A colleague of mine wants his Amiga to feel more authenic, so wants to replace his CF Card as his HDD and install a IBM microdrive like you'd see in the mid '00s iPods - just to get a little bit of lag to software/commands :D
Amigastore took their sweet time getting this mechanical keyboard out the door, but seeing as how the house is upside-down, I've hardly have time to get to it outside of a few mins here or there.
Looks to be quite decent. Gives the Amiga real weight now as well which I'd not thought about till I put it in. Not going to be it's permanent home, as I've another system in mind for it but seeing as how I was tinkering with this one (Floppy drive had died and needed switching out - this one is going to get the fresh case and black keycaps treatment at some point), I just quickly swapped it in. Obviously more of a blue tint to the peripheral keys but looks at home. Feels very good to the touch with the limited typing I've done.
Anyone remember space hulk on the 600? Scared the crap outta me!
I'm push the wrong side of 30 myself ha.
Nah I'd say you're right, the 020 can struggle at times.
Might just drop the cash and get myself a nice new mechanical one so, see it as a bit of a quality of life upgrade! :)
Yeah it's the stock 020 with 8MB fast ram installed.
It might just be my head interpretting games running fine as having a bit of slowdown. Was mainly Dune 2 when the screen got busy. I'll have to have a look at it on WinUAE and see if it's the same.
That's how I ended up feeling about it when researching. I suppose it depends on what you're after. Me, I want the authentic Amiga experience with some modern day niceties…but I still want it to be an Amiga at the end of the day. The Pistorm, while amazing in its own right, just makes the Amiga a little 'too' modern for what I'm after, and when combined with certain software compatibilities etc, I ended up leaving it as a curio and not something I'll likely pursue.
@o1s1n by most accounts, the TF12030 or any 030 based accelerator will run WHDLoad games at full speed, and retains a high degree of authenticity. Is your 1200 running with its stock 020 cpu?
It's something that does seem to be affecting the old computers these days.....time, not helped by our familiarity with modern keyboards. Never mind the dead flesh of the Spectrum - The C64 keyboard is a nightmare to use 🤨
A lot of them seem to have issues, and there are some who always said the 1200 keyboard was a downgrade from the 500 to begin with. Problems with key rollover etc, which might not explain your particular issue, but could be a symptom along the same lines. If it was missing keystrokes, for example, I'd be looking at the membrane first as I'm sure you've considered, but perhaps problems could manifest as something like you are seeing as well ?
I'm sure an Amiga specialist may start suggesting some timing related issue after that, perhaps the CIA chip on the way out, caps acting up etc. I mean, that's fairly guesstimate to begin with, and perhaps they'd show as a more catastrophic problem, but, as you know, these things are creaking at this point.
Very interested in hearing your thoughts on that keyboard once you try it out.
One issue I'm having with my A1200 actually is inputs on the keyboard. Not sure if it's a mechnical problem or software related.
It's working and all the keys do register inputs, but if I write my name for example, it comes out something like 'oosssiin'. Inputs go from duplicating the letter way too quickly to taking too long and nothing is input at all.
Not that I'm banging out novels on the thing or anything, so it's not really impacting much other than inputting save file names.
Will look into one of those as would be very handy. TY
They are a nice little add on that targets a value for money angle but can have issues with legacy software, and you essentially are taking it away from being 'an Amiga' in some ways and crossed over to emulation with Emu68 etc. Dabbled a little with one a while back, but a workmate of mine spent a lot of time with his, and there was always a 'but' or 'as long as'.
Dont get me wrong, that's fine, you get your RTG, slick desktop and all the bells and whistles, but there are already alternative ways of having that experience from pure emulation on PC, PiMiga and FPGA alternatives like Vampire standalones or MiSTer etc. Like these options, they'll excel in Sysinfo and desktop use, but it has corners compared to other 'real' accelerator options, with timing issues on some software, some AGA issues plus the messing about with display outputs. Out of the loop of late as to whether it's improved, but I imagine it has, as there has been various builds plus improvements around compatibility with the WHD wrapper etc.
Other lads can probably shed more light on how it is now, plus I believe there is a shortcut where you can just disable it on boot which is handy if you want to boot up something that may be having issues, but, and I'm open to correction here, I believe you lose it completely which is a bit of a killer as that's where it's excellent value for money as a pure accelerator and FastRAM provider is.
Certainly worth a mess around for the cost of entry as a brilliant alternative accelerator certainly next to a Warp or TF, though personally I have a Vampire SA and PiMiga for the other fancy stuff, but I just found myself wanting to keep the main 1200 as 'normal' as possible, bar the TF1260 that is.
On another note, another mechanical keyboard replacement option has appeared there recently. US layout, but have ordered one to check out for another unit. Least this one came out, still waiting on a C64 version to come through on Indiegogo
https://amigastore.eu/en/994-mechanical-keyboard-amiga-1200.html
If you install WHDLoad Wrapper you will the most performance out of WHDLoad games on PiStorm.
So you're seeing a noticable improvement in game speed when running regular Amiga games?
I noticed a low of slowdown while playing Dune 2 the other night. Would be great to get things like that running smoother.
😂 2010, barely out of college and I already had Amiga notions. Had a look through my emails and I actually ended up buying my current A1200 the same month the thread was started.
Anyone ever try Virtual Karting Deluxe? Was playing it last night, couldn't believe how nice it looks and how smooth it runs. It's not quite early PS1 3D but you could easily mistake it for 32X title.
Always time for the Amiga though. Put serious hours into my Amiga 600 back in the day. Had the wild weird and wicked bundle
I use the cm4 variant of the PiStorm32 lite on my A1200 and it brings it to a whole new level. RTG screenmodes via Hdmi output with RTG and native screenmode auto-switching via an external hdmi switch mod for now, still waiting for the Framethrower addon.
There's thousands of games and demos available on WHDload and an 030 Amiga is perfectly fine however it can be slow where as the PiStorm runs everything without slowdown especially if using the WHDload wrapper.
I went back and forth with the idea, but the general concensus seems to be if you're only ever playing classic Amiga games, then an 030 based accelerator with some ram is perfect.
For more modern tech demos, modern desktop applications and such, then the pistorm starts to make more sense.
I think I'll go the TF12030 route for mine when the time comes
It emulates a faster CPU and Fast and/or Slow RAM (for the A500/600 at least) - it has limitations for sure. The A1200 one is a bit spendy though.
More info on the Amiga.org site → https://wiki.amiga.org/index.php?title=Pistorm32-Lite
Very cool! I hadn't heard of those PiStorms at all. See there's one for the A1200 too.
https://amigastore.eu/937-pistorm32-lite-amiga-1200.html#/
So does the Pi basically emulate a fancy accellerator and all the rest? I have 8MB of FastRAM in mine so can use WHDLoad, but it would be amazing to have the equivilent of a fancy accellerator to smooth out frame rates.
Another external drive option - cheaper and Irish store/seller
When building the Amiga 500+, I ended up sinking a few hours into Syncidate :) when playing with a PiStorm accelerator, its amazing to see the speed increase you can have in games like Syncidate by just adding RAM
Have you ever seen the Gotek foppy drive emulators you can install?
They're not that expensive at all.
https://amigastore.eu/en/676-internal-usb-floppy-emulator-gotek-for-amiga-500-600-and-1200.html
There's also a more expensive external one if you still want to be able to use physical floppies
https://www.ami64.com/product-page/mini-external-amiga-gotek-drive-with-rotary
Am looking for more games but some of the prices are mad.
Just a bog standard a600
"my fathers old amiga"
Anyone else feeling very old :) Enjoy the Amiga adventure !!!
Cool stuff! Is it an A600 or an A1200?
I was playing a bit of Cannon Fodder 2 last night as well, one of those series that really stood the test of time.
I fixed up my fathers old amiga and have been playing cannon fodder most weekends, ordered number 2 so cant wait for it to arrive.
I was going to create a new Amiga thread but decided to have a bit of a search and what do you know, I actually already made one 15 years ago 😁
Anyone pottering around with Amiga bits and pieces these days? I fired up my A1200 yesterday for the first time in quite a while and ended up spending two hours playing Dune 2.
Which then lead me on to discover a Patreon where someone is remaking an AGA remaster of the game:
https://www.patreon.com/duneiithebuildingofaremaster
SirLemonhead wrote: » I got an A500 and 1200 for free from boards a few years back, Still have them both
SirLemonhead wrote: » I remember using workbench on a tv being awful and headache inducing (due to the fact it's trying to read tiny text on a flickering telly!) so i'm tempted to get one of those VGA output boards and giving it a go again.
Retr0gamer wrote: » Not really considering how similar the architecture was. The only thing holding back more ports was that fact that since you could use multiple disks the games on a lot of games on amiga wouldn't fit on MD carts.
