CompuServe Messages

Graeme, unless he already has an A500, I would suggest he get an A1200. It has much better graphics and speed than a stock A500 or A2000, and is inexpensive if you can find one. It also has the built-in capability to switch between NTSC and PAL, and has a built in color composite out. It comes with 2MB RAM (A500 has 512k, A2000 has 1MB). It depends on what he wants to do as to his RAM requirements. For stills and short animations, the stock 2MB is sufficient. If he wants to overlay graphics with live video, he'll want to get a genlock. I know GVP makes a PAL version of the G-Lock, and there is a GVP Tech available in the AmigaVendors forum. This Genlock seems to have a good feature to price ratio, especially for the new graphics chip set of the A1200. A hard drive is a necessity, and the A1200 has a built in IDE connector for 2.5 inch laptop drives (Dataflyer makes an adapter cable to connect standard 3.5 inch drives). The A1200 comes with AmigaDOS 3.0 All together, expect to pay around 1 to 2 thousand for this setup depending on what he already has (I am assuming we are talking about US currency). ps. If he does have an A500 already, tell him to get an A1200 anyways and keep the A500. Once he gets into Amigas and video, he'll find out that you can't have too many Amigas (I have 3 of them). –IBM compatable technician by day, Amiga madman by night– Rick Green, Mobile, Al