Amiga 1200- Retro- How the hell do I use it????

Sorry to spam, but do I need a joystick just to use this thing???? o.O?

Figured i'd ask here sinec here's alot of ex-users around.

Just setting it up for my other half to play with :)

[edit] Bugger. Yes.

Sorry :)

What kind is it? Does it have an internal harddisk?..you'll need a joystick for the majority of games, some were mouse driven but not that many..also you could use a sega megadrive joypad.

..and what games do you have for it?

No, but you may need a mouse. If one doesn't come with the system you can fake it by holding down Left-Amiga + the direction you want to go in.

If memory serves left clicking is Left-Amiga + Control (could be alt, it's the key that's right next to the Amiga Key). Right clicking is similar, just with the Right-Amiga key.

Don't press Control and both Amiga keys at the same time tho'. Really.

You really should get a mouse tho'. You can buy them from Amiga Inc. (they're pretty expensive tho').

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?cgiurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com%2Fws%2F&fkr=1&from=R8&satitle=amiga+mouse&category0=

The amiga was a home gameing computer, and most games did require a joystick yeah.

Pretty much all games need a joystick, and the OS needs a mouse. (you can control the OS mousepointer by keybaord as well, but it really is a pain)

The left port is mouse, right port is joystick... The mouse port can double as a 2nd joystick port in 2-player games.

I spent one entire hour figuring out how to reset it ;) Key-mashing worked for a while, then i figured I needed to figure out what the combo was ;)

I've ordered a joystick and mouse off the internet. It doesn't have a hard drive, but I have a spare 20gb one lying around (Yeah, i know, If it works it'll only pick up a small amount of it!). The cable for the drive costs almost as much as the joystick + mouse :D

Man, you shoulda just asked me. I've still got on in a box. It was a top computer. I even had an 80MB hard drive with mine, it was awesome.

Well, if you don't min grey??? ;) I can easily lose these Ebay bids ;)

I got mine free but it's got absolutely nothing but a dead beetle in it! :D

I meant, just ask me the questios, I'm selling the A1200, it was my BEST computer ... maybe ... the C64 was pretty cool too.

Heh cool, it's worth some dosh and I expect the value will shoot up soon enough!

I'm going to sell the dead beetle on Ebay...

It was the best of all times, all the others are the shadows, C64 was/still is, the SUN !!!

Cyg: Try advertising the beetle in here:
http://www.fcla.edu/FlaEnt/

Wedoe: yeah the C64 era was cool, but when the Amiga came out, it seemed like it could do everything you ever really wanted from a game (none of us knew about 3D FPS games then...)

Amiga FTW!!

My 1200's still sittin in a box too. Not really sure what the plan is. I dont use it, but I dont wanna get rid of it. I keep saying one of these days I'm gonna hook it up for nostalgia.

heh.... yeah one of these days. What do bone stock 1200's sell for now?

I had a whopping 200MB HD in my A1200... Only computer I ever sold for more than a bought it for new, 2 years later. (Almost a year after Commodore had gone bankrupt, when there was still a good amount of demand for used systems)

£6 in GameStation :-)

Im looking to buy an amiga1200 but im too fussy, i want the original box as new.

So thats like what, almost 12 us dollars? Bah!

I guess I'll just hold onto it, and wait for amigas to come back into style again :)

They seem to be worth much much more if in original condition and boxed :-)

I can also sell my NES and get more money than the cost of a Gamecube. K-hool.

I have the original box ;-p !

the original white box with blue print? no images or colourful pictures.

yep, I'm looking at it right now. Blue and red print actually. I'm not selling though, sorry.

erm... I have my box still. Boring white box, blue and red stripes, technical looking drawing of an amiga on top. In fairly good shape. I got a 1084 monitor also sitting in a box...I'm in the us though.

But if yer interested, feel free to name a $$$price$$$

8)

I wouldn't mind having an A1200 again. So would a lot of people, probably. The thing is, what the hell would I do with it? Kind of pointless getting back into Amiga assembly or even Amiga Blitz coding. No market for games or applications whatsoever.

All in all, it would just be to play a few old games, a task for which WinUAE is far more suitable. WinUAE can emulate (almost entirely accurately, these days) any Amiga model, faster (on my Athlon 3700) than any Amiga ever ran. The fastest Motorola CPU which you could plug into an Amiga was the (FPU-less) 75MHz 68060. My mobile phone has more computing power.

I suppose there's no replacement for the kitcsh factor though ;)

Only problem with WinUAE is the scrolling is never perfect for PAL games as monitors can't do 50Hz, and when in 100HZ, something isn't right on my PC.

>All in all, it would just be to play a few old games, a
>task for which WinUAE is far more suitable.

Playing on the original hardware with the original mouse and the original joystick is just part of the experience.

If you use UAE on a modern PC, you just won't get that magic. I still use my A1200 regularly, and yes, I mainly play old games, but recently I've been buying loads of old original games I never played, so in a sense I have a ready supply of *new* games to play.

EDIT: It's not rational, I know, but the Amiga is just so cool!


Andy

Grey: My Iiyama did 50Hz, but on a 19" monitor it absolutely kills your eyes! To think that we stared intently at 50Hz TV's for hours on end with our Amigas (and C64's, Speccy's etc). Spectacle manufacturers must be having a field day :)

I thought I was in heaven the day I got my Iiyama and could work in flicker-free 85Hz mode. Now I've got a TFT, I have to stop myself drooling when looking at it.

Heh, I won the control pad :)

Ebays a funny place, I got my first Positive feedback for good communication.

I never spoke a word to the dude.!

yeah VP: I must have started at a TV for HOURS a day, 7 days a week for um ... 12 years, then I got a PC and stared at crap monitors for quite a few years until I got an iiyama 17" Vision Master (in the P133 days), mind you I probably didn't really start running at higher desktop HZ until much later as with DOS etc, you were stuck with what the games offered.

Cygnus: CONTROL PAD! You're sick dude. this is an Amiga, you need a "Joystick", maybe a competition pro:

http://www.vesalia.de/e_competitionusbblue.htm

I'm getting one of those free next week :)

Cyg,

I used to use my Mega Drive joypads with the Amiga ... plugged straight into the joypad ports and worked a treat with Sensi :)

Stevie

Hello.

I've still got my 1200 with (I think) 20gig hard drive in a tower. Really, really looking forward to hooking it up to my projector - Sensi-soccer at that size is such fun.

For me, I think I'll use it for Med. The PC version is Ok, but Octamed just rocks!

As vinylpusher says above programming on it is a bit of a dead end, which means I've a dozen or more books sitting there gathering dust. Along with a more than a few other books :o)

Goodbye.

Joystick? Bah. Competition Pro CD32 pad is where it's at. One of the slickest pads you could get.

Failing that there's the one that sucker-pad's to your desk and looks a bit arcadey. Can't remember the name of it but it came in both microswitched and non-microswitched flavours.

There was a particular mouse as well, 600 DPI, black, 3-button and was just a continuous curved wedge shape. 1cm either way and you were hitting the edge of the screen with the pointer :) Spot-on for gaming. Middle mouse button configured to cycle through all open screens was the only way to appreciate Workbench.

Too much nostalgia, just too much.

BlitzPlus was just so good. Guaranteed refresh rate, no jerks or tears: you knew exactly what it could do and it did that every time without fail. Plus you could inline assembly :-)