Newbie help

[1980-20..]

Just signed up to classic amiga and like it so far very nice site. So the reason im here is that i never actualy owned an amiga but always wanted one, to the extent that i lied to my mates about geting one when i was a kid and they all lent me games to play on it when it arived. Needless to say it never arived and i had to do some backpedaling to get out of an awkward possition. Anyway i decided a few days ago to search through ebay and see what was there and bidded on a few items, nothing serios and lost out to higher bidders. My knowledge of the amiga is limited to games and the names of some of the systems but thats about it so any help to point me in the right direction would very much appreciated.

Ill probably only be using as a games system to start off with and im not very technicaly minded so small words is probably best thanks again and sorry if this is posted in wrong place.:D

[Harrison]

Hi and welcome :thumbs:

The best Amiga model you should buy is the A1200. This has the most possibilities for gaming and is ideal if you later wish to take it further into more serious Amiga software.

The A1200 is also one of the most supported and expandable Amigas.

When looking for an A1200 the price you should expect to pay for a basic standard A1200 is about £40. But you would expect to pay more if it includes other things like extra ram installed (called fast ram), or a faster central processor and ram (called an accelerator). Extra included boxed games and other software will not however increase the price much.

As a basic A1200 without any extra hardware upgrades you need to load games from floppy disk. This works fine as most games were designed to be played this way. Make sure you get a joystick with the Amiga though as most games need one. The competition Pro or ZipStik are two of the best sticks if you can find one.

However if you wanted to get the most out of an A1200 there are loads of additional hardware upgrades you can add. An internal harddrive is one of the best upgrades as you can then install games onto it and not need to load them from floppy disk. And using a program called WHDLoad even floppy disk only games can be installed to harddrive. Something we can help you with if you wish to look into this later.

[1980-20..]

thanks for that harrison much apreciated.

[Harrison]

Forgot to mention. Have a look at http://www.amibay.com

It is our sister site and designed as a fee free alternative to ebay, and without the inflated prices as there is no bidding. Just stated buy it now prices.

Just post a wanted advert on the site for an Amiga and I'm sure someone will be able to help.

[Puni/Void]

Just signed up to classic amiga and like it so far very nice site. So the reason im here is that i never actualy owned an amiga but always wanted one, to the extent that i lied to my mates about geting one when i was a kid and they all lent me games to play on it when it arived. Needless to say it never arived and i had to do some backpedaling to get out of an awkward possition. Anyway i decided a few days ago to search through ebay and see what was there and bidded on a few items, nothing serios and lost out to higher bidders. My knowledge of the amiga is limited to games and the names of some of the systems but thats about it so any help to point me in the right direction would very much appreciated.

Ill probably only be using as a games system to start off with and im not very technicaly minded so small words is probably best thanks again and sorry if this is posted in wrong place.:D

Hi and welcome to the forum! :)

As Harrison wrote, the Amiga 1200 is a great choice. Be sure to get a harddrive for it, along with some extra memory. It's well worth the extra cash. You'll get much more out of the machine that way.

Amibay is the best alternative to get Amiga hardware (and software) at fair prices. It's safe as well, as most members are dedicated retro-enthusiasts. I've purchased several items from sellers on the site and everything has been of fine quality.

If you want to buy something from a store, Amigakit (http://www.amigakit.co.uk) and Vesalia are your best bets. These shops sells both new and refurbished hardware. You can even get a complete Amiga 1200 system at Amigakit, which you can customize yourself!

[1980-20..]

Thanks for the amibay and amigakit tips ive checked them both out, nothing much happening on amibay but will keep an eye on it. Think ill try and get the best system i can with hardrive etc but this means my budgeting is slightly out so will have to raise some more funds first.
:)

[Buleste]

Another alternative (albeit a little more expensive) is retro gaming world (http://www.retrogamingworld.co.uk) where you can get all sorts of retro hardware.

[1980-20..]

retro gaming worlds site v nice made me tempted to buy other stuff though.:p

[Harrison]

:lol: When you start to look at retro hardware it does indeed become very tempting to want to buy more and more. Especially when you see loads of different systems and hardware that you couldn't afford back at the time. Or that you sold and regret getting rid of.

Have you also considered emulation? For the Amiga look at WinUAE. It can look a bit complicated to begin with, but has an easy to use quick start section. And it's completely free to download, and most games and other software can be found at many places (we can point you in the right direction).

[Buleste]

retro gaming worlds site v nice made me tempted to buy other stuff though.:p

It should come with a wallet health warning.;)

[1980-20..]

Yeah i hadnt considered emulation for the amiga only had internet access at home for a couple of months so im a bit behind the times. Ive been using spectrum emulator at mo but other than that im not realy up to speed with emulation and the legality of it an all that. My knowledge is very out of date im afraid. I played some games on mame many years ago and at the time roms were considered breach of copyright an all that and i remember commodore having a site where you could pay to download c64 games but thats as fer as my knowledge goes im afraid.:huh:

[Harrison]

There is still a bit of muddy water considering roms. However emulators themselves were deemed legally OK a while back after some court cases, so that isn't an issue. In the UK and most european countries at least.

As for roms, it is a bit harder. Many games and applications are now very old, and many of the original publishers and developers no longer exist, so tracking down who still owns the copyright is very hard. Many that can still be traced happily state their software can be offered for download and used for free home use and they are happy for this to take place. Of the people I've contacted I've not yet had any negative replies, with Revolution software allowing Classicamiga to host downloads of their two Amiga games, and even Future Publishing said they were OK with us scanning in their old Amiga magazine publications and making them into PDFs for download from the site. So it is generally all good.

A french site called planetemu.net is a great place to visit to find and download games in the emulator format ADF. You can even comvert these disk images back into real Amiga disks on an A1200 easily by copying the adf files to the Amiga and then using a program such as ADFBlitzer to convert and write is back to the disk.

The Amiga emulator WinUAE can be found at http:www.winuae.net and is well worth playing around with. You will however need a copy of the Amiga kickstart roms as a file to make the emulator work, and these are the only part of the Amiga that is still copyrighted and illegal to share online. However I will PM you with some info to help you with this part.