I think you've hit the nail on the head - it wasn't long before people were putting A1200's in tower cases or coming up with external IDE adapters to fit cheap CD ROM drives, etc. It's always been a computer people tinkered with to get the most bang for their buck, and that's filtered down to today, with all sorts of clever add-ons, expansions, etc. And of course, once Commodore went bust, and existing 3rd party support drifted away, the only people who were left to support the Amiga were the people who owned Amigas. As a platform, there's a real DIY aspect to it, which I love. Once upon a time, games developers used to lament that they were getting hemmed in by the Amiga's standards, because loads of people owned an Amiga 500 and never bothered expanding it. These days, you'd be hard pressed to find an Amiga still in use that is completely stock.
That accelerator is a bit of a bonus. A stock A1200 isn't much of a boost over an A500. But with an 030 @40Mhz and some extra RAM, you're in for a treat.
Looking forward to the next video in this series. The more I see of these Retro video's, the more I miss my Amiga 500 and 1500, the more I want to see if I can buy one again. Lot of more's there :)
Back in the day mounting a 3.5" hard drive and squeezing the case closed was the way most amiga 1200 budget upgrades went. I knew many machines and my own original from 1993 and a friend of mines machine ran like that until the late 90's with no fizz bang. We still have our original machines. I had a gvp 1230 accelerator with a 50mhz 030 which is still running fine.
I have always wanted an Amiga. The closest I got to one was at a couple of shows, so I never got to enjoy what they could do. Emulation works, but isn't the same thing and real hardware. Thanks for the video, it reminds me of why I still want one!
11:55 At this, it usually cycles different shades of grey for about 2 seconds, then tries to boot from the hard drive. With the lack of a hard drive, it hangs on the screen for up to 10 seconds more before giving you the purple insert disk screen. However, even if it did find a hard drive, it could still end up hanging on grey as it loads workbench or something. So in short, yes, this is normal for an A1200.
My old Amiga 1200 PPC /060, BVision 3D Vga, USB, 128mb ram, AmigaOS4 and OS 3.9 on home made tower chase. 😎 Only Amiga make possible! 💪 RULEEZ Coming soon, new AmigaOS4 multicore on new Notebook PPC 64bit 😎
It's funny that you showed The Fate of Atlantis when mentioning the temptations of PC games, as this game exactly marked my transition from Amiga 500 to PC. I absolutely loved all the Lucas Arts adventures, so I had no hesitation in placing a pre-order for the game, for the Amiga, as I wanted it as soon as it came out. I think this must have been from Special Reserve, they had adverts in most magazines of the time and I used to buy most of my Amiga games from them. However, I had been thinking about buying a PC for a while, using money I had saved up from my first job. I think I must have seen in a magazine somewhere the details of the PC version of The Fate of Atlantis, with its promise of 256 colour VGA graphics and no disk-swapping (the memory of the horrendous disk swapping on the Amiga version of Monkey Island 2 was still fresh at the time). So, I bought a PC (a 486 DX2 50, which I still have) and I rang up Special Reserve and changed my pre-order from the Amiga to the PC version. And that was that. I don't think I bought another Amiga game and the PC replaced the Amiga on my desk and sadly the Amiga was boxed up and put away. The good news is that I still have the Amiga, still in its original box and I do get it out from time to time, although I tend to use emulators for playing Amiga games these days.
I knew the world had changed towards the PC, not with Doom like many other people, but when I saw and heard Monkey Island 2 running on a VGA Monitor and with music from a Roland MT-32. I was gobsmacked!
You should invest in some type of UV lighting, a plastic container, and either reflective tape or tinfoil for the outside of the container, So you can do retro brighting indoors, It's not that costly at all and you never have to depend on the sun again.
My A1200 has been sat in its box on top of the wardrobe for over 20 years, no tinkering, just the shop installed HD and a Blizzard accelerator in the trapdoor... wonder what the chances of it just working are?
Check the PSU voltages at the pins before you plug it in so you don’t accidentally fry it - if they’re good then go for it! :) Let me know how you get on! :)
Eeek! You should probably replace those mangled clock port pin headers. They're too far gone. There were a lot of neat expansions made for the clock port since it was the only other internal expansion port in the A1200 and accelerators usually went on the trapdoor port. It's a slow bus but it was used for a lot of things like sound cards and the like.
Internal 3.5 inch drives like that were common as far as I remember. The dealers used to sell them as kits with the advantage that they were cheaper than 2.5 inch drives. I think you were meant to leave the top RF shield in and cut one of the ribs on the case to get it to fit instead of wedging it on the top of the PCB like that though.
I don’t think I’d have been happy about it wobbling around but then again I suppose back then it would have lived on a desk and stayed there - I move things around too much these days :)
In early 1994 I worked at a shop that did a lot of Commodore repairs, and seeing a 3.5” drive in a 1200 wasn’t uncommon. If just the bit of shield above the rtc was removed (it was removable, so a rtc could be added under the shield) and a bit of cardboard or insulating foam was added beneath the harddrive, it would fit snuggle between the keyboard and the rf-shield, not moving at all, once the machine was assembled! Haven’t seen one just lying on the pcb like that though … and maybe the “mangling” of the rtc connector, is because the drive would shift around and short-circuit it?..
@@TheRetroShack The problem was 2.5" drives were stupidly expensive at the time (well, all hard drives were, but 3.5" drives were finally becoming at least not crazy-expensive). Just a few short years later with the explosion of laptops with hard drives, 2.5" drives would become cheap too, but in 1992 it was a forward-thinking but present-foolish choice on Commodore's part. They should have included a real 3.5" drive mount at the cost of making the case just slightly larger. There were a number of mods that came out in those short few years where you'd take out the internal floppy, use the floppy bay for a 3.5" hard drive, and then rewire df0: to use the external floppy port, and just always use an external floppy drive on your A1200. And of course all the tower conversion kits, of which there were many. A lot of these kits were solely so you could add hard drives and didn't even add a busboard for Zorro expansions (though there were a lot of those too).
Accelerator worth more than the Amiga. :) BTW I don't think it's accurate to say it has more support now than it did back in the day. Remember that at the time the market was big enough to support several dedicated magazines that you could buy in any newsagent. They were all packed with ads for weird and wonderful add-ons and had readerships in the hundreds of thousands.
A fair point and I suppose I was on the periphery of it at that point so probably wasn’t ‘in the loop’ on a lot of the more esoteric or fringe stuff - I’m just glad that there are still so many things available for these things! You only have to look at the Amiga representation at the Revision demo parties each year to see how much these things are still loved :)
@@TheRetroShack Absolutely! I think the fact that there are so many of them still in action is probably why some people find it acceptable to do all those case mods. They're not exactly rare (yet)!
It is fair to say though, that for a 30 year old computer that was only on sale for a few short years, the Amiga 1200 still has loads of 3rd party support to take advantage of modern hardware, which is pretty remarkable.
General consensus amongst the comments is that it's likely light bulb damage? Maybe stored on the top of a wardrobe or something? Who knows, it's proper nasty though :)
Still have my original A1200. No idea if it still works, but it did the last time I checked about 15 years ago. The hard disk required a format, but otherwise still worked. It was the computer I learned how to upgrade and system manage on. It still has the stock Workbench 3.0 ROMs, but has a 1gb HD, a Blizzard card with a 68030 running at 50mHz(I think, but don't quote me on the clock speed, it was waaay too long ago, but good enough to run Doom at full speed at 320x200) and either 4 or 8mb of fast RAM, depending what I was doing that day. The reason for the difference in RAM at times is that if I plugged my SCSI adapter and 8mb of chip RAM in, it would green screen on boot, so if I wanted to use the CD-ROM drive I had to swap the fast RAM SIMM over to 4mb. I still have the CD-ROM and SCSI adapter, but the adapter is broken. Those PC cards were really dodgy, I think I had 3 of 'em. I also have the official A1200 dust cover and aftermarket higher wattage power supply with built in fan.
Nice! Wondering how you will handle the case... Love my 1200. Had one back in the day... Loved it... Had to get one again, which I did years (8 ish?) ago... Was tricky finding a A1200 here in the US for a decent price back then. Can imagine it hasn't gotten better. Have a 28Mhz 030 with 32M RAM in it now. You really do need at least some RAM for an A1200 to perform happily. And a processor and RAM make it fly. Love the PCMCIA option. Mostly use it for ethernet (I also have a PCMCIA SCSI card I can use with a CDROM). Admittedly, I also got a PCMCIA WiFi card I haven't used, because my 1200 is sitting about 18 inches away from my router. ;-) I wouldn't say I routinely browse the internet with it :-), but it is nice to be able to pop over to Aminet from time to time. And they are still releasing new versions of AmigaOS!!! Enjoy and I'll be watching to see how your progress proceeds... ;-)
Have an A1200 in my collection but it's only got the HD - would love an accelerator card to check out some of the faster stuff. And I have seen several 1200s with those melty patches on the case, definitely something up with the design if that keeps happening.
You should have seen the original wiring it was put together with tape and I replaced the tape with terminal Block as a temp measure as was planning to install the whole computer with a ez-tech tower
Hey Paul! I bet you were horrified to find all the wires taped up! I've learned from the comments that LOTS of people had these 3.5" drives loose in the case so I guess it was the done thing :) Looking forward to seeing where I can take this and I'm so grateful for you sending it in! (Secretly, I'm probably even more excited for the 500 Plus cos I can stick a PI Storm in there :) :) )
@@TheRetroShack yep I was but I was not first one I seen. I did install the 3.1 Roms as it originally had 3.0 Roms so the hard drive when boots will have OS 3.9 installed with deluxe paint,personal paint and possibly Photogenics also
Love the video, I have currently got 2 A1200s brought ages ago, one in a tower with a blizzard ppc board and one in desktop with a Vampire. Fun machine to use and play with! Just a minor comment on the video, the logo "swish" sound between segments is kinda harsh.
@@TheRetroShack I didn't want to say bit it was a little, erm, well, annoying 😅 Maybe if it was a little quieter and you had the logo either come in or leave rather than both. But if its gone it's all mute now anyway 😁
The A1200 is my second favorite retro computer I have four of them would of been five but I sold my A600 many years ago as I did not like it. More fool me as the upgrades now available are fantastic. Anyway I digress, Looking at the the damage to the case I think it has been close to a 60 watt bulb.
Well - It took me ages to find because I wasn't expecting it :) I'd been tracing signals and it was only when I got to that chip that I thought 'Hang on, what's that!' Little blighter!
@@TheRetroShack visual inspection is sometimes underestimated when fault finding! You found the fault which is what matters at the end of the day. Probably a blob from previous tinkering! 🤣
I'd highly recommend a mSATA SSD on a 2.5" 44 pin IDE converter board. They are marginally fast, energy efficient, cool and system compliant. And if that turbo board works, try to obtain a 16bit PCMCIA network card and transfer files over the network with sambafs. That way you can get rid of those annoying CFCards. :)
how are cf's annoying? they are straight thru IDE and need no additional adapter chips to convert signals to another standard making them not only quick in access time,and a practical match to amiga IDE,they run cold,use less power than your SSD and will have a faster access time due to no translation thru others chips causing latency. They are compact and practical and cant see how they are " annoying". I've been using CF's on all of my amigas almost 20 years now. Some of my cf's are 20+ years old .If cf's annoy you dont buy cheap china no brands. cf's also work well in a pcmcia port adapter which might cost $4.
Those destroyed clock-port header pins are misplaced on this board. This is a known problem on some Amiga 1200s from the factory. The pins should be actually near the expansion socket/floppy, not towards the custom chips. Please research this problem online for a proper fix, when working on the board, and don't just blindly replace the clock port pins!
Shortly after the introduction of the A1200 I was in a dilemma if I should get the A1200 or should buy a PC. After talking to a computer guy back then I got a recommendation to get a PC because Amiga was a "dead end". I still wonder what could have happened if I got an Amiga 1200 instead.
I think it would have taken a few hundred thousand more people to have made that decision unfortunately - Still, at least you can grab one now and still have all the fun :)
i had one of these machines from new, it was pretty good but it was released too late and other technologies rendered it redundant fairly quickly. Nice to see one again though. Please get rid of the swooshy sounds on the transitions though, i don't think it helps the flow of the narrative. Just my opinion. Love your restorations. I'm in the Uk too and if you want to retrobrite have you considered buying a few meters of UV LEDs and making an LED enclosure
Couple of complaints about the whooshes - consider them gone! :). I have considered the old UV LED setup - just need to get a move on with it I guess :)
Powering on an A1200 after so long is a bit dangerous as the caps tend to leak out. First thing every A1200 user should do is to replace these old leaky caps and replace them with new ones. After that you can power on the machine.
Molten is mostly used for rocks/metals/hard things that are liquified by extreme temperatures I think - Molten rock, not melted rock. My ice cream melted, not molten ice cream :). Think I'm right there :) :)
@@TheRetroShack i know.. however i did try to recreate my love of the amiga 1200 a few years ago.. i bought a case and keyboard off ebay and did what everyone does.. put a raspberry pi in it.. lolol.. however it wasn't until i got the Mister that i truly felt like i'd got my amiga back again..
For me it would be a tough choice between getting one of the cases shown on the th-cam.com/users/A1200NET channel, or using it as a starting point for an a4000TX motherboard build.
"What might have been if money and time had been kinder to Commodore back in the day." You mean, "What might have been if Commodore's leadership had not had their head up their arses."
Ha ,ha,The Truth came out,The old computers are and still will be the best,And all those dos and/ or Windows PCs, Macintoshs aren't, weren't all that great,Huh !!!!.Just all money, ego,and bragging rights, branding butt kissing!!!!
As far as my memories go back (and they go back well beyond the eighties into the seventies) an Amiga was some 2 - 2.5 times more expensive than a PC of similar capabilities. Amiga was never cheap, and this is probably another reason added to the many by which the PC won the race.
Well, interestingly I remember paying nearly £2000 for my first PC in around 1988 when My amiga cost me about £400 a year or so earlier - but that may just be the Mandela Effect on my poor old brain! :)
Sorry :( It all comes down to available time I'm afraid. Full time job, wife and kids and unfortunately I need to eat and sleep :( :( Financial milestones on the channel should (if reached) allow some more flexibility in work/channel balance :). Glad you're enjoying the channel :) :)
@@TheRetroShack Sure, understand of course. I guess what I meant was, to release less but longer ones when you do. You do great subjects. A deeper dive would enhance them.
I wonder what were those guys thinking releasing that thing in 1992. PCs have Windows 3.1 (and even WWG 3.11), a 32-bit protected mode OS (vs. 68020 having no memory management/protection whatsoever), with sound, video, unlimited screen resolution and TrueType/Type1 font support. Also, a 1992 PC had a choice of video- and audiocards with the standard ISA interface, unlike shitty proprietary builtins. PCs also supported high-resolution, high-frequency monitors instead of CRT TVs those micros used. It was obsolete by like 5 years at that point.
Speaking as someone who had a PC back at that time (and I assure you, Windows 3.x did not have memory protection), I made the jump to Mac (which I admit did feel like a wrong move at times been ‘95 and ‘98). After jumping to Mac, I wondered why anyone would stick with Wintel, with its comparatively sluggish CPUs, primitive 8.3 file names, lack of plug and play, lack of good quality native sound, lack of resolution in games (320x200 - yuck) etc etc. The truth is, you chose the platform that works for you. PC worked for you - which is great. Mac worked for me, and still does now. Amiga, and even ST, worked for millions of others. No point in getting all religious about it - but really, as someone who was there, the PC really wasn’t all that.
The Commodore Amiga is the greatest computer ever made.
Now *there's* a prompt for an internet debate :) :)
Aaah what about Atari 800XL!?!?
@@SproutyPottedPlantGot a series about those coming up real soon too :) :)
probably said it before.....always wanted an amiga so its great to see these videos......roll on part 2!
Thanks Chris - won't be long because I can't wait to use it myself! :) :)
I think you've hit the nail on the head - it wasn't long before people were putting A1200's in tower cases or coming up with external IDE adapters to fit cheap CD ROM drives, etc. It's always been a computer people tinkered with to get the most bang for their buck, and that's filtered down to today, with all sorts of clever add-ons, expansions, etc. And of course, once Commodore went bust, and existing 3rd party support drifted away, the only people who were left to support the Amiga were the people who owned Amigas. As a platform, there's a real DIY aspect to it, which I love. Once upon a time, games developers used to lament that they were getting hemmed in by the Amiga's standards, because loads of people owned an Amiga 500 and never bothered expanding it. These days, you'd be hard pressed to find an Amiga still in use that is completely stock.
Well I'm hopeful that the Amiga community will be pleased with what I have in mind for this one! :) :) :)
That accelerator is a bit of a bonus. A stock A1200 isn't much of a boost over an A500. But with an 030 @40Mhz and some extra RAM, you're in for a treat.
I’m looking forward to finding out just how quick it is (if it works!)
A vanilla A1200 should generally be 2-5 times faster than the A500. Depending on the code ofcourse.
Thanks for the upload! Amiga 1200 is a amazing machine. Im looking forward to part 2.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Looking forward to the next video in this series.
The more I see of these Retro video's, the more I miss my Amiga 500 and 1500, the more I want to see if I can buy one again. Lot of more's there :)
It's a slippery slope! Stay away from the edge! :) :) :)
Laughed when I saw my very own transparent A1200 at 4:16. Original case safety stored away in the box the new A1200 case came in.
Looks amazing! Glad you kept the original too :)
@@TheRetroShack my A600 and period CRT monitor keep up the beige duties superbly
Back in the day mounting a 3.5" hard drive and squeezing the case closed was the way most amiga 1200 budget upgrades went.
I knew many machines and my own original from 1993 and a friend of mines machine ran like that until the late 90's with no fizz bang.
We still have our original machines.
I had a gvp 1230 accelerator with a 50mhz 030 which is still running fine.
What a nice donation to the shack. I look forward to episode 2.
I've got something really cool planned for this :) :)
The long delay on the grey screen is it looking at the IDE interface. Once you have a drive attached, that delay will disappear!
Good to know :) I guess that’s why I haven’t seen that behaviour on the A600 as that has a CF card installed on the IDE channel. :)
@@TheRetroShack yep delay is looking for HDD, hold two mouse buttons for more info on drives
@@TheRetroShack From memory the 3.0 ROMs had no such delay when there wasn't a hard drive connected. A "feature" added in Kickstart 3.1 :)
Lovely video cant wait for the next episode !
Thanks - keen to get this one done so won't be long! ;)
@@TheRetroShack yeah a really interesting Computer ! Cant wait to see it shine once again
Great video as always. Even better as you've featured my modded A1200 @ 4:25! 😍
All of these custom Amiga builds have, shall we say, ‘inspired me’… hoping you all like the results :)
I have always wanted an Amiga.
The closest I got to one was at a couple of shows, so I never got to enjoy what they could do.
Emulation works, but isn't the same thing and real hardware.
Thanks for the video, it reminds me of why I still want one!
Couldn’t agree more - I have probably the ‘best’ Amiga sitting on my PI 4 - but it’s just a little ‘soulless’ compared to the real thing :)
11:55 At this, it usually cycles different shades of grey for about 2 seconds, then tries to boot from the hard drive. With the lack of a hard drive, it hangs on the screen for up to 10 seconds more before giving you the purple insert disk screen. However, even if it did find a hard drive, it could still end up hanging on grey as it loads workbench or something.
So in short, yes, this is normal for an A1200.
Thanks for the info - very good to know this stuff! :)
My old Amiga 1200 PPC /060, BVision 3D Vga, USB, 128mb ram, AmigaOS4 and OS 3.9 on home made tower chase. 😎
Only Amiga make possible! 💪 RULEEZ
Coming soon, new AmigaOS4 multicore on new Notebook PPC 64bit 😎
Nice kit!
So glad that Beast is in better hands now 🙌🏾
It's funny that you showed The Fate of Atlantis when mentioning the temptations of PC games, as this game exactly marked my transition from Amiga 500 to PC.
I absolutely loved all the Lucas Arts adventures, so I had no hesitation in placing a pre-order for the game, for the Amiga, as I wanted it as soon as it came out. I think this must have been from Special Reserve, they had adverts in most magazines of the time and I used to buy most of my Amiga games from them.
However, I had been thinking about buying a PC for a while, using money I had saved up from my first job. I think I must have seen in a magazine somewhere the details of the PC version of The Fate of Atlantis, with its promise of 256 colour VGA graphics and no disk-swapping (the memory of the horrendous disk swapping on the Amiga version of Monkey Island 2 was still fresh at the time).
So, I bought a PC (a 486 DX2 50, which I still have) and I rang up Special Reserve and changed my pre-order from the Amiga to the PC version. And that was that. I don't think I bought another Amiga game and the PC replaced the Amiga on my desk and sadly the Amiga was boxed up and put away.
The good news is that I still have the Amiga, still in its original box and I do get it out from time to time, although I tend to use emulators for playing Amiga games these days.
I knew the world had changed towards the PC, not with Doom like many other people, but when I saw and heard Monkey Island 2 running on a VGA Monitor and with music from a Roland MT-32. I was gobsmacked!
If the board has not been recapped, you should do this immediately.
Looks like a gentle touch of a hot bulb :D
You may just be right there!
You should invest in some type of UV lighting, a plastic container, and either reflective tape or tinfoil for the outside of the container, So you can do retro brighting indoors, It's not that costly at all and you never have to depend on the sun again.
It unfortunately all comes down to money and time - and not having enough of either! :) :) I'll get one eventually no doubt :)
I get it especially during these times but I'm sure you'll get there sooner or later.
My A1200 has been sat in its box on top of the wardrobe for over 20 years, no tinkering, just the shop installed HD and a Blizzard accelerator in the trapdoor... wonder what the chances of it just working are?
Check the PSU voltages at the pins before you plug it in so you don’t accidentally fry it - if they’re good then go for it! :) Let me know how you get on! :)
Eeek! You should probably replace those mangled clock port pin headers. They're too far gone. There were a lot of neat expansions made for the clock port since it was the only other internal expansion port in the A1200 and accelerators usually went on the trapdoor port. It's a slow bus but it was used for a lot of things like sound cards and the like.
Yep - I'll be replacing those :)
Internal 3.5 inch drives like that were common as far as I remember. The dealers used to sell them as kits with the advantage that they were cheaper than 2.5 inch drives. I think you were meant to leave the top RF shield in and cut one of the ribs on the case to get it to fit instead of wedging it on the top of the PCB like that though.
I don’t think I’d have been happy about it wobbling around but then again I suppose back then it would have lived on a desk and stayed there - I move things around too much these days :)
In early 1994 I worked at a shop that did a lot of Commodore repairs, and seeing a 3.5” drive in a 1200 wasn’t uncommon. If just the bit of shield above the rtc was removed (it was removable, so a rtc could be added under the shield) and a bit of cardboard or insulating foam was added beneath the harddrive, it would fit snuggle between the keyboard and the rf-shield, not moving at all, once the machine was assembled!
Haven’t seen one just lying on the pcb like that though … and maybe the “mangling” of the rtc connector, is because the drive would shift around and short-circuit it?..
@@peterlinddk possibly! Would explain why it got snipped off I guess :) :)
@@TheRetroShack The problem was 2.5" drives were stupidly expensive at the time (well, all hard drives were, but 3.5" drives were finally becoming at least not crazy-expensive). Just a few short years later with the explosion of laptops with hard drives, 2.5" drives would become cheap too, but in 1992 it was a forward-thinking but present-foolish choice on Commodore's part. They should have included a real 3.5" drive mount at the cost of making the case just slightly larger.
There were a number of mods that came out in those short few years where you'd take out the internal floppy, use the floppy bay for a 3.5" hard drive, and then rewire df0: to use the external floppy port, and just always use an external floppy drive on your A1200.
And of course all the tower conversion kits, of which there were many. A lot of these kits were solely so you could add hard drives and didn't even add a busboard for Zorro expansions (though there were a lot of those too).
@@NozomuYume fascinating stuff!
Accelerator worth more than the Amiga. :)
BTW I don't think it's accurate to say it has more support now than it did back in the day. Remember that at the time the market was big enough to support several dedicated magazines that you could buy in any newsagent. They were all packed with ads for weird and wonderful add-ons and had readerships in the hundreds of thousands.
A fair point and I suppose I was on the periphery of it at that point so probably wasn’t ‘in the loop’ on a lot of the more esoteric or fringe stuff - I’m just glad that there are still so many things available for these things! You only have to look at the Amiga representation at the Revision demo parties each year to see how much these things are still loved :)
@@TheRetroShack Absolutely! I think the fact that there are so many of them still in action is probably why some people find it acceptable to do all those case mods. They're not exactly rare (yet)!
It is fair to say though, that for a 30 year old computer that was only on sale for a few short years, the Amiga 1200 still has loads of 3rd party support to take advantage of modern hardware, which is pretty remarkable.
Looking forward to this refurb!
Me too :) :)
@@TheRetroShack Me too!
Nasty ol' solder blob! Thankfully that's all it was! Good eye on that one!
Yep, sneaky little bugger! :) :)
Just noticed in the video, your A1200 is made in the Philippines. Mine is made in Scotland.
Does yours wear a kilt? :)
Click this video as I was a little surpised on the damage ! - Dave / South West Amiga Group
General consensus amongst the comments is that it's likely light bulb damage? Maybe stored on the top of a wardrobe or something? Who knows, it's proper nasty though :)
Still have my original A1200. No idea if it still works, but it did the last time I checked about 15 years ago. The hard disk required a format, but otherwise still worked.
It was the computer I learned how to upgrade and system manage on. It still has the stock Workbench 3.0 ROMs, but has a 1gb HD, a Blizzard card with a 68030 running at 50mHz(I think, but don't quote me on the clock speed, it was waaay too long ago, but good enough to run Doom at full speed at 320x200) and either 4 or 8mb of fast RAM, depending what I was doing that day. The reason for the difference in RAM at times is that if I plugged my SCSI adapter and 8mb of chip RAM in, it would green screen on boot, so if I wanted to use the CD-ROM drive I had to swap the fast RAM SIMM over to 4mb. I still have the CD-ROM and SCSI adapter, but the adapter is broken. Those PC cards were really dodgy, I think I had 3 of 'em.
I also have the official A1200 dust cover and aftermarket higher wattage power supply with built in fan.
Had a Blizzard A1230@50MHz and it was a beast, add in an FPU it does make it a bit faster too.
Genuinely quite excited to see what this can do when it's all pumped up :)
Nice! Wondering how you will handle the case... Love my 1200. Had one back in the day... Loved it... Had to get one again, which I did years (8 ish?) ago... Was tricky finding a A1200 here in the US for a decent price back then. Can imagine it hasn't gotten better. Have a 28Mhz 030 with 32M RAM in it now. You really do need at least some RAM for an A1200 to perform happily. And a processor and RAM make it fly.
Love the PCMCIA option. Mostly use it for ethernet (I also have a PCMCIA SCSI card I can use with a CDROM). Admittedly, I also got a PCMCIA WiFi card I haven't used, because my 1200 is sitting about 18 inches away from my router. ;-)
I wouldn't say I routinely browse the internet with it :-), but it is nice to be able to pop over to Aminet from time to time. And they are still releasing new versions of AmigaOS!!!
Enjoy and I'll be watching to see how your progress proceeds... ;-)
Thanks - I've got a plan :) Whether it works or not is a different matter! I guess we'll find out soon enough :)
Have an A1200 in my collection but it's only got the HD - would love an accelerator card to check out some of the faster stuff. And I have seen several 1200s with those melty patches on the case, definitely something up with the design if that keeps happening.
You should have seen the original wiring it was put together with tape and I replaced the tape with terminal Block as a temp measure as was planning to install the whole computer with a ez-tech tower
Hey Paul! I bet you were horrified to find all the wires taped up! I've learned from the comments that LOTS of people had these 3.5" drives loose in the case so I guess it was the done thing :) Looking forward to seeing where I can take this and I'm so grateful for you sending it in! (Secretly, I'm probably even more excited for the 500 Plus cos I can stick a PI Storm in there :) :) )
@@TheRetroShack yep I was but I was not first one I seen.
I did install the 3.1 Roms as it originally had 3.0 Roms so the hard drive when boots will have OS 3.9 installed with deluxe paint,personal paint and possibly Photogenics also
If they came out earler i might have got one but by the time i was spending to much time working, down the pub or raving.
You make that sound like a bad thing ;)
Where do you get your diag Roms?
Just got mine off eBay - they seem readily available :)
Love the video, I have currently got 2 A1200s brought ages ago, one in a tower with a blizzard ppc board and one in desktop with a Vampire. Fun machine to use and play with!
Just a minor comment on the video, the logo "swish" sound between segments is kinda harsh.
The 'swoosh' is gone! No-one likes it :) :) :)
@@TheRetroShack I didn't want to say bit it was a little, erm, well, annoying 😅 Maybe if it was a little quieter and you had the logo either come in or leave rather than both. But if its gone it's all mute now anyway 😁
The A1200 is my second favorite retro computer I have four of them would of been five but I sold my A600 many years ago as I did not like it. More fool me as the upgrades now available are fantastic.
Anyway I digress, Looking at the the damage to the case I think it has been close to a 60 watt bulb.
What’s the first favourite?
@@TheRetroShack Zx Spectrum The 1st computer I ever owned from new and the 1st computer I learned to program 😁
That was a stroke of luck with the blob of solder! Look forward to part two.
Well - It took me ages to find because I wasn't expecting it :) I'd been tracing signals and it was only when I got to that chip that I thought 'Hang on, what's that!' Little blighter!
@@TheRetroShack visual inspection is sometimes underestimated when fault finding! You found the fault which is what matters at the end of the day. Probably a blob from previous tinkering! 🤣
I'd highly recommend a mSATA SSD on a 2.5" 44 pin IDE converter board. They are marginally fast, energy efficient, cool and system compliant. And if that turbo board works, try to obtain a 16bit PCMCIA network card and transfer files over the network with sambafs. That way you can get rid of those annoying CFCards. :)
Aargh! So much stuff I can do with this thing! :) :)
how are cf's annoying? they are straight thru IDE and need no additional adapter chips to convert signals to another standard making them not only quick in access time,and a practical match to amiga IDE,they run cold,use less power than your SSD and will have a faster access time due to no translation thru others chips causing latency. They are compact and practical and cant see how they are " annoying". I've been using CF's on all of my amigas almost 20 years now. Some of my cf's are 20+ years old .If cf's annoy you dont buy cheap china no brands. cf's also work well in a pcmcia port adapter which might cost $4.
@@a4000t Ok, I take my word back. They are not annoying...
...after you find the adapter/CF couple that works of course. :)
4:57 I like those "cutscenes" but my suggestion is to make them little bit quieter :).
Ps. nice video
Already sorted - a few complaints :(
My Amiga 1200 needs help, floppy drive fault and capacitors?
Always recap if you can - and get that floppy swapped out for a Gotek, you won't regret it :)
Those destroyed clock-port header pins are misplaced on this board. This is a known problem on some Amiga 1200s from the factory. The pins should be actually near the expansion socket/floppy, not towards the custom chips. Please research this problem online for a proper fix, when working on the board, and don't just blindly replace the clock port pins!
Thanks for the heads up!
Shortly after the introduction of the A1200 I was in a dilemma if I should get the A1200 or should buy a PC. After talking to a computer guy back then I got a recommendation to get a PC because Amiga was a "dead end". I still wonder what could have happened if I got an Amiga 1200 instead.
I think it would have taken a few hundred thousand more people to have made that decision unfortunately - Still, at least you can grab one now and still have all the fun :)
i had one of these machines from new, it was pretty good but it was released too late and other technologies rendered it redundant fairly quickly. Nice to see one again though. Please get rid of the swooshy sounds on the transitions though, i don't think it helps the flow of the narrative. Just my opinion. Love your restorations. I'm in the Uk too and if you want to retrobrite have you considered buying a few meters of UV LEDs and making an LED enclosure
Couple of complaints about the whooshes - consider them gone! :). I have considered the old UV LED setup - just need to get a move on with it I guess :)
Powering on an A1200 after so long is a bit dangerous as the caps tend to leak out. First thing every A1200 user should do is to replace these old leaky caps and replace them with new ones. After that you can power on the machine.
lol fizz bang the art of early upgrading and overclocking lol
Well, I'm nearly finished with it and there's been no fizz-bang yet so that's a good sign :)
4:05 Oh my God...😍
When is it melted and when molten ?
Asking for a friend 😎
Molten is mostly used for rocks/metals/hard things that are liquified by extreme temperatures I think - Molten rock, not melted rock. My ice cream melted, not molten ice cream :). Think I'm right there :) :)
@@TheRetroShack Thanks 😊🤝🏻👍🏻🇳🇱
Ahh nice a “real” commodore A120” not the later German knock offs!
Let the internet war begin :) :) :)
i miss my a1200.. :( sold it to get a 486 dx2/66...
What fools we were Baz! :)
@@TheRetroShack i know.. however i did try to recreate my love of the amiga 1200 a few years ago.. i bought a case and keyboard off ebay and did what everyone does.. put a raspberry pi in it.. lolol.. however it wasn't until i got the Mister that i truly felt like i'd got my amiga back again..
@@bazza5699 oh stop with the Mister!!! I’m getting one, ok?! :) :) :) :)
@@TheRetroShack yayyayyy i've worn you down!!.. now.. just get you to go vegan and my work is done!!!
For me it would be a tough choice between getting one of the cases shown on the th-cam.com/users/A1200NET channel, or using it as a starting point for an a4000TX motherboard build.
"What might have been if money and time had been kinder to Commodore back in the day." You mean, "What might have been if Commodore's leadership had not had their head up their arses."
No internal varta battery of death, only a dozen or so little capacitors of death
Very true! :)
the pimple below the space bar is a screw being too long mark
nice vid, but those wooshing noises are not good
Couple of complaints - consider them gone :)
Ha ,ha,The Truth came out,The old computers are and still will be the best,And all those dos and/ or Windows PCs, Macintoshs aren't, weren't all that great,Huh !!!!.Just all money, ego,and bragging rights, branding butt kissing!!!!
Amiga fan? :) :)
you do realize commodore purchased the amiga company ,
Yep - covered this in th-cam.com/video/SCPiN-5QzQQ/w-d-xo.html
well the mouse wont work when insertet into the wrong port hehe :D
Don't worry, it's in the right port :) I was controlling all the diagrom navigation with it because the keyboard was upside down on the desk :)
@@TheRetroShack at 9:37 the mouse is plugged into port 2 :) but guess in diagrom both ports works
@@MrBlackmaxDKLol - I guess so ;)
Is it weird that I want a machine even more after it's been mistreated?
As far as my memories go back (and they go back well beyond the eighties into the seventies) an Amiga was some 2 - 2.5 times more expensive than a PC of similar capabilities. Amiga was never cheap, and this is probably another reason added to the many by which the PC won the race.
Well, interestingly I remember paying nearly £2000 for my first PC in around 1988 when My amiga cost me about £400 a year or so earlier - but that may just be the Mandela Effect on my poor old brain! :)
That's a shitty escom model I guess.. I once bought another a1200 and thought it wasn't working because of that delayed boot
Those woosh transitions are…distracting :-/
Thought I’d got rid of those! Sorry!
I wish your videos were 20mins long. It just gets into the mix and it’s over. *sad face*
Sorry :( It all comes down to available time I'm afraid. Full time job, wife and kids and unfortunately I need to eat and sleep :( :( Financial milestones on the channel should (if reached) allow some more flexibility in work/channel balance :). Glad you're enjoying the channel :) :)
@@TheRetroShack Sure, understand of course. I guess what I meant was, to release less but longer ones when you do.
You do great subjects. A deeper dive would enhance them.
I wonder what were those guys thinking releasing that thing in 1992. PCs have Windows 3.1 (and even WWG 3.11), a 32-bit protected mode OS (vs. 68020 having no memory management/protection whatsoever), with sound, video, unlimited screen resolution and TrueType/Type1 font support. Also, a 1992 PC had a choice of video- and audiocards with the standard ISA interface, unlike shitty proprietary builtins. PCs also supported high-resolution, high-frequency monitors instead of CRT TVs those micros used. It was obsolete by like 5 years at that point.
Speaking as someone who had a PC back at that time (and I assure you, Windows 3.x did not have memory protection), I made the jump to Mac (which I admit did feel like a wrong move at times been ‘95 and ‘98).
After jumping to Mac, I wondered why anyone would stick with Wintel, with its comparatively sluggish CPUs, primitive 8.3 file names, lack of plug and play, lack of good quality native sound, lack of resolution in games (320x200 - yuck) etc etc.
The truth is, you chose the platform that works for you. PC worked for you - which is great. Mac worked for me, and still does now. Amiga, and even ST, worked for millions of others. No point in getting all religious about it - but really, as someone who was there, the PC really wasn’t all that.