A1200 Amiga DefinitionComputer Pages: A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z The Amiga 1200, or A1200, was Commodore International's third-generation Amiga computer, aimed at the home market. It was released in October 1992, at a base price of £399 in the United Kingdom and $599 in the United States. After Commodore's demise, the A1200 was re-launched in 1995 by Escom. The new Escom A1200s were released with Kickstart V40.63 (3.1), and the new units were priced at 1992 levels. Like its predecessor, the A500, it featured an all-in-one design incorporating the CPU, keyboard, and disk drives (including, unlike the A500, the option of an internal hard disk drive) in one physical unit. It had a failure rate under warranty of 0.78%, much better than the A500's rate of 8.25%. A1200 PopularityAlthough a significant upgrade, the A1200 proved not to be as popular as the earlier Amiga 500. There were a number of reasons for this:
Although Commodore never released any official sales figures, it is estimated that Commodore shipped fewer than 1 million A1200s worldwide before going bankrupt in April 1994. A1200 Processor and RAMThe A1200 utilized a Motorola MC68EC020 CISC CPU (roughly four times faster than the 68000 processor in the Amiga 500). It is noteworthy that, like the 68000, the 68EC020 had a 24-Bit expansion bus; allowing for a theoretical maximum of 16 MiB of memory. It shipped with 2 MiB of Chip RAM. Chip RAM could not be expanded beyond those 2 MiB, but an additional 8 MiB of Fast RAM could be added through use of the trapdoor expansion slot. Later, various accelerators featuring 68020, 68030, 68040, 68060 and PowerPC processors were made available by third parties. Such accelerators did not only have faster CPUs but also more and faster memory (on the most expensive boards 256 MiB on two 128 MiB SIMMs), real time clocks, IDE ports and other enhancements. A1200 Graphics and SoundThe A1200 shipped with Commodore's third-generation chipset, the Advanced Graphics Architecture or AGA. As the name implies, the AGA chipset had superior graphical abilities in comparison with the earlier chipsets, but not much else. The A1200 also offered improved audio abilities which allowed for higher sampling rates for sound playback. A1200 Peripherals and ExpansionIn addition to the ports common to all earlier Amiga models, the A1200 featured a memory/CPU slot, a PCMCIA slot and a feature unique to the A1200 - a clockport. The clockport was a remnant of an abandoned design feature (real time clock and Chip RAM expansion) and was used for, among other things, audio cards. If one was willing to forgo the A1200's form-fitting case, PCI and Zorro busses could also be added to the A1200, allowing graphics, sound and network cards to be added. Eyetech and Power Computing built and supplied many PC tower kits to 'tower up' the A1200 and in essence convert it to a 'big box' Amiga, even allowing for use of PC AT Keyboards. One problematic factor for expanding the A1200 was the rather limited 23 watt power supply. Hard drives and even external floppies could stress the power supply too much. This was usually alleviated by 'towering up' the Amiga as it allowed for use of much more capable power supplies. The problem could also be mitigated by replacing the A1200's factory default power supply with the much more powerful A500 power supply. A1200 SoftwareThe first incarnation of the A1200 was bundled with AmigaOS 3.0. Technical Specifications Summary
A1200 Trivia
ReferencesGareth Knight (2005). "Commodore Amiga 1200". Retrieved May. 22, 2006.We hope this definition of A1200 Amiga was what you were looking for and appreciate your visit and welcome you back anytime. Check Our our Network Equipment InventoryComputer Pages: A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
