Amiga 1200 Chantal is well stacked.
The computer has sat on an open desk since
October of 1993 and has been used almost
every day since that date. Without fault.
She has not been recapped.
The floppy drive is the original and works
perfectly. I have to say I use the external
high density drive more, so that may be the
reason she has survived so long.
I did have a 4MB PCMCIA RAM card when I first
got the A1200, though this was removed when I
fitted the Blizzard with the SCSI KIT and the
32MB of memory.
I have an Ethernet PCMCIA card connected to
my local network and SAMBA to connect to
other PCs. Plus I have broadband for mail.
SCSI has always been my main method of
driving peripherals and here the SCSI KIT
fitted to the Blizzard gives me the extra
port for connecting SCSI drives and the like.
That is what that extra port is for on the
back of the A1200, plus the screw in the
base that secures the SCSI port plate.
In the day I bought quite a few Blizzard
1230IV cus they really are the best. This
card has 32MB RAM and the SCSI KIT.
The SCSI KIT IV came as an add-on
for the 1230-IV accelerator card.
I did have the GVP A1230 Turbo fitted
but this only had 4MB RAM so I swapped
it out for the Blizzard. The GVP also
has an SCSI card that you can slot in.
I have both fitted to another A1200.
The A1200 cost me £550 in the day with
an 80MB internal hard drive.
The current internal 2.5" hard drive is
550MB which was an upgrade from a 350MB
which in turn replaced the 80MB int drive
I did try a 3.5" 1GB in 1995 but failed
cus the A1200 PSU wasn't powerful enough.
The label still has the protective clear cover.
I really have no interest in retrobryting
or what ever its called. The machine grew
old like me. She is still my Amiga and I
love her just the way she is.
This is the Power Computing external high
density floppy drive. I moved over to hd
almost immediately as dd just couldn't
store any capacity of animation.
Wish they had made the drive easier to
identify as I am sure a number of floppy
drives that came up for sale were high density.
They are like so rare to find.
This is my external Amiga SCSI tower for the 1200.
All connected via the one connector to
the back of the Amiga 1200 SCSI port.
At the bottom we have the Power Computing
external SCSI CD-ROM player.
Above the CD is the two external SCSI
2.1GB hard drives.
And finally the ZIP 100 that has avoided
the death click and I have never lost
a disk in all the years of use.
It's a kinda organised chaos. Trust me.
Note the termination block on the
top most external SCSI hard drive.
The good thing about the external SCSI
is they all have their own power so
are not draining anything from the A1200.
This is the only connector to the Amiga 1200.
I only recently swapped out the mouse.
After many years of service I retired the Logic3.
I gave up with joysticks as soon as I could.
The Microvitec is still working though
was repaired in the nineties with a
faulty power switch.
I have never upgraded beyond WB3.0. I just
have never needed to do so.
Anything above 3.1 is way too slow on
a basic Amiga. This computer would
be OK but I dislike the later OS look.
She's fast enough for me at 030.
And she has so many volumes it's tricky
keeping track of all my files sometimes.
That is the list of the SCSI devices.
32MB RAM is like oodles more than I have
ever needed. I sometimes use quite a bit
creating animations but the restriction
on the Amiga has always been the media,
so files need to fit on a hd disk, though
I do use the ZIP for archiving.
My Amiga always feels like home to
me and I have never wanted to change
the style or setup.
I did move over to ToolsDaemon so I can
launch my programs from a menu. Not a
fan of the Amiga 'windows' system.
Mostly I use DOpus anyway.
And 'thems' my buttons.
I love edited and creating buttons.
I have any number of configs for
differing set ups.
I use Miami for my network.
Historically I used YAM as my mailer.
Welcome to my world.
Flibble is over 25 years old now
and the city is still growing.
I use the A1200 in the Workshop for
accessing files while I work on
the collection.
Though Clara Veiga is never far away.
The music to Amiga games is always so
atmospheric, especially the ones I played
just after I got the A1200. So original.
And when the computer is idle she
runs a Clara Veiga DPaint animation
which is always a pleasant vision
as I go about my retro day.
And this is what SCSI drives sound like.
