Amiga HD additions

[J T]

Especially as A500s are fairly easy to find, and cheap as chips on fleaBay.

[TiredOfLife]

There is still a fair bit of software for 3.9 and below being developed if you wanted to use your machine for something other than games.

[toomanymikes]

You mention using the amiga apart from games - what sort of things? I use my PC for 3D, image editing and CAD - is there anything like this?

[TiredOfLife]

Yes
Image editing software is still being developed at the moment by various people.
Image FX is supposed to be very good.
I have 1.5 but I think it's up to 4.5 now.

Not sure how up to date the CAD stuff is.
A search on Aminet should help with this and any other software you maybe interested in.

I use mine for the internet, email, chatting, radio, shopping etc.
Use it to listen to mp3 and have photos stored as well.
I have a fair few demos I like to watch as well.
Gaming also.

[toomanymikes]

How does it compare with a PC for the net and the photo editing? In terms of price too - is it expensive to mod the machine into something that can rival a pc? If i have to sell a lung i dont think my GF will be too happy!

[Stephen Coates]

For web pages it is great if you don't want pages that use CSS and similar things render properly. It is great for IRC though. WookieChat is a nice IRC client, although it, like IBrowse (for web pages) seems to lack simple copy and paste functions which gets really annoying.

If I remember correctly, PhotoGenics is a photo editing programme, which I would assume does alot of photo editing things. I have nver used it though so can;t comment on it.

I did read something about a photo organisation programme in a magazine, that is supposed to be like Apple's iPhoto, but i can't remember what it was called. It is OS4/PPC only though.

What do you mean by rival a PC? If you mean rival the Megahertz or processor cores then it won't, but I'm sure you would be able to do alot of nice things with an amiga which has a PPC and an 060, and even faster on an AmigaOne, which has a G3 or a G4 processor. Does anyone know how fast OS4's 68k emulation is compared to a real 68k?

Although you might be best off waiting a while before getting an AmigaOne and OS4, just in the event that all this legal stuff between Amiga and Hyperion gets nasty. Personally, I think the courts should just bang Amiga and Hyperion's heads together and tell them to get on nicely. After all, OS4, regardless of how illegal it might be looks like a very good OS, and Amiga should appreciate that.

At the moment you would probably be best off just getting an A1200 with a Blizard 1230 (for a 68030 processor) or a 1260 (for a 68060) and moving up to a PPC later, like I am (I currently have an 030). While this won't do as much as the PPC, it is MUCH nicer than the built in 020.

[Harrison]

As Steve mentioned Photogenics is a nice Amiga graphics package that can do a lot and is similar in function to older version of Adobe Photoshop. I used version 2 on my A4000 with a 68030 CPU and 18MB of ram and it was a bit slow, but usable. With more ram it would have been faster, but I think for good photo editing on the Amiga you need to consider a dedicated 24-bit graphics card.

Building an A1200 tower conversion and adding a breakout expansion board would allow the addition of a PC graphics card which would then open up the Amiga to true 24-bit graphics screenmodes that run much faster for things like graphics applications.

Also to do anything like this the fastest accelerator you can afford is needed. A Blizzard 1230 is really the minimum to consider. Don't go for any accelerator with a 68040 CPU in it as they need a lot of power and generate a lot of heat. The 68060 in contrast is faster, more compatible with anything that would run on the slower 030 CPU and runs cooler, so if you could afford an accelerator with the 68060 CPU then that is the one to get, otherwise get the 68030 first.

As Steve also mentioned, Web browsers on the Amiga are a bit out of date compared to current standards on the PC and Mac. iBrowse was recently updated and does now do a better job of rendering pages using CSS and Javascript, but it still lags behind current standards so many pages will not quite look as they were intended. It is usable though.

Any alternative route also suggested by Steve is the Amiga One. This is the next generation of Amiga developed around the PPC G3 and G4 CPUs. It is not backwardly compatible with classic Amigas so cannot run games from the original Amiga. Instead it uses a new hardware design and is designed for use with the latest version of Workbench, now known as Amiga OS 4. This is much more powerful and would give you power more equal to a PC. But as Steve also mentioned there are current legal issues between the developers of OS4 and the company that own the original copyrights to Workbench. So it could be worth holding off until we know the outcome of this before deciding on buying into the Amiga One.

The other advantage of the Amiga One reference design is that the computer is a PPC computer so can run versions of Linux compiled for it. This is therefore another way to gain access to anything the Amiga cannot currently do as it opens up access to Linux versions of graphics packages such as GIMP and web browsers such as Firefox 2.

The alternative option could be to build an A1200 tower conversion and add a dual accelerator card that comes with a 68060 and a PPC processor on the same card. This gives the best of both worlds as it allows the running of all software.

Personally if I were in your shoes I would begin by getting an A1200 with Kickstart 3.1 roms, a 68030 accelerator card with some fast ram fitted, an internal Harddrive and a PCMCIA network adaptor so you can access a network and broadband on it. This could be achieved for less than £200.

Then you could upgrade it later as needed.

Alternatively you could go straight for a tower conversion. Parts you would need to create a full and very nice A1200 tower would include:

1. DBox 1200 (the actual tower conversion kit)
2. A1200 motherboard with KS 3.1 roms (Amiga stores sell these)
3. PC keyboard adaptor (so you can connect any PC keyboard up)
4. Buffered IDE interface (this converts the standard A1200 HD IDE interface into one that can take up to 4 devices so you can then connect a cd/dvd drive as well as hd).
5. harddrive (could use cheaper 3.5" HDs as it's in a tower)
6. PCI breakout board (so you can then use cheaper PC PCI cards)
7. Voodoo 3 PCI graphics card
8. PCI ethernet card
9. CD/DVD drive.
10. floppy drive.
11. Accelerator card (Blizzard 1230 or better)

And you can also add other compatible PCI sound cards to give better audio within Workbench.

Have I missed anything out of that list Steve?