Hi ppl,
 
I am thinking to put my a1200 online to enable better file transfer etc, I have ordered a PCMCIA wired ethernet nic, so i have couple questions:
 
1) Is my A1200 3.1 rom, 4gb cf with accelerator card ACA1230 @ 28mhz 64mb on classic WBLite up to the task?
 
2) What software do i need to install to my a1200,  TCP/IP software AmiTCP, Genesis(build in AOS3.9) or Miami ??
 
Thanks if you can help

1) Is my A1200 3.1 rom, 4gb cf with accelerator card ACA1230 @ 28mhz 64mb on classic WBLite up to the task?

That's basically the hardware I use.  3.0 ROM and Classic WB Full, but that shouldn't make any difference.
I do run in Interlace with MagicTV to reduce the effect of the flicker on my 1084s.
 

2) What software do i need to install to my a1200,  TCP/IP software AmiTCP, Genesis(build in AOS3.9) or Miami ??

I use AmiTCP 3 personally.
I'm not at all bothered by command line configs.  (Not that there wasn't some confusion.  It didn't work the first few times.. ;-)
I also don't like time limits or nag windows, and licenses on some of those are hard to come by, so I went AmiTCP.  If I'm not mistaken (I don't use it), I think Easynet uses AmiTCP 3 also.

For file transfers, I haven't had any problems with AmiTradeCenter (I think that's it).
I just run an FTP server on one of my machines at home.  I can prep files on it and then send them to the Amiga or I can just download directly using AWeb.

desiv

That's basically the hardware I use. 3.0 ROM and Classic WB Full, but that shouldn't make any difference.
I do run in Interlace with MagicTV to reduce the effect of the flicker on my 1084s.
 
 
 
I use AmiTCP 3 personally.
I'm not at all bothered by command line configs. (Not that there wasn't some confusion. It didn't work the first few times.. ;-)
I also don't like time limits or nag windows, and licenses on some of those are hard to come by, so I went AmiTCP. If I'm not mistaken (I don't use it), I think Easynet uses AmiTCP 3 also.
 
For file transfers, I haven't had any problems with AmiTradeCenter (I think that's it).
I just run an FTP server on one of my machines at home. I can prep files on it and then send them to the Amiga or I can just download directly using AWeb.
 
desiv

Hey Desiv, its reassuring to know there are others with a similar set-up that are already online. How are you getting on with your aca1230 these days, has there been any more news on the new aca card that was set to be released about now?

Hey!  ;-)

How are you getting on with your aca1230 these days, has there been any more news on the new aca card that was set to be released about now?

Love the ACA...  
I had a bit of a scare a bit ago.  I installed a new CF-IDE adapter (one that will work with the HD LED on the Amiga case) and then my Amiga wouldn't boot...  After swapping things around (and panicking like crazy for a bit), I remembered that my ACA had a tight fit and wondered if I bumped it.  So, I pulled it back just a bit and everything works great again.  ;-)
(My Amiga wants its cards slid back just a bit.  My 8M RAM card was the same.)

Whew! :-)

As for news, I heard Jens was a bit swamped and some products (the Indivision MK2) are going to be delayed...
I think there was an issue with acquiring memory chips (for the new ACAs??  Can't remember) that was causing a bit of a delay also..

So there might be some delays (might affect Christmas), but they're still queued up.

I've heard good things about Easynet, so if you want to do that, it's probably worth it.
I like Amigakit as a company too..

If you want to go old skool, I can help you with the configs..
Mine are rather modified.  ;-)

desiv

Hey guys, I use my A1200 with a 28Mhz 030 (an old DKB Cobra, slower than the ACA1230/28) with 64MB RAM as my main computer system every day. I own several PCs and other computers but my A1200 is the one I use the most, and I'm online all day! So have no fear, it's perfectly up to the task if you don't have your expectations too high. You should definitely try using your A1200 to chat with, the keyboard is a dream to use compared to any modern keyboards which use cheap rubber components instead of coiled, metal springs like the A1200. You can also play some online games, the best would have to be Dynamite. It's like Bomberman but you can play against a whole heap of friends (and enemies) online. I recommend MiamiDX for TCP, it's the best there is until Roadshow comes out. You can even get free keyfiles for it.

I have recently been setting up a new A1200 and made a backup of the customised Workbench 3.1 setup I have put together so far and uploaded it online for other Amiga owners (who legally own Workbench, since they own the hardware) to download and try on their A1200s. It already has both AmiTCP 3.2b and MiamiDX installed as well as a bunch of updates, patches and better datatypes and things. It also has the IBrowse 2.4 demo installed as well as the unrestricted IBrowse 1.2 which was given away free with Aminet CD 24.

If anyone would like to try it, send me a private message and I'll send you the link. It's an uncompressed LHA file inside a Zip file. You unzip it first to produce the uncompressed LHA, which you would transfer to the A1200 somehow (through a PCMCIA card reader or by putting your drive in a PC and using WinUAE), then extract it to a bootable partition. It's actually the beginning of a new Workbench pack a few of us are working on, so we need some testers if anyone would like to try it and help us perfect it for release. I made a demonstration comparing Composite and S-Video recently, and to demonstrate I used Workbench and some programs, including Doom and Shapeshifter. Everything you see in the video is included. This was running on a plain 14Mhz 68EC020 A1200 with only a 8MB RAM card, no CPU upgrade so expect better performance on your 030s.

Some good internet software:

WookieChat (Internet Relay Chat) - http://wookiechat.amigarevolution.com/wookiechat/
SabreMSN (MSN Instant Messenger) - http://wookiechat.amigarevolution.com/sabremsn/
AmIRC (Internet Relay Chat) - http://www.amirc.org/
AmiMSN (MSN Instant Messenger) - http://members.iinet.net.au/~trebs/AmiMSN/
Dynamite (Online Game) - http://amisource.de/dynamite/
AmiTwitter (Twitter) - http://amitwitter.sourceforge.net/
AmiGift (P2P File Sharing) - http://amigift.sourceforge.net/
IBrowse (Web Browser) - http://www.ibrowse-dev.net/
AmiNetRadio (Music Collection & Online Radio) - http://amigazeux.net/anr/
TwinVNC (Virtual Network Computer Client) - http://aminet.net/package/comm/tcp/TwinVNC0.8beta
MiamiDX (TCP/IP) - http://aminet.net/package/comm/tcp/MiamiDx10cmain
MiamiDX GUI - http://aminet.net/package/comm/tcp/MiamiDx10c-MUI
MiamiDX Keyfile - http://www.fatcat.vispa.com/keyring/

Here are some useful files that you can copy to your Amiga on a 720kb DOS-formatted disk (remember to cover the second hole on a HD floppy disk with tape) so you can begin using some PCMCIA cards.

If you're using your PCMCIA port you might experience lockups when the card doesn't reset itself and the Amiga tries to access it. If this happens, you can usually unlock the computer by pulling the card out and re-inserting it. In any case, you should either perform a simple hardware fix or install these patches which will reset your PCMCIA port each time you boot up:

CardPatch - http://aminet.net/package/util/boot/CardPatch
CardReset - http://aminet.net/package/util/boot/CardReset

If you use a cheap PCMCIA CF or SD card reader, you will need the driver and a filesystem that recognises FAT-formatted drives:

CompactFlash Device - http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/cfd
Fat95 - http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/fat95

When using a PCMCIA network card you will need one of two drivers, depending on the chipset your card uses:

CNet Device - http://aminet.net/package/driver/net/cnetdevice
3c589 Device - http://aminet.net/package/driver/net/3c589

Also you might want to try a lighter, but harder to configure TCP stack, AmiTCP 3.2b is free and there is a very useful setup guide here:

AmiTCP - http://www.wiwi.uni-frankfurt.de/~andreas/amitcp/index.htm

And of course the most useful file of them all, which you will need before you can extract anything, LhA:

LhA 2.12 (Run this first) - http://aminet.net/package/util/arc/lha
LhA 2.15 (Then extract this) - http://aminet.net/package/util/arc/lha_68k

What else?

A few handy tips:

-If you've ordered Amikit's EasyNet CD and don't have a CD drive for your Amiga, you could be tempted to think you could just copy the files from the CD to a CF card, plug it to your Amiga through the PCMCIA adapter and there you go! ... Well, not entirely true! If you're doing it through Windows some flags from the Amiga files could be lost in the process which is likely to cause troubles at later stages.
The "not so fast" but "really more secure" way is making an ISO image of the CD at your PC, copy it to the CF card, plug the card into your miggy and mount this image as a real Amiga device. I used Isomount for that, though any of the available diskimage devices at Aminet will do. Once mounted, just double click on the installer icon and let it do its job!

-Your LAN at home is likely to be using DHCP while your Amiga is likely not doing it save you installed some DHCP utilities (which have mixed reports: some people say they work fine and some other state they don't work at all). Workarounds this include configuring your LAN to work with fixed IPs (which is a pain nowadays) or being the lucky owner of a router that supports working with DHCP while simoultaneously having some IPs reserved for specific devices (usually using MAC numbers as identifiers). This last proved to be a life-saver in my case, as it works like a charm for going on-line with my 2 miggys at the same time.

-If you're using WIFI, your home LAN is likely to be using some modern security ciphering system as WPA2, while your Amiga is likely to be stuck at WEP. Either you are the lucky owner of a router which can work with both systems simoultaneously (which right now I don't even know if it exists!), have some workaround with several access points, or just downgrade your whole LAN to WEP, which is still a nice (but deprecated) security level anyway... provided you're sure none of your neighbours is a bad ugly evil hacker! :-)

--

Why not use DHCP?

I have been using DHCP with MiamiDX from the start...

Every once in a while MIAMI fails to get an IP address, but if I click [Online] again it always works the second time unless my router is stoned. I have Miami set up to iconify  after going online. This happens very infrequently and also keep in mind that the Amiga reboots more frequently and thus uses DHCP more than my other computers.

I do have the mac 7.6.1 under Shapeshifter set to use a static IP. I just picked one that is below the range that the router assigns via DHCP.

I think the main advantage to using DHCP is that the router can put an entry in its DNS table for your computer. So I should be able to put in "Amiga1200" as a FTP server address if I had an ftp service running. You must enable and populate the option "send host name on request" in DCHP options in Miami.

Why not use DHCP?

I have been using DHCP with MiamiDX from the start...

Because AmiTCP/IP based stacks don't come with DHCP support and some people prefer them for efficiency and availability.

MiamiDX is too bloated with features which are useless for many people. Makes it bit messy IMHO. I think Genesis GUI is more clear and it is already installed for people who use OS3.9. I've used MiamiDX only on special occasions like when I've absolutely needed DHCP, PPPoE, broadcasting or network sharing via Amiga, but in the most cases external routers have obsoleted those needs nowadays and basic network setups are just fine. AmiTCP is also much faster than traffic monitoring Miami...