Alicia 1200 Amiga ITX Motherboard

Alicia 1200 Amiga ITX Motherboard

The Alicia 1200 is an Amiga A1200 motherboard reimagined using the ITX form factor or is also known as Mini-ITX. This form factor is direct from the PC world which means there are many case options available.

The Alicia 1200 ITX motherboard provides direct access to the same ports available on the Amiga A1200 on the back of the board but also includes a DIN Keyboard and DIN Mouse ports: Below is a list of ports available on the Alicia 1200.

External Ports:

• 1 x DB9 Joystick port
• 1 x DB15 RGB Video port
• 1 x VGA Port (15Khz only)
• 2 x Phono for left and right audio
• 1 x DB9 Serial Port
• 1 x Parallel Port
• 1 x Floppy Drive via internal header
• 1 x PS/2 connection for PC-keyboard or A4000-keyboard. (Selectable with just one DIL switch)
• 1 x PS/2 Connection for PC-Mouse with auto-switch between mouse and joystick. Multi-button and
• scroll wheel support.

Internal Ports:

• Standard 44-pin IDE Socket
• 22-pin Clock Port
• A dedicated Digital/Analogue Video expansion Port (VP2) (provides for flexible future video upgrades)
• Tornado V2 offers an 120-pin expansion bus for slim yet very powerful AGA systems.
• PCMCIA with angled adaptor
• Slim High Quality Adapter offering card edge support (for Amiga accelerators like PiStorm32, TF1232, ACA 1234)

Combine this with an ITX case and PSU, you will have an expandable Amiga A1200 within an ITX form factor.


What is the Tornado V2 port?

Tornado is an innovative 120-pin expansion bus containing all important signals needed to expand the system with everything from Powerful Processors with RAM and IDE, RTG Graphics adapters or Network cards.

This is not cheap. RetroPassion is selling a fully built board for an eye watering 699.99 Pounds Inc. VAT. Ouch!

https://www.retropassion.co.uk/produ...therboard-itx/

Forgetting the very high price I think they completely missed the point of creating and releasing a reimagined A1200 motherboard these days. This has a VGA Port in addition to the standard SB15 Amiga Video port, but they only support 15Hz so you still have to use an old Amiga monitor or add your own a scandoubler. At this price they could easily have build a scandoubler into the motherboard. Maybe they are going to add on for the expansion port, but why? Also a standard IDE port. Again at this price and in today's market imagine if it instead supported a slower M2 HDD.

I get the idea of being able to use the chips from your original A1200 to create a new ITX form factor A1200. It's a nice idea, and you can also use your existing expansion cards, but not at this price. For this price I would be expecting a much faster preinstalled CPU (030 world be ideal), support for direct video output via HDMI and support for more modern storage solutions.

They also make a replacement reimagined standard shape A1200 motherboard for ?750 so also a really high price. And also similar replacements for the A500 and A600. At these prices this is becoming an exclusive club.

The price made me cry and laugh at the same time.
The A1200 NG has a lower price. That one is to expensive.

Way too expensive. I'm not sure who it is really aimed at or who would choose to buy this over getting a real A1200 motherboard recapped and refurbished for far less money.

I suppose the difference is that the A1200NG is emulating an Amiga using an OrangePi, whereas this is using original real Amiga chips to provide new original Amiga hardware in a new ITX form factor. The limited production run would greatly increases PCB manufacture costs, but I still don't really get the point. I suppose as it's got a fully compatible A1200 expansion port and you can use original A1200 accelerators and GPUs, if you did own these but not a working A1200 it might be tempting. But still they should have added an onboard scandoubler with an HDMI output as that would have solved the most frustrating issue using old systems these days.