32-bit Personal Computer - Dismantled for reference and curiosity
Hoping to rekindle their success with the Amiga 500, in October of 1992 Commodore released a second budget computer again boasting great new features, enhanced graphic and sound capabilities.
Technically the sound hardware was the same as in the Amiga 1000, however higher sampling rates could be achieved by pushing the AGA chipset (Advanced Graphics Architecture) into a higher horizontal scan rate or outputting audio directly using the CPU.
In truth it was a great unit. It just wasnt as vastly superior to those that had come before it as the Amiga 500 had been (for the price) so sadly wasn't well embraced by the public. The A1200 sold well but nothing like the A500.
The Amiga 1200 has an internal 3.5" floppy drive as well as the ability for an internal 2 1/2" hard drive to be installed. Later releases of the A1200 came with a hard drive pre-installed, hence the A1200 HD.
The Amiga 1200/A1200 HD was a 32-bit native design platform that came standard with 2mb of RAM. Its AGA graphics chipset output a huge 16.8 million colours with 256 colours available on screen at once for standard use. It used Commodore's weird HAM (Hold and Modify) mode to allow for 262,144 colours to be displayed at once but pretty much only for static images such as digitised photographs.
Like the Amiga 500, the A1200 had an array of connectivity and expansion options but due to a very underpowered power supply owners had to pick and choose which wonderful new add-on the wanted to use.
*Trivia: The A1200 was codenamed 'Channel Z' after the song of the same name by the B52's. The PCB is even printed with 'Channel Z'. It shares the B52 song naming convention with the Amiga 600 'June Bug' and the Amiga 500 'Rock Lobster'.
