Aah! Isn't this nice? A new A1200.

hamster

I came across this morning. How about treating yourself to a new A1200 with a 80Gb drive? Even better the 2nd pic shows that you can connect the Amiga to your standard monitor. No need for the TV or a specific multisync monitor.

Hey, has anyone bought a new retro machine recently? I'm pleased to see to buy the basic Amiga 1200 new is only 128 Euro. Great to see the option is there.

hamster

Oh I found it here -> http://www.vesalia.de/

If I can just hold back until later in the year...

silverlining

That sounds very expensive for a scan doubler but maybe that's because of the de-interlacing functionality. Any scan doubler should do tho, not neccesarily an amiga one. I'll have a look online

silverlining

Hmmm...it turns out that the price is reasonable. I saw this: http://ecoustics.pricegrabber.com/search_techspecs_full.php/masterid=1031987
but it doesnt fix the flicker you get when you scandouble interlaced video modes and it would only work for converting the composite (RCA) out not the signal from 23-pin RGB port. I cant remember if interlaced modes are used often on the amiga but I guess it would be better to cover that option as well. So all in all the intervision looks like an okay price but it's a pity it wont work with composite as well so you cant use your DVD player, games console etc with it.

As for retro amiga machines, I was talking about my A4000T to my bro last week and we both agreed that we must rescue it soon.

That A1200 still looks good though doesnt it? The design definitely aged well

hamster

I always intended to get the A1200 after my then 3 year old A500 (March 93). The AGA chipset and the upgraded workbench I had my eyes on. I had planned to get a 50Mb hard disk with it at the time... but then I was unexpectantly given the option of blowing IR£1800 on a 486DX-66Mhz 8Mb 250Mb HD with 1Mb Tseng ET4000 with only Dos6 and win3.1. Hmmm. £1800 would buy some dream machine today.

silverlining

hamster wrote:

.. but then I was unexpectantly given the option of blowing IR£1800 on a 486DX-66Mhz 8Mb 250Mb HD with 1Mb Tseng ET4000 with only Dos6 and win3.1. Hmmm. £1800 would buy some dream machine today.

Dont feel guilty, it was commodore's fault. It was a neighbours 486 running frontier (with textures! wow!) that started my first leaning towards PCs. We were so let down by commodore.

hamster

Yeah Commodore muddled things up bad towards the end. Releasing a A600 smaller than A500 with numeric keyboard and less expansion options and alienating half the add-on market. The A1200 was class but too late - and then the compatibility issues. I really was considering it though.

When blew me away with the 486 was fractint and vistapro (free on a mag at the time) was speed (back then) at which a fractal landscape was generated. 2 minutes versus 40mins on the A500 I had. I guess raw power of the pc outshone when custom chipsets wasn't involved - but my gaming went from small time to large ones like Ultima VII. My god what a cracker - You probably know already but google for Exult.

silverlining

hamster wrote:

Yeah Commodore muddled things up bad towards the end. Releasing a A600 smaller than A500 with numeric keyboard and less expansion options and alienating half the add-on market. The A1200 was class but too late - and then the compatibility issues. I really was considering it though.

true, we got one with a 20gig just when I was starting to get bored with them...shoulda just kept the A500 for a while longer methinks

hamster wrote:

When blew me away with the 486 was fractint and vistapro (free on a mag at the time) was speed (back then) at which a fractal landscape was generated. 2 minutes versus 40mins on the A500 I had. I guess raw power of the pc outshone when custom chipsets wasn't involved - but my gaming went from small time to large ones like Ultima VII. My god what a cracker - You probably know already but google for Exult.

Vistapro was very cool, I used to spend ages playing with it (amiga format magazine I think?) but yeah, it was difficult to get used to as each render took ages so I stopped practicing.
As for the ultima games its probably just as well that I didnt get hooked I was wasting loads of time playing Frontier and 2-player Settlers (2 mice and splitscreen...great fun).
I used to have fun playing with sound samples in octamed, I couldnt compose music for ****e but the little bit I learned about sampling sound and distorting it at a young age really helped me to understand signal processing better in university.

Did you ever dabble with composing or spend a long night trying to animate something in Deluxe Paint?

hamster

I didn't do much with Deluxe Paint 3 other than paint a few pictures. My brother tried a stickman animation which was quite good but ran out of memory too quickly.
Remember the 3D Construction Kit? I wasted a year on that and created two games on it. Looking back at them now I see that they were badly planned, too slow and impossible to complete since you'd have to see a slightly different colored pixel (say a switch) to proceed! I can't even complete it any more. I found my old files thru fdi2disk (I think it's called - reads amiga disks using 2 floppy drives). And don't start with the colour scheme.

I'm playing around with ScummVM for the Monkey Island series again.

VistaPro was great. Yep, I got it off Amiga Format (still have 'em) and I got Vista Pro 3 off PC Guide in 1995 then and that was even better. I think Byrce knocked it off it's throne in the end. Did you ever finished Settlers 2? Wow one land took me 20+ hours to complete it! versions 3 & 4 just got bloaty.

hamster

Actually I found some shots of the 3DCK games I had... dig that groovy brown green border..eeek!

silverlining

Cool, you actually did stuff with your amiga, fair play, I just played with different applications and never achieved much. A high point for me was discovering a few star-trek voice samples on a CU-amiga coverdisk and playing with them in octamed. Simple stuff nowadays but back then it was so cool to see the waveform visually and be able to see what happens when you applied different filters or reversed different sections.

Settlers was great though, I tried playing settlers2 but it never grabbed me the way the first one did. besides, the second mouse we had broke, so we couldnt play 2-player on it. I'll never forget the sound effects which really gave you a feeling of satisfaction as your little village got up to speed.

hamster

silverlining wrote:

Cool, you actually did stuff with your amiga, fair play, I just played with different applications and never achieved much. A high point for me was discovering a few star-trek voice samples on a CU-amiga coverdisk and playing with them in octamed. Simple stuff nowadays but back then it was so cool to see the waveform visually and be able to see what happens when you applied different filters or reversed different sections.

Settlers was great though, I tried playing settlers2 but it never grabbed me the way the first one did. besides, the second mouse we had broke, so we couldnt play 2-player on it. I'll never forget the sound effects which really gave you a feeling of satisfaction as your little village got up to speed.

TBH, I never 'discovered' Mods etc in a big way until I got the PC. Imagine my shock when all the Amiga tunes I know could be listened to. I think it was PCFormat's 3rd CD edition that had a huge collection of Amiga Mods... I always go here for more http://www.mirsoft.info/gamemods.php
But I remember trying out OctaMED and the sample tunes. There was also a sound editor 'n rip tool. But the fact that I didn't have a harddrive for the Amiga tended to make things painful. Would have been nice to have your own samples and a tune in the 3D games for example.
Actually I haven't really ever tried Settlers one - must try that on WinUAE. In settlers 2 I loved the way you could store and manage resources - but it was a pain at times when "why won't that guy cut anymore trees etc."

silverlining

I just remembered reading an article about the guy who did the music for the turrican series. I dunno if you ever played them but they had the best music of any amiga games and I'm still amazed by them today even though it's quite dated now...I'll have a look, maybe wikipedia has something but the article mentioned that there was some concert played by an orchestra with loads of retro game music a few years ago and the turrican soundtrack was a big feature.

silverlining

Good 'ole wikipedia. It's mentioned here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphonic_Game_Music_Concert

I'd love to have heard an orchestral version of the turrican soundtrack..I wonder if it's available anywhere?