Hi everyone,

Sooo, it's been a while-ish. Still drop in here and there, but not really been active on the Amiga for years. I'm thinking of digging out the ol boing ball again.

I have been keeping up with some aspects of the Amiga world (no pun intended), buying Amiga OS 4 and its updates as well as the recent 3.3. Even picked up Settlers 2 because I wanted to support.

I have an A1200 here with some sort of dual CF IDE interface in there. The CF card itself doesn't really boot up too well. Not sure how it was setup, but it's trying to do too much and the computer doesn't have enough RAM to get started and it all gets a bit clogged up. I could probably try to boot up from a floppy and clean things up, or I could try connecting the CF card to my Mac and (somehow) mounting that Amiga formatted card as a drive and prepping it all in FS-UAE.

But, I'm also thinking of cleaning the old gal up and picking up some new kit. I'm here for some basic guidance.

- Form factor: I want to keep the A1200 in the original form factor
- Acceleration and RAM: I've seen a handful of cards out there and would really like to beef up the speeds (back in the day I had a Blizzard 1260/50 and a Voodoo FX 3D, towered up with a Mediator card). What super nippy options would any of you point towards?
- GFX: I'm guessing I won't be plugging in a GFX card like I used to. But what are the RTG options available these days? I assume HDMI is quite easy to mod in these days.
- Audio: Would I be right in assuming Paula is still rocking and no alt audio output is needed?
- Connectivity: Are these any wi-fi or Bluetooth options out there (mainly thinking for mouse/joypad inputs) and how well are we supported these days? USB: Is this supported well enough on the Amiga and do any of you have USB-C ports doing anything these days?

And anything else. Have I missed anything obvious that someone might want to think about or consider coming back to the platform?

What I plan to use it for is:
- Classic Gaming: Still got my WHDLoad key and still stoked that we have Putty Squad :D
- "Modern" Gaming: Quake was always fun on the Amiga, and I'm sure I've seen other fun modern projects on the go (Saw the AB3D2 post earlier. Nice)
- DPaint: I loved this application, so that might be for my down time. (And perhaps the other artistic ones I enjoyed too, Photogenics, Vista Pro)
- Music Production: Install all the classic and updated trackers and get back into chopping up some beats

And generally enjoying computing again. All this modern lark is starting to feel like work.

It'll be great to see some of the classic names in here. number6, Toaks, RoqueFort... and many others I've not spoken with in years.

FuZion.

@FuZion

As you're in Birmingham, are you able to get across to Telford this Saturday? West Midlands Amiga Group are meeting and you'd get to see some of the latest developments and get advice.

A great, current option is PiStorm and Emu68. It's a carrier board for a Raspberry Pi 3 or 4 which runs a bare metal CPU emulator. It's fast, allows you to use the HDMI output of the Pi, as well as the WiFi, ethernet (Pi4), and RAM (up to 2GB).

Some users on here don't like the CPU emulation but it's much faster than running something like Amiberry (full Amiga emulator) on a Pi standalone.

@FuZion

Like @AndyFC, I too would have to strongly recommend the PiStorm/Emu68 combo. It ticks most of the boxes on your wish list, asy enough to get, and quite affordable.

The runner up is the more expensive Apollo V4 FPGA-based expansion card with 68080 + SAGA. Not as speedy as a Emu68, but is a mature and well-rounded offering.

For a working OG A1200, these are the best bang-for-buck options.

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All the way, with 68k

Thanks @AndyFC and @agami.

I’m not going to be in Brum on Saturday unfortunately, but I will look out for other gatherings. Thanks too for your suggestions too, that gives me something to research.

Appreciated.

FuZion.

@FuZion

pistorm is worth nothing shit that changes your amiga into mouse and keyboard interface for rpi
rpi that run emulator that work like winuae
using it is stupid simply beacause amiga mouse and kayboard was copied from pc many years ago
do not listen to some that want to fool you and spread pistorm/emu68 propaganda
do not waste money for this shit pistorm just use winuae almost for free

@FuZion

Don't listen to ppcamiga1, he's the resident PPC troll and can't stand the fact that there are fast and affordable options for 68K users while he's stuck with hardware that gets an already outdated release once a decade if he's lucky.

Emu68 is *nothing like* UAE, it doesn't emulate any of the Amiga custom hardware, it just talks to it like any other accelerator. It's more akin to Amithlon (except that it runs bare metal): an emulated CPU with a bunch of additional hardware. All the software and drivers run on the 68K side.

No physical 68K solution can hold a candle to it in terms of performance. You also get RTG and other bonuses with it.

It's very hard to make a case against it except that it's not authentic 68K silicon. There are plenty of fast 060 boards available today but you'll typically have to provide your own 68060 for them

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Doing stupid things for fun...

@ppcamiga1

The thread was going so well. Your an idiot, that needs to learn to not post with stupid comments.

Sibbi, please ban this troublesome soul.

@FuZion

As already said, ignore ppcamiga1. He doesn't speak for the sane people on here.

Last edited by F0L on 06-Nov-2025 at 09:34 AM.

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@FuZion

There 2 cheap ways to go:

1. PiStorm (like it was introduced by all the others here)
2. A1200NG, a software Emulator like it is on PiStorm with an A1200 compatible mainboard.

You should also think about hard-disk/hard-disk replacement a CF card or the memory on the software emulators might be a good solution, and about HDMI Output both versions will add RTG (Graphiccard) RAM, acceleration AHI Audio Ethernet/Wifi

This place is still as awesome as ever. Great to see fueds are still alive and kicking too �

Great to see you still here Karlos 👊

I may start to look at the various options people are mentioning next week.

@FuZion

Yeah, I'm feeling a lot older but not much wiser

Pft, I can't even type smilies like I used to.

Last edited by Karlos on 06-Nov-2025 at 01:40 PM.
Last edited by Karlos on 06-Nov-2025 at 01:40 PM.

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Doing stupid things for fun...