$fff|1-A1200 - A tale of expansion


$bff                           By Daniel Thornton


$fafI  got  my  first  Amiga  in  1996.  It was an A500 which I bought off a
friend  for  £50.   It  was  a  basic  machine,  and  all I had were the
Workbench  1.3  disks.   And  I  thought they were great.  Well, I still
do...sort  of (it had a decent font editor that I lost when I got rid of
the  machine...)  I  did  eventually get round to upgrading it - in late
November  '96 I got hold of an A520 SCSI Hard Drive (100 meg) with 4 meg
of  memory  on  it for only £30!  Bargain!  In late December, I realised
that  I  needed  an  A1200,  so I attempted to sell the Amiga at a local
secondhand  shop.  The pillock plugged the hard drive into the expansion
port  of  the  Amiga  when  they  were both switched on, wiping the hard
drive,  with  him  refusing  to  buy  it  because  he  couldn't  see  it
working.Anyway,  he  bought the A500, I took the HD home, dismantled it,
put  it  back  together  again and sold it to my local computer shop for
£50!   With the money I had made, I bought a secondhand A1200 with 30meg
HD and A500 PSU, Joystick and software for £150.  Another bargain.

I  was  17  in September '97 and decided to get my first upgrade for the
1200  -  a  2 speed CDROM from Hi-Soft, complete with Squirrel and three
CD's  (Golden  Games, Demos Are Forever and the brilliant AGA Experience
2)

I  unpacked  it,  followed the instructions step by step, plugged it in,
and...

Nothing.   The PCMCIA pins were all bent in my machine, meaning I had to
take  everything apart to bend them back into position.  But at least it
works  now.   Maybe  Carnage  should produce a CD-ROM of their own (with
EVERY issue of The Word on it?) Go on - I'd buy it.

So  with the CDROM sorted, I realised that once my Workbench had loaded,
I was left with approximately 512k to do anything in.  Shit.  This meant
a further £50 had to be spent on a RAM board.  I phoned Power, they said
it  would  arrive  the  next day.  It didn't.  I phoned back.  It wasn't
even  in  stock!   I  needed  the extra memory, so I opted instead for a
42mhz  Viper 030 for around £20 more.  It didn't arrive the next day.  I
waited nearly two weeks after countless promises that they would have it
in stock the next day.  Still nothing.  I was desperate, so with my last
few pounds I upgraded to a Blizzard 1230-IV with 4 meg.  As I ordered on
a  Friday,  they  said  it  would  arrive  on  Monday.  Fair enough.  On
Saturday  they  phoned  up at 4:59 (according to the answerphone) to say
the  4meg SIMM I had ordered was not compatible with the 1230, and would
I  like  to  upgrade  to an 8meg?  I was at work, and didn't get in till
six,  by  which  time  it was too late to phone them back.  On Monday, I
upgraded to the 8meg SIMM.  The board arrived the next day.

Cue  around  three  hours trying to fit it into the tiny trapdoor on the
A1200.   It amazes me that a group of people who can design such a great
machine  can  fail  to  create  an  adequate  design  for a hole to plug
expansions into...I didn't want to push the board too hard as I had just
spent  £150  and didn't want to snap the board, but I got pissed off and
just rammed it in with a lot of force.  I switched my Amiga on, saw some
blue flashing lines, got scared, then saw my Workbench loading.  Phew!

$ff4STOP PRESS!!
$ff0Since  this article was first written some time ago, I have invested yet
more money into my A1200.
   
The  latest purchase has been a new hard drive (30meg just wasn`t enough
for me!).  So now I have a 170meg drive (might not seem much these days,
but it`s more than enough for me).

Unfortunately,  I  seem to be getting a reputation for having probs with
mail order...
   
This  time,  the hard drive still hadn`t arrived after more than a week.
I phoned up Gasteiner, who were very helpful and apologised, saying that
the  IDE  lead  had only just got back in stock (this was straight after
Christmas, so I was full of seasonal goodwill), and that they would send
the  HD  out  that night on next day delivery at no extra charge.  I was
more chuffed than a whole yardfull of trains chuffing along.
   
Anyway, I plugged the HD in, set it all up...and found it was corrupting
files,  so the next day I phoned Gasteiner again and they told me to cut
pin  1 on the IDE lead, and everything would be alright.  And it was.  A
bit  slower (maybe because its a bigger hard drive?), but at least I can
put  my  essays and other stuff on the HD without being scared that I`ll
never see it again.

$fffend