Amiga Only In 2008

Hi

First of all a brief history, I got my first serious computer in 1999, a P2 running Windows 98. It was horrible and gave me nothing but problems. Later that year I got an Amiga 600 followed by Amiga 1200.
I upgraded the A1200 to an 030/50MHz accelerator board with 8Mb RAM and put it in a tower with 1Gb HD and CD running OS 3.9. The system was very unstable but that was down to the crappy way I built it, I was only young at the time.

I then upgraded to the A1 which unfortuantely gave me a lot of trouble, I sold both systems and switched to the Mac between 2003-07 and now currently use a PC.

However I have decided that becoming a Network Engineer is not the career for me, so I don't really have any need to use a PC, and for the PC access I do need, my parents have a PC in the next room I can use.

So we come to the crunch...

I use a computer for web browsing , instant messaging, IRC and Email mostly. eBay now and again too.

These needs would obviously affect the spec of my system however:

I want the Amiga 1200 to stay in its desktop case.

I also have a flat panel LCD monitor here, which is in the gallery hooked up to a 1200 here

One thing I do still have from my old system is the 3.9 CD, and I can hopefully dig out the 3.1 floppies too.


What is the best route would you say? I have seen many people here and other forums who are Amiga only and get by doing more things than me, so I am sure it is possible to get by Amiga only in nearly 2008

And also one other question, those of you who are Amiga only, what are your set ups and what do you use them for, how is the Amiga getting you by on web browsing, since I know the Amiga is limited in this respect.


Best regards, look forward to some interesting responses :)

@EARTHLING

It can be done, but you'd have to make compramises on the web browsing.

As long as your A1200 has some extra ram, say 32mb min and at least an O30 card you could get it to do what you need.

There's Simple Mail/Yam for email. Then Wookiechat for IRC (A must have) For Instant messeging you can use Jabberwocky (There's a tutorial on this site I did on how to configure it - look under articles).
Note: I am ruling out Epistula because you need OS4

Web Browsing, IBrowse, would be okay to do most of the sites you mentioned, however because you would only have a "vanilla" A1200 the best you could hope for would be 256 colour images and it would be S-L-O-W. I can't think of any other alternative to this problem other than upgrading your A1200 into a tower and adding monster bits. (Which you have already said isn't what you wish to do)

In short, you could use your A1200 for most things other than web browsing on your basic setup.

The cost involved in upgrading it would be silly unless you want to and so I would recommend you look around for a cheap second hand laptop or PC system for that.

Good Luck and Merry Xmas

@EARTHLING

I want the Amiga 1200 to stay in its desktop case.

not so easy once you upgrade it whit 060 it get to hot, start melting plastic cover on bottom housing.

personally i think 32bit graphics card is most, not only because of nice looking graphics but because 32bit gfx cards are faster then the old Amiga AGA graphic cards as well. (big difference in speed.)

so unless like go for Mediator PCI / big tower, then most go for BlizzardPPC whit mini PCI slot.

For movies you need a PowerPC nothing else will do this days. 060 will do just fine for MP3 files.

(060 can play full screen Quick time movies on shapeshifter, if you have a 24bit gfx card, and a SCSI card, and fast SCSI harddrive)

@LiveForIt

Quote:

The 68060 does not get so hot, you don't even need a fan! 68040 on the other hands get very hot!

Thanks for the thoughts people, keep them coming in :)
I have been offered the following by a friend:

Desktop 1200, PowerFlyer Gold, Scandoubler, Flicker fixer, 4Mb memory, OS 3.9 installed

What I need to know is though, is Powerflyer Gold compatible with desktop 1200 (will it fit?)

Regards