Blast from the past! I had the Amiga 500, my sister had the 500+, and I got a 1200 for Christmas. Two of my best friends also got 1200's, some brilliant games from them days. Zool, Cannon Fodder, Pinball Fantasies, Simon the Sorcerer and Monkey Island to name a few. I wish I hadn't got rid of them now.
Great vid as always! My first computer was an Amiga 500 and then I eventually got two 1200's. All three eventually went to a friend and I got PC like a lot of people did. Two years ago another mate sold me his old original 1200 that he'd had up in his loft and it now sits in my bedroom hooked up to a CRT TV. The best home computer evah!
Great stuff, I can still remember the day when my dad and I went out and got our A500 512K RAM! soon upgraded it to 1MB via a trapdoor ram upgrade (with clock!!). Currently I still have the A500 I also have an A1200 and an A4000/40 which is still a great machine. When you thing back the Amiga was a real power house compared to the average PC at the time, and a pioneer of many things that we take for granted on modern PCs. R.I.P Jay Miner
Heartwarming is the word! Awesome trip down memory lane. It's so nice to know that other people out there love this tech they way do.
10 років тому+2
Thanks for this unbelievably informative video, Dan. Back in the 80's I met the Amiga in a magazine here (I guess it was BYTE or PC Magazine), and thought it was an amazing machine. I live in South America, and in those days there were no Internet, so my chances to buy one were literally zero. Now I see I wasn't wrong, thanks to your video. So sad it didn't continue :( . Who knows what would them achieve!
As a former 64, 500 and 1200 owner I enjoyed this video and I really dig your passion for the machines. Even had a BBS up for awhile.. good stuff. Great job Dan!
A actually was using an Amiga1200 'til way after 2006 when I switched to Mac. And that btw was an unaccelerated A1200 with "only" some more Fast Ram (8MB) and an upgrade from the already installed ca. 800MB Hard Drive (Escom) to a 3GB one (which I sadly wasn't able to backup yet) as well as a 4xCD-Rom and some external Floppy Drive. It was really painful surfing via AWeb with only a 56k Modem, since the unaccelerated Amiga only was able to squeeze ca. 32k through it's serial port.
Commodore defined my teen years, and moving to a PC was a bitter pill to swallow at the time when I was left with no upgrade option for Amiga. The transition of Lightwave3D to PC and the power of a 486 left no competition. It's hard to comprehend an compare the power of the beast that sits next to my desk today to either of those machines. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. :)
omg!! 20th!?!? GEEZE I remember seeing it in the UK Amiga Magazines here in NZ and being excited about it at ~12 years old lol. Never got one, stuck with the A500+ for a while but always drooled over it :)
So happy to come home from work Dan to find you've uploaded a new video. Made my day. Great review. Im relatively new to the Amiga 1200 (had a 600 back in the day). Drooling at the prospects of what I can do to my new machine and the journey of discovery learning to use it. Great vid all round. Keep them coming.
I was always more into the serious side of the Amiga, the OS the programs and productivity software to be honest. I did enjoy the odd game of course, but the main attraction for the Amiga to me was the groundbreaking operating system.
I know I'm a bit late 😅, but I'm really curious about your gaming side since you're doing awesome console videos too. What is your gaming background, did you play only Amiga back in the day or it was more of snes/megadrive and later Playstation ? What about pc gaming? Long, I know, but you can do it 😂
I do realise this is an old video but this posting made my day. Thank you for your time and I must admit this video made me feel all warm inside, I had an Amiga a500 and gave it an upgrade because I NEEDED IT! I installed an upgrade through the underside trapdoor, "mammoth 4mb and a 020 FPU and it was fantastic!) I could play VIRUS and other taxing games at the speed originally intended! PS could you give me a link to a workbench 3.9 that has no malware please as I am now emulating the Beloved AMIGA:) PPS I still play Robocod AGA and Z/X out on this machine. LONG LIVE THE KING/AMIGA:)
Was really good to see an Antique still in running order. I still have a couple of A500's lying around somewhere, i have no Idea if any of them still live. I still have the SCSI hard drive that mounts on the side too. Was the most advanced computer of it's time most certainly. I certainly would like to know how to put game images on that hard drive, it was a 500 Meg which was big in the day for an amiga. Those old SCSI drives were very well made, it probably still works. Thanks again for a historical run down on A1200 beast. I always wanted one at the time.
Hello. Im a former amiga 1200 owner and darlo resident (county durham my friend :-) now living in Christchurch, NZ. Love your videos and am now so nostalgic for my old machine im going to get amiga forever.
The yellowing is sped up by sunlight, but the direct cause is an incorrectly mixed batch of plastic that contains more starch than recommended. This usually results in the yellowing of plastic, which can be reversed by the application of bleaching chemicals. There's actually a hugely rare selection of about 300 Super Nintendos that turned green over time, but there are only a few still in existence.
Topsoft, I remember those guys well in Stockton, they were down the little back alley, their shop was like a little Aladdins Cave, Steve and Alex in there were great guys. They moved round the corner early 90's into a bigger shop on the corner and then into the shopping center. I frequented their shop, bought stuff virtually every week on my C64 from them. Currently have an Amiga 600 with Easy ADF and the PCMCIA CF adapter, should be getting a 1200 in the next few weeks so will finally be able to experience the AGA games as back in the 80's & 90's I was an A500 user.
Only had an A500+ but seeing this stuff again really brings back great memories. First gaming machine/home computer, from when I was about 6 years old. Loved it and can't forget those fantastic games.
I had a sweet A1200 with a 64MB expansion board. It was a neat machine. Did a lot of graphics and animation with it. Years ahead of anything else at the time.
Can still remember the day I brought my a1200, bloody thing had a duff floppy disc drive lol, replacement unit worked like a charm and I still have my Amiga 1200 with a Blizzard 1260 accelerator stored away in mint condition.
Hello Dan, I just wanted to take the time to say thank you for your videos. As a computer user here in America, Amigas were hard to come by. I am fairly sure we are about the same age, so when you were using such a mind blowing computer in 1992, I was still using a Commodore 64! There wasn't much of a hacker scene in the states at the time. The Amiga world is one that we really missed out on. Thank you, and you have a new American subscriber. :)
Best computer I ever owned. I did all my university coursework on a 1200 (back in 91-94). And played every game ever written (well, a few!) AND made music on it with Protracker which I'd learned to use on my old 500 some years before.
The A1200 was indeed the best computer ever made, hands down! I was late to the Commodore party, parents couldn't afford to buy me the C64 when I was a kid, they got me the Sharp MZ-700, dear oh dear, the only graphics capabilities on that thing was the funky characters printed on the side of the keys and beeps for sound lol Wasn't until 1988 when I used some of my college fund to buy the C64, can still remember to this day walking into Tandy computers and buying the C64 for £150. Absolutely loved the C64, it was such a huge step up from that sharp mz computer, eventually got myself a 1541 disc drive and the action replay mk6 cartridge which I used to make copies of all my games from tape to disc, boy did that transfer how awesome the C64 was to use, games loading in just a few seconds. Think it was around 1992/3 when I brought an Amiga 600, the A1200 was out at the time but I couldn't afford that at the time so opted for the A600, around 1994 I got the A1200 race & chase pack and sold the A600 to my brother. Had many years of joy using the A1200, didn't take me long to get a hdd to use & wanting more power I used two Blizzard accelerators, the 1230 & then the 1260, that 060 was a speed demon compared to the standard 68020! Still got all my amiga gear stored in the loft, if I had the space I'd have the A1200 all setup & running although I'd have to get the board re-capped to be safe as I wouldn't want those things exploding & damaging the board.
I remember walking into a computer shop to get some commodore 64 games and seeing an Amiga500 playing mods in ProTracker. My parents got me the A1200 for Christmas a few years later. I also used Wordsworth for my college work and D-paint. I still own it and recently set it back up at work to play around with at lunch time
Nice .. I started running a bbs on a comadore 64 with a 300 baud modem when I was 15 then ran one on a 128 machine . Then moved to an amiga and ran a bbs also was part of fidonet and had 4 scsi drives on my 500 machine .. Was alot of fun . I upgraded the chips in the 500 some had to solider etc .. newer kick start fater angus etc . upgraded it to 2 meg of chip ram and had a side car with 4 meg of ram and a 100 meg hd daisy chained 3 more drives off of that 500 was 2000$ can at the time and 4 meg of ram and the 100 meg hd was 1000$ can
Those damn good amigas, revolutionary and light years ahead of the competition. Nothing quite beats Amiga for innovation. Perfection housed in a keyboard form factor. Unbeatable!
I had one shortly after launch. Actually bought the Amiga 600 at first after having an Atari STe for few years. Realised the Amiga 600 was not much of an upgrade to that instantly and also missed the numeric pad. So back to Dixons as it was then and returned the 600 and begged my mother to pay extra for 1200. It was a nice machine but not enough software pushed it. Ended up selling to a mate of mine who played championship manager on it exclusively! Wish I’d kept having seen all the homebrew support it ended up with
My old A1200 still boots, as far as I know. And I had it on the internet back in 2001 or so. PCMCIA adapter worked a treat. I moved it into an old 2000 HD box as I was hacking away at mine as well. Got to add the CD drive quite easily then. :-) Maybe I could make a vid of it sometime and show the old original 2000 power supply running it. :-)
I loved my Amiga 1200, I used it for everything from playing games to writing my college work. I even used Cross Dos to port my pascal programs from the Amiga to PC DOS/Turbo Pascal. Those were the days!
Yeah I hope the second edition of the book does eventually come out, it's 2 years late now though and keeps getting pushed back :( Actually the A500 is the ONLY Amiga that Commodore actually released a CDROM drive for, so you're in luck there, it's called the Amiga A570, it slots on the side and will allow you to run pretty much all CDTV titles.
Do you get proper aspect ratio with that non-4:3 monitor? GUI as well as programs/games? Also, is the video signal being converted to digital from analog, or is it digital all the way?
Hi, there Dan back of the day in 1987 here in Australia when the Amiga 500 first come out. It cost the same as a commodore 64 with the 1541 floppy disk drive. Where is the idea of that?
You have a really neat Amiga 1200 system there! Have you considered putting an 060 in it to give it even more speed? I had a PPC towered up A1200 which sadly died and I had to leave it behind when I emigrated. But hoping to pick up another A1200 when I come back to the UK at Christmas and build it up a bit. The DVI adapter looks great, does it make pal low res games look blocky though on a monitor?
Hi what a great video!! I pulled my original 1200 from the loft this week but sadly the internal HD and floppy were toast, I have ordered a new floppy from amigakit and an RGB to scart cable, PCMCIA C flash card and a 68020 128MB accelerator (I used to have a blizzard board back in the day but sold it) I got my HD replaced with a CF card, awesome to be playing BIP and sensible soccer again, lots of it wont work till I get the ram card but its enough to warm the cockles, such a great bit of kit.
I'm leaning more towards uv light/sunlight. To back this up, I have a white monitor, the side of it that faces the window has yellowed, the rest has not. I keep my A1200 covered up when not using it and it's still as white as the day I bought it, I have an A600 that I left uncovered and that has gone yellow.
I love Amiga, me personally to this day and beyond will always be the best computer in the world, none of this firmware update crap, you turn on your Amiga and just play, how simple is that. I have 2 mint condition A500's and plus a few new and sealed items I will never open like the A520 modulator still sealed in box plus a sealed box tank mouse and more. I have a brand new never used A1200 coming next week which I will preserve as I will get another A1200 to use and upgrade etc. Only Amiga !
Cool video, it's great to see these machines still being used & developed. I couldn't afford an A1200 when they came out back in '92. Back then I was still using a Commodore 64. I eventually got an A1200 off ebay about 3 years ago & have upgraded it over the past couple of years. I'm also interested in the newer Amiga OS & plan to get a Mac Mini G4 to try out MorphOS. I did give Icaros a try but couldn't install it as didn't seem recognise my Apple keyboard or USB mouse :(
i've been meaning to get an amiga again i had a 600 from new, but i can't remember do games work on the 500/+ , 600/+ 1200? or are there limits to which games run on which?
Brilliant stuff Dan and as informative as ever! I'm bizarrely hooked on the A600 when it comes to nostalgia (I love the A500 but I was an ST guy in the early days) but quite clearly the A1200 is the definitive model of Amiga to own.......i'll definitely pitch up with one eventually though :)
Dan! Big Hey all the way from Saudi Arabia Thank you, I recently bought an Amiga 1200 based on you recommendation. Im very happy with it, but the problem is that I really want to add an accelerator. I want to play whdloads and some powerful (e.g Doom or Quake) games as well. Any recommendations? Thanks again
Just came across this, pretty old video and a good one... and by now there's even more hardware for the Amiga 1200! And you can have a great WHDLoad setup like this, but just in case anyone who sees this doesn't know - you don't have to play all of them stretched... :)
If this helps to resolve the issue the reason cases on old computer go yellow is because of the fire retardant chemicals on the plastics...not the plastics themselves. It can be reversed. It was discussed pretty heavily on the "Atari-Forum". Retrobright I think was the most effective solution used which involves removing the chemicals off the plastics without damaging the plastics themselves.
hi Dan, new subscriber great channel BTW. could you tell me if any particular variant is more desirable? also I've got the chance to buy an escom but it doesn't have hd at the end of the sticker. are they are good machine? thanks
Hi I have a Question which joystick did you use in this Video for the amiga? Is it a modded Competion Pro? It clicks relly nice, it might have very good microswitches? because on the old original Competition Pro joysticks the microswitches were bad back in the day. When you have used it for a certain of time the buttons fail to respond. It would be nice if you could tell me which joystick do you use or any tips to reactive my old Competition Pro joysticks! thanks
As someone who only really uses amiga for gaming, Would you recommend buying one of these to play amiga games? or does it feel very similar to playing the emulators we have readily available such as winuae on pc?
Dan do u know about the Amiga 1200 magic pack from escom cloanto and amiga technologies? the rom for it where can i download it from? the ks rom revision 45.064?
I am an original C64 and A500 user from the old days (1985-1994). I switch to PCs after that. I have an Amiga 2000 and 1200 that I just won on Ebay. I want to add the Indivision ECS and AGA (respectively) to the two Amiga systems. But, I am curious, why did you have your A1200 hooked up via your SCART connector AND the Indivision output to a DVI cable? Are both required for different screen modes? I was under the assumption the Indivision would output all screen modes.
The Amiga 1200 was a great computer, especially when you put an expansion board in the back. I loved mine as a kid, a faced a crossroads decision to keep it and learn to program in AmigaE (based on C I believe) or sell it and get a guitar. I chose the latter. Got more girls that way. ;-)
When i had my 1200, i was dialing up BBS everyday. Then suddenly one day, the BBS changed it's network... to something called the internet. I was greeted with a screen about being welcome to the internet etc etc, and the flashing cursor. I had no f****** clue what was happening, and gave up on computers until 1995. So i had 2 iconic scenarios in duality, a unique home computer and the introduction of the internet.
As a kid growing up with a Commodore 64, I always wanted an Amiga! My family ended up getting a 286 and 386 PC in 1989 instead, and they were nice in their own way, but I still loved Amigas, and got a used 500 several years later, although sadly I don't have room to set it up at the moment. Is there any way to set up a Compact Flash card like that on a 500, or do you really need a 600 or 1200?
I know that this is a vert old video, but if you still have troubles with cable management I recommend buying velcro cable ties from places like eBay and AliExpress. They are dirt cheap and work very well, especially for what you pay for them.
Fair question, main reason was they were owned by an American parent company who dragged them down. Commodore in the UK and Germany were very profitable, but the parent company in America wasn't. Sadly bad management at head office pulled the whole company down and the Amiga with it in 1994.
Hey I noticed you used a 10 MB/s CF card. Was that the fastest disk I/O speed A1200 was capable of? Has anybody done benchmarks how much I/O speed one could get from the on-board IDE?
Ah the ZIP STICK! I thought I was alone. After destroying pretty much every QuickShot joystick ever sold, I ended up with a Zip Stick and found it BULLET PROOF! Deserved more exposure than it got at the time IMHO.
Got it 3 times returned as i finally had a working product. From Keybord errors do drive issues. But then it was great playing Wincommander and the Alien Breed Special Version on it. :)
It was funny the Amiga version aka port of wing commander look better,and played better then the pc version of course ,but got a d- rating, and yet the pc version got a A+rating Go figure..
Made me even more want to get a 1200 again. I'm from Darlington, I remember Topsoft, although the shop in Clark's Yard was Chips. Lots of Amiga machines and addons on Ebay. Good prices too. I like my PC, but I think I had more fun owning an Amiga !.
Blast from the past! I had the Amiga 500, my sister had the 500+, and I got a 1200 for Christmas. Two of my best friends also got 1200's, some brilliant games from them days. Zool, Cannon Fodder, Pinball Fantasies, Simon the Sorcerer and Monkey Island to name a few. I wish I hadn't got rid of them now.
Great vid as always! My first computer was an Amiga 500 and then I eventually got two 1200's. All three eventually went to a friend and I got PC like a lot of people did. Two years ago another mate sold me his old original 1200 that he'd had up in his loft and it now sits in my bedroom hooked up to a CRT TV. The best home computer evah!
Great stuff, I can still remember the day when my dad and I went out and got our A500 512K RAM! soon upgraded it to 1MB via a trapdoor ram upgrade (with clock!!).
Currently I still have the A500 I also have an A1200 and an A4000/40 which is still a great machine.
When you thing back the Amiga was a real power house compared to the average PC at the time, and a pioneer of many things that we take for granted on modern PCs.
R.I.P Jay Miner
Heartwarming is the word! Awesome trip down memory lane. It's so nice to know that other people out there love this tech they way do.
Thanks for this unbelievably informative video, Dan. Back in the 80's I met the Amiga in a magazine here (I guess it was BYTE or PC Magazine), and thought it was an amazing machine. I live in South America, and in those days there were no Internet, so my chances to buy one were literally zero. Now I see I wasn't wrong, thanks to your video. So sad it didn't continue :( . Who knows what would them achieve!
As a former 64, 500 and 1200 owner I enjoyed this video and I really dig your passion for the machines. Even had a BBS up for awhile.. good stuff. Great job Dan!
This looks awesome. I would love a similar system. This is really an amazing computer!
You brought back a few memories. The Amiga was an incredible machine. Well ahead of its time.
Such an amazing system. Happy birthday Miggy.
A actually was using an Amiga1200 'til way after 2006 when I switched to Mac. And that btw was an unaccelerated A1200 with "only" some more Fast Ram (8MB) and an upgrade from the already installed ca. 800MB Hard Drive (Escom) to a 3GB one (which I sadly wasn't able to backup yet) as well as a 4xCD-Rom and some external Floppy Drive.
It was really painful surfing via AWeb with only a 56k Modem, since the unaccelerated Amiga only was able to squeeze ca. 32k through it's serial port.
A memory refreshing review!! Thanks Dan I really love like this review it is quit interesting that this machine still alive! Good modifications though
Commodore defined my teen years, and moving to a PC was a bitter pill to swallow at the time when I was left with no upgrade option for Amiga. The transition of Lightwave3D to PC and the power of a 486 left no competition. It's hard to comprehend an compare the power of the beast that sits next to my desk today to either of those machines. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. :)
omg!! 20th!?!? GEEZE I remember seeing it in the UK Amiga Magazines here in NZ and being excited about it at ~12 years old lol.
Never got one, stuck with the A500+ for a while but always drooled over it :)
ive been checking out a few of your vids over the past week,, but one,, this one was the motherload... absolutely loved it,, thank you
So happy to come home from work Dan to find you've uploaded a new video. Made my day. Great review. Im relatively new to the Amiga 1200 (had a 600 back in the day). Drooling at the prospects of what I can do to my new machine and the journey of discovery learning to use it. Great vid all round. Keep them coming.
What an awesome set up! Such a throw back to my childhood, love it!
I was always more into the serious side of the Amiga, the OS the programs and productivity software to be honest. I did enjoy the odd game of course, but the main attraction for the Amiga to me was the groundbreaking operating system.
I know I'm a bit late 😅, but I'm really curious about your gaming side since you're doing awesome console videos too. What is your gaming background, did you play only Amiga back in the day or it was more of snes/megadrive and later Playstation ? What about pc gaming? Long, I know, but you can do it 😂
I do realise this is an old video but this posting made my day.
Thank you for your time and I must admit this video made me feel all warm inside, I had an Amiga a500 and gave it an upgrade because I NEEDED IT! I installed an upgrade through the underside trapdoor, "mammoth 4mb and a 020 FPU and it was fantastic!) I could play VIRUS and other taxing games at the speed originally intended!
PS could you give me a link to a workbench 3.9 that has no malware please as I am now emulating the Beloved AMIGA:)
PPS I still play Robocod AGA and Z/X out on this machine.
LONG LIVE THE KING/AMIGA:)
I had an Amiga 1200 for xmas 1992. Favourite computer ever i really do miss not been able to play on it now, i had so many games for it.
Was really good to see an Antique still in running order. I still have a couple of A500's lying around somewhere, i have no Idea if any of them still live. I still have the SCSI hard drive that mounts on the side too. Was the most advanced computer of it's time most certainly. I certainly would like to know how to put game images on that hard drive, it was a 500 Meg which was big in the day for an amiga. Those old SCSI drives were very well made, it probably still works. Thanks again for a historical run down on A1200 beast. I always wanted one at the time.
Hello. Im a former amiga 1200 owner and darlo resident (county durham my friend :-) now living in Christchurch, NZ. Love your videos and am now so nostalgic for my old machine im going to get amiga forever.
The yellowing is sped up by sunlight, but the direct cause is an incorrectly mixed batch of plastic that contains more starch than recommended. This usually results in the yellowing of plastic, which can be reversed by the application of bleaching chemicals. There's actually a hugely rare selection of about 300 Super Nintendos that turned green over time, but there are only a few still in existence.
Topsoft, I remember those guys well in Stockton, they were down the little back alley, their shop was like a little Aladdins Cave, Steve and Alex in there were great guys. They moved round the corner early 90's into a bigger shop on the corner and then into the shopping center.
I frequented their shop, bought stuff virtually every week on my C64 from them.
Currently have an Amiga 600 with Easy ADF and the PCMCIA CF adapter, should be getting a 1200 in the next few weeks so will finally be able to experience the AGA games as back in the 80's & 90's I was an A500 user.
Great to have your voice as a waveform in real time!
Absolutely the best Amiga 1200 review on you tube! 10 out of 10 sir! Your inspiring me to get my a1200 in shape. Nice to see you back again Dan!
Only had an A500+ but seeing this stuff again really brings back great memories. First gaming machine/home computer, from when I was about 6 years old. Loved it and can't forget those fantastic games.
Thank you for your nice review. I cannot help wondering why you keep the picture streched in 16:9, can't you set your TV to 4:3?
I had a sweet A1200 with a 64MB expansion board. It was a neat machine. Did a lot of graphics and animation with it. Years ahead of anything else at the time.
Belting video there fella. Definitely brought back some memories of the good old days!
Can still remember the day I brought my a1200, bloody thing had a duff floppy disc drive lol, replacement unit worked like a charm and I still have my Amiga 1200 with a Blizzard 1260 accelerator stored away in mint condition.
Hello Dan,
I just wanted to take the time to say thank you for your videos. As a computer user here in America, Amigas were hard to come by. I am fairly sure we are about the same age, so when you were using such a mind blowing computer in 1992, I was still using a Commodore 64! There wasn't much of a hacker scene in the states at the time.
The Amiga world is one that we really missed out on. Thank you, and you have a new American subscriber. :)
Brilliant :D The Amiga always pulls you back!
Had the Amiga 500 back in the day with a full 1MB and battery back up clock! Oh yeah!!!! Really tempted to buy an A1200.
Best computer I ever owned. I did all my university coursework on a 1200 (back in 91-94). And played every game ever written (well, a few!) AND made music on it with Protracker which I'd learned to use on my old 500 some years before.
Glad you enjoyed the trip down memory lane :)
The A1200 was indeed the best computer ever made, hands down!
I was late to the Commodore party, parents couldn't afford to buy me the C64 when I was a kid, they got me the Sharp MZ-700, dear oh dear, the only graphics capabilities on that thing was the funky characters printed on the side of the keys and beeps for sound lol
Wasn't until 1988 when I used some of my college fund to buy the C64, can still remember to this day walking into Tandy computers and buying the C64 for £150.
Absolutely loved the C64, it was such a huge step up from that sharp mz computer, eventually got myself a 1541 disc drive and the action replay mk6 cartridge which I used to make copies of all my games from tape to disc, boy did that transfer how awesome the C64 was to use, games loading in just a few seconds.
Think it was around 1992/3 when I brought an Amiga 600, the A1200 was out at the time but I couldn't afford that at the time so opted for the A600, around 1994 I got the A1200 race & chase pack and sold the A600 to my brother. Had many years of joy using the A1200, didn't take me long to get a hdd to use & wanting more power I used two Blizzard accelerators, the 1230 & then the 1260, that 060 was a speed demon compared to the standard 68020!
Still got all my amiga gear stored in the loft, if I had the space I'd have the A1200 all setup & running although I'd have to get the board re-capped to be safe as I wouldn't want those things exploding & damaging the board.
ahhh id love an Amiga 1200 never experienced one but looks amazing - Keep up all the hard work on the videos!
I remember walking into a computer shop to get some commodore 64 games and seeing an Amiga500 playing mods in ProTracker. My parents got me the A1200 for Christmas a few years later. I also used Wordsworth for my college work and D-paint. I still own it and recently set it back up at work to play around with at lunch time
Good to see you back Dan! Awesome videos!
Thanks for that, keep us updated with your A1200 too :)
I just realised, this video is almost 10 years old now itself. As if the 1200 review wasn't making me feel old already!
Nice .. I started running a bbs on a comadore 64 with a 300 baud modem when I was 15 then ran one on a 128 machine . Then moved to an amiga and ran a bbs also was part of fidonet and had 4 scsi drives on my 500 machine .. Was alot of fun . I upgraded the chips in the 500 some had to solider etc .. newer kick start fater angus etc . upgraded it to 2 meg of chip ram and had a side car with 4 meg of ram and a 100 meg hd daisy chained 3 more drives off of that 500 was 2000$ can at the time and 4 meg of ram and the 100 meg hd was 1000$ can
Those damn good amigas, revolutionary and light years ahead of the competition. Nothing quite beats Amiga for innovation. Perfection housed in a keyboard form factor. Unbeatable!
I had one shortly after launch. Actually bought the Amiga 600 at first after having an Atari STe for few years. Realised the Amiga 600 was not much of an upgrade to that instantly and also missed the numeric pad. So back to Dixons as it was then and returned the 600 and begged my mother to pay extra for 1200.
It was a nice machine but not enough software pushed it. Ended up selling to a mate of mine who played championship manager on it exclusively!
Wish I’d kept having seen all the homebrew support it ended up with
It was my first Amiga model and it is still on my desk. Thanks for the interesting video.
My old A1200 still boots, as far as I know. And I had it on the internet back in 2001 or so. PCMCIA adapter worked a treat. I moved it into an old 2000 HD box as I was hacking away at mine as well. Got to add the CD drive quite easily then. :-) Maybe I could make a vid of it sometime and show the old original 2000 power supply running it. :-)
Brian Bagnall's Amiga book is still in the works!!! Hopefully it will get there sooner or later...especially as many people pre-ordered.
I have been a lucky possessor of an A1200 since 1993. Never ever going to sell mine. A glorious machine. Long live Commodore!
Can you do a video on all the ad-ons you've done to your 1200, why and where to get them from?
Sorry I'm so late seeing this video. Enjoyed the look round inside the A1200. Thanks.
I loved my Amiga 1200, I used it for everything from playing games to writing my college work. I even used Cross Dos to port my pascal programs from the Amiga to PC DOS/Turbo Pascal. Those were the days!
Wow, where did you get your time machine from then, as the A1200 wasn't released until late 1992.
Slight correction: HAM8 lets you use 262,144 colors out of 16M colors. :)
I still have my 1989 Amiga 500 with Workbench (the orange disk, 1.3). Great music from Jaguar XJ220! Good old days! Congrats!
Brilliant news, hope you enjoy MOS, it's a sweet OS :)
I owned a A1200 , and it was a great time. My first computer graphics hardware.
Will do!
Yeah I hope the second edition of the book does eventually come out, it's 2 years late now though and keeps getting pushed back :( Actually the A500 is the ONLY Amiga that Commodore actually released a CDROM drive for, so you're in luck there, it's called the Amiga A570, it slots on the side and will allow you to run pretty much all CDTV titles.
Do you get proper aspect ratio with that non-4:3 monitor? GUI as well as programs/games? Also, is the video signal being converted to digital from analog, or is it digital all the way?
Hi, there Dan back of the day in 1987 here in Australia when the Amiga 500 first come out. It cost the same as a commodore 64 with the 1541 floppy disk drive. Where is the idea of that?
Reading "A Company on the Edge" now. Very interesting book - looking forward to the follow up book detailing the Amiga era.
The book was cancelled a year ago :(
You have a really neat Amiga 1200 system there! Have you considered putting an 060 in it to give it even more speed? I had a PPC towered up A1200 which sadly died and I had to leave it behind when I emigrated. But hoping to pick up another A1200 when I come back to the UK at Christmas and build it up a bit. The DVI adapter looks great, does it make pal low res games look blocky though on a monitor?
Absolutely love your videos!
Recently bought a Mac mini G4 and installed MorphOS thanks to you.
Hi what a great video!! I pulled my original 1200 from the loft this week but sadly the internal HD and floppy were toast, I have ordered a new floppy from amigakit and an RGB to scart cable, PCMCIA C flash card and a 68020 128MB accelerator (I used to have a blizzard board back in the day but sold it) I got my HD replaced with a CF card, awesome to be playing BIP and sensible soccer again, lots of it wont work till I get the ram card but its enough to warm the cockles, such a great bit of kit.
What is the yellow wire coming from your Indivision Mk2 CR to the right corner of the motherboard?
Is it some kind of grounding?
Yeah it's a grounding cable
I'm leaning more towards uv light/sunlight. To back this up, I have a white monitor, the side of it that faces the window has yellowed, the rest has not. I keep my A1200 covered up when not using it and it's still as white as the day I bought it, I have an A600 that I left uncovered and that has gone yellow.
Ahh nostalgy
I love Amiga, me personally to this day and beyond will always be the best computer in the world, none of this firmware update crap, you turn on your Amiga and just play, how simple is that. I have 2 mint condition A500's and plus a few new and sealed items I will never open like the A520 modulator still sealed in box plus a sealed box tank mouse and more. I have a brand new never used A1200 coming next week which I will preserve as I will get another A1200 to use and upgrade etc.
Only Amiga !
Cool video, it's great to see these machines still being used & developed. I couldn't afford an A1200 when they came out back in '92. Back then I was still using a Commodore 64. I eventually got an A1200 off ebay about 3 years ago & have upgraded it over the past couple of years. I'm also interested in the newer Amiga OS & plan to get a Mac Mini G4 to try out MorphOS. I did give Icaros a try but couldn't install it as didn't seem recognise my Apple keyboard or USB mouse :(
the machine that warms our heart is definitly the amiga 500 !
I want that machine!!! Great review btw.
A1200 Escom EPIC! :) Greetings from Poland :)
i've been meaning to get an amiga again i had a 600 from new, but i can't remember do games work on the 500/+ , 600/+ 1200? or are there limits to which games run on which?
Brilliant stuff Dan and as informative as ever! I'm bizarrely hooked on the A600 when it comes to nostalgia (I love the A500 but I was an ST guy in the early days) but quite clearly the A1200 is the definitive model of Amiga to own.......i'll definitely pitch up with one eventually though :)
Dan! Big Hey all the way from Saudi Arabia
Thank you, I recently bought an Amiga 1200 based on you recommendation.
Im very happy with it, but the problem is that I really want to add an accelerator. I want to play whdloads and some powerful (e.g Doom or Quake) games as well. Any recommendations?
Thanks again
Actually the review starts about 3 mins earlier at 5:10 if you want the background on the A1200 :)
Just came across this, pretty old video and a good one... and by now there's even more hardware for the Amiga 1200! And you can have a great WHDLoad setup like this, but just in case anyone who sees this doesn't know - you don't have to play all of them stretched... :)
If this helps to resolve the issue the reason cases on old computer go yellow is because of the fire retardant chemicals on the plastics...not the plastics themselves. It can be reversed. It was discussed pretty heavily on the "Atari-Forum". Retrobright I think was the most effective solution used which involves removing the chemicals off the plastics without damaging the plastics themselves.
hi Dan, new subscriber great channel BTW. could you tell me if any particular variant is more desirable? also I've got the chance to buy an escom but it doesn't have hd at the end of the sticker. are they are good machine?
thanks
Hi I have a Question which joystick did you use in this Video for the amiga? Is it a modded Competion Pro? It clicks relly nice, it might have very good microswitches? because on the old original Competition Pro joysticks the microswitches were bad back in the day. When you have used it for a certain of time the buttons fail to respond. It would be nice if you could tell me which joystick do you use or any tips to reactive my old Competition Pro joysticks! thanks
As someone who only really uses amiga for gaming, Would you recommend buying one of these to play amiga games? or does it feel very similar to playing the emulators we have readily available such as winuae on pc?
Great review & sweet A1200HD.
Dan do u know about the Amiga 1200 magic pack from escom cloanto and amiga technologies? the rom for it where can i download it from? the ks rom revision 45.064?
You have the ultimate Amiga setup.
I am an original C64 and A500 user from the old days (1985-1994). I switch to PCs after that. I have an Amiga 2000 and 1200 that I just won on Ebay. I want to add the Indivision ECS and AGA (respectively) to the two Amiga systems. But, I am curious, why did you have your A1200 hooked up via your SCART connector AND the Indivision output to a DVI cable? Are both required for different screen modes? I was under the assumption the Indivision would output all screen modes.
The Amiga 1200 was a great computer, especially when you put an expansion board in the back. I loved mine as a kid, a faced a crossroads decision to keep it and learn to program in AmigaE (based on C I believe) or sell it and get a guitar. I chose the latter. Got more girls that way. ;-)
When i had my 1200, i was dialing up BBS everyday.
Then suddenly one day, the BBS changed it's network... to something called the internet.
I was greeted with a screen about being welcome to the internet etc etc, and the flashing cursor. I had no f****** clue what was happening, and gave up on computers until 1995. So i had 2 iconic scenarios in duality, a unique home computer and the introduction of the internet.
As a kid growing up with a Commodore 64, I always wanted an Amiga! My family ended up getting a 286 and 386 PC in 1989 instead, and they were nice in their own way, but I still loved Amigas, and got a used 500 several years later, although sadly I don't have room to set it up at the moment. Is there any way to set up a Compact Flash card like that on a 500, or do you really need a 600 or 1200?
I know that this is a vert old video, but if you still have troubles with cable management I recommend buying velcro cable ties from places like eBay and AliExpress. They are dirt cheap and work very well, especially for what you pay for them.
You can connect direct to DVI, or change it for HDMI or VGA yeah.
Another thought, I have an A3000 but no one mentions what you can do with these nowadays, and there does not seem to be any mods available
Fair question, main reason was they were owned by an American parent company who dragged them down. Commodore in the UK and Germany were very profitable, but the parent company in America wasn't. Sadly bad management at head office pulled the whole company down and the Amiga with it in 1994.
Hey I noticed you used a 10 MB/s CF card. Was that the fastest disk I/O speed A1200 was capable of? Has anybody done benchmarks how much I/O speed one could get from the on-board IDE?
this was truly a brilliant piece of machinery
Ah the ZIP STICK! I thought I was alone. After destroying pretty much every QuickShot joystick ever sold, I ended up with a Zip Stick and found it BULLET PROOF! Deserved more exposure than it got at the time IMHO.
Got it 3 times returned as i finally had a working product.
From Keybord errors do drive issues. But then it was great playing Wincommander and the Alien Breed Special Version on it. :)
It was funny the Amiga version aka port of wing commander look better,and played better then the pc version of course ,but got a d- rating, and yet the pc version got a A+rating Go figure..
it boots up after 39 seconds. it looks for a floppy or hard disc at boot time? thanks.
Thanks!!! Any suggested store. where to start the Amiga world?
Made me even more want to get a 1200 again. I'm from Darlington, I remember Topsoft, although the shop in Clark's Yard was Chips. Lots of Amiga machines and addons on Ebay. Good prices too. I like my PC, but I think I had more fun owning an Amiga !.