April 18, 2004

I have always been an Amiga fan. I purchased the first Amiga sold in Virginia, back in October 1985. I heard news of it months earlier and had long been in waiting. Not long after, though, (I think partially due to the early dearth of Amiga software and partially due to Apple's marketing savvy) I sold the machine for an Apple IIe (if you can believe it). A few years later ('89) I ended up with an Amiga 2000 and then later, still ('93), an Amiga 1200HD. After years without an Amiga, I found a new-in-box Amiga 2000 ('00) and added it to my collection. Amigas came and went into and out of my world of machines, and they were always memorable and enjoyable.

Back in 2000, I got the itch to put together a superfast Amiga 1200 tower for the purpose of watching demos and playing a few games. It was easy to find all the parts (though some had to be ordered from Europe) and after a little translating, the tower came together just fine. But I sold it, as well—this time, to fund the purchase of an iBook.

Not long ago, just shy of four years after the first tower was built, I got the itch again. So I started scrounging and found that it was far more difficult to fine the pieces needed to construct the Amiga 1200 tower. But I managed it. Parts arrived from all over the U.S., Europe, Israel, and Canada to get this unit made. And after much toil, the new tower is fully operational.

Have a look at some images of the process (and then read on, in link below, for more info).

Specs of the Amiga 1200 tower:

• Amiga 1200 motherboard (14.3MHz 68020, 2MB CHIP RAM) [new]
• "Noblesse" mid-tower case from Revanche LLC [new]
• Blizzard A1260 accelerator w/ 68060 @ 66MHz (overclocked 60MHz chip) [used]
• Blizzard SCSI IV kit (localbus connection to A1260) [used]
• 64MB FAST RAM [used]
• FlickerMagicT flicker-fixer/scan-doubler [new]
• 2GB IBM UltraStar SCSI HD (7200 RPM) [used]
• NEC 40x SCSI CD-ROM drive (black faceplate) [used]
• Sony 3.5" Amiga floppy drive (black faceplate) [new]
• 100MB SCSI Zip drive (external) [used]
• LinkSys PCMCIA Ethernet card [new]
• ViewSonic 19" VGA CRT [new]
• Running AmigaOS v3.9