I found a use for the turbo button. Turns out there are two pins of the bus board that if shorted turn-off the bus board, disabling all your zorro 2 boards. If I connect this to the turbo button I can turn the bus board on/off turning in back into a regular A1200 for games that don't like the expansion. The accelerator and be turned off by holding a key combination on powerup.
As an AmigaONE X5000 owner I can say that you can use it and AmigaOS 4.1 as a "daily driver". Most 68k applications that were written without banging the hardware will run without any visual emulation (like word processors, 3d software such as LightWave, Image processing tools such as ImageFX and Photogenics and obviously much faster than any 68k would). I've setup my emulated A1200/060 system to be as cpu speed accurate as possible (WinUAE) and for the benchmark I used a tool I used a lot back in the days which is called Pegase, which was probably the fastest 68k MP2 encoder for music files. It had very optimized versions for 030/040 and 060. I encoded the same song on my 060 emulated setup as well as using the 030 version on under OS4.1 on the AmigaONE X5000. A1200/060: 00:04:17 A1X5000: 00:00:36 Then on the A1X5000 I used Lame to encode with the same settings, but as MP3 and the result was 00:00:17. Fun fact... running the 060 emulation with JIT and Fastest Possible, Pegase finishes at 00:00:15. 68k games (ECS/AGA) will run under the implemented RunInUAE. ADF files and WHDLoad games works... the cool thing with ADF files... if you name them properly, the system will automaticaly switch disks. You simply just doubleclick on the first disk and the emulator starts and off it goes. The only real downside with AmigaOS is that it lacks a proper web-browser that is up to date and works with everything. So do not expect to be able to do any bank related things. I havn't even gotten Paypal to work... the browers I use is Odyssey and it can actually load most sites including youtube... however, it doesn't seem to support hardware accelerated playing of videos and the CPU will struggle there. The workaround is to use AmiTube (a separate software), find the video and then stream it directly to Emotion, which is a hardware accelerated videoplayer. That works really well. But yeah... make sure you at least have a smartphone for the sites that requires that sort of security. :) And of course... if you are into video editing, you are going to end up empty. It would be great if the people behind Vlab Motion and Movieshop could release the sourcecode or someone buying it from them to update it for OS4.1. :) Well... that would be a dream... :D
I had the Eyetech EZtower for my A1200 with the PowerUp PPC board and the BlizardvisionPPC graphics card, unfortunately my Powerup board and graphics card got lost when moving house about 10 years ago. Knowing how rare they are and how much they are worth it makes me cry to think its probably been thrown in the bin.
The Amiga 1200 tower was one of those upgrades that I always wanted to do. It was originally the plan for my 1200, but I stuck it on the back burner at just the time this stuff was going cheap which in hindsight was a silly idea.
I never knew about big box Amigas back in the day, everything seems like a massive afterthought, i guess they were scrabbling for any market share at this point
Not sure what you mean? There were big box Amigas back then. Amiga 2000, Amiga 3000 and Amiga 4000. They were all built to be workstations for desktop publishing, 2d/3d animation and rendering and video editing. Vlab Motion + Toccata + Movieshop turned any of the big box Amigas into non linear editing systems for video with 44.1Khz stereo sound. Not to mention the Video Toaster + the additional hardware called the Flyer on the US market If you talk about the A1200.... sure... the towers were an afterthought... because no one knew, back when the A1200 was designed, how popular it became and also that there were shitloads of companies designing stuff for it that would require it to be put into a tower.... :D I think it is one of the most expandable of all Amiga computers, even when compared to the real big box Amigas. The Amiga 1200 had a trapdoor slot for accelerators and most of them would fit quite well. Even the Blizzard 1260 would fit there... however.... the accelerator cards themselves, starting with Blizzard 1230, had an additional slot on it for a SCSI controller. And the SCSI controller also had an additional slot for memory. And that is when the towersystems started to get attractive in the mid 90s. And when that had happened that most Amiga 1200 users had things in a towercase, Elbox released the Mediator PCI which became extremely popular since you could then buy cheap PCI graphicscards etc. They produced two versions for the A1200 (one with 6xPCI and one with 4xPCI) and then they continued to produce versions for all the big box Amigas... even different versions wether they were in desktop cases or tower versions. :) My A1200 was in the Elbox tower with Blizzard 1260/256MB ram, SCSI controller (connected to an external SCSI tower), Voodoo 3 3000 gfx card, Soundblaster 128 and a RTL 100MBit networkcard. Thanks to the supported 3D acceleration via the Voodoo 3 card, I could play Quake with 30-40 FPS even though I didn't use a PPC processor.... just the 060 and the Voodoo 3. Those were the times. :D
I guy I knew in the early 90’s had an Amiga 2000 that I got to mess with. Though I’ve never had an Amiga, I’ve always been impressed with their design.
@@TemalCageman Indeed. Look at Terminator 2 and the Amiga's involvement with some of the special effects. Also, was it Seaquest DSV, or the scifi space station TV series, the name of which escapes me.
If you want a cheap PPC “Amiga” get a MacMini G4 and run MorphOS on it. More power than a Blizzard and total cost, including licence for MorphOS should be less than £125. I’ve got a MacMini, AppleMac Pro G5 and a PowerBook G4 all running MorphOS and old Amiga PPC software.
Good god this reminds me of my build that I sold back in early noughties. A4000 kb, Mediator with Voodoo 3 PCI and soundblaster PCI , squirrel scsi, apollo (?)1260 @66mhz, 96 mb Ram, SCSI cd burner, IDE drives x2, surf squirrel fast ethernet , silver surfer fast serial, fast parallel, mutlisync CRT monitor 17", butchered ATX power supply, several strategically placed fans, Catweasel (?) HD floppy interface and drive (1.7mb), and twenty other things that I have forgot. PPC scared me a bit coz of compatibility - and I was a bit reluctant to lose the 060 beast - which i would have had to sell to afford a PPC and 060 combo board. I think I sold the lot and loads of software, joysticks, joypads, the original case, keyboard, every CU Amiga, Amiga Format, One AMiga Amiga power, all CD covers CD32 games for £300. Cost me thousands over the years, I yearned or an A4000 tower but decide to build my a1200 A4000 beater instead. Damn I miss it ☹
I use Amiga OS 4.1 Final Edition on an Amiga X5000 and whilst every so often I am forced to use my Windows 10 machine when there is an app I require that is just not available on the miggy, for about 95% of my home use the X5000 is wonderful, and MUCH MUCH nicer to use than Win 10.
From what I have seen of 4.1 the UI certainly is much more my cup of tea than Win10, but I'm a Linux user so I have no great love of Windows. Out of interest what are you using as a browser ?
@@RetroBytesUK I use Odyssey on my AOne X5000. It handles most sites quite well, except for embedded videos... there is a way to spoof it so you can watch youtube with it at least. I wouldn't try to use it for any bank-related stuff though. That's why I have a smartphone... :D
Seen all this in Amiga Format and didn't have the cash. Was only a high schooler. As for Amiga Format, the magazine itself got kinda pointless at the end, but the cover CD full of freeware and shareware(it's how I got the Amiga port of Doom, it even had the instructions on how to install the files from the PC-CD version to play the full game) was always worth the coins in pre-internet days.
Well don't even think about using Zorro II card with PPC, it's slower than AGA. Mediator for ZIV slots are really pricey. So get rid off that Elbox ZIV busboard and buy standard Mediator. You can get used one on amibay for like 180E and for another 20E you will get PCI card - USB, Radeon 9200, LAN 100Mb etc. But if you want to use Warp3D (something like OpenGL) you need Voodoo3 and they can go for 100E. Another option is to get Bvision which is 3D PCI RTG that plugs into BlizzardPPC directly.
Mediator is best option for towered Amiga, Radeon/Voodoo, Spider, LAN and you have great Amiga. I decided not to go PPC route. 060 is plenty for Classic and beside data types for pictures ppc is not doing much at all. Ibhad it, but decided to sell it, got TF1260 and it's AMAZING.
Keep doing what you do! I have never had my hands on an Amiga, Acorn, BBC micro, or even Commadore 64, But being born in the US in the mid 80's to a very techie family I learned to appreciate archeotech at an early age. I love the thorough firsthand experience you share with us.
The first time I ever heard of an Amiga, it was an ad on the internet in like 1998 for one of these Amiga towers. I was born in 89, I’m American, and everyone had PC’s. So this weird PowerPC not-Mac thing was fascinating to me. Ever since, I’ve had a weird obsession with UK computing history. Still never seen an Amiga in real life lol
What an excellent video. I'm a Linux user who has never used an Amiga, but my researching the progression of computers for media production of course led me to the Video Toaster & and the Amigas. I read about them and wish I'd been a part of it. I've often considered buying one, but I don't know if I can justify the cost without the personal history and nostalgia. But the more I learn the more impressive the platform is. The way it's managed to progress despite being "discontinued" for so long is astonishing. I love the history lessons, and the technical explanations that give a lot more comprehension for the uninitiated like myself.
Funny thing. My trajectory was pretty much the other way around. I learned C on an Amiga 1000, and had a A500 bodged into a mini tower at school, but spent most of my time on the Suns once given an account. I got to be the CS dept sysadm for a while, and moved on to start an ISP in the nineties, and I had a 486 (later a Pentium 133) PC running Linux. I've stayed there pretty much ever since with a bunch of Slackware boxes at my house tied together with gig ether.
I was originally an Amiga fan, and I think it is still the computer I loved most. I use a PC now, but don't feel the same attachment to it. I used an Amiga pretty much until the end of Commodore, I was sort of forced to change because while I loved my Amiga, I'd just started a degree and *really* needed a PC I could use for development work. I didn't have the space to keep both set up, so the Amiga got packed away, and gradually replaced. My PC I have now is many orders of magnitude more powerful than my 1200, but it still feels like I am using a tool, rather than doing something I love. To some extent, I get the feeling of doing something I love from using my various Raspberry Pis, but even that's not the same.
Nowadays original A1200 case can be made with 3D printer if wanting to go back. Because as I understand it can now be done with a Vampire card like that exists for the A600, but it's really sad commodore never had a microsoft like budget.
There is a company doing new injection moulded A1200 cases, the quality is really good on them. Yeah the vamprie is a much easier upgrade option than going full tower to get accel and rtg. They dont do PPC howerver so you cant run any of the PPC software. If I can get and rtg card I'll do a follow-up video looking at some of the few commercially released games for amiga ppc.
I remember this case from Amiga ads in local computer magazine and its one of the nicer case designs of that time imho. Amiga at the time were considered quite cheap way to get computer but only when they were not expanded too much. Prices for accelerator cards were quite ridiculous and I remember at the time I got used Pentium 166MHz (somewhere in 98 if I remember correctly) with board and ram I would have hard time getting 68030 card for the money. Heck, I still would not be able to. BTW. 68060 is more comparable to AMD K5 or even Cyrix 6x86 when it comes to both CPU design and performance characteristics. In other words even without bottleneck in form of AGA chipset Quake will run slower than Pentium with the same clock and very comparable to K5.
Man, I am so sad I was born blind, because I am very much into these retro computers and stuff but I can’t actually use them. It’s more and more tempting to go learn 68000 Assembly and build myself a screen reader
I had an A1200 with the Blizzard A1230/882@50MhHz and the thing was fast, but the trapdoor couldn’t handle the heat under Linux so ended up buying and converting a peecee case. Having a decent case with pci slits and a cheap FTX card would’ve made that thing a beast.
I had the A4k Version of this... TOP shelf stuff. ZEROOOOOOO support in terms of anything that would take advantage of the PPC. This of course was spurred on by the ambiguity and general stupidity of the folks in charge of the Amiga IP (back then). The tactic was keep announcing products if nothing else to reduce confidence in any kind of third party offerings and make them inert. A cluster- F in every sense of the concept. Back in the day I spoke to one of the folks in charge of said IP and half the conversion was who they were aiming to sue for trying to create open source projects. I sold mine off in 2005 for $100 more than what I paid in 1998. Fast forward to today... Folks in charge of IP do very little in terms of hardware and the legal battles as to who owns what slogs on...and end users are the heroes in this story.....They cretate 68K solutions like Vampire, Terrible Fire, and Pistorm that are head and shoulders above most offered from official channels.
They really did hold the amiga back a platform with that behaviour. It fortunate that you and others have created some what of a 68k Amgia renaissance in the last few years.
Sorry, I'm missing something from here. Do. you mean IP as in intellectual property or is it a name of a group that provides... something? What that has to do with the current solutions as the Vampire and such? I'm not that deep in Amiga stuff and I seriously don't understand :(
I still remember ripping A4000 desktops apart by the dozen because the A4000t was not there to make a tower in PC cases. Literally bought A4000's by the truckload..... It's just depressing just how much money it is worth today.
@@cocusar I believe they mean the holding company who bought the intellectual property of the Amiga name, OS, etc were mismanaging it while the fans kept it going
I remember those cases and kits you could buy as a conversion for your A1200. I ended up buying a 4000T instead which I am happy about. I think, unfortunately, the cases for the A1200 had no character, at all, so, perhaps, in this new day of Amiga, there could be some cooler things but I think leaving it all in the wedge case and cramming modern tech into it is the way to go. Thanks for the vid, I really enjoyed it!
I would loved to have been able to find an Amiga 4000T they looked great, and the extra slots would have been handy. It a shame you can't find them anywhere these days.
So glad I have my Blizz 040PPC card :D Really need to sort out the tower case properly as the keyboard interface has stopped working and the zorro board is missing some standoffs. Just need time, and space LOL
I had an 040 in the trap door of my A1200, I dont actually know why as I didn't do anything with it but I resorted to the high tech solution of stacking books under the A1200.
I would argue that the Vampire is the most powerful 68k Amiga ever made.... and then, as far as AmigaOS 4.1 goes, you have the AmigaONE X5000. :) But if we stick to the classic hardware + expansions.... They are equal to the A1200/A2000/A3000 regarding 68k CPU speed because all 4 models had access to 68060 CPUs. If we exclude the Vampire for now, since it is only for A500/A600/A1200 and sports a "100Mhz 68080, onboard RTG and 512MB fast ram". As for expansion... yes the A4000 has Zorro III but so does the A3000, but the A3000 doesn't have AGA. If you go down the route of PCI expansion instead of Zorro, then there are some differences there as well. But lets start with the Phase 5 PPC products. The A1200 had 4 options.... PPC 603e at 180, 200 and 240Mhz and space for up to 256MB ram. Then there was 603e Plus that also had a SCSI controller and a slot for the BlizzardVision graphicscard. The A3000 and A4000 had access to PPC 604e at 150, 180, 200 and 233Mhz with up to 128MB ram, SCSI controller and expansion slot for CyberVision PPC graphicscard. However, only the A4000 could use the onboard SCSI controller since the A3000 could not send an INT2 signal (not present in the A3000 cpu slot). The 604e processor is faster due to its 3 integer units compared to 603e 1 integer unit. As for memory expansion.... the A3000 and A4000 had a bunch of Zorrro based ram expansion boards that you coud use. I've seen such Amigas display over 700MB of ram, which is quite extreme for an Amiga, where the A1200 can only reach 256MB ram (again, if we exlude the Vampire). Now, regarding PCI expansion, some interesting things have happened the last years. And this is where the A1200 PCI expansion differs from the A3000/4000 PCI expansion. There are a bunch of fairly cheap and powerfull PPC-PCI boards floating around and they have been reported to only work with A3000 and A4000... they do not work with A1200. And these PPC processors are way faster than what Phase 5 put onto their accelerators. If you search here on youtube for "PCI PowerPC cards on the Amiga - a deep dive" you will find an hour long video from Wrangler Amiga and he goes through all the things you need to know in order to get these very powerful PPC based PCI accelerators to work and he also show some stuff off. :) But they only work for A3000 and A4000 that has the Elbox Mediator expansion. And these cards probably runs circles around the Vampire in terms of raw processing speed. But at the same time, you are going to be limited to a few apps that can utilize the power of the PPC, such as games, video/audio/image encoding/decoding/processing... yeah... things like that. :) It is a fun watch though.
LOL @6:37 ... I'm sometimes asked how I could afford my collection. My answer is always "I bought these back in the 90s, when you were unloading yours."
Amiga was my first true gaming system and to this day they still live in the mancave and get used how they should. Games were always better than the dos ports/version.
Ooh. I have such tower a1200. Exactly the same design as the one you refurbished. I always thought it was a mod made by the previous owner (since I bought it second hand). Well, now I know it's actually actual product. I recapped the board, but it's good point the power supply is now really just a fire hazard, lol.
thats the exact same cap that messed up my opamp line, i had to bodge a wire to get the audio to work right, glad im a electronics nerd, had to trace and deduct.
Im kinda glad I just stuck with 680x0 based Amigas, and a PC running Win NT. (which is where C= were heading anyway). The (post C=) Amiga story got quite ugly for a good while there. :)
i remember waiting 2 years trying to get a voodoo 5 to replace my voodoo3 in my pci mediator machine. i gave up after the 3rd card i got didn't work, not all voodoo5s worked with it apparently.
@@RetroBytesUK I had the same towercase as in this video.... Blizzard 1260 with 128MB ram + the SCSI-controller that gave another 128MB ram. Mediator PCI with a Voodoo 3 3000 16MB RTG board, Soundblaster 128 and an RTL networkcard. I also had an external SCSI tower with a CD burner and some extra harddrives. Internaly I had 4x 40GB ide harddrives (using the Elbox FastIDE interface). At some point I had 3x harddrives with an LS-120 diskdrive (this was like a zip drive but it could read/write regular floppys as well (could not format them though). All this... except for the external scsi tower and its contents, I exchanged for a Pegasos-1 computer... that is still something that haunts my life. How stupid I was to get rid of such a powerful Amiga for such crap as the Pegasos-1 really was. Oh well. :)
@@TemalCageman I feel for you that was one heck of a system to exchange. I'm managed to get hold of a FastIDE since making this. It really has improved the disk performance. I also have gotten hold of the 3d gfx add-on for the CPU card, but there is a snag as it physically wont fit. So I need to create a re-locator board for it, which means also getting hold of the connectors which is the bit I'm currently stuck on.
@@RetroBytesUK Oh damn.... sad to hear about that snag. But at least you have a proper classic system. Thankfully before my exchange, I stored everythin onto my PC based FTP so I can run my old classic system via WinUAE. I also own a Sam460ex as well as an AmigaOne X5000, Ontop of that I do have an miniMac running MorphOS (which I havve not used in 4-5 years) and a Vampire 4 Stand Alone... oh and not to forget.... the Amiga 500 mini, which is brilliant for those oldschool games if games is your goal. :) Sure you have to pay for it, but the plug-and-play is worth it compared to the time to setup lets say a Raphery Pi to do the same for less money.
I piad £500 for my upgraded PPC card (330Mhz PPC CPU/68060/75Mhz) from Amibay back in 2010. I sold that same board about 6 years ago and netted £1600 for it. I also had the bvision board to go with but never got time to try it, so sold that as well at double the price i'd paid. I have the Tower A1200 too. I've got a mediator PCI board, the voodoo 2 card which works really well (and was hard to get years ago), a decent 100mb PCI nic and also sound. I haven't turned it on for at least 5 years. Next time it gets turned on will be after recapping and a PSU change, the likes of which you've just done. Due to space and time, i'll end up sorting it all out to make it nice and sellable and then get shot. I have 2 x A1200 desktops along with some 060 boards and 030 boards that all work nicely. I have the vampire 2 A600 as well, with nice HDMI, which scratches the itch of Amiga use occasionally. I'm glad I bought so much stuff around the 2010 time. Although I paid what seems like a lot back then, it's worth 3-4 times more at present day. Was ultimately a really good investment.
The price of PPC accelerators are scary now, I just dont have that kind of money for an accelerator. You've got a very nice collection therem Its a shame the vampire 2 for the A600 is nolonger being produced.
So in the early 2000s, Apple released Mac OS 10, which ran on a custom UNIX-compatible kernel (on top of Mach for legacy stuff but whatever). Apple was also using PPC hardware at the time, and because OSX was UNIX, gcc could work. Therefore, if someone were to add the Amiga's supplementary chips as an add-on card to the Power Mac, iMac, or Powerbook line, could you be able to run some AmigaPPC software natively on a Mac?
I have my Amiga 1200 in an EZ-Tower Z4, although I don't have the bus-board. I don't have such a flash accelerator card, mine is just a humble GVP A1230 Series II with 68030@50MHz. Works well enough for anything I need to do on my Amiga though, including downloading software and modules and such. I'm very much considering putting my Amiga back into the wedge case though. There is something very beautifully nostalgic about that, and as I don't have a bus-board, I don't really need to keep it in a tower, other than for somewhere to put my CD-ROM drive I guess ^^
a1200.net has started making new wedge cases, they have a few advantages over the original for internal upgrades. I have one, and it’s got an internal usb card and I connect a usb cd drive to that.
@@RetroBytesUK My old wedge case is perfectly fine. Not much yellowing at all, and if I had to pay the kind of money these things command today, I'd rather just get a Mediator PCI 1200 TX to justify keeping my system in a tower ^^ As long as there's no internal space for a CD-ROM drive (a small redesign could possibly allow for a laptop style drive), I don't see the point in replacing my original with a new one.
@@rebeccaschade3987 If its in good condition I completely agree, it's just most tower owners either never had the original case (as they bought their tower off someone else) or have lost/sold the original case.
@@RetroBytesUK I received my A1200 from the original owner, who'd used it as a work computer for many years, but had now retired it. It did have the accelerator card in it, but was otherwise stock. I've since upgraded from the more standard 40MHz "EC" model '030 to the 50MHz RC, added an FPU and upgraded from 4MB to 32MB FastRAM. I've also added a few other upgrades, such as PCMCIA Ethernet, Fast IDE adapter and such. There's however been issues with the keyboard. I replaced the membrane, but it didn't help, so I've narrowed it down to most likely being poor conductivity in the graphite on the plungers. But when I saw the EZ-Tower for sale, I decided to get it with the intention of potentially upgrading with a bus-board etc. But the novelty of trying to turn an A1200 into a pseudo modern system has kind of worn off. An Amiga is best at being an Amiga :)
Hi, it's me again/ I found a little bit more information. The closest one I could find was an Amiga Big Tower A1200 but it isn't exactly the same, I'll describe it again, maybe someone can give me a clue. It measures 27" Height (with no wheels) 7.5" wide and 17" deep it's all metal except the front basal It has 6 5.25" bays, 2 floppy bays and 7 expansion ports, I believe much has been replaced inside. It doesn't open like other towers but the metal sides slide off. The structure that holds the .motherboard folds down after a couple of screws are removed, The motherboard doen't come with a VGA port but the video is accessed by a card in the expansion port that has a HD-15 port and an s-video jack. No I have no way to send a photo of it. But thanks,
I bought the 200mhz and 040 25mhz ppc card new along with the add on graphics card i sold it with all the original boxes and got £475 for it on ebay if only i kept it longer at the current prices i wont be getting one again .
Very nice indeed! Bordering on the delicious. Here's a controversial thought for the comments section: Amiga PPC accelerators. A spectacularly bad idea in hindsight that looked like a really good idea at the time. Yeh, I'm not a fan of this current blinkered habit too many people have for judging the past using today's knowledge and/or sensibilities. What's that phrase? "Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged."
I never got a PPC, at the time I didnt even have an accellerator at all, but a friend of mine had one. Actually I think he had four, before getting one that was even remotely useable. Now I have a T1200 with a zorro-ii, theres a catweasel in there and an 060'50. I really must get that old girl re-capped.. And there is a cap on the accellerator too that I'm a bit concerned about. I absolutly hate those stupid caps.. purists be damned, if I can get them off in one piece without lifting pads, the ones going back in there will have legs...
I actually have no experience with Amigas of any sort. I started on an IBM PS/2 Model 30 (Intel 286), and stayed largely in the Intel world since. I do have a VIC-20 now, but haven't played with it yet since I'm missing the power brick for it)
Hi, I've been holding on to what I think is an old Amiga (at least the frame) that an ex-friend gave me after he ripped off my new computer. It's taller than most towers and has like 4 slots for hard drives inside, 6 5.25 drive bays in front, 2 floppy bays in front, and 7 expansion slots in back, and has lots of room inside. It's an all-metal frame and outside with the exception of the front panel which is plastic. The sides come off and the frame has a side that lifts down on a hinge for access to the motherboard, I've had it for years and everyone has told me it's way out of date and would be very expensive to upgrade if possible. I need opinions. Thank you ahead of time
@@RetroBytesUK I am not sure I can't find a number/letter I can pin down as a model number. I've searched the internet but haven't been successful to my liking. I can add that it was to have wheels and it came with a 5.25" Driver Bay accessory that was a "Hard Drive Switch" which I found was very hard on Hard drives. It also had no video port on the motherboard but came with a video card with a RJ-45 port and a s-video din.
@@RetroBytesUK I don't really have a twitter account I'm kind of private. I'd ask for your E-mail but then it would be shown here for all to see, If we could figure out a private way . I don't have a photo but I do have a computer drawing I did with details.
I had ppc blizzard 240 mz 603 i brought card new then got bvison graphics add on i wasint rich just badly wanted ppc i had wait along time before phaze 5 produced them .then dce took over they made my bvison .😂 I sold my blizzard to itaian doctor .brought my wifes engament ring i paid 2000 nz for mine .i ran quake i brought the click boom port .was so slow on 040 but special 😊 ppc port ran so well .i ran bbs on cnet amiga software .one night caller rang when playing quake .he logged in it ran quite slow but think workef was awsome .wish keep my ppc card no way can afford one know.❤ Thanks for memorys .i brought a old mac mini tryed morphos .i prefer os 4
The PA-RISC/Windows NT part of the story is bollocks. PA-RISC was looked at as the basis for a 3D GPU, with a mind to putting it on a PCI card or in a games console. Using a modified form of a RISC core as a dedicated GPU was common in the 90s (look at N64 Reality Coprocessor, it's MIPS). This was not a replacement for the Amiga's hardware. In fact no work was done on this beyond a proposal. If they had survived to build it, it wouldn't have replaced the Amiga in any sense. The actual plan for the Amiga was called Actuator and (by the time commodore closed) was designed around PCI bus, with the traditional Amiga chipset fully intact. The OS was being rewritten to support RTG natively, although that feature seems not to have been documented for 3.1 beyond the blurb on the back of the box. The PA-RISC based GPU would've just been an optional extra. Commodore Never, Ever, made any noise about Windows NT. It was just a magazine rumour, nobody at Commodore ever talked about it.
You would not catch me paying that, largely because I dont have that kind of money for a cpu accelerator, but also if I did have a spare 3k thats not what I would spend it on.
I found a use for the turbo button. Turns out there are two pins of the bus board that if shorted turn-off the bus board, disabling all your zorro 2 boards. If I connect this to the turbo button I can turn the bus board on/off turning in back into a regular A1200 for games that don't like the expansion. The accelerator and be turned off by holding a key combination on powerup.
As an AmigaONE X5000 owner I can say that you can use it and AmigaOS 4.1 as a "daily driver". Most 68k applications that were written without banging the hardware will run without any visual emulation (like word processors, 3d software such as LightWave, Image processing tools such as ImageFX and Photogenics and obviously much faster than any 68k would).
I've setup my emulated A1200/060 system to be as cpu speed accurate as possible (WinUAE) and for the benchmark I used a tool I used a lot back in the days which is called Pegase, which was probably the fastest 68k MP2 encoder for music files. It had very optimized versions for 030/040 and 060. I encoded the same song on my 060 emulated setup as well as using the 030 version on under OS4.1 on the AmigaONE X5000.
A1200/060: 00:04:17
A1X5000: 00:00:36
Then on the A1X5000 I used Lame to encode with the same settings, but as MP3 and the result was 00:00:17. Fun fact... running the 060 emulation with JIT and Fastest Possible, Pegase finishes at 00:00:15.
68k games (ECS/AGA) will run under the implemented RunInUAE. ADF files and WHDLoad games works... the cool thing with ADF files... if you name them properly, the system will automaticaly switch disks. You simply just doubleclick on the first disk and the emulator starts and off it goes.
The only real downside with AmigaOS is that it lacks a proper web-browser that is up to date and works with everything. So do not expect to be able to do any bank related things. I havn't even gotten Paypal to work... the browers I use is Odyssey and it can actually load most sites including youtube... however, it doesn't seem to support hardware accelerated playing of videos and the CPU will struggle there. The workaround is to use AmiTube (a separate software), find the video and then stream it directly to Emotion, which is a hardware accelerated videoplayer. That works really well. But yeah... make sure you at least have a smartphone for the sites that requires that sort of security. :)
And of course... if you are into video editing, you are going to end up empty. It would be great if the people behind Vlab Motion and Movieshop could release the sourcecode or someone buying it from them to update it for OS4.1. :) Well... that would be a dream... :D
I had the Eyetech EZtower for my A1200 with the PowerUp PPC board and the BlizardvisionPPC graphics card, unfortunately my Powerup board and graphics card got lost when moving house about 10 years ago. Knowing how rare they are and how much they are worth it makes me cry to think its probably been thrown in the bin.
Oh that's a real shame. That was a really good hardware combination, I supsect saddly your not the only person that happened to.
The Amiga 1200 tower was one of those upgrades that I always wanted to do.
It was originally the plan for my 1200, but I stuck it on the back burner at just the time this stuff was going cheap which in hindsight was a silly idea.
I don't think anyone then expected stuff to start hitting the crazy prices things go for now.
I never knew about big box Amigas back in the day, everything seems like a massive afterthought, i guess they were scrabbling for any market share at this point
Not sure what you mean? There were big box Amigas back then. Amiga 2000, Amiga 3000 and Amiga 4000. They were all built to be workstations for desktop publishing, 2d/3d animation and rendering and video editing. Vlab Motion + Toccata + Movieshop turned any of the big box Amigas into non linear editing systems for video with 44.1Khz stereo sound. Not to mention the Video Toaster + the additional hardware called the Flyer on the US market
If you talk about the A1200.... sure... the towers were an afterthought... because no one knew, back when the A1200 was designed, how popular it became and also that there were shitloads of companies designing stuff for it that would require it to be put into a tower.... :D I think it is one of the most expandable of all Amiga computers, even when compared to the real big box Amigas.
The Amiga 1200 had a trapdoor slot for accelerators and most of them would fit quite well. Even the Blizzard 1260 would fit there... however.... the accelerator cards themselves, starting with Blizzard 1230, had an additional slot on it for a SCSI controller. And the SCSI controller also had an additional slot for memory. And that is when the towersystems started to get attractive in the mid 90s. And when that had happened that most Amiga 1200 users had things in a towercase, Elbox released the Mediator PCI which became extremely popular since you could then buy cheap PCI graphicscards etc. They produced two versions for the A1200 (one with 6xPCI and one with 4xPCI) and then they continued to produce versions for all the big box Amigas... even different versions wether they were in desktop cases or tower versions. :)
My A1200 was in the Elbox tower with Blizzard 1260/256MB ram, SCSI controller (connected to an external SCSI tower), Voodoo 3 3000 gfx card, Soundblaster 128 and a RTL 100MBit networkcard. Thanks to the supported 3D acceleration via the Voodoo 3 card, I could play Quake with 30-40 FPS even though I didn't use a PPC processor.... just the 060 and the Voodoo 3.
Those were the times. :D
I guy I knew in the early 90’s had an Amiga 2000 that I got to mess with. Though I’ve never had an Amiga, I’ve always been impressed with their design.
@@TemalCageman Indeed. Look at Terminator 2 and the Amiga's involvement with some of the special effects. Also, was it Seaquest DSV, or the scifi space station TV series, the name of which escapes me.
@@JamieCrookes BabylonV
@@janwiersma1449 That's the one! Thanks. I forgot that was bugging me at the time. I love closure! :)
I was joking the other day when I said “I look forward to the PPC Amiga review any day” 🤣
You mean it was not a request 😱
If you want a cheap PPC “Amiga” get a MacMini G4 and run MorphOS on it. More power than a Blizzard and total cost, including licence for MorphOS should be less than £125. I’ve got a MacMini, AppleMac Pro G5 and a PowerBook G4 all running MorphOS and old Amiga PPC software.
I've been meaning to get a g5 to try mophos on, partly because it a gorgeous looking machine.
I should try Morph on my iBook G4 (it’s either 1GHz or 1.25, I forget) some time.
Good god this reminds me of my build that I sold back in early noughties. A4000 kb, Mediator with Voodoo 3 PCI and soundblaster PCI , squirrel scsi, apollo (?)1260 @66mhz, 96 mb Ram, SCSI cd burner, IDE drives x2, surf squirrel fast ethernet , silver surfer fast serial, fast parallel, mutlisync CRT monitor 17", butchered ATX power supply, several strategically placed fans, Catweasel (?) HD floppy interface and drive (1.7mb), and twenty other things that I have forgot. PPC scared me a bit coz of compatibility - and I was a bit reluctant to lose the 060 beast - which i would have had to sell to afford a PPC and 060 combo board. I think I sold the lot and loads of software, joysticks, joypads, the original case, keyboard, every CU Amiga, Amiga Format, One AMiga Amiga power, all CD covers CD32 games for £300. Cost me thousands over the years, I yearned or an A4000 tower but decide to build my a1200 A4000 beater instead. Damn I miss it ☹
Thats a fantastic system you had back then. Whoever you sold it to hopefully appreciated it and has taken good care of it.
I use Amiga OS 4.1 Final Edition on an Amiga X5000 and whilst every so often I am forced to use my Windows 10 machine when there is an app I require that is just not available on the miggy, for about 95% of my home use the X5000 is wonderful, and MUCH MUCH nicer to use than Win 10.
From what I have seen of 4.1 the UI certainly is much more my cup of tea than Win10, but I'm a Linux user so I have no great love of Windows. Out of interest what are you using as a browser ?
@@RetroBytesUK I use Odyssey on my AOne X5000. It handles most sites quite well, except for embedded videos... there is a way to spoof it so you can watch youtube with it at least. I wouldn't try to use it for any bank-related stuff though. That's why I have a smartphone... :D
I want an X5000 but the one supplier that ships to America is out of stock, possibly forever.
Seen all this in Amiga Format and didn't have the cash. Was only a high schooler.
As for Amiga Format, the magazine itself got kinda pointless at the end, but the cover CD full of freeware and shareware(it's how I got the Amiga port of Doom, it even had the instructions on how to install the files from the PC-CD version to play the full game) was always worth the coins in pre-internet days.
Well don't even think about using Zorro II card with PPC, it's slower than AGA. Mediator for ZIV slots are really pricey. So get rid off that Elbox ZIV busboard and buy standard Mediator. You can get used one on amibay for like 180E and for another 20E you will get PCI card - USB, Radeon 9200, LAN 100Mb etc. But if you want to use Warp3D (something like OpenGL) you need Voodoo3 and they can go for 100E. Another option is to get Bvision which is 3D PCI RTG that plugs into BlizzardPPC directly.
Mediator is best option for towered Amiga, Radeon/Voodoo, Spider, LAN and you have great Amiga. I decided not to go PPC route. 060 is plenty for Classic and beside data types for pictures ppc is not doing much at all. Ibhad it, but decided to sell it, got TF1260 and it's AMAZING.
Keep doing what you do! I have never had my hands on an Amiga, Acorn, BBC micro, or even Commadore 64, But being born in the US in the mid 80's to a very techie family I learned to appreciate archeotech at an early age. I love the thorough firsthand experience you share with us.
I put a 100 MB SCSI Hard-drive into my standard A1200. Loved the thing
The first time I ever heard of an Amiga, it was an ad on the internet in like 1998 for one of these Amiga towers. I was born in 89, I’m American, and everyone had PC’s. So this weird PowerPC not-Mac thing was fascinating to me. Ever since, I’ve had a weird obsession with UK computing history. Still never seen an Amiga in real life lol
What an excellent video.
I'm a Linux user who has never used an Amiga, but my researching the progression of computers for media production of course led me to the Video Toaster & and the Amigas. I read about them and wish I'd been a part of it. I've often considered buying one, but I don't know if I can justify the cost without the personal history and nostalgia.
But the more I learn the more impressive the platform is. The way it's managed to progress despite being "discontinued" for so long is astonishing.
I love the history lessons, and the technical explanations that give a lot more comprehension for the uninitiated like myself.
Funny thing. My trajectory was pretty much the other way around. I learned C on an Amiga 1000, and had a A500 bodged into a mini tower at school, but spent most of my time on the Suns once given an account. I got to be the CS dept sysadm for a while, and moved on to start an ISP in the nineties, and I had a 486 (later a Pentium 133) PC running Linux. I've stayed there pretty much ever since with a bunch of Slackware boxes at my house tied together with gig ether.
I was originally an Amiga fan, and I think it is still the computer I loved most. I use a PC now, but don't feel the same attachment to it.
I used an Amiga pretty much until the end of Commodore, I was sort of forced to change because while I loved my Amiga, I'd just started a degree and *really* needed a PC I could use for development work. I didn't have the space to keep both set up, so the Amiga got packed away, and gradually replaced.
My PC I have now is many orders of magnitude more powerful than my 1200, but it still feels like I am using a tool, rather than doing something I love. To some extent, I get the feeling of doing something I love from using my various Raspberry Pis, but even that's not the same.
Got that same tower and also had the Zorro IV busboard expansion, it did have the tendency to destruct itself. even bought the PCI expansion for it.
Nowadays original A1200 case can be made with 3D printer if wanting to go back. Because as I understand it can now be done with a Vampire card like that exists for the A600, but it's really sad commodore never had a microsoft like budget.
There is a company doing new injection moulded A1200 cases, the quality is really good on them. Yeah the vamprie is a much easier upgrade option than going full tower to get accel and rtg. They dont do PPC howerver so you cant run any of the PPC software. If I can get and rtg card I'll do a follow-up video looking at some of the few commercially released games for amiga ppc.
@@RetroBytesUK i find using the original case best👏
Now you just need to add a x86 Bridgeboard so you can cram three different CPU architectures in the same computer.
I remember this case from Amiga ads in local computer magazine and its one of the nicer case designs of that time imho. Amiga at the time were considered quite cheap way to get computer but only when they were not expanded too much. Prices for accelerator cards were quite ridiculous and I remember at the time I got used Pentium 166MHz (somewhere in 98 if I remember correctly) with board and ram I would have hard time getting 68030 card for the money. Heck, I still would not be able to. BTW. 68060 is more comparable to AMD K5 or even Cyrix 6x86 when it comes to both CPU design and performance characteristics. In other words even without bottleneck in form of AGA chipset Quake will run slower than Pentium with the same clock and very comparable to K5.
Man, I am so sad I was born blind, because I am very much into these retro computers and stuff but I can’t actually use them. It’s more and more tempting to go learn 68000 Assembly and build myself a screen reader
You can do what you put your mind to. I worked at a call center years ago and we had several agents who were blind.
"Gateway the surprisingly cow themed company"! Never thought about it before but proper made me laugh 😂
Something pretty funny about the way you said gotta a little arrow, ooohh, lol.
I had an A1200 with the Blizzard A1230/882@50MhHz and the thing was fast, but the trapdoor couldn’t handle the heat under Linux so ended up buying and converting a peecee case. Having a decent case with pci slits and a cheap FTX card would’ve made that thing a beast.
Loved those towers, especially the home made ones at the time
I had the A4k Version of this... TOP shelf stuff. ZEROOOOOOO support in terms of anything that would take advantage of the PPC. This of course was spurred on by the ambiguity and general stupidity of the folks in charge of the Amiga IP (back then). The tactic was keep announcing products if nothing else to reduce confidence in any kind of third party offerings and make them inert. A cluster- F in every sense of the concept. Back in the day I spoke to one of the folks in charge of said IP and half the conversion was who they were aiming to sue for trying to create open source projects. I sold mine off in 2005 for $100 more than what I paid in 1998. Fast forward to today... Folks in charge of IP do very little in terms of hardware and the legal battles as to who owns what slogs on...and end users are the heroes in this story.....They cretate 68K solutions like Vampire, Terrible Fire, and Pistorm that are head and shoulders above most offered from official channels.
They really did hold the amiga back a platform with that behaviour. It fortunate that you and others have created some what of a 68k Amgia renaissance in the last few years.
@@RetroBytesUK I haven't done anything its the Apollo TEAM coders and DEVS that do it....I am just a fan and gfx dude and sometimes presenter
Sorry, I'm missing something from here. Do. you mean IP as in intellectual property or is it a name of a group that provides... something? What that has to do with the current solutions as the Vampire and such? I'm not that deep in Amiga stuff and I seriously don't understand :(
I still remember ripping A4000 desktops apart by the dozen because the A4000t was not there to make a tower in PC cases. Literally bought A4000's by the truckload..... It's just depressing just how much money it is worth today.
@@cocusar I believe they mean the holding company who bought the intellectual property of the Amiga name, OS, etc were mismanaging it while the fans kept it going
I remember those cases and kits you could buy as a conversion for your A1200. I ended up buying a 4000T instead which I am happy about. I think, unfortunately, the cases for the A1200 had no character, at all, so, perhaps, in this new day of Amiga, there could be some cooler things but I think leaving it all in the wedge case and cramming modern tech into it is the way to go. Thanks for the vid, I really enjoyed it!
I would loved to have been able to find an Amiga 4000T they looked great, and the extra slots would have been handy. It a shame you can't find them anywhere these days.
I had a Bvision, it worked like a charm
So glad I have my Blizz 040PPC card :D Really need to sort out the tower case properly as the keyboard interface has stopped working and the zorro board is missing some standoffs. Just need time, and space LOL
Its amazing how much time and space holds my collection back, and money.
@@RetroBytesUK I am hoping to be moving this year so will hopefully have a larger workspace I can get it out on to and give it a proper going over!
@@kelvin1316 Having space really really helps. I had kids a few years ago, so I now have less space, and time, way less time.
I had an 040 in the trap door of my A1200, I dont actually know why as I didn't do anything with it but I resorted to the high tech solution of stacking books under the A1200.
For me, the dream Amiga would be an A4000, the most powerful Amiga they made.
They are very cool.
I would argue that the Vampire is the most powerful 68k Amiga ever made.... and then, as far as AmigaOS 4.1 goes, you have the AmigaONE X5000. :)
But if we stick to the classic hardware + expansions....
They are equal to the A1200/A2000/A3000 regarding 68k CPU speed because all 4 models had access to 68060 CPUs. If we exclude the Vampire for now, since it is only for A500/A600/A1200 and sports a "100Mhz 68080, onboard RTG and 512MB fast ram".
As for expansion... yes the A4000 has Zorro III but so does the A3000, but the A3000 doesn't have AGA. If you go down the route of PCI expansion instead of Zorro, then there are some differences there as well.
But lets start with the Phase 5 PPC products. The A1200 had 4 options.... PPC 603e at 180, 200 and 240Mhz and space for up to 256MB ram. Then there was 603e Plus that also had a SCSI controller and a slot for the BlizzardVision graphicscard.
The A3000 and A4000 had access to PPC 604e at 150, 180, 200 and 233Mhz with up to 128MB ram, SCSI controller and expansion slot for CyberVision PPC graphicscard. However, only the A4000 could use the onboard SCSI controller since the A3000 could not send an INT2 signal (not present in the A3000 cpu slot). The 604e processor is faster due to its 3 integer units compared to 603e 1 integer unit.
As for memory expansion.... the A3000 and A4000 had a bunch of Zorrro based ram expansion boards that you coud use. I've seen such Amigas display over 700MB of ram, which is quite extreme for an Amiga, where the A1200 can only reach 256MB ram (again, if we exlude the Vampire).
Now, regarding PCI expansion, some interesting things have happened the last years. And this is where the A1200 PCI expansion differs from the A3000/4000 PCI expansion. There are a bunch of fairly cheap and powerfull PPC-PCI boards floating around and they have been reported to only work with A3000 and A4000... they do not work with A1200. And these PPC processors are way faster than what Phase 5 put onto their accelerators.
If you search here on youtube for "PCI PowerPC cards on the Amiga - a deep dive" you will find an hour long video from Wrangler Amiga and he goes through all the things you need to know in order to get these very powerful PPC based PCI accelerators to work and he also show some stuff off. :) But they only work for A3000 and A4000 that has the Elbox Mediator expansion. And these cards probably runs circles around the Vampire in terms of raw processing speed. But at the same time, you are going to be limited to a few apps that can utilize the power of the PPC, such as games, video/audio/image encoding/decoding/processing... yeah... things like that. :)
It is a fun watch though.
LOL @6:37 ... I'm sometimes asked how I could afford my collection. My answer is always "I bought these back in the 90s, when you were unloading yours."
Amiga was my first true gaming system and to this day they still live in the mancave and get used how they should.
Games were always better than the dos ports/version.
Great video, would recommend to the algorithm. Consider this an interaction.
Thanks, one day the algorithm will smile on me.
@@RetroBytesUK community interaction, surveys, hilarious shorts. All helps. Certainly got a great channel here and wish you all the best.
@@cubeflinger Thank you, its nice of you to say. It helps to know that people enjoy what your doing when I'm stuck trying to get something working.
Ooh. I have such tower a1200. Exactly the same design as the one you refurbished. I always thought it was a mod made by the previous owner (since I bought it second hand). Well, now I know it's actually actual product. I recapped the board, but it's good point the power supply is now really just a fire hazard, lol.
Those power supplies smell so bad when they fail, the acrid smoke hangs around for a while too.
thats the exact same cap that messed up my opamp line, i had to bodge a wire to get the audio to work right, glad im a electronics nerd, had to trace and deduct.
Im kinda glad I just stuck with 680x0 based Amigas, and a PC running Win NT. (which is where C= were heading anyway).
The (post C=) Amiga story got quite ugly for a good while there. :)
LET THE BUN FIGHT COMMENCE
Nice video. COMMODORE AMIGA FOR EVER !
Good lord now I want one of these
They are fascinating, I really need to get a RTG card for it.
i remember waiting 2 years trying to get a voodoo 5 to replace my voodoo3 in my pci mediator machine. i gave up after the 3rd card i got didn't work, not all voodoo5s worked with it apparently.
I loved my A1200 ppc tower I miss it ☹
I think there are a lot of people who regret letting their Amigas go. Most probably did not have one as nice as an A1200 tower however.
@@RetroBytesUK I had the same towercase as in this video.... Blizzard 1260 with 128MB ram + the SCSI-controller that gave another 128MB ram. Mediator PCI with a Voodoo 3 3000 16MB RTG board, Soundblaster 128 and an RTL networkcard. I also had an external SCSI tower with a CD burner and some extra harddrives. Internaly I had 4x 40GB ide harddrives (using the Elbox FastIDE interface). At some point I had 3x harddrives with an LS-120 diskdrive (this was like a zip drive but it could read/write regular floppys as well (could not format them though).
All this... except for the external scsi tower and its contents, I exchanged for a Pegasos-1 computer... that is still something that haunts my life. How stupid I was to get rid of such a powerful Amiga for such crap as the Pegasos-1 really was. Oh well. :)
@@TemalCageman I feel for you that was one heck of a system to exchange. I'm managed to get hold of a FastIDE since making this. It really has improved the disk performance. I also have gotten hold of the 3d gfx add-on for the CPU card, but there is a snag as it physically wont fit. So I need to create a re-locator board for it, which means also getting hold of the connectors which is the bit I'm currently stuck on.
@@RetroBytesUK Oh damn.... sad to hear about that snag. But at least you have a proper classic system. Thankfully before my exchange, I stored everythin onto my PC based FTP so I can run my old classic system via WinUAE. I also own a Sam460ex as well as an AmigaOne X5000, Ontop of that I do have an miniMac running MorphOS (which I havve not used in 4-5 years) and a Vampire 4 Stand Alone... oh and not to forget.... the Amiga 500 mini, which is brilliant for those oldschool games if games is your goal. :) Sure you have to pay for it, but the plug-and-play is worth it compared to the time to setup lets say a Raphery Pi to do the same for less money.
I remember an Amiga all in one with a 266mhz CPU shown on ZDTV but I can't find it anywhere.
And I thought that PC is a mess... geez... now it would be hard to even start using any Amiga (maybe except 500) to run some retro programs/games.
I piad £500 for my upgraded PPC card (330Mhz PPC CPU/68060/75Mhz) from Amibay back in 2010. I sold that same board about 6 years ago and netted £1600 for it. I also had the bvision board to go with but never got time to try it, so sold that as well at double the price i'd paid. I have the Tower A1200 too. I've got a mediator PCI board, the voodoo 2 card which works really well (and was hard to get years ago), a decent 100mb PCI nic and also sound.
I haven't turned it on for at least 5 years. Next time it gets turned on will be after recapping and a PSU change, the likes of which you've just done. Due to space and time, i'll end up sorting it all out to make it nice and sellable and then get shot. I have 2 x A1200 desktops along with some 060 boards and 030 boards that all work nicely. I have the vampire 2 A600 as well, with nice HDMI, which scratches the itch of Amiga use occasionally. I'm glad I bought so much stuff around the 2010 time. Although I paid what seems like a lot back then, it's worth 3-4 times more at present day. Was ultimately a really good investment.
The price of PPC accelerators are scary now, I just dont have that kind of money for an accelerator. You've got a very nice collection therem Its a shame the vampire 2 for the A600 is nolonger being produced.
So in the early 2000s, Apple released Mac OS 10, which ran on a custom UNIX-compatible kernel (on top of Mach for legacy stuff but whatever). Apple was also using PPC hardware at the time, and because OSX was UNIX, gcc could work. Therefore, if someone were to add the Amiga's supplementary chips as an add-on card to the Power Mac, iMac, or Powerbook line, could you be able to run some AmigaPPC software natively on a Mac?
I know you are saying bun fights... but my american(southern) ears I hear bum fights. Lol.
Great videos so far..
Interesting video
I have never seen one of these.
There is not alot of them around, you needed to be a deadicated Amiga fan woth deep pockets back then to be able to aford it.
I have my Amiga 1200 in an EZ-Tower Z4, although I don't have the bus-board. I don't have such a flash accelerator card, mine is just a humble GVP A1230 Series II with 68030@50MHz. Works well enough for anything I need to do on my Amiga though, including downloading software and modules and such. I'm very much considering putting my Amiga back into the wedge case though. There is something very beautifully nostalgic about that, and as I don't have a bus-board, I don't really need to keep it in a tower, other than for somewhere to put my CD-ROM drive I guess ^^
a1200.net has started making new wedge cases, they have a few advantages over the original for internal upgrades. I have one, and it’s got an internal usb card and I connect a usb cd drive to that.
@@RetroBytesUK My old wedge case is perfectly fine. Not much yellowing at all, and if I had to pay the kind of money these things command today, I'd rather just get a Mediator PCI 1200 TX to justify keeping my system in a tower ^^ As long as there's no internal space for a CD-ROM drive (a small redesign could possibly allow for a laptop style drive), I don't see the point in replacing my original with a new one.
@@rebeccaschade3987 If its in good condition I completely agree, it's just most tower owners either never had the original case (as they bought their tower off someone else) or have lost/sold the original case.
@@RetroBytesUK I received my A1200 from the original owner, who'd used it as a work computer for many years, but had now retired it. It did have the accelerator card in it, but was otherwise stock. I've since upgraded from the more standard 40MHz "EC" model '030 to the 50MHz RC, added an FPU and upgraded from 4MB to 32MB FastRAM. I've also added a few other upgrades, such as PCMCIA Ethernet, Fast IDE adapter and such. There's however been issues with the keyboard. I replaced the membrane, but it didn't help, so I've narrowed it down to most likely being poor conductivity in the graphite on the plungers. But when I saw the EZ-Tower for sale, I decided to get it with the intention of potentially upgrading with a bus-board etc. But the novelty of trying to turn an A1200 into a pseudo modern system has kind of worn off. An Amiga is best at being an Amiga :)
Hi, it's me again/ I found a little bit more information. The closest one I could find was an Amiga Big Tower A1200 but it isn't exactly the same, I'll describe it again, maybe someone can give me a clue.
It measures 27" Height (with no wheels) 7.5" wide and 17" deep it's all metal except the front basal It has 6 5.25" bays, 2 floppy bays and 7 expansion ports, I believe much has been replaced inside. It doesn't open like other towers but the metal sides slide off. The structure that holds the .motherboard folds down after a couple of screws are removed, The motherboard doen't come with a VGA port but the video is accessed by a card in the expansion port that has a HD-15 port and an s-video jack. No I have no way to send a photo of it. But thanks,
I bought the 200mhz and 040 25mhz ppc card new along with the add on graphics card i sold it with all the original boxes and got £475 for it on ebay if only i kept it longer at the current prices i wont be getting one again .
It's all extremely expensive now.
True, but it will change.
I got one of those for christmas for my a1200
0:28 it was the other way around: Escom then Gateway 2000..
Time index 13:33, Pimms and 15 year scotch. You’ve got great taste in electronics and alcohol.
Loved this video
A little bit offtopic: your background music reminds me of Cuphead and whole lot of burn in the back part it caused)))
If the Amiga would have survived the 90's RTX gaming would maybe an old hat today :D
Good ol' times with 28Mhz on my A2000😏
Some weird mic fluttering around the 9 minute mark
Viper fpga boards work in this thing?
Very nice indeed! Bordering on the delicious.
Here's a controversial thought for the comments section: Amiga PPC accelerators. A spectacularly bad idea in hindsight that looked like a really good idea at the time. Yeh, I'm not a fan of this current blinkered habit too many people have for judging the past using today's knowledge and/or sensibilities. What's that phrase? "Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged."
I never got a PPC, at the time I didnt even have an accellerator at all, but a friend of mine had one. Actually I think he had four, before getting one that was even remotely useable.
Now I have a T1200 with a zorro-ii, theres a catweasel in there and an 060'50. I really must get that old girl re-capped.. And there is a cap on the accellerator too that I'm a bit concerned about.
I absolutly hate those stupid caps.. purists be damned, if I can get them off in one piece without lifting pads, the ones going back in there will have legs...
I actually have no experience with Amigas of any sort. I started on an IBM PS/2 Model 30 (Intel 286), and stayed largely in the Intel world since. I do have a VIC-20 now, but haven't played with it yet since I'm missing the power brick for it)
Hi, I've been holding on to what I think is an old Amiga (at least the frame) that an ex-friend gave me after he ripped off my new computer. It's taller than most towers and has like 4 slots for hard drives inside, 6 5.25 drive bays in front, 2 floppy bays in front, and 7 expansion slots in back, and has lots of room inside. It's an all-metal frame and outside with the exception of the front panel which is plastic. The sides come off and the frame has a side that lifts down on a hinge for access to the motherboard, I've had it for years and everyone has told me it's way out of date and would be very expensive to upgrade if possible. I need opinions. Thank you ahead of time
Is it an A4000 tower ?
@@RetroBytesUK I am not sure I can't find a number/letter I can pin down as a model number. I've searched the internet but haven't been successful to my liking. I can add that it was to have wheels and it came with a 5.25" Driver Bay accessory that was a "Hard Drive Switch" which I found was very hard on Hard drives. It also had no video port on the motherboard but came with a video card with a RJ-45 port and a s-video din.
@@barrywerdell2614
Do you want to send me a photo of its main pcb on twitter, I could then have a look and workout what it is.
@@RetroBytesUK I don't really have a twitter account I'm kind of private. I'd ask for your E-mail but then it would be shown here for all to see, If we could figure out a private way . I don't have a photo but I do have a computer drawing I did with details.
What about Code::Blocks + gcc-ppc toolchain.
Those switches look like paracetamol tablet capsules.
I can't un-see that now 😂
I had ppc blizzard 240 mz 603 i brought card new then got bvison graphics add on i wasint rich just badly wanted ppc i had wait along time before phaze 5 produced them .then dce took over they made my bvison .😂 I sold my blizzard to itaian doctor .brought my wifes engament ring i paid 2000 nz for mine .i ran quake i brought the click boom port .was so slow on 040 but special 😊 ppc port ran so well .i ran bbs on cnet amiga software .one night caller rang when playing quake .he logged in it ran quite slow but think workef was awsome .wish keep my ppc card no way can afford one know.❤ Thanks for memorys .i brought a old mac mini tryed morphos .i prefer os 4
wow, just think...if amiga had stuck around and used the hp risc cpu, they might have ended up using itanium! ugh!
The psp has gone up a bit already
The PA-RISC/Windows NT part of the story is bollocks.
PA-RISC was looked at as the basis for a 3D GPU, with a mind to putting it on a PCI card or in a games console. Using a modified form of a RISC core as a dedicated GPU was common in the 90s (look at N64 Reality Coprocessor, it's MIPS). This was not a replacement for the Amiga's hardware. In fact no work was done on this beyond a proposal.
If they had survived to build it, it wouldn't have replaced the Amiga in any sense. The actual plan for the Amiga was called Actuator and (by the time commodore closed) was designed around PCI bus, with the traditional Amiga chipset fully intact. The OS was being rewritten to support RTG natively, although that feature seems not to have been documented for 3.1 beyond the blurb on the back of the box. The PA-RISC based GPU would've just been an optional extra.
Commodore Never, Ever, made any noise about Windows NT. It was just a magazine rumour, nobody at Commodore ever talked about it.
Who's that hairy guy with the screwdriver?
Yeah
you need to get wipeout 2097 on this ;)
I really do, if I find a suitable RTG card its going to happen.
Have you the specs of this ppc ?
better to get a PPC Mac and put Linux - then is a viable computer of sorts
3 grand!!!!!!!!! how much? lol
You would not catch me paying that, largely because I dont have that kind of money for a cpu accelerator, but also if I did have a spare 3k thats not what I would spend it on.
Hellow EveryOne :)
Amiga 1200
I Have The Same Tower But Not With PPC Card
I Have CPU 60030 + CoCPU + SCSI Controller
This Is My Litlle Stuff.... :)