Your dream Amiga?

[Harrison]

If you could design the best Amiga from existing Amiga models and third party hardware what specification would it be? Including Amiga model, expansion cards, OS, and any other hardware.

[J T]

I always wanted an A1200 with a decent sized HDD, an external drive (maybe a couple) a CD-ROM drive and a decent, sizable monitor to play on. I wasn't really too fussed about accelerator cards, I knew very little about them.

Easily pleased

[Merlin]

You guys need to see what Zetro, Smiley and Dambuster have done for the Amiga, such as fitting DVD-ROM drives to them and booting from Compact Flash cards, take a look on the English Amiga Board and Oldskool UK for what I am talking about, I nearly have all the parts to build my own A1200 Plus machine.

Merlin

[Harrison]

We had a discussion a while back regarding using flash cards instead of an HD, and I think it was Teho who is using such a method on the A600. From what I have read though there are a few downsides to using a flash card compared to a real HD on the Amiga. Things such as compatibility with some software and games and the transfer speed.

I've always wanted to do a major A1200 to tower conversion project myself, upgrading the system with PPC and PCI/Zorro breakout board, but as time has gone on I now find myself mainly using Amiga software via emulation and leaving the actual hardware behind. Don't get me wrong, I do still love the actual Amiga hardware, but compared to emulation it is now more fiddly to get the variety of software running on the Amiga compared to just changing the settings in emulation.

Maybe if the new PPC Amiga actually reaches production I may once again take a direct interest in building a really good PPC Amiga.

[Merlin]

..... but as time has gone on I now find myself mainly using Amiga software via emulation and leaving the actual hardware behind. Don't get me wrong, I do still love the actual Amiga hardware, but compared to emulation it is now more fiddly to get the variety of software running on the Amiga compared to just changing the settings in emulation......

Heresy!

I cannot believe that you would rather muck about with WinUAE than get your hands on the real deal....admittedly, it is easier to run setups you could never afford under WinUAE (I could never afford an A1200 at the time, let alone the upgrades), however, the scene is still alive with Amiga people, otherwise this board would not exist and we would all be slaves to boards created by Cloanto and the like.

I returned to the scene because of Amiga Forever by Cloanto and it made me want to get involved again, not because of rose-tinted glasses, but because I am a bit sick of Windows wanting to do everything for me, I missed the old days of writing startup-sequences and getting my hands dirty in the CLI.

Besides, there are some cracking games on the Miggy that just don't run too well in WinUAE, even on my 3.2 Ghz, 1 Gig memory PC.

There, that's my tuppence worth.

Merlin

[AlexJ]

however, the scene is still alive with Amiga people, otherwise this board would not exist and we would all be slaves to boards created by Cloanto and the like.

True, but also there's a significant proportion who remember the games and just want to give them a go again.

Besides, there are some cracking games on the Miggy that just don't run too well in WinUAE, even on my 3.2 Ghz, 1 Gig memory PC.

There's a few ones that are hard to configure, and a few with only bad cracks but nearly everything I wanted to play again, and everything I wanted to try has worked. WinUAE can shorten the loading time, makes disk swapping easier etc. Sure it's great to fire up the miggy every now and again, have a go at a few games on it with the real disk drive noises, proper anticipation while it loads etc. for nostalgia but I find that really WinUAE does the job better for actually playing the games.

[Harrison]

..... but as time has gone on I now find myself mainly using Amiga software via emulation and leaving the actual hardware behind. Don't get me wrong, I do still love the actual Amiga hardware, but compared to emulation it is now more fiddly to get the variety of software running on the Amiga compared to just changing the settings in emulation......

Heresy!

I cannot believe that you would rather muck about with WinUAE than get your hands on the real deal....admittedly, it is easier to run setups you could never afford under WinUAE (I could never afford an A1200 at the time, let alone the upgrades), however, the scene is still alive with Amiga people, otherwise this board would not exist and we would all be slaves to boards created by Cloanto and the like.

I returned to the scene because of Amiga Forever by Cloanto and it made me want to get involved again, not because of rose-tinted glasses, but because I am a bit sick of Windows wanting to do everything for me, I missed the old days of writing startup-sequences and getting my hands dirty in the CLI.

Besides, there are some cracking games on the Miggy that just don't run too well in WinUAE, even on my 3.2 Ghz, 1 Gig memory PC.

There, that's my tuppence worth.

Merlin

Don't get me wrong, I own a lot of real Amigas (2x A500, A500+, A600, 2x A1200, A4000, CD32) and do run them often. I used to have them all setup in the spare room and used them a lot, but they do take up a lot of room so are now packed away when not in use.

So if I just want to play one game, run something to take screenshots, or access a file for the site then I will use emulation. Also there were some Amiga games that I couldn't get to run on any of my real Amigas, but that I did get to run via emulation.

But, there will always be that sense when running anything via emulation that something you cannot quite place is missing compared to a real Amiga.