Hello everyone,

Now I really done it. My A1200 does not boot anymore.
After some serious crashes it seems my HDD has finally given up .

No worry. I have another one in the closet.
The last software I ran on my A1200 was the 'Amiga in a box' stuff. This was intended for UAE but worked 'fine' on my A1200.

Now I need (or want) to start over. I would like some suggestions.

What is the best list of software to put on my amiga.
Where I'm gonna get it is my problem

Like I have OS3.1 laying around and and am able to transfer things to amiga disks from pc. So if I can download it I can install it.

All help is welcome.

BTW these are my specs:

Harddrive ???MB (it is +300MB I assume)
Ram 32MB
Cpu 030@40Mhz
(not willing to put it in a tower ever! but am willing to upgrade to 040 (maybe 060)).
No CD-ROM (PCMCIA drives are hard to find here)

Greetings,
Erno

040 in a standard A1200 is not a good combination... if you're going to upgrade to a better CPU go directly to a 060 card instead.

300Mb harddrive is kind of small... try get hold of something bigger (4Gb is ideal).

040 is probably fine powerwise, some people find it umm, too hot for the case I think. If you upgrade a 1200 a lot, make sure to get a better PSU.

@Doppie depends on what you want to use it for, I mean, if you want to surf the web with it, their are a variety of Pcmcia NICs you can get, there is soem free wbe surfing software, but the good (well, hafway decent) stuff is shareware. If you want generic desktop stuff, you'll want MUI 3.8 and ClassAct to actually run the apps(since you can't get a cd, you'd have to stick to non OS3.9 software I guess). For games, WHDLoad is good, lets you put the games on the hardddrive. Annnd from their it really just depends on what ya want.

Aminet (www.aminet.net, but there are many mirrors) is a great place for free software.

Greetings Doppie1200!

Dont bother trying to patch OS3.1 youll fill your harddrive trying to make this acient version anything descesnt! You should upgrade directly to OS3.9 but you will need a CDRom for this!

Check http://www.haage-partner.de/aos39/index-e.html for Info.

Your 3.1 ROMs are the latest ROMs that can be bought so your OK there

An 060 is deffinitly your best bet to upgrade you processing power with as its the fatest 68K you can get for your 1200! It will help with MP3s and 3D stuff but you will be let down by the AGA chipset and its measily 2MB Ram.

If your looking for a cheap 060 check out EBay or http://www.amibench.org for second hand hardware.

If I were you I would seriously consider getting a tower as this allows you to expand your 1200 to take advantage of "Powerfull" graphicscards (such as a Voodoo3 3000 16MB) Via PCI slots as well a descent Sound Cards (Soundblaster 128) 100MBit Network Cards and MP3 Hardware decoder Cards. A Graphics Card and An MP3 Decoder card will free you from the SLOW AGA Graphics and Sound (8Bit by the way)chipset and free up lots of you CPU cycles to do a lot more work by taking the load off your processor!

It will then allow you to easily add a 3.5" Harddrive (less expensive than a 2.5" laptop model and add a CDRom!!!

PM me if you need any advice

Thanks
Mark

Well for games alone an 030 card should be enough, with say anywhere from 8 to 32 megs of RAM (depends on how recent of games) Most games that use 060s will run slow due to AGA anyhow, since they usually are newer 3D ports and such (stuff you can almost always find on PC). 060 does let you do nifty things like play MP3s with it though. I use Visprefs to make 3.1 lok a bit more spiffy, NewIcons is a great icon set, and is only 32 colors. You can download all sorts of datatypes (aminet again) for image and audio files and video, even PDF or HTML, but I use standalone apps for that (AmiPDF and Next work fine usually). AWeb is the best free web browser(unless someone is gonna argue for AMosaic), but Voyager and IBrowse are much better (shareware though). WHDLoad is something you'll definitely want, since it allows you to copy the games to harddisk, and often compensates if you have the wrong ROM for a game. I'm not sure how hi-res AGA can go, but if you want to use a VGA monitor, you'll need a proper scandoubler (otherwise none of the games will work) Amiga specific ones (read: proper hi quality RGB out) cost about 100+USD, generic gaming console ones for the composite RCA jacks cost more like 60USD, depends on how clear of a picture you need.

You can't get gfx cards for the 1200 without spending a lot of money, either on a PCI bus board, or a blizzardPPC + Vision card combo. If you're just doing this for retro gaming and a bit of retro computing, don't bother really, only new games and new apps use that stuff, now, if you wanted to use the Amiga as a serious machine .

Hi,

Thanks alot everybody.
I think I made up my mind what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna fix my A1200 up but I'm not going to do any expensive upgrades.

I would like an 060 (who doesnt) but the gain on an 030 1200 is not comparable to the price. I'll stick to the 030.

As far as graphics cards....the same actually. I agree with bloodline. I'm better off running UAE on a Mini-Itx board stuck under a keyboard (idea!). Otherwise I'll end up with an overpriced tower containting a CPU board and all kinds of PC peripherals with somewhere an A1200 board hidden that actually adds nothing to the system anymore.

So I'm going for retro computing. Fix my workbench up using UAE and transfer the lot to my 'new' 4GB drive using Compact Flash (I read this is possible).

Thanks all for all the replies.

Regards,
Erno