Commodore Amiga A1200's...


Many moons ago, a teenage Panteneman hounded his parent's to death for one of those sniny new 'AGA Chipset' Commodore Amiga's. After much skimping and scraping, I was bought one for my 16th birthday. And lo, it was a most meritorious time – as I was a lowly no mark for not owning an Amiga and now I had the best ones you could get (short of the A4000/A4000T) your hands on. I even overlooked so called 'Friends' that suddenly wanted to know me because I owned an A1200.

10 Months later, Commodore went bust in spring 1994. I had read in Amiga Format that they were in trouble, but thought that they would pull through somehow and find some investor of some form. Another two months later, support for it ended – as in, the local 'computer club' held at a social club at the opposite end of town. It sat there to gather dust, and I lost heart with computing. Only to use Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 machines in college for coursework, and later on Windows 95 in work. Commodore doing tits up, was like the loss of a good friend.

I didn't envisage Commodore going tits up (like many Commodore users), in all honesty. I naively thought I would get a good 3 or 4 years worth of life out of my Amiga, like I did with my Commodore 64 (which had a nice game collection, and a 1541 floppy disk drive and Action Replay 'freeze cartridge'). Neither did my folks, and I got earache for several months at least because they spent £400 on what became an elegant white door wedge.

A month ago, I found a Commodore 128 on eBay and I had to have it, with original box, manuals and CP/M 3.0 disk still sealed. Despite the fact that, as nice as it was, it had barely any software support even back when it was out. I blame the purchase on 'Nostalgia', because I always wanted one from when I was a kid. Oh, and because VICE isn't 100% perfect at Commodore 128 emulation, according to online posts. *facepalms*
(Panteneman Isn't entirely sure why he bothered on, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 20:32, 16 replies)

Amiga CD32
/Nostalgia and disappointment.
(mr-lizard Hell's teeth man!, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 20:38, closed)

There is only one that was worse...
Commodore 64GS. Truly POINTLESS. Released at a time when the Megadrive and SNES were ruling the roost with the 'console wars' in the UK.
(Panteneman Isn't entirely sure why he bothered on, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 20:41, closed)

Atari Falcon '030
Who on Earth owned one of those things? Did ANYONE make anything for those?

I don't even think they were back compatible with an Atari ST either!
(Panteneman Isn't entirely sure why he bothered on, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 22:31, closed)

A4000
I had one.
1GB HDD, OpalVision 24Bit card and a legit copy of Lightwave 3.5 (£800!) bought it for 3D rendering stuff to video.
Just shy of £3500 for the lot (this is 1994 BTW), Commodore went under a few months later. :( Got about £500 back about a year later when I finally chopped it in for a PC.

Still got an A1200 set up in the loft though.
(Bad Monkey hasn't had an abusive gaz since, Wed 6 Oct 2010, 0:28, closed)

I bought a mint A1200 last year
I regret nothing. Last Christmas was a heroic orgy of Supercars II, Alien Breed, SWOS and Xenon II. Next Christmas will be too although I have managed to add Zeewolf, the Lotus series and bloody dozens of others so it will be EVEN BETTER.
(Leonard Hatred briefly did some work on, Wed 6 Oct 2010, 9:34, closed)

Good man!
Super Cars 2 still rocks!
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Wed 6 Oct 2010, 10:24, closed)

Indeed
Best Gaming EVAR!

Elite and the floppy with my pilot save on it were the only two disks near my A500 for about 6 months.

Micro Machines was another complete time sink, and don't even get me started on Moonstone! (Just nipping up to the loft, BRB!)
(Bad Monkey hasn't had an abusive gaz since, Wed 6 Oct 2010, 12:27, closed)

Moonstone fucking rocked, but mine crashed far too often:

When the 2 big blue fuckers swung their clubs at exactly the same time from either side of the screen

When the big mud monster thing with a skull for a head did its big drag-you-under attack

When you killed one of the cpu controlled knights, they'd sometimes have a round grey ball in their inventory (which I assumed was a moonstone?) - scrolling the mouse over it would crash

On the final whirlwind whip boss, for no real reason.

Still ... what a game! I now have the music from the dice game at the tavern in my head.
(steh30, Wed 6 Oct 2010, 15:32, closed)

Did you ever kill the dragon?
If you stood at the right spot under its neck and stabbed up it was a piece of piss. Then you got loads of gold and weapons (like the sword of sharpness).
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Wed 6 Oct 2010, 15:53, closed)

Yeah dragon was piss once you knew how, the game was more just pot luck if I could keep it from crashing!

Sword of Sharpness ftw
(steh30, Wed 6 Oct 2010, 17:58, closed)

OUCH!
That's one hell of a loss!

The A4000 was a total beast of a machine. I remember some software and upgrade where you could fit a PC board inside, and a Mac board (if you were able to get one) and have three computers in the one box. I am certain there was something like that, back in the day ("Citation needed", as they say on Wikipedia).

There is YouTube footage of modified Amiga's able to browse the internet and perform Mp3 playing just like a PC we come to take for granted if you look out for it.
(Panteneman Isn't entirely sure why he bothered on, Wed 6 Oct 2010, 21:06, closed)

I still have my Amiga set up
I took it to uni in 1995, it saw active service long after Commodore went tits up. In my third year, my housemate asked me to remove it from his room as he was playing Cannon Fodder until 4am every night.

I think you should be proud that you had an A1200 in 1994, I would have loved one at the time.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Wed 6 Oct 2010, 10:23, closed)

Don't get me wrong...
I was really pleased and privileged to own an A1200. My problem was that I only had the thing for 10 months and then Commodore went bust and I lost heart with computing in general as a result, knowing full well the PC had won (or more specifically, Microsoft Windows). So, I had a gap of some several years of computing until 2002 when I got my first actual PC.

In hindsight, the problem was Commodore got through money like toilet paper and made a load of useless machines that they didn’t need to make. They had all the aces, but just squandered it all. By that time, computing was evolving at a ferocious rate and PC’s caught up.

The only computers they should have bothered with should have been the Commodore 64, Commodore 128 (perhaps improving it and making it as successful as the 128k Spectrum), and the Amiga series (minus the pointless A600, even an ex Commodore head honcho was reported to have said it was a screw up). They shouldn’t have bothered with stuff like the C=16, C=+4, GS, CD32 etc. I still have the A1200, and the C=64, and they hadn’t even seen 21st century air and light until a few week ago when I had an evening of retro gaming malarkey (I’ve even ordered a 1541 Ultimate).

The ‘denialists’ that keep on trying to bring back the Amiga should call it a day I reckon (Amiga One, Project Natami etc), as they don’t have a cat in hells chance in being a successful competitor. In a parallel universe, I would like to think Commodore rules the roost, probably with some form of really insane Amiga that probably does 128bit processing or something scary. On the basis of how good Amiga’s were back in the day.

I have since taught my nephew the awesomeness of the Commodore 64 and Amiga, and recently helped him in installing VICE for Linux. He’s doing some form of A Level Computer Science course and I have been recalling my tales of dabbling with BASIC and Machine Code, and gaming from back in the day. He’s astonished with the capabilities of the machines, especially when I showed him Crest and Oxyron’s ‘Deus Ex Machina’ demo and an Amiga one done using a ‘060 AGA machine, and a YouTube demo of a 4mb A1200 being able to browse the internet. So, he appreciates and has learned that without these machines we wouldn’t have what we are using today (e.g. Workbench brought along the concept of a fully skinnable GUI for example). It’s nice to be able to spread the word on these ‘old school’ setups to a new generation.
(Panteneman Isn't entirely sure why he bothered on, Wed 6 Oct 2010, 13:27, closed)

I didn't know there are people who want to bring the Amiga back
as much as I love the machine, things have moved on. Even 'I' have to admit that some of the classic games haven't aged well. I loved "Another World" and "Flashback" back in the day, but I loaded them up a few months back and found them unplayable.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Wed 6 Oct 2010, 14:22, closed)

As if proof were needed, check this out for size:
Project Natami

Natami Stage 1 YouTube video

Amiga One X1000

If this isn't flogging a dead horse, then i don't know what is. Nice idea on paper, but doubtful it will succeed. A+ for trying, however.
(Panteneman Isn't entirely sure why he bothered on, Wed 6 Oct 2010, 17:57, closed)

Minimig & FPGA Arcade
There is already the Minimig (of which I own two), latest firmware brings it to the speed of an A3000 with 2 meg chipram and 1.5 meg slow (but actually really fast) RAM.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimig

Then there is the FPGA Arcade, which will run the Minimig core and have AGA capabilities, however somebody still needs to add all the 68020 instructions to make some of the AGA games work. Some AGA games will work fine without 020 though...

www.fpgaarcade.com/

Both are really small and emulate the Amiga chipset in silicon.
(SillyMoo, Thu 7 Oct 2010, 11:19, closed)