3 years ago it seems.  I guess Escom quit making the A1200's a while back.



blakespot

Well, how do you know whether to use a PC drive or an Amiga drive if you just get a motherboard (floppy, that is)?  The Escom Amiga's were mod'ed to use PC HD floppies in DD mode as I recall.  Maybe an older A1200 w/ a real Amiga drive would be better anyway.  I have been looking on eBay but they only have one A1200 and it's going w/ a C1942 monitor which I don't need or want.  

Where do these mobo's come from anyway?  SoftHut claims "refurb" on theirs.  Can't recall what CompuQuick claims.  Vesalia says "new" for their NTSC mobo's.  Where do they get these new mobos?  No one has new A1200's w/ case and kbd - not that I need it.

What I need:

- tower of some kind to put it in - prob Mirrage
- A1200
- MagicScan / FlickerMasterT / other int. flicker fixer

Got the accelerator, SCSI lined up (as you know) and just grabbed a 2GB SCSI HD on eBay and have sites on a Toshiba SCSI CD-ROM.

Have ext. Zip 100 SCSI which will be media shuttle from my G4 to my Amiga 1200 to load it up, then eventually will go Mediator for PCI eth to get it on my LAN.  

So you think I should order from Vesalia and play it by ear?




blakespot

Vesalia accepts PayPal now. :-)

Those NEW motherboards are actually new old stock, which means never used from the time they were made but still old in a sense that they have been sitting in that state for years. They are certainly not freshly manufactured goods.

A1200 motherboards that came under the Escom name do not have different motherboards that require PC floppy drives, but the drives themselves were PC drives (here comes the magic word) that were CONVERTED to work in Amiga DD mode. That's all there is to it. That's why some games didn't like them, only due to the floppy drive kind. If you were to swap it with a Chinon or Panasonic make which Commodore originally used, the problems would be gone.

Escom A1200s also often (if not always) came with revision 1D1 motherboards, which are the best as they include timing fixes.

A1200 motherboards suffer from a reset problem with the PCMCIA slot. I'm not sure exactly when this occurs, but I think that it does when you use a PCMCIA card (like an ethernet card for example) and as soon as you reboot the system it won't be detectable anymore unless a hardware fix is applied. There is also a software solution which works with your Blizzard card. ;-) It could be the other way around. PCMCIA cards only available at first boot and after you reset, not anymore. Anyway, not a big deal if you don't plan to use it and I suspect you won't as you plan to use a Mediator as you've mentioned earlier, which gives you an option of cheap PCI Ethernet card.

It is absolutely unknown of which board revisions/make these Vesalia A1200 motherboards are. I suspect 1D1 as SoftwareHut sell these and I know that they stock up through Vesalia, so there is a high probability.

Vesalia will take PayPal payments in Euros. If you order and get a paypal invoice that means that they have your order in stock. They will surely elaborate on what is available and what is not if a particular item of your order is missing. Basically if you place an order they will likely respond to your order related e-mails from that point. You will know that your items are available by getting a PayPal invoice. It's very bad customer treatment but those are the breaks nowadays with Amiga dealers. We simply have to take that s*it from time to time as we are limited with options. :-(

As for the floppy, I suggest a high density drive for A1200T or A4000 (they are the same product). SoftHut has them and possibly Vesalia too.

The PCMCIA reset problem goes something like this... when you reboot your amiga, the PCMCIA port goes dead, all you need to do is remove / readd the PCMCIA card and it works again. There is a software hack on aminet and it works well :-)

Eyetech do a cracking tower, called the z4, towered my 1200 up in it last year, its the mutts nuts :-P