The A1200 is a strange looking beast;
if the A600 was a cut-down A500, then
the A1200 is an overgrown A600. The
creamy-white case is the same length
as the A500, but only 2/3 of the
depth. The keyboard is now at a
slightly greater angle, as is the disk
drive and recessed ventilation slots.
It all reminds of my old SAM Coupe,
but in appearance the similarity to
both the SAM and A500 ends. This
Amiga is probably the most radically
new low-end Amiga ever. The processor has been upgraded from a
8MHz (in reality, 7.14MHz) 68000 to a
14MHz 68020, and the difference shows. No longer do you catch Intuition
drawing a window or requester.
Everything runs that bit faster and
you do notice it - from ray tracing
and image processing to simple,
everyday Workbench and CLI use, your
life is improved. I would say the
upgrade is worth this alone. Using
the SysInfo program, the A1200 comes
out as exactly 2 times faster than the
A500+; and that's only the processor. Out go Agnus and Denise and in come
Alice and Louise (who chooses these
names?). All screen modes can now
display 256,000 from a palette of
16,777,216 colours; some 8 times as
many as the Super NES! Screens now
have a maximum resolution of 1280x512,
and there are now umpteen different
graphics modes, ranging from the bog
standard 320x200 lo-res to non-flicker
interlace displays. HAM mode no
longer suffers so much from that
annoying fringing - the only
indication of any difference with
existing software. No current
software takes advantage of these
changes, so you'll just have to wait
for DPaint 4.5! Sprites are now
resolution independent, and have had
their width restriction lifted from 16
to 64 pixels. Lovely stuff! Unfortunately, the sound has remained
the same. Paula still bangs out the
4-channel, 8 bit noise. Its still
good, but is it good enough? It
appears that there is a problems with
a few A1200's - the sound is slightly
distorted, as if the signal is coming
out too loud. Database Computers
(where I bought the machine) and
myself are currently wrestling with
Commodores services to find out what
is to be done about this annoying
fault. Luckily, the A1200 comes with
12 months on-site warranty, so there's
no problem if anything goes wrong.
The A1200 comes with both Kickstart
and Workbench 3.00 and at first
glance, you'd never guess. The
Workbench, apart from running faster,
has no major presentation changes.
You can now put any IFF graphic in the
background of the Workbench screen,
but that's it. Where most of the
changes lie are in the preferences and
devices drawers. Preferences now caters for "Locale"
users - that is, non-English owners.
Both the language and keymap used can
be changed via an on-site map, which
also changes the clock to suit.
There is a new "Sound" preference -
this allows to you play a sample every
time a "flash" signal is called (e.g.
upon an error etc.) Changing the palette prefs gives you a
glimpse of the new AGA (aka AA) chips
- a 256 colour screen is opened, and a
"colour wheel" is displayed. Colours
can be chosen just by clicking on the
relevant point in the colour wheel.
256 colour Workbench anyone? Holding down both the mouse buttons
during a (much slower - why?) reset
brings up a new version of the old
Plus boot-menu (now called "Early
Startup Control"). From the three
menus here, the user can disable the
processor caches, switch back to
emulated ECS or normal graphics modes,
switch to 60Hz, disable drives and
check out any boards pinned to the
machines. Handy indeed.
As yet, there is no other software
bundled with the A1200 other than the
Workbench, Extras, Fonts, Storage
(printer, monitor, DOS settings) and
Locale (language) disks. I have been
told that a specially written set of
games is to be released to certain
owners after November 10th. As soon
as I get hold of these, they'll be
getting the reviewing treatment. Compatibility is something that many
users will be worried about - we all
remember the horror stories told by
the press last November after the
launch of the Plus. Let me put your
mind at rest - compatibility is only
5-10% lower than that of the Plus, and
most of those that don't work can be
"persuaded". By using the "Disable
CPU Caches" option on the Early Boot
menu, many titles will run without a
glitch. More stubborn programs will
require the use of something like
Degrader. So is it worth it? Well, I was
expecting (and so were many other, I
suspect) a mid-range Amiga to be
launched at around £800-£1000, under
the title of A2200 or A1600 or
something. This would leave the A600
with the budget market sown up.
Instead we've got an enormously
powerful computer, with enough
hardware muscle to knock the Atari
Falcon (when it arrives) out of the
market. The price? £399. If you
don't think this is a bargain, then
you need to take a closer look. With
hard drives widely available (£285 for
60Mb) and the future suddenly looking
much brighter for the Amiga, you'd be
daft to miss it.
It's now two weeks since I bought this machine, so do I still feel the same way? Here's a quick bit on using the machine after the "honeymoon" period...
The increase in speed isn't quite as noticeable as at first, but that's only to be taken for granted. In saying that, I was using a friends A500 a few days ago and it seemed horrendously slow...
Compatibility still hasn't caused many problems. I've even found a few disks (mainly demos) that work on the A1200 that didn't on the plus. On the other hand, a few games stubbornly refuse to work, despite prodding with Degrader and other utilities. Swings and roundabouts...
The sound problem is still there. I've had a Wang engineer round and he told me he's had calls to 3 other Amiga 1200's in the last week, all the the same problem. I'm now awaiting a response from Commodore - there definitely is a problem with the 1200 - whether it's just my batch, or a common fault, it needs fixing.
All I need now is a hard drive - and for that, I need £250. Anyone offering? Go on, I'll be your best friend...
Custom Chips:
AA multichip co-processor
system (Alice, Lisa,
Paula) for video,
graphics, sound and DMA
Internal Disk:One internal 3.5-inch
floppy drive standard
(880KB formatted maximum)
Mounting provisions for
one 2.5-inch AT IDE hard
drive
Video Display:Output type: RGB, analog and digital; colour composite; RF modulated; interlaced and non-interlaces; up to 8 bitplanes
CENTER>Horizontal scan rates:15.6KHz to 31.4KHz