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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 .Gareth Knight (2005). "Commodore Amiga 1200" . Retrieved May. 22, 2006. Like its predecessor, the Amiga 500 , the A1200 is an all-in-one design incorporating the CPU , keyboard, and Disk Drive s (including, unlike the A500, the option of an internal Hard Disk Drive ) in one physical unit. The system competed directly against the Atari Falcon , but intended as a home computer it inadvertently competed against entry level PCs and 16-bit game consoles. During the first year of its life the system reportedly sold well, but not comparable to game consoles and in a desire to compete Commodore launched the Amiga 1200-based Amiga CD32 game console in June 1993. The future looked good for the Amiga 1200, but due to poor financial management Commodore ran into cash flow problems and soon went bankrupt - this despite the fact that the Amiga 1200 and Amiga CD32 both were successful and profitable products. Before going bankrupt Commodore has find buyers of around 1 million units of A1200. With Commodore’s demise, the A1200 almost disappeared off the market, but the system got a second chance with Escom 's re-launch in 1995. The new Escom A1200 was almost identical to the original model, the difference being a slightly updated Operating System and a floppy disk drive from a different manufacturer. Re-launched at a price of one-hundred and fifty dollars above what it had been sold for two years prior (equal to the 1992 launch price) potential buyers found that the system provided little value and largely ignored the system. After Escom's financial problems, the Amiga 1200 was taken off the market some time during 1996. POPULARITY Although 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 . TECHNICAL INFORMATION Processor and RAM The A1200 utilized the Motorola MC68EC020 CISC CPU (roughly four times faster than the 68000 processor in the A500). It is noteworthy that, like the 68000 , the 68EC020 had a 24-Bit expansion bus; allowing for a theoretical maximum of 16 MB ( MiB ) of memory. It shipped with 2 MB of Chip RAM . Chip RAM could not be expanded beyond those 2 MB, but an additional 8 MB 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 MB on two 128 MB SIMMs), real time clocks, IDE and SCSI ports and other enhancements. Graphics and sound The 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's faster CPU also offered allowed for higher sampling rates for sound playback, however the basic sound hardware was not upgraded and remains identical to the original Amiga 1000 . Peripherals and expansion In addition to the ports common to all earlier Amiga models, the A1200 featured a memory/CPU slot, a PC Card 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). Third party developers put it to ingenious use by creating an array of innovative expansions for the A1200 such as audio cards (Delfina) and even a route to expanding the A1200 with USB (Subway USB). 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. The Escom A1200 were fitted with PC-based 'High Density' internal drives that had been downgraded to Double Density drives. This resulted in some software not working. ''(PC style drives do not supply a "ready" signal, which signals if there is a floppy in the disk drive.)''Thor Bernhardsen. "Amiga floppy woes..." . Retrieved July. 12, 2006. Software The first incarnation of the A1200, by Commodore, was bundled with AmigaOS 3.0 that used Kickstart 3.0 (39.106), CrossDOS – allowing for reading & writing MS-DOS format disks - various utility programs including calculator and screenblanker, and limited-time offers of Deluxe Paint IV AGA (a 2D paint & animation program) and Final Copy (a full featured word processor).Kevin J. Klasmeier. "Falcon030 -vs- 1200 -vs- Performa 400" . Retrieved Oct. 20, 2006. The Amiga Technologies/Escom version shipped with AmigaOS 3.1 and Kickstart 3.1, and used to be bundled with various third-party programs such as Scala, Wordworth and so on. Summary
ADVANTAGES OVER THE LOW-COST AMIGA 600
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