Wanted: Amiga 1200 + any extra goodies for it

[Mark Smith]

Hiya,

I'm just after an A1200 again, if it has some sort of accelerator even better but not essential.  Got to be a PAL one though :-)

So if anyone has one they'd like to sell let me know and we'll see what sort of offer I can make.

Regards

Mark

[Murple]

I dont know why, but the 1200s seem to be pretty hard to get a hold of. I guess not many were originally made since they came near the end of Commodore. The more powerful A4000 with the same chipset is fairly easy to find, but the 1200s seem to be rarer and sell on eBay for much higher prices. I suppose it could also be that annoying eBay symptom of idiots with way too much money who have no problem artificially running up the prices on A1200s because they "need" to have another one ("Gosh, only 6 of my 39 Amigas are 1200s!")... which sucks for those of us who just want one. Or I guess they could really be rare and worth the prices. I don't know. I just know I've about given up on ever getting one. Hope you find one though. There seems to be more of them available from Europe so maybe a PAL model is easier to get.

[Golan Klinger]

The more powerful A4000 with the same chipset is fairly easy to find, but the 1200s seem to be rarer and sell on eBay for much higher prices.

You find that Amiga 1200 sell for more than Amiga 4000? I would not have expected that.

[Murple]

I wouldn't have either. The A1200s seem to be the most expensive Amigas on eBay. I don't know if that reflects any actual rarity or value, or if its just a matter of people liking them (they're the most powerful of the "portable" system-in-keyboard Amigas) and a small handful of spoiled rich bastards artificially inflating the prices by bidding astronomical prices on them because they're collecting them like a neurotic old lady migh hoard cats. I was recently bidding on an A1200 (I dont have one, never have, always wanted one) and it eventually sold for well over $400. At the same time there were two A4000s with video toasters and monitors that had a buy-it-now price (for both systems and monitors, not separate auctions) for substantially cheaper... they sat there and got no takers. Several other A1200s sold for $300-500 in the same time frame.

I'd love to get my hands on an A1200. For my purposes, they probably are the best Amiga, as they take up little space, are nicely self contained, have a hard drive, can be somewhat expanded with PCMCIA (all I'd ever use is perhaps ethernet), and have the last of the Amiga chipsets. I'm not planning to use an Amiga as my primary computer, I don't intend to do any video editting, and I don't need a full size expandable system. You can slap a CPU accelerator in an A1200 and have a pretty nice little system for playing old games and running cool demos. That's really all I need. I've just about given up on ever having an A1200 though. So far I just have a 500, and somewhere in a closet I've got a crusty old original Amiga.

I recently got an A2000 on eBay for under 50 bucks. It hasnt arrived yet so I dont know if it even works, but the seller says it comes up enough to ask for a disk. It had a hard drive at one point but was removed long ago. I found a hard drive controller that comes with some Quantum disk (probably one of the old 50-ish megabyte ones) and has (empty) SIMM slots for up to 8 meg RAM. Fortunately, I didnt throw out my old PC 30 pin SIMMs so I can probably get it up to 8Mb right away. If all these parts work, I guess that's the Amiga I'm going to have to work with. Its not really what I want, but I figure if I find a CPU accelerator card for it, it'll be OK. Its much bigger (physically) than what I wanted, but... barring some miracle availability of an A1200 at a sane price, I dont think I'm getting one.

I do see more 1200s for sale in Europe though. If I wanted one of those, I'd need a PAL monitor... and shipping across the ocean would probably be astronomical. I don't really consider importing a PAL 1200 as an option. It might make life easier for strandedinnz than it is for those of us in the US/Canada area though.

[Golan Klinger]

Oh, I know all about the 1200. I'm quite fond of mine.

I haven't bothered adding ethernet because I don't intend to use it for web browsing et al. I have been thinking about adding USB ports though. Being able to move things to and fro on a USB memory key would be kind of handy. The only other offbeat thing I've done is remove the hard disk, add in an IDE-CF adaptor and go with flash memory for storage. It's faster, quieter and cooler. I use it primarily for game playing and most games are don't require AGA or mass storage so I feel a little guilty about not fully utilizing the machine. I could probably get by with my 1000.

[Murple]

Getting by without mass storage isn't a big deal, yeah... but floppies of the proper density aren't going to be around forever, and old ones can get ruined pretty easy. A hard drive or flash card is likely to last longer and be easier to replace.

[Golan Klinger]

D'oh! You just reminded me that I upgraded the floppy drive from the double density 880KB default to a high density 1.76MB one. I never really think about that. Your point is valid though. Diskettes are notoriously impermanent.

[Guest]

The only other offbeat thing I've done is remove the hard disk, add in an IDE-CF adaptor and go with flash memory for storage. It's faster, quieter and cooler.

I just added CF to my Apple //e (http://www.paytonbyrd.com).  I have an A600 sitting on the same desk that currently has a 2 gig 4500 RPM drive in it.  You can definitely tell when drive latency kicks in and I plan to replace that HD with a CF card as well.  I just have to get the appropriate adapter.