junglehunter Posted July 4, 2003 Share Posted July 4, 2003 I have the chance within the next few days to get a free Commodore Amiga system. Is it worth picking up? Any good titles? Thanks in advance! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raijin Z Posted July 4, 2003 Share Posted July 4, 2003 Make sure the boot disk and workbench disk are the same version, and aren't corrupted. I have three inert amigas thanks to that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeV0 Posted July 4, 2003 Share Posted July 4, 2003 Yeah its worth it for sure. As Raijin Z said, make sure you get at least the workbench for your amiga. Without it you wont be transferring many games from a PC. The pc's floppy controller will not read or write an amiga format disc so if you havent original amiga game/program discs you will need to transfer them from a pc serial port or get the amiga online. Which model amiga is it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ze_ro Posted July 4, 2003 Share Posted July 4, 2003 Hmm... good games... lets see if I can remember some: Turrican 1 & 2 Atomic Robokid Xenon 2 Super Frog (Platform game like Sonic) Alien Breed (In fact, any Team 17 game) Black Crypt Dungeon Master 1 & 2 Drakkhen Heimdall (never played it, but looks good) Ultima V Moonstone Chaos Engine Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge Pinball Dreams/Fantasies/Illusions James Pond 2: Operation Robocod Speedball Dune II Populous Worms SimCity Scorched Tanks Last Bronx ...and any Psygnosis game (Such as Shadow of the Beast, Killing Game Show, Blood Money, etc)... although they're some of the hardest games you'll ever play. A lot of point-n-click adventures were also released for the Amiga such as Secret of Monkey Island, Darkseed, Beneath a Steel Sky, etc. That should get you started... there's actually a whole buttload of great games for it, most of which never really succeeded on other platforms. Some other good news is that a lot of Genesis games made their way to the Amiga (I think Sega used the Amiga as their development platform). So look for titles like Altered Beast and Space Harrier. --Zero Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stein Posted July 4, 2003 Share Posted July 4, 2003 Can't say you'd be disappointed with it, I have 3 amigas myself, very cool stuff depending on what type of amiga you get will kind of determine the games you can play, some older games won't run on the newer computers and likewise, some newer games won't run on the old stuff... an amiga with a full meg of 'gfx' ram and a couple megs of 'fast' ram together with 2.x roms and an ecs chipset (you really want a hard drive and workbench installed too) will run probly the widest selection of games, of course no AGA games... a lot of AGA games are somewhat overated anyhow, most being produced after commodore found itself in such dire straights, lots of bad ports from older games with updated gfx pallete the worst thing about the Amiga is WinUAE (emu) is much more compatible with the full library of games than any one real amiga can be. You can get a rom switcher and add some more flexibility, I have one of these in my amiga 2000 and it served it's purpose very well anyway you look at it a free system is a good thing! Good luck to you I'm sure you'll have some fun with it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ze_ro Posted July 5, 2003 Share Posted July 5, 2003 Yeah, it sucks that Amigas aren't very compatible... luckily, I have three different models (the 500, 1200, and 3000), so I think I manage to beat the spread. My brother is more of an Amiga fan than I am, and he was really happy to get the 1200. I'm not sure if the hard drive works though. --Zero Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeV0 Posted July 5, 2003 Share Posted July 5, 2003 I only have an a600 with no HD, Its now brown with age. Hmmm, i think my faves are speedball2 and Nitro Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vigo Posted July 5, 2003 Share Posted July 5, 2003 Yeah, it sucks that Amigas aren't very compatible... luckily, I have three different models (the 500, 1200, and 3000), so I think I manage to beat the spread. My brother is more of an Amiga fan than I am, and he was really happy to get the 1200. I'm not sure if the hard drive works though. --Zero The Problem is not the Amiga itself, but the lousy game coders which used dirty tricks being incompatible with faster CPUs/newer OS revisions. If you want it just for classic gaming, Kickstart 1.3 is best suited for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desiv Posted July 6, 2003 Share Posted July 6, 2003 If I remember correctly, you could boot a 1.3 kickstart on a 1200 tho??? (been awhile.. I think some game mag even included it on a disk they had..) And the 1200 had that menu you could get to when you turned on the machine (holding a mouse button???) to allow you to choose some things, like PAL/NTSC or ECS/AGA???? I think... I know I used that to play my import (I didn't know it was an import when I ordered it, just thought it was a great deall) Simon the Sorcerer in PAL mode on the monitor (1084S, best monitor EVER MADE!!) so I could see all the menus... And there were VERY VERY few games that wouldn't run on the 1200 with these options.... That's why I loved my 1200.. Still wish I had it.... As for great games. Psygnosis.. Almost any... (Shadow of the Beast series, Blood Money, Leander were the ones I owned..) I personally liked Dragon's Lair and it's ilk, but I feel like I'm in the minority when I mention it.. Simon, of course. And I thought the Gobliiins series were hysterical... And lots of others.. Great gameplay.... If you wanted to have the feeling of being wasted withOUT taking drugs, just play Mindwalker (first Amiga game???)... TRIPPY!!!!! (Actually, I haven't been wasted, so this is my guess of what it would be like.. :-) desiv Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dauber Posted July 6, 2003 Share Posted July 6, 2003 junglehunter -- trust me, I'm the guy you wanna ask about Amigas. If it's the Amiga 2000, 500 or earlier, screw it, it ain't worth it. Get yourself either an Amiga 3000 or something that has the AGA chipset. If you MUSt get an Amiga 600 with a Kickstart/OS version earlier than 3.1, you can't add a hard drive unless the Kickstart ROM version ends in zero or five; if it ends in 9, you need to upgrade the ROM. If you need to upgrade the ROM, just go straight to Kickstart 3.1. Despite popular belief, the Amiga 600 IS surprisingly upgradable...you can put in a 68030 CPU with up to 32 megs fast RAM in the form of a 72-pin SIMM, and I believe you can add an Amiga 1200-style clock port, too. If it's a 4000, make sure it has revision 11 of the Buster chip, although I believe it's easily upgradable. Also, check out the battery. Some of the older Amiga 4000s use the barrell-style battery, which is notorious for corroding the motherboard with acid leakage; it needs to be replaced every few years. Some of the newer revisions use the much-easier-to-deal-with CR2032. Also, know that the RAM slots on the Amiga 4000 are very fragile and almost guaranteed to crack. That happened on mine, and I had my Amiga dealer hot-glue the SIMMs in place a coupla years ago. If you get a 4000 and plan to expand it, one of your plans might include rehousing it into a tower, as it has very little room....and most internal CD-ROM drives won't fit in the drive bay and will stick out about an inch. The A4000 is extermely expandable...mine's beefed up with the latest OS [version 3.9, which came out a year or so ago], four USB ports [i only use one, though!], a Prelude 16-bit full-duplex sound card, a nice 32-bit graphics card, a purty fast SCSI card, and about 146 megs of RAM. You can also use a PowerPC CPU with these things, and PCI expansion has been a possibility for over a year now. Amiga 1200 -- very tricky model to buy for, as there were so many motherboard revisions. For best results, make sure you have a working clock port for maximum expandability. Most industry-standard expansions that people use with the 1200 are essentially hardware hacks, though, like adding Zorro slots and stuff, which the 1200 was never meant to do...but there are Zorro and PCI expansion options for this, and you can add a PowerPC CPU to it and bring it up to par with the rest of the computing world, as you can with the 4000.... Amiga 3000 -- same battery problem the Amiga 4000 has...also, I know for certain expansion cards you need to hack the motherboard to a degree, like cutting a line or something...but this thing has a built-in scandoubler/flickerfixer [unless you have a graphics card, a SD/FF is necessary if you want to use a modern-day monitor with it] and a built-in SCSI port...can also use the same PowerPC cards that the 4000 uses, but requires a hardware hack. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeV0 Posted July 6, 2003 Share Posted July 6, 2003 Hey Dauber Could you give some advise on connecting a HD to an a600?? I noticed a 2.5 like ide setup inside the case so i assume it would be 2.5 only?? Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desiv Posted July 6, 2003 Share Posted July 6, 2003 2.5" only internal.. But you can get a 2.5" (44 pin) to 3.5" (40 pin) cable adapter and a power splitter if you want to go external to a 3.5" IDE drive. (Of course, a case would be nice too...) There are places that sell the adapter and some diagrams if you want to build one... (The basic difference with the 44 is that it can carry power. If you're good, you can take the power from the 44 and use it to power the drive. One less cable to bring out (you bring a 44 out and then adapt it, instead of adapting it and then bringing out a 40 pin AND power.) I've heard however there can be power supply issues with the standard A600 power supplies if you start adding too much (Processer accelerator, external hard drives..) to the 600.. Not sure how much power newer drives pull compared to the Amiga days???? Also, a few sites said to make sure your drive is at least 80 meg or it's not really worth it.. :-) :-) 80 meg?? :-) I remember paying (an ungodly amount now that I think about it) for an external SCSI enclosure, adapter, and 40 MEG drive for my A500!!!!! :-) Didn't the Amiga file system have like a 4 gig limit?? desiv Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raijin Z Posted July 6, 2003 Share Posted July 6, 2003 I have an Amiga 500, boxed and everything, but no kickstart or workbench disks. >_< Still, I found it on the STREET. I was driving someone home, and I missed their street. I turned onto the next street up, and saw a monitor on the curb with some boxes. SCREECH! Popped the trunk, threw everything in, and took the guy back home. Amiga 500, boxed, styrafoam, keyboard, mouse, a monitor, and a printer. Tons of documentation, but almost no programs. >_ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ze_ro Posted July 7, 2003 Share Posted July 7, 2003 Didn't the Amiga file system have like a 4 gig limit?? Believe me, unless you're using the Amiga for professional applications like video editing, 4 gig's is WAY more than you'll ever need. Hell, you could probably archive all the existing Amiga software with that big a drive. My brother had a 500 meg drive hooked up to his A500, and I don't think he ever got anywhere close to filling it up. Considering the Amiga was fairly popular for video editing (Video Toaster and all), there must have been a way around this or something. 80-200 megs is plenty. You should keep in mind that most Amiga games don't really take advantage of hard drives anyways, so you won't be installing them. Finding such small hard drives these days might actually be hard though, so you might be better off looking for a 2-5 gig drive from a semi-old laptop. --Zero Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeV0 Posted July 7, 2003 Share Posted July 7, 2003 Thanks for your help desiv, So i think im going to get a 2.5 out of an old 486 laptop and make it internal. I think its only 300meg or so but from what you guys say it''s easily enough. junglehunter, di you get it?? Which model? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dauber Posted July 7, 2003 Share Posted July 7, 2003 First of all, about this "200 megs should be enough" myth... I have THREE hard drives in my Amiga, incluing a small [400mb] SCSI for booting into OS 3.9 [the latest Workbench] and a 13.6 gigger that's nearly maxed out...and I don't do anything "professional," although I do from time to time use it for 30-track digital recording...at which time I need to empty out my drives...I do everything everybody does -- word processing, graphics conversion, MP3 downloading, Intenet stuff, MIDI sequencing [MIDI files are only a few kilobytes], fun WAV stuff, etc. And I NEED all the space I can get! [i even have a few Zips and CDRs filled up....] The latest version of the operating system itself nowadays requires 20 megabytes of hard drive space. Oh...and the latest version of the operating system can handle beyond the old 4 gigabyte limit. Fortunately, when I had my A600 I never had issues with the power. I eventually built it up with a hard drive, an Apollo 630 [33mhz] accelerator w/an 8-meg SIMM, the Surf Squirrel [hint: only the "surf" part of the Surf Squirrel works on an Amiga 600], ProMIDI interface, and an external floppy, all on the stock power supply. Had that baby going for a couple of years until I got my A4000. If you just want an Amiga to play the ol' classic games [speedball 2, Lemmings, etc.] THEN I can accept the "200 megs should be enough" logic...but if you want it as a general computer, you need much more... And yes -- the A600 takes the 2.5-inch hard drives that are standard to laptops, although you can hack it to use a 3.5-inch. Never tried it myself, though. And also, if the Kickstart ROM is for OS 2.05 or lower, make sure the actual version number ends in 5 or 0....if it ends in 9, it's "crippled" so that hard drive access is disabled. My first Amiga dealer told me Commodore did that so they could charge Europeans an upgrade fee to get hard drive access if they purchased a model without an HD; the upgraded chips were offered to US customers at no charge. But if you have Kickstart 3.1, you're home-free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ze_ro Posted July 8, 2003 Share Posted July 8, 2003 I do from time to time use it for 30-track digital recording...word processing, graphics conversion, MP3 downloading, Intenet stuff, MIDI sequencing [MIDI files are only a few kilobytes], fun WAV stuff, etc. Yeah, but the majority of that is not "normal usage" for an Amiga. If you actually plan on using an Amiga as a general purpose computer these days, then yes, you'll need a hard drive comparable to those used in computers these days... but if you're buying an Amiga to screw around with and play games, I really doubt you'll end up doing much of that stuff. Hell, on my own PC I could probably get away with a 4 gig hard drive... most of my hard drive space is just wasted on junk like SegaCD iso's that I'll never play. --Zero Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeV0 Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 First of all' date=' about this "200 megs should be enough" myth...If you just want an Amiga to play the ol' classic games [speedball 2, Lemmings, etc.'] Yep, its only a game machine for me. Funny, it used to aggravate me when ppl said the amiga was just a games machine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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