Today was a good day! I managed to score myself a PhaseV blizzard 1220/4 Amiga A1200 RAM Module on eBay. It’s a 68020 (same chip that comes in the Amiga a1200) but it runs at 28Mhz and includes 4Mb of FastRAM which frees up the blitter wait states, thus, speeds up the amiga.
I must admit, after installing the card, there is a noticeable difference in load speed. Of course, this is largely helped along by the fact I also installed a 8GB CF solid state hard drive into my Amiga as well. The boot up speed into Workbench is impressive … Really impressive.
The other thing I really like about the CF hard drive is there is absolutely zero noise. It’s even been programmed to stop the disc drive from ‘clicking’ when the drive is sitting idle. If you ever owned a Amiga, you know the noise I’m talking about.
The hard drive wasn’t a planned upgrade but a couple of weeks ago my 80MB Quantum Go Drive, which I have had installed in my Amiga since the early 1990’s, decided it no longer wanted to work anymore. Bad times indeed considering I have pixel artwork sitting on that drive that I created when I was a teenager … And like every bone idle teenager, I never backed the work up to floppy. A lesson I am sadly learning the hard way.
Overall, I am happy with the upgrades. They have given my Amiga A1200 a whole new lease of life. Next job is to try and recover the old drive to hopefully get my work back.