Question: What should be my everyday - all singing / dancing Amiga be?

[intangybles]

Question: What should be my everyday - all singing / dancing Amiga be?

Background:

I am the proud owner occupier of a handsome “Retro Desk”, no Retro Cave for this black duck! Which is currently occupied by the following, Amiga A2000 with an external scan doubler, Apple IIe with External 5.25 drive (these are the heart of my Retro memories - Apple IIe, first computer I serviced in the field & the Amiga always my computer of choice since my original A1000). The desk is also occupied by a MacMini and an i7 Based PC under the desk! All sharing the one LCD monitor via a switch box.

I never owned an AGA Amiga, they had not arrived when by necessity at the time I moved away from the Amiga - although I never got rid on my A2000!

The pinnacle of my Amiga experience was my custom built Pc full tower case which contained an Amiga A3000 and a 200mmx PC with a shared SCSI bus and used Siamese Systems software for integration. Recently found my Siamese Systems disc and am contemplating installing it on the A2000 again if I can locate an appropriate serial interface for the PC. Sadly this machine was lost to land fill a few years ago!

Over the years - as Amiga People do - I have run many emulation systems and even own and still use my copy of Amithlon on an old R51 ThinkPad! Love that old beast!

Getting involved with the Amiga Retro Brisbane Group has well and truly brought me back the Amiga core - so to speak!

Like my desk space (limited) my budget for my hobby is a cost neutral one! To spend more - something would have to go!

So…. As the question at the top suggests - I can not work out what way to go with an every day use Amiga solution! (One that for argument sake can run any of the games we may choose in our GOTHEM challenge each month but does not have to be a Video Toaster!).

You may well have seen some of the past posts / points / questions I have asked over time on a number of options. These include;

• Vampire, Tabor (These are at the High end)
• MiniMig, Mister, UnAmgia (FPGA)
• Raspberry Pi etc… (Emulation)

With Stephen Jones new smaller case project for instance and now the all-in-one (so to speak) Pi4 a small desktop system - that will fit on my “Retro Desk” seems a very good option! (AmiKit is going to release a New Pi4 Build soon to).

Very interested to get any thought s on this?

I will do a second post with all the links I have collected together on the subject.

(Pics of my Desk for reference)

[power]

Your specified use case is the GoTM, so just games?

I'd say just a 1200 with a nice accelerator for WHDLoad hooked up to the display of your choosing, I use a 1084S some people go with a scandoubler and LCD but that's up to you.

As for accelerator, I use and recommend an invidision ACA1233n (with your choice of processor I went 55MHz 030) and also have a PCMCIA card for transferring files.

https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/en/shop/product/ACA12xx.html

https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/en/shop/product/Flickerfixer_Scandoubler.html

[intangybles]

Thank you so very much for the input!

An A1200 (especially accelerated) would be at the very top of the wish list - but - sadly it would just be well beyond the Budget for the foreseeable future! Even if I was to sell all I have now, I doubt very much it would net enough for that!

Like my desk space (limited) my budget for my hobby is a cost neutral one! To spend more - something would have to go!

So many wishes and those horses just keep getting further away! 

After costing up and "guessing" in some cases on things such as a Mister or (UnAmiga Type), Vampire, etc... I have ordered one of the Pi 400's (Will see how that goes).
It was affordable from my pocket money, will fit happily on the desk with no additional hardware, is a hardware platform I am very familiar with and have several images that should run directly on it - out of the box!

Lets see how well it fits the bill!

Your specified use case is the GoTM, so just games?

I'd say just a 1200 with a nice accelerator for WHDLoad hooked up to the display of your choosing, I use a 1084S some people go with a scandoubler and LCD but that's up to you.

As for accelerator, I use and recommend an invidision ACA1233n (with your choice of processor I went 55MHz 030) and also have a PCMCIA card for transferring files.

https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/en/shop/product/ACA12xx.html

https://icomp.de/shop-icomp/en/shop/product/Flickerfixer_Scandoubler.html

[quantum8]

That pi400 should be a nice upgrade compared to the 3b. I don't nearly use my pi4 enough but when I do it's loads faster!

[intangybles]

That pi400 should be a nice upgrade compared to the 3b. I don't nearly use my pi4 enough but when I do it's loads faster!

Yes, everything seems to indicate that it will be!

If I can run my port of AmiKit XE I did for my Pi3b based NinjaKat and use that as my desktop OS I will be a very happy camper!

[quantum8]

As long as you upgrade the underlying OS and firmware to the latest version, you should be able to insert the same SD and away you go.

I'm thinking of converting mine to run off an external ssd as apparently it's loads faster. Makes it a little less portable though.

[intangybles]

As long as you upgrade the underlying OS and firmware to the latest version, you should be able to insert the same SD and away you go.

I'm thinking of converting mine to run off an external ssd as apparently it's loads faster. Makes it a little less portable though.

Pi400 arrived yesterday, going to start from scratch with 2 setups! One retropie and one Manjaro (Arch) based. Will report back when I have it up and running!

P.S. the new PIOS SD that came with it all booted up and ran fine - will keep that setup too.

[intangybles]

Back link to FB Group post: I think its the answer to my long term question...

https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmigaRetroBrisbane/permalink/856823548398106/

Current status of my Pi Adventures:

https://www.amigaretro.com/index.php/topic,234.0.html

[intangybles]

Final answer to my question was:

https://www.amigaretro.com/index.php/topic,292.0.html

Checkmate A1500 Mini (MiSTiX) System!