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Best first Amiga?

T

Tupin

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2009
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436
Location
St. Louis, MO
Okay, so I've already put my foot into the ring of 16-bit computing with an Atari ST 1040STF, but I noticed that games are a lot better on the Amiga.

Now, I got the ST for $50, but I never have seen an Amiga go for that, even a 500. I did have someone contact me after I put a wanted ad on Craigslist saying that they wanted to sell their Amiga 500. They have yet to respond, but what should I look for in the lot they are offering? Should I wait for a machine like a 1000, 1200, or 600? Would it be worth it to wait for an Amiga with a PCMCIA slot?
 
The vast majority of games will run an a simple A500 with 1MB expansion. An external floppy will make life easier. That is what I started with and grew from there as I got into it more.
To transfer games to floppy you will need a null modem cable and a PC.
 
The A500 is also the easiest to obtain, although I've seen a lot of good deals for Amiga 2000's lately. I have both, love 'em, and now I'm on the lookout for a A600 or A1200.

You may want to find yourself an A590 hard drive, as well. Floppies are annoying.
 
If it's specifically games you want it for, an A500 would definitely be the most compatible option, especially one with the original chipset and 1.3 ROMs. The later A500+ has the enhanced chipset and 2.0 ROMs and therefore has trouble running some titles. The A600 is basically an A500+ in a smaller case with the numeric keypad chopped off (bad news if the games you want to play require it!) but you get a PCMCIA port, an optional internal hard disk (or these days a CF card with an adapter) and built in composite video and TV modulator. I wouldn't recommend going for an A1000 unless it has a memory upgrade; the basic model came with only 256KB.

The A1200 is also a very nice all-round machine and will run most of the older games as well as the newest AGA-only titles. It has the same extras as the A600 but also a full keyboard and a much more useful expansion port which will take accelerators and gobs of memory if you're into that kind of thing.

One thing to look out for with all Amigas is that they output 15KHz video which most VGA monitors can't handle. They also use an odd 23-pin sub-D connector for which you need a specific cable. Composite video isn't too bad for games though as they don't generally use the higher resolutions.
 
It should also be noted the Amiga 1000 was the very first Amiga: 256K RAM, Kickstart 1.0 or 1.1, serial and parallel ports gender changed etc. While number-wise it looks like a better model than the 500, in practise it is the other way around. You get a detachable keyboard, but then again you could look for a cheap Amiga 2000 if you aim for that.

I think the rough order of Amigas was something like this, not considering odd models such as the 1500, 2500, CDTV etc:
Amiga 1000, 2000, 500, 3000, 500+, 600, 4000, 1200

Of course that is not an order of how powerful each model was, just the order they were released.
 
Ah, that is right, the weird video output and only monochrome composite. I have RGB monitors from the era such as one for an Apple IIGS and one for my ST, could these be adapted to work with an Amiga? I've seen an ST-Amiga monitor adapter, but not the other way around...
 
There are several flicker fixers that you can install that will give you vga output also. These pop up on fleabay from time to time, or you can check on amigakit. Great provider for just about everything Amiga. There's also vesalia in Germany that has quite a bit.

The 500 is probably the best all around Amiga out there. It can be upgraded to faster processors and a goodly amount of memory. Only bad thing is there are no zorro slots which can somewhat limit expansion. Then again, if you're looking for the gaming experience, it's the 500 hands down.

Unless you want to go for small in which case I recommend the minimig. Just picked one of these little beauties up the other day. Whole danged thing is only 5" square! Uses ps/2 keyboard and mouse and has native vga output. Only bad thing about it is you have to have kickstart and all games in .adf format since it uses a SD card for the floppy drive.

The A1000 was a nicer design with the separate keyboard, but major problem was the kickstart disk. Lose that and your stuck.
 
I second the Amiga 500 with 512kb Ram expansion and external floppy drive. You can't beat it for compatibility with most games. While an A1200 can run v1.3-only games, I hate messing with Relo-Kick and the like. I much prefer just gaming regularly and easily on my A500, although as someone already said, the A590 hard drive certainly makes things easier...

Also, there is a single-slot Zorro-II expansion for the A500. It attaches to the expansion slot on the right side of the A500 - it's messy, but it works. Unfortunately the name of it escapes me at the moment...

@Mr.Amiga - thanks for the link regarding the S-Video adapter.. I might have to pick one of those up, especially if the output is much clearer than the composite video output that I normally get with my A520 adapter.
 
Tupin said:
Ah, that is right, the weird video output and only monochrome composite. I have RGB monitors from the era such as one for an Apple IIGS and one for my ST, could these be adapted to work with an Amiga? I've seen an ST-Amiga monitor adapter, but not the other way around...
Click to expand...

I dare say most contemporary RGB monitors can probably be made to work, given the correct cabling. Support for the 15KHz signal is the key thing here. The A600 and A1200 have colour composite video, BTW. I thought the composite from the A520 modulator was colour too, but I could be mistaken.

Re. hard drives, the A590 is OK but GVP made some really nice drives for the A500. They have a handy switch on the front to allow you to easily boot from floppy and can take up to 8MB of extra RAM using regular 30-pin or 72-pin SIMMs.

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They also made the awesome A530, which is similar but includes a 40MHz '030 accelerator.
 
Tupin, I'm not sure which fact you commented but already the first Amiga 1000 natively outputs RGB. However it is true the early Amigas only had a DB23 RGB plus a RCA for monochrome. I'm not sure about the 600, but the 1200 finally got composite in colour as well as RF output built into the unit. A bit strange that Commodore decided to not try to fit RF inside the Amiga 500, since the Commodore 64 had been having it for years. Commodore users would go back to the VIC-20 days to find a machine which requires an external RF modulator.
 
@cosam - Thanks for pointing out about the A500+. Come to think of it, I have a GVP A500+ decked out as well. Picked it up for $25 on eBay about 8-9 years ago, back when I was getting into the Amiga heavily. Never did use it, as I didn't have 2.04 KS installed in my 500 at that time. As I remember, my A500+ even had the bridgeboard installed within it... maybe it's time I pulled that system back out... :)
 
Correct. The built-in composite from a 1200 however is in colour. Not sure about the 600, but since it uses the same chipset as the 500+, I doubt you get colour from that one. Actually monochrome isn't so bad, as you can easily connect two screens to the same computer: a monochrome one on the direct RCA output and either a RGB monitor or something else via the A520 RF modulator. We used to run a dual screen setup in the computer club, nice way to let visitors have a peek when you play (multiplayer) games without everyone crowding around the screen.
 
You can get NUL Modem cable on ebay with both 9 pin and 25 pin ends on each side for next to nothing. I use Amiga Explorer via NUL-Modem and ethernet (you can pick either in the software setup) to move files around between PC and Amigas. If you use the the serial port all you need is a kickstart disk on the amiga side plus a blank 720K to download a small file to (works best with 2 floppies) and the PC side will send the file needed to complete the software setup to the amiga. You just have to make sure you have the same baud rate and other settings on both machines for it to work.

Best thing is to have an Amiga monitor because 80 column text using coax is bad on the eyes (but OK for games).
 
carlsson said:
Correct. The built-in composite from a 1200 however is in colour. Not sure about the 600, but since it uses the same chipset as the 500+, I doubt you get colour from that one. Actually monochrome isn't so bad, as you can easily connect two screens to the same computer: a monochrome one on the direct RCA output and either a RGB monitor or something else via the A520 RF modulator. We used to run a dual screen setup in the computer club, nice way to let visitors have a peek when you play (multiplayer) games without everyone crowding around the screen.
Click to expand...

The A500 composite output isn't monochrome - it's greyscale. Back when my 1084 monitor died, I thought the composite output would be useless because everybody said it was monochrome - which is just white + black, like a classic Mac. But I was relieved to find it was greyscale and not bad at all for Workbench - or even games if you really have to.

But of course, the s-video adapter I posted is a much, MUCH better way to go.
 
Unknown_K said:
You can get NUL Modem cable on ebay with both 9 pin and 25 pin ends on each side for next to nothing. I use Amiga Explorer via NUL-Modem and ethernet (you can pick either in the software setup) to move files around between PC and Amigas. If you use the the serial port all you need is a kickstart disk on the amiga side plus a blank 720K to download a small file to (works best with 2 floppies) and the PC side will send the file needed to complete the software setup to the amiga. You just have to make sure you have the same baud rate and other settings on both machines for it to work.

Best thing is to have an Amiga monitor because 80 column text using coax is bad on the eyes (but OK for games).
Click to expand...
I know the correct null modem cabling, but I need to use a USB-Serial adapter as this laptop only has USB ports.

What I ideally would like to do is take the Amiga, download the client onto the Amiga like you said, and then save the program onto the disk. Then I take the disk, load up the program on the Amiga side, insert a new 720K, then send the program over to the floppy drive on the Amiga to be written. Once it writes, then I will have a disk I can boot straight from the Amiga. This is how Amiga Explorer works, correct?

This kind of reminds me of ADTPro. That was easy to setup, but didn't work on my PC because ADTPro had problems with USB adapters. However, I have heard of Amiga Explorer working with setups similar to mine, so I should be good. :grin:
 
I'd love to have an A1200, but I'd pretty much have to import a PAL model from Europe, because the American NTSC version is so incredibly rare. I guess by the time it came out in 1992, Commodore didn't put any effort into marketing the A1200 in North America, because they knew that over here, the only remaining market share of any significance for the Amiga was to run Video Toaster and other specialized applications which required the room for internal expansion which the A1200 didn't have. In fact I don't think they ever sold the A500+ or A600 over here at all, so the only all-in-one Amiga most Americans have ever seen was the original A500.
 
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