@BigD

Quote:

The A4000NG has been seen to run Jim Power with next to no slowdown despite the difficulty in emulating the copper/blitter for that game

Also soon to be available as a card upgrade for A1200NG.
Not sure what you were watching. It was full speed, with zero slow down.

Maybe you could badger RGL into jamming a serial port on their "THE A1200" to seal the deal.
You could also damand to know if you can connect 10 joypads and joysticks on it, to play multi player games. As we know, you will never be buying unless it has all this.

Last edited by F0L on 26-Nov-2025 at 01:00 PM.
Last edited by F0L on 26-Nov-2025 at 12:58 PM.
Last edited by F0L on 26-Nov-2025 at 12:57 PM.

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@F0L

Very snarky and time for school me thinks:

AI says:
Quote:

"Next to no" is an idiomatic phrase meaning almost none or very little. It is used to describe a situation where there is a very small amount of something, like "There is next to no milk left" or "We have next to no time".

i.e. It looks good! Learn to take a compliment. However, whatever my misgivings over possible Jim Power issues, lack of USB-A slots etc, I am almost ready to pre-order THEA1200 on behalf of my friends. It's an big event release and probably the Amiga's last big hurrah before a gentle slide off into obscurity if we're honest.

As a comparison, I am awaiting your case study report on playing a null modem serial game of Super Skidmarks with an A1200NG serial linked to a Classic Amiga. How did that go? Was I supposed to buy an A1200NG myself and conduct the tests contrary to our discussion? I am not on your payroll and if you weren't prepared to test the serial port with 'real world' usage cases then yes I agree you shouldn't have included it as I'm not a guaranteed AmigaKit customer anymore sadly!

To be honest I'll most likely still buy THEA1200 on behalf of my friends as it represents an easy and approachable way into the Amiga including Workbench. Good luck with the A1200NG accelerator and A4000NG. In another dimension where potential customers were courted rather than expected to be your loyal beta testers from the get go I may have bought one or the other. This would especially be true if I knew that the serial port worked as would be expected on a regular A1200! I still don't know that to be true as of 26th November 2025!

P.S. A YouTube video would be nice of you sat down relaxed drinking a pint of IPA with your mates away from the stresses of work (especially cheeky forum combatants), playing 8-player Super Skidmarks on the BigD approved, serial equipped A1200NG!

Last edited by BigD on 26-Nov-2025 at 03:24 PM.
Last edited by BigD on 26-Nov-2025 at 03:18 PM.
Last edited by BigD on 26-Nov-2025 at 02:59 PM.
Last edited by BigD on 26-Nov-2025 at 02:27 PM.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

I'm sorry, time to school you. "Next to no" IS NOT "NO" which ever sarcy way you dress it up.

Unfortunately, I will never do any Amiga stuff out side work. As I'm constantly working, do not get time to test or try things to please one person. Who badgered pushed and moaned about every single detail. Even others pointed it out.

Yet you have not badgered or moaned once at RGL to get what you want added to a product.
They will do exactly what they did with the mini, ignore customers requests and give lack luster firmware updates that do jack to let the customer do what they want. Oh right, lets buy a pirated ready made stick, where you have to load another version of Amiberry, just to be able to use stuff like Drawbridge.

Youtube vid, will never happen, plus I very rarely drink (dont see point).

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@F0L

Yep, I gave direct face to face feedback to a high up Plaion representative after THEA500 Mini release and have been vocal about my concerns regarding THEA1200 pre-order with no clarification of the specs. I have now (with my poor choice of English admittedly) flagged up the positive performance of the A4000NG. I am fair and balanced and have no vendetta, but I am also not blindly loyal to Matthew's business either!

Getting back to the issue, we talked about you testing a single usage case regarding the serial port on the A1200NG. If you haven't had time to test it then fair enough but we did reach an understanding on the way forward with that. I cannot get excited about something that may or may not work. I had similar questions about the Prisma Megamix music card. I experiment with a lot of Amiga things but I have drawn the line with your products rightly or wrongly!

I still see good things from the development of the A1200/A4000NG but I cannot with a right conscience recommend those products to my retro computer loving friends over and above the RGL products. Yours are wannabe direct A1200 replacements with bells and whistles and not a consumer grade Amiga-light experience albeit with the opportunity for some fun soft-modding with THEA1200/THEA500 Mini IMHO.

Last edited by BigD on 26-Nov-2025 at 05:15 PM.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@F0L

I also really don't know why you are so upset that a serial port was included on the A1200NG mobo! Can I assume that it has been removed from the A4000NG in order to finally put right the great misstep you seemingly took by including it? Ridiculous! I'm sure that someone found it useful and maybe you should ask them to test it with Super Skidmarks when you find out who they are?!

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

Quote:

I still see good things from the development of the A1200/A4000NG but I cannot with a right conscience recommend those products to my retro computer loving friends over and above the RGL products. Yours are wannabe direct A1200 replacements with bells and whistles and not a consumer grade Amiga-light experience albeit with the opportunity for some fun soft-modding with THEA1200/THEA500 Mini IMHO.

Obviously, you no nothing about it and how it works. Pointless even debating with you.
You do not have to use the "bells and whistles" as you put it. Simple, just dont use a keybaord or real floppy drive.

You also do not have to use Amibench, you do realise its not just for Amibench. You can put what ever setup you want on the main menu (unlike RGL stuff). You can even have it boot your favourite setup, without even entering the GS / NG main menu.

I'm sorry, I see you as having an issue, as you went into an update thread for NG and trashed thread, banging on about "The A1200" and then even bragged about trashing thread.

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@F0L

While there was never the intention to "trash" a NG/GS support thread as you put it, if you treat a public forum like your official support service website then you will pick up other people along the way like myself that don't own your machines. In that sense, Hyperion have got it right!

I understand that your platform is flexible but maybe for my use case just switching on the machine and having fun trumps being able to plug in a real floppy drive or faffing around getting my childhood Workbench backup image working just right! You aren't able to include WHDLoad as standard and you can't tell me whether the serial port 'feature' works with the null modem game mode that is included as part of the game that you decided to bundle with the A1200NG! That was your choice of how to do business not mine! "Build it and they will come!" does not work on people that can't risk the eventuality of all the initial tweaking and experimenting to see whether the product they have shelled out on is something that they actually wanted or not! The Amiga was fun to experiment with but these Arm emulation boxes aren't Amigas, they should be fun consumer level machines pulled out for an IPA fueled (or insert beverage/non-alcoholic alternative of choice) gaming night with no faffing, no "Wizonk Magic Arena ADF is not loading" type problems and definitely no "the MiSTer runs Pinball Dreams smoother than this!" type moments! The A4000NG is a step in the right direction on this considering the Jim Power demonstration (depending on price) but there still isn't a working AmiStore supported by these machines yet. Personally, I wouldn't expect to see the likes of ReShoot Proxima 3 or MetroSiege (when released) feature even when launched! I might be wrong depending on licensing conditions/costs etc. I also acknowledge that there is nothing similar in the works for the RGL machines and hence it will be a unique selling point once available depending on the games offered.

THEA1200 comes with an officially licensed version of Workbench and that is fine for 99% of retro gaming/home computer fans. THEA1200 is the perfect way to introduce these sorts of people to the Amiga and by extension even to your company! Maybe some of my friends will be your customers one day? It pays to keep me on side and I might possibly name drop you amongst the likes of AmigaStore.eu, RetroPassion, Ami64 and the many many great and friendly Amiga companies that now exist! We are so blessed to have such choice!

Just be happy THEA1200 release was delayed beyond Christmas 2025 as that should mean more sales of the A1200NG for AmigaKit!

Last edited by BigD on 27-Nov-2025 at 11:32 AM.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

Last post from me on this.

You need to read what you put, as you have contradicted yourself.
You have to do same on Mini, i.e. faff about.

Not our fault regarding WHDLoad, we already had an agreement in place from around 2010.

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@F0L

Quote:

You have to do same on Mini, i.e. faff about.

The Pandory/AMiNIMiga Discord communities have been great. I expect for all of that knowledge gleaned to be carried forward for THEA1200 to use with helping my non-Amigan friends have a good time! Yes, they will be oblivious to all the past research and chats and pushing a little gaming box to do more than it was designed to do! That was fun while it lasted but it was with a view to a usage case! Primarily I used the Mini to use the AMiNIMiga Workbench distro to playtest new Worms DC custom maps and Pandory500 to test the new 4-player Wizonk Magic Arena. I don't have to be a playtester unless it is on my terms with a community that has fun learning. Maybe other people have found that with your machines. I hope that they have!

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

Quote:

P.S. A YouTube video would be nice of you sat down relaxed drinking a pint of IPA with your mates away from the stresses of work (especially cheeky forum combatants), playing 8-player Super Skidmarks on the BigD approved, serial equipped A1200NG!

Maybe ask one of the people creating A1200NG content on Youtube if they can test this out for you. Alternatively you could ask AmigaKit if they'll let you try it for yourself if you bring your A1200 along to the next UK or Ireland show they attend.

@Rob

Maybe I will be motivated to if the A4000NG keeps the serial port in place in my honour! That seems quite a speedy Arm machine! Probably pricey? The Framethrower will personally give me two Classic machines to logistically/feasibly do this null modem jiggery pokery at shows without an insane number of monitors with but yes it is an interesting feature for the 'NG' machines to have.

I wonder if THEA1200 will recognise a USB to Ethernet adapter in its 'baked in' Workbench environment?

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@Thread

Amiberry does support serial ports, if there is a propper Linux underneath it, it may support USB I/O devices as well.

There might be a small problem with the build in drawbridge (Amiga Floppy Reader) that is connected via a serial port.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 28-Nov-2025 at 05:10 PM.

@BigD

If the screenshot on their website is anything to go by, it will just be a vanilla 3.1 install.

@BigD

Quote:

I wonder if THEA1200 will recognise a USB to Ethernet adapter in its 'baked in' Workbench environment?

Probably not, their previous products had networking disabled (and for good reasons, network capable devices fall under a different product segment and must adhere to much stricter regulations, with much more "pain" should you, as vendor, fail to comply).

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B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@Rob

Quote:

... it will just be a vanilla 3.1 install.

Some results with AIBB are better with AOS3.1, it seems as if AOS3.2 has some slower routines for Text/Graphics so AOS3.1 or AOS3.0 is faster.

@OneTimer1

Floppy Drawbridge works fine.
Also Amiberry does support Serial. Has since 2020.

So I would imagine, if RGL actually use updated version, it will work.

Last edited by F0L on 02-Dec-2025 at 09:13 AM.
Last edited by F0L on 02-Dec-2025 at 09:12 AM.

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@OneTimer1

Quote:

Some results with AIBB are better with AOS3.1, it seems as if AOS3.2 has some slower routines for Text/Graphics so AOS3.1 or AOS3.0 is faster.

I'm not sure what that has do with BigD's hope for interent connectivity out of the box.

@Rob

Quote:

Rob wrote: I'm not sure what that has do with BigD's hope for interent connectivity out of the box.

That's exactly the reason why I posted this line: "@Rob" otherwise I would have written "@BigD"


For internet connectivity you should look into the used system under it: A1200NG is using a proper OS under the Amiberry, so at least there should be some internet access over Linux (at least for the App shop), on "TheA1200" we don't know.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 03-Dec-2025 at 01:28 PM.

@Thread

Recent thread deserves to be on the front page. I have backed off pre-ordering this due to the lack of info on the SoC being used and the high chance that they are reusing the standard THEA500 Mini PCB! I have however signed up to the Vectrex Mini Kickstarter which looks so much fun!

Last edited by BigD on 04-Dec-2025 at 04:09 PM.
Last edited by BigD on 04-Dec-2025 at 04:08 PM.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@Thread

So did anyone here take the plunge and preorder THEA1200?

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios