New to the Amiga, or coming back after many years? Start here.
The Amiga is a family of personal computers sold by Commodore from 1985 to 1994. Thanks to a set of
custom chips that handled graphics, sound and memory access on their own, it could show more colours,
play sampled stereo sound and multitask far beyond most home computers of its day.
It became especially popular in Europe for games, and around the world for video, animation, music
and the demoscene. A dedicated community still uses, repairs and develops for it today.
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It depends on what you want to do. For classic games, the Amiga 500 is the most compatible
choice, since most late-1980s and early-1990s games were written for it.
For the widest range of software and the most upgrade options, the Amiga 1200 is the best
all-rounder: it has the enhanced AGA graphics chipset, a built-in hard disk interface and a large
range of modern accelerators. The big-box models (A2000, A3000, A4000) offer expansion slots but are
larger, rarer and usually more expensive. See Hardware: General for a model list.
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At minimum: a power supply, a mouse, a way to connect a display, and some software. Original power
supplies are now decades old, so many owners use a modern replacement built for the Amiga.
The display is often the trickiest part. Amigas output a 15kHz RGB signal that most modern monitors
cannot show directly. See connecting to a modern monitor.
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Look for a leaking clock battery. The Amiga 500 trapdoor memory expansion (A501) and the big-box
models have a small battery that can leak and corrode the board. If you find one, remove it before
using the machine.
Many later models (including the A600, A1200, A3000, A4000 and CD32) use small surface-mounted
capacitors that can leak with age. Replacing them ("recapping") is a common and worthwhile repair.
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There are several options. A Gotek floppy emulator replaces the floppy drive and loads disk
images (ADF files) from a USB stick. A CompactFlash or SD card on an IDE adapter can serve as
a fast, silent hard drive on the A600, A1200 and A4000, and can be prepared on a modern PC using an
emulator.
You can also write real floppy disks from images using a USB floppy controller such as Greaseweazle
connected to a PC.
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PAL Amigas (sold in most of Europe and Australia) run their display at 50Hz, and NTSC Amigas (sold
in North America) at 60Hz. Many European games were written for PAL and may run too fast, or have
the bottom of the screen cut off, on an NTSC machine.
Some Amigas can be switched between modes, and emulators let you pick either one.
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