This mini forum is intended to provide a simple means of discussion about the Commodore  Amiga 1200 computer. If you want to share your own experience or memories, or add relevant information about this system: post a message!

I had an A1200 on the week it launched. When they first launched hundreds of them had to be returned as the internal modulator (Commodore replaced the A520 external modulator) did not provide a clear picture or sound of any quality. I also remember most games not working on the machine probably due to the 68020, Rom v3 and the AGA chipset. I got shot of mine, bought a second hand A500+ (That I had sold to get the A1200) and saved up for a PC. A friend of mine remained faitful to the A1200 and even had the 060 card in his (that bulged out of the expansion slot) by this time there was some software for the machine. To be honest the machine was never well supported, you were far better off with a A500+ for games and a A3000 for the more serious stuff. Interestingly the A1200 was built at SCI in Irvine in Scotland, about 3 miles from my house. 2 of my cousins worked on it and they told me of the majour problems they had with the machine, especially with mdulators.

Andrew Wallace:

Sorry to hear your bad experience with the 1200, but to move ahead in the world, some compatibility has to be sacrificed. There were ways to diminish this problem though, using software Kickstart replacements or the compatibility settings at boot.

As for your other comments, I must really beg to differ. This computer was -very- well supported and continues to be many years after it''s supposed demise. You can still get CPU upgrades, graphics cards and even 16 bit sound cards with a DSP for it. You can stick it in a full tower if you so wish and use cheap PCI graphics cards instead of using the relatively more expensive Amiga graphics cards if you so wish.

Software was also written for it long after Commodore went bankrupt in ''94 and Escom went belly up in ''96. So you can''t say it was never supported well, because it really was. Just as well as any of the other Amigas.

The Magic Pack was definitely released - I worked at a computer store (that did not sell second-hand gear) in Cork back in the mid-90''s and I remember talking to a manager about the Escom-released Amiga 1200, and it was a Magic Pack bundle. Just fyi.

The A1200 was far the best computer i ever own. i was for a wile in a small demoscene in my country, used it for grafic design and even on my own little video and audio event company.
Sad that such a great machine was backup by moron decisions by the manufactures
My A1200 was tricked out with a wooping 128mb ram, 060/PPC Blizzard with a Blizzardvision graphics card, 240mb HDD and a 4x CDrom at the end of its life
...i still own it, but its literaly stripped apart in a box right now...one day might take a travel back in time and reassemble it

You could actually use 3.5" HDD mounted inside the case. You had to remove the HDD holder/clips and botch together your own stabilizer but it sure worked. Saved moeny and got you more Megs.

hi..the amiga 1200 works without the hard disk

Yes the Amiga has been re-implemented in an FPGA.

The Minimig is complete and available for purchase - it re-impliments an A600 using a real 68000 and the custom chip set in FPGA.

The Natami project is nearing release it is a fully Amiga compatible machine with several modern enhancments.

Does anyone know if the Amiga has been put onto a FPGA (field Programmable Gate Array) or CPLD ..?? It would be nice to get a hardware single chip Amiga.

Many people see the Amigas as a games machine only. I had a friend with an A2000 ( two floppies), who moved to PCs. He never experienced what the Amiga''s hardware could do with just some extra memory!! I remember installing Civilization I (4 disks) onto RAM: and thus saving disk swapping. And with an internal hard drive and a 030 with 8MB, that was efficient. I met a group of people, programming for both the Amiga and PC, and the scrolls in the Amiga just couldn''t be matched on the much faster Pcs!!

The A1200 was a great computer, I still have it at home, unfortunately is not working. But the platform is not lost, there is new Amiga-compatible computer called NatAmi on the way:)

Check out YouTube video of the prototype in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v$rydE7wa_5d0

You can still buy "New old" stock Amiga a1200''s on amigakits.com. I just bought one and cannot wait! There''s cheapr one''s on ebay but they are yellowed and grubby. Check it out!

I still hve my A1200, with an 030 card, 18 MB RAM and a 500MB HD, still has the best version ever made of UFO on it. I still use it quite a bit, particularly or Cinema 3D and Dpaint. It was a shame the platform died.

Weak side of A1200 was low-power power supply, complicating to connect additional devices and expansion boards, wich may result overload and instability in work.

I have re-discovered the Amiga Computer series and have set up a nice Amiga 1200 with a dual-boot option for OS 3.5 or NetBSD 3.1. This system also makes use of a FibreLine 10MBit Ethernet NIC (PCMCIA) adapter, a 68030 Turbo board and will soo be equipped with the new Indivision FlickerFixer (to be released in late 2008). I use it for gaming and as Email client. And it still does a very good job.

It is such a pity that the Amiga and especially the A1200 did not survive the "DOS PC invasion". Good to know that there still are a lot of people who take care of these old machines.

I bought my thre amiga's for thee pound each I have the amiga a1200 a500 and cd32 and i'm only 12yrs old i see great potential in my a1200 but i need the workbench disks os 3.0 or 3.1 could anyone please make me a copy of them??Email me if you can BIGEST 12yr old AMIGA fan!!!!!!! hehe lovin Amiga

I recently built my 2nd Amiga 1200 tower, providing the unit with an (overclocked) 66MHz 68060 accelerator and high capacity fast SCSI. The story of this machine can be read in the 'www' link above. (Be sure to click into the gallery of photos of the setup from within the story linked above.) I use the machine mainly for watching hacker demos.

The A1200 was a fine machine. I have got one (and an A600 and CD32). I saw an A500 working once and was very glad that my first Amiga was the A600 or else I probably would never have bought an A1200. I got my A1200 from a car boot sale, prior to that I'd had a CD32 with an SX1 box which turned the CD32 into a full A1200. I can't seem to find the CD32 though.

Yep, the trapdoor expansion is definitely easy to use. Only problem is that some cards (mainly 68040's I think) could overheat. Do you think it's possible to put a Blizzard PPC into it with the original case?

My Amiga 1200 had 420MB Seagate 3.5 inch HD installed internally (well, I coudn't fit it, so there was small, 3mm gap between lower and upper part of case, clearly visible on left side of computer - hard drive was simply to high). It was running internal acceleration card with 50MHz Motorola 68030 overclocked to 66MHz and math coprocessor running at 50MHz an asynchronous mode, and with 16 MB of 'real-fast' memory. It was very fast, I don't remember the name of this card - my friend bought it for me in USA... It was quite rare in Europe, most of my friends with Amigas 1200 had different acc. cards in their machines. Besides the clear superiority in terms of speed my card had some compatibility problems with its memory controller - most of so called 'demos' coudn't utilize 'fast' on-board memory resulting in speed loss (such programs could only use 2MB of 'chip' type memory, with access slowed down by DMA channels).

Also, almost none of the cards in the card section work with the A1200 :)

The Magic Pack definately was released.

The modification to the disk drive was not for compatibility with the Amiga filesystem at all (All disk drives can read and write Amiga filesystem disks, but standard PC floppy CONTROLLERS can't read/write Amiga 880/1760k disks. As AROS proves, PC floppy controllers can write FFS disks with only 720/1440k).

The incompatability was due to a missing signal (DSKRDY) which indicates when the motor has spun up and is ready.

The Amiga 1200 did have up to 200Mb Hard Disk Drive internally. I should know as I have one! Also the expansion underneath the Amiga 1200 not only held extra RAM but you could add an additional faster CPU which would override the orignal - not sure how this was done.