What are the differences between an Amiga 500 and Amiga 1200?
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- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
- Join RustyIngles on a nostalgic journey back in time as he pits two legendary Commodore Amigas against each other - the Amiga 500 and the Amiga 1200. 🚀 In today's epic showdown, we'll explore everything from their technical prowess to their quirky Easter eggs. Which machine was the true king of its era? 🏆
Dive deep into the world of retro computing with detailed comparisons of their specs, graphics capabilities, and much more. Discover which model dominated the markets in Europe and the USA. Whether you're a lifelong Amiga fan or new to the scene, this video is packed with information and a hefty dose of nostalgia.
Don't forget to like, comment with your thoughts, and subscribe for more retro gaming content! Let us know which Amiga model you think deserves the crown and why. 👑
Stay tuned to Retro Games Rediscovered for more comparisons, deep dives, and retro fun. Thanks for watching! 🕹️🎮
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I remember when I passed from A500 plus to A1200. Just to be able to install Workbench magic and boot into it like a PC in win 3.1 was so great. Also to hook up IDEs ( it cost a month salary for a 1.5 giga quantum fireball hdd at that time ) made the Amiga a super fast computer. Some month later I got a Blizzard 030 expansion card. All 3D games worked at 60 FPS or more with no lags, loading time almost none existent, theme park, syndicate run super smooth. Truly amazing days. What killed it was there was no more Amiga stores and friends moved to PCs. Soon later the N64 and PS1 came.
The rest is history.
Thanks for your comment, the 1200 was a massive jump from the 500 (or 500 plus in your case). I bet your 1200 flew when you had the 030 expansion card in it!
The Amiga 1200 is a great machine but it was too little too late. I know components very expensive in 1992, such as ram and hard drive. I do believe Commodore tried to keep the prices down for more sales, but the 020 with 2 MB of ram was not enough even at that time.
Thanks for your comment and for watching the video, yes I agree it was sadly too late to save a failing Commodore.
The A1200 is what the A600 could have been, it could have saved Commodore. Just another in a long line of bad decisions.
Thanks for your comment! You're right, the A1200 had the potential to be what the A600 should have been and possibly could have helped save Commodore. It's a classic example of how a series of unfortunate decisions can impact a company's fate.
If you enjoyed this discussion, please consider subscribing to my channel, Retro Games Rediscovered, for more retro computing insights and content!
Cheers,
RustyIngles
There was healthy profit margin with A1200. Hint: CD32's asking lower price.
Indeed. I had an i386 cpu overclokced and an svga capable display adapter. The amiga was only a match till I got a soundcard.
Saddest day, when I had to sell my A500 to get an A1200!
Got my A500 in 1988.
What a wonderful machin it was The first time you could play arcade style/quality games at home.
Saved me loads of 10ps!
Still got my A1200 and it works perfectly.
Thanks for your comment, I bet it was a sad day when you sold you A500 but I guess it was bittersweet if you were picking up an A1200
@@RetroGamesRediscovered It was! I used the A1200 in my transition from gaming to working. Used it for all my advertising leaflets using Pagestream 2 and a Star LC 20 impact printer (printing graphically). I then photocopied the prints which were “jaggy” free! Pretty amazing really.
I had a Star LC 20, crikey I'd forgotten all about that printer. Great times. Seems a distant memory now!
01:17 Amiga500 (OCS) could also display EHB (ExtraHalfBrite) mode which is 64 onscreen colours. It's basically a 32 colour mode but then it's cloned and they half the brightness of each cloned colour. Example of games using this are: Pinball Dreams and Fantasies, Black Crypt, Fightin' Spirit and I'm pretty sure Ruff 'n' Tumble.
A500 could also use the Copper Chip to interrupt the scanline to add many more onscreen colours. eg: Lionheart, Fire and Ice, Turrican 2, Jim Power.
The Copper chip could display 2 (and many more) different resolutions with their own palette on 1 screen at the same time, a number of games do this.
Then there was HAM mode which could theoretically display all 4096 colours.
01:22 Paula sound wasn't technically 4 channel stereo sound. It was 4 mono channels connected to a stereo output, 2 for left and 2 for right speaker.
02:10 AGA had a palette of 16.7 million. 256 onscreen colours and 262,144 colours in HAM mode.
02:25 A1200 CPU was clocked at 14.18Mhz PAL and 14.32Mhz NTSC.
02:56 The Sound chip in the A1200 is exactly same as Paula in the A500, one difference they did however was remove one of the low pass filters for the A1200 giving it a slightly "brighter" sound. I have a couple of comparison videos on my channel, one for Battle Squadron hi-score music and another for a Hoffman track where I compare a real A500+ and A1200 to emulated Amiga filters using Protracker Clone for PC.
Thank you for sharing the information, I stand corrected!
you can see a test from saimo where he gets superior 14bit quality out of an AGA machine. Search for "Hertz Overload / v1.0"
Amiga 500 (4096 color mode) was called HAM and the A1200 was called HAM8 (but sure it was the same thing, but with a bigger selections of colors).
The low pass filter on A1200 could be turned on and off as I remember it... A500+ (which I had) maybe had the possibility also, but as I remember it you had to do a hardware modification?
@@alexanderwingeskog758
There are 2 low pass filters on the OCS and ECS Amiga's, one that was always on and one that could be turned on or off.
AGA Amiga's had the always on LPF removed, that's why there's a "brighter" sound on AGA Amiga's.
Agreed, the A1200 should have shipped with a minimum Full 68030 clocked at 14Mhz, ideally 25 and had 2MB CHIP and 2MB 32bit fast.. even the 14Mhz machine would have performed a lot better.
The Amiga 500 is a obscure personal computer for us in south america, more even the 1200, It would be neat if they was more popular in here in their era.
I prefer 1200, mostly because of easier expandability and IDE interface.
Getting the A500 was earth shattering at the time. Some great times and a massive leap from a master system. A1200 just didn't feel a massive leap (even if it was technically better). Stuff like added paralax backgrounds etc and a bit better framerate just didnt excite as much as the og 500 did.
yup, love my amiga 1000, waited got a 1200, all the games looked the same. One year later I got a IBM 486/33, never looked backed. Commodore had it , but dam got lazy or dumb.
If only the A1200 was released in like 1988 or so and another refresh 3 years later. Still the PC would've been more popular through the sheer IT industry support and investments commodore could never have hoped to match.
The A1200 really shone in productivity applications like rendering and design, graphics etc. back in the day while the PC was still struggling with that type of stuff, though it quickly caught up with the 486 and pentium and windows 95.
BTW I think PAULA was exactly the same in the A1200 vs A500 but in a PLCC package instead of a PDIP. Could be that it was enhanced in the A4000 with HD floppy capability since floppy data was decoded using PAULA.
The integrated IDE controller in the A1200 was such a game changer, being able to use HDDs was a huge upgrade from floppy only A500 (of course you could upgrade the A500 with very expensive SCSI drives but was out of the price range for most people).
The 1200 was amazing at the time. Shame it got overtaken rather quickly.
Found your channel from the Amiga Addict Magazine. I really like the Amiga coverage. Where did you get that amazing T-Shirt from, do you sell them?
Thank you for your comment and for coming from the magazine! I got the tee from an independent shop, but I am going to start selling them in my online store. I'll keep you updated!
A1200 was touted in 1992 as next big thing and succesor to A500, but truth to be told 1992-1994(95) were A500's best games years (Turrican II, Toki, Lionhart, Megalomania, Settlers, Dune II, Sensible soccer, etc.)! A500 was everywhere (I still wonder how only about 4.5 million were sold) and I haven't seen A1200 untill much later when Playstation was already a household name and I was dissapointed. All the games I saw were already old news, I have already played then in A500 and I could not spot the any difference on CRT! Even while A1200 versions contained larger number of colors, it all looked the same to me, since I had only my (fading) visual memory of A500 vesrsions to compare it with! The fact that A500 market was during A1200's life was much larger, made developers develop games with A500 as main target and just upscale color number for A1200. Even still to this day of retro gaming, I prefer A500 versions when I play! A1200 was laging behind SNES and even Mega Drive from inception which is mostly visible on Street Fighter II versions which A1200 could not handle. When 3D stuff appeared, we have alredy seen much better stuff on PC and even for that you had to have much more upgraded A1200, so better invest that money into PC. And leaving same sound chip as A500 was major omission. A500 already had problems playing music and effects in game simoultaneously in 4 chanels, so additional a chanel or 2 was very missing. Also, real stereo would help. Commodore was in mess all the way through 80s and 90s and it just shows on botched and compromised design of 1200.
The A1200 did have a tough time living up to the A500's legacy, despite being a better machine. Maybe it needed a bit more 90s pizzazz. It was sadly too little too late. Thanks for your comment and for watching the video.
I had both of these machines and still have my A1200 (still white too); albeit with some modern twists, modern caps, the newest kickstarts, memory card hard drive adaptor, gotek drive and memory upgrade. I haven’t went for any of the updated accelerator cards. I have a raspberry pi running Chris Edward’s excellent images; thusly saving my original hardware for “best”.
I went from the A500 with 1MB to an A1200 with 8mb ram upgrade and an adaptor to run a 300mb IDE hard drive. The difference was night and day.
Thanks for sharing your experience! It's fantastic that you still have your A1200 in such great condition with modern upgrades. The A1200 with 8MB RAM and a 300MB IDE hard drive must have been a huge leap from the A500 with 1MB. The night-and-day difference in performance and capability must have been incredible.
Using a Raspberry Pi with Chris Edward’s images to preserve your original hardware is a smart move. It’s great to see enthusiasts like you keeping the Amiga spirit alive with both original and modern setups.
I think the A1200 hugely benefitted from even a small expansion. My dad was wise enough to buy ours with a RAM expansion (either 2 or 4mb, can't remember which) and a few years later we added the hard disk (120mb, don't think we ever filled it). The Fast RAM definitely made simple things like navigating Workbench considerably faster than on the A500 (as well as making games like Frontier truly playable!) and the hard disk was a huge game changer (it was a good design choice to have that IDE interface inside the A1200).
Needs a viper2 fpga
Both greatmachines but the A500 enjoyed the Amiga golden years while the far superior A1200 had to face its sad demise...
Sad story...
You're right, completely bad timing from Commodore, but they badly managed the Amiga project I think
Nope it did not made A1200 a powerhouse. It made it a machine that was partly inferior to the PC at the same time.
The A500 at the time of its release in 1985 however WAS indeed a powerhouse!
The A500 came out in 1987. Your point is correct, however. The A1200 was a decent home computer but hampered by lacklustre features and rather than being a revelation for home computing it was only a decent alternative (the AGA chipset was decent but with only 2mb of Chip RAM, the same small disk capacity of 880k, a very modest 14Mhz CPU while PCs were ever cheaper and more powerful - even though still less user friendly than Amigas in 1992 - game developers didn't seem to know how to take advantage of its improved specifications. As soon as one added a bit of Fast RAM it was a respectable and notable advancement on the A500, but at stock specs of 2mb RAM it wasn't, in practice, a big leap forward). All that said, we had both an A500+ and an A1200 and greatly enjoyed both (we did buy the latter with a RAM expansion though, either 2mb or 4mb of Fast RAM, and it helped a lot). We later added a hard disk to the A1200 which made it even more enjoyable, especially for games like Civ, UFO and Championship Manager Italia (disk loading times massively reduced, no disk swapping, no worries about having enough save game space). I wouldn't have swapped our A1200 for an early 90s PC, even though I missed out on some great PC games in the mid to late 90s. I much preferred using the Amiga compared to using PCs at school or at friends' houses.
I do not see any Amiga 1200 game that made a huge leap from A500. They were looking quite same unless you have a faster cpu and fast ram addition
Lack of harddrive was also a big issue on stock machine
The Computer Mão Amiga was pretty popular among some teenagers at the time
The A1200 was amazing although Commodore were really f**king things up by now.
The first problem was the lack of specific games for the machine. If you were a developer and you were making an Amiga game, you are going to target all Amigas not the high-end machine that not many people had.
Secondly, games like Doom were really starting to shine, the 1200 had a socket for a Maths co-processor which could do the fast maths required for 3d rendering, sadly it was just shipped with a socket and didn't have the chip in it to do the business.
Lastly, the consoles had multi-button controllers, why the Amiga wasn't pushed down this direction I don't know. It is compatible with the CD32 controller but nearly all games were one button only.
A1200 is the best for me. My machine was equipped with 68030 accelerator on 25 MHz
I had 2 600s with memory upgrades, and a 1200 with an 030 accelerator. Prefered the 600s though.
What does the A500 run that the A1200 does not?
A600 cries in the corner
Wolfenstein and doom killed Commodore amiga
700?
🤣 very clever
That really shouldn't have made me laugh, but it did.
I used to have a500 as a child. Realy thinking of buying it again but after this video im not sure if a1200 would be a better buy
Thanks for your comment and for watching the video. I had an A500 as a child but never had the A1200 but always wanted one. As an adult, I've got both. Whilst the 1200 is a better machine, the 500 will always hold a special place for me. Shop around for a machine though, as the prices are always rising
Had both, the A500 is still my favourite for gaming.
The A1200 was fun for a while.
Raspberry Pi running Chris Edward’s brilliant and Free images are a very good substitute for the real thing. And a fraction of the price.
You're absolutely right-Raspberry Pi running Chris Edward’s brilliant and free images is an excellent and cost-effective way to relive the classic Amiga experience. It’s amazing how much functionality you can get at a fraction of the price of original hardware.
Thanks for your reply, the A500 is indeed a classic favourite for gaming with its iconic library of titles. The A1200 offered some exciting advancements, but there's something timeless about the A500.
my question is simple - why does the real Amiga or Amiga emulator winuae both need a shapeshifter 3.1 rom in order to run shapeshifter? thanks...........