The A1200 is a strange looking beast; if the A600 was a cut-down A500, then the A1200 is an overgrown A600. The creamy-white case is the same length as the A500, but only 2/3 of the depth. The keyboard is now at a slightly greater angle, as is the disk drive and recessed ventilation slots. It all reminds of my old SAM Coupe, but in appearance the similarity to both the SAM and A500 ends. This Amiga is probably the most radically new low-end Amiga ever.
The processor has been upgraded from a 8MHz (in reality, 7.14MHz) 68000 to a 14MHz 68020, and the difference shows.
No longer do you catch Intuition drawing a window or requester. Everything runs that bit faster and you do notice it - from ray tracing and image processing to simple, everyday Workbench and CLI use, your life is improved. I would say the upgrade is worth this alone. Using the SysInfo program, the A1200 comes out as exactly 2 times faster than the A500+; and that's only the processor.
Out go Agnus and Denise and in come Alice and Louise (who chooses these names?). All screen modes can now display 256,000 from a palette of 16,777,216 colours; some 8 times as many as the Super NES! Screens now have a maximum resolution of 1280x512, and there are now umpteen different graphics modes, ranging from the bog standard 320x200 lo-res to non-flicker interlace displays. HAM mode no longer suffers so much from that annoying fringing - the only indication of any difference with existing software. No current software takes advantage of these changes, so you'll just have to wait for DPaint 4.5! Sprites are now resolution independent, and have had their width restriction lifted from 16 to 64 pixels. Lovely stuff!
Unfortunately, the sound has remained the same. Paula still bangs out the 4-channel, 8 bit noise. Its still good, but is it good enough? It appears that there is a problems with a few A1200's - the sound is slightly distorted, as if the signal is coming out too loud. Database Computers (where I bought the machine) and myself are currently wrestling with Commodores services to find out what is to be done about this annoying fault. Luckily, the A1200 comes with 12 months on-site warranty, so there's no problem if anything goes wrong. The A1200 comes with both Kickstart and Workbench 3.00 and at first glance, you'd never guess. The Workbench, apart from running faster, has no major presentation changes. You can now put any IFF graphic in the background of the Workbench screen, but that's it. Where most of the changes lie are in the preferences and devices drawers.
Preferences now caters for "Locale" users - that is, non-English owners. Both the language and keymap used can be changed via an on-site map, which also changes the clock to suit. There is a new "Sound" preference - this allows to you play a sample every time a "flash" signal is called (e.g. upon an error etc.)
Changing the palette prefs gives you a glimpse of the new AGA (aka AA) chips - a 256 colour screen is opened, and a "colour wheel" is displayed. Colours can be chosen just by clicking on the relevant point in the colour wheel. 256 colour Workbench anyone?
Holding down both the mouse buttons during a (much slower - why?) reset brings up a new version of the old Plus boot-menu (now called "Early Startup Control"). From the three menus here, the user can disable the processor caches, switch back to emulated ECS or normal graphics modes, switch to 60Hz, disable drives and check out any boards pinned to the machines. Handy indeed. As yet, there is no other software bundled with the A1200 other than the Workbench, Extras, Fonts, Storage (printer, monitor, DOS settings) and Locale (language) disks. I have been told that a specially written set of games is to be released to certain owners after November 10th. As soon as I get hold of these, they'll be getting the reviewing treatment.
Compatibility is something that many users will be worried about - we all remember the horror stories told by the press last November after the launch of the Plus. Let me put your mind at rest - compatibility is only 5-10% lower than that of the Plus, and most of those that don't work can be "persuaded". By using the "Disable CPU Caches" option on the Early Boot menu, many titles will run without a glitch. More stubborn programs will require the use of something like Degrader.
So is it worth it? Well, I was expecting (and so were many other, I suspect) a mid-range Amiga to be launched at around �800-�1000, under the title of A2200 or A1600 or something. This would leave the A600 with the budget market sown up. Instead we've got an enormously powerful computer, with enough hardware muscle to knock the Atari Falcon (when it arrives) out of the market. The price? �399. If you don't think this is a bargain, then you need to take a closer look. With hard drives widely available (�285 for 60Mb) and the future suddenly looking much brighter for the Amiga, you'd be daft to miss it.
It's now two weeks since I bought this machine, so do I still feel the same way? Here's a quick bit on using the machine after the "honeymoon" period...
The increase in speed isn't quite as noticeable as at first, but that's only to be taken for granted. In saying that, I was using a friends A500 a few days ago and it seemed horrendously slow...
Compatibility still hasn't caused many problems. I've even found a few disks (mainly demos) that work on the A1200 that didn't on the plus. On the other hand, a few games stubbornly refuse to work, despite prodding with Degrader and other utilities. Swings and roundabouts...
The sound problem is still there. I've had a Wang engineer round and he told me he's had calls to 3 other Amiga 1200's in the last week, all the the same problem. I'm now awaiting a response from Commodore - there definitely is a problem with the 1200 - whether it's just my batch, or a common fault, it needs fixing.
All I need now is a hard drive - and for that, I need �250. Anyone offering? Go on, I'll be your best friend...
Custom Chips: AA multichip co-processor system (Alice, Lisa, Paula) for video, graphics, sound and DMA
Internal Disk:One internal 3.5-inch floppy drive standard (880KB formatted maximum) Mounting provisions for one 2.5-inch AT IDE hard drive
Video Display:Output type: RGB, analog and digital; colour composite; RF modulated; interlaced and non-interlaces; up to 8 bitplanes
CENTER>Horizontal scan rates:15.6KHz to 31.4KHz