My Amiga 1200 setup
When I was a teenager I had an Amiga 2000, a computer I loved dearly and whose lifetime I extended as much as possible with various hardware upgrades. In 1996 I saved enough money to buy a new computer and I was eager to purchase the Amiga Walker, after skipping two Amiga generations. However Amiga Technologies went bankrupt, the Walker was never released, and I moved on to a Windows 95 machine.
Years later a bought an Amiga 1200 HD on eBay, but I didn’t do much with it. It was easy and cheap (compared to today) to get some good boxed games on eBay, but most of them did not run properly due to a change in the disk drive Amiga Technologies had to make when re-releasing the A1200 after Commodore went bust.
This year, I discovered that you can HD-install games on an Amiga that were not originally intended to run using a shareware tool called WHDLoad. To get it working reasonably well, it’s a good idea to upgrade the A1200 with a few things. Figuring out all the parts took a bit of time, which is why I’m sharing my setup here.
Compact Flash SanDisk Hard Disk Kit 2,5”, 4 GB
Replacement for the original internal hard drive that is faster and offers a lot more storage. Split into two partitions: Work and Games.
Compact Flash PCMCIA + 4GB Compact Flash SanDisk
ImageMate All-in-One USB 3.0 Reader
Two adapters to read and write data to a Compact Flash card. One for the A1200 via PCMCIA and one for your PC/Mac via USB. Allows you to download files on your PC/Mac and get them onto your Amiga.
Indivision AGA MK2cr 1200, plus Adapter DVI to HDMI
Allows to connect the Amiga to a standard PC monitor via DVI or HDMI. I had to remove the metal RF Shield from the A1200 to fit it in.
ACA 1233 Turbocard with 40MHz MMU and 128MB of RAM
WHDLoad needs the extra memory and the higher processor speed makes it possible to play some of the late FPS games that heavily relied on third-party turbocards to run at a decent frame rate. Get the optional Real Time Clock module if you care about what date stamps your files have.
Expansion Slot Cover DVI
Custom 3D-printed slot cover for the A1200 expansion port. Not required technically, but it’s nice to not have the installed DVI video port be a loose cable coming out of a hole.
Competition Pro Joystick Retro
This was the best joystick available back then, and its pretty amazing that you can still buy one today that is compatible with the Amiga joystick port.
Replacement keyboard
While trying to clean the old keyboard I accidentally broke off two keys, so I got a mint replacement keyboard that was probably sitting in a warehouse for 20 years.
Amiga Forever
Includes licensed versions of all classic Amiga OS versions and ROM files. Needed to do a clean install on the A1200, and to run older games in WHDLoad that would otherwise be incompatible with the chipset of the A1200.
