So, I was visiting a friend of mine for another one of our "retro gaming days" and my mate wanted a Commodore 1084S monitor, of which I had a spare I was not using - but rather than charge money for it, we decided on a swap - now, we'd initially agreed this ages ago but it's taken a while to sort out getting the swap done, so the swap was agree before I got my 1200 that I have (although, I'm quite happy to have 2 of them, as I don't have a good track record for working 1200s)
Well, I'm happy anyway, I've now got 2 good 1200s that work and have been properly serviced, which is better than buying some untested thing off ebay or FB Marketplace.
A1200 number 2 is of the following specification:
ESCOM A1200 rev 2b motherboard, fully serviced and recapped
stock 68020 with the stock 2MB Chip RAM and AGA graphics
stock internal floppy drive, which has been serviced, cleaned and recapped
Kickstart 3.1 ROMs (this is a definite plus, as my other still has 3.0 ROMs, but 3.1 allows for running newer AmigsOS without ROM upgrade)
It's pretty much a blank canvas, and I'm happy to have it, having a few ideas which I will detail below
I ordered this back in April, it arrived ealy June (I know, crazy innit) and I have it installed in my other 1200 (the 3.0 ROM one) but because of the 3.0 ROMs, I can't really run 3.5/3.9/3.1.4/3.2, so I have to patch scsi.device with LoadModule if I want to run a CF card bigger than 4GB (and tbh, I've had reliability issues doing that in the past) but now I have a 3.1 machine which I could use 3.5, 3.9, 3.1.4 or 3.2 on, so that's useful.
So, I'm very tempted to move the 8MB Fast RAM card, and the CF card into the new 1200 with 3.1 ROMs, as it'll be ready to go and can be running a newer AmigaOS and therefore allow >4GB CF card, then, keep the original 1200 as a "floppy only machine" until I get round to getting further upgrades for it (or just leave it stock)
Well, I don't have a good track record of having working 1200s, they always seem to F up on me, so I'll keep them both so that I have spares should the worst happen.
They're breeding - there's the A500, A500+, A1200 (x2) and A1500 ................... I had more at one point, some of them "fled the nest" and I whittled it down to just the one A500+, but now they're breeding again - I think I have an Amiga addiction problem 🤣
I'm really tempted to get a CD32 if I can get one at a reasonable price (SPOILER: none of the ones I've seen are reasonable)
Stay tuned for further updates to my Amiga collection!