A1200 / The A1200 / A1200NG

North West Computer Museum Commodore Day ( NWAG meeting)

End of February I was lucky enough to attend the latest mini North West Amiga Group meeting at the North West Computer History Museum in Leigh, England. Although this mini Amiga event had happened before at this place, every time it has been on previously, I have been either working or at another event. So pleased I got to go to this one.

So as always it’s fun to hang out with Amiga users, I was with my dad who wanted to see the mill, as that where this museum was located, quite a unusual place, it had a whole host of other creative business and unique things also located inside, https://spinnersmill.co.uk/ 

In the museum there were loads of computers all set up ready for you to play with and enjoy, a great little museum and setup. Clearly ran by very friendly and knowledgeable people. The Amiga meeting was in a little side room, that I felt was bit small, but was enough space to hold the event, I think the mini meet up was a success, as quite a few people attended. Hope to go to the next one at this location. I think its also worth a visit if your in the area to see the museum.

A1200 / The A1200 / A1200NG / F1200

It seems particularly this year the A1200 fans are getting some existing products, we got more A1200 Cases replacements, but also we finally got new A1200 keyboard for these cases, so now you can much easily build a nice new fresh looking Amiga. https://amigastore.eu/en/994-mechanical-keyboard-amiga-1200.html 

Amigakit are also progressively nicely with their A1200NG project, you can follow the progress of the project, in this blog https://blog.amigakit.com/ Also https://www.youtube.com/@iowtheme iowtheme one of the devs and beta testers of the project has been posting a number of video demoing the device. 

Retro Game ltd the A500 Mini makers also recently came out and said that their Amiga Maxi, long rumoured full size Amiga system, will be based on the A1200, that is, if it happens. According to them, there are some legal issues prevented the system coming to market, between Amiga and Hyperion on the ownership of AmigaOS. I hope these issues can be resolved, but its also clear, that there be other options if this doesn’t happen.

  Then there another project I come across, Amicube F1200, a FPGA full AGA Amiga that focus of being as accurate as it can be to original hardware and have floppy disk support, looks interest, most importantly looks to be a cheaper solution than Vampire v4. 

This has lead me to really think about doing some kind of A1200 build this year, hopefully I managed to secure a CD32 edition case from A1200.net, I not decided yet whether to go, A1200NG route or my own kinda emulation setup, using a Pi or mini x86 that would fit inside the A1200 case. But also I’m keeping my eye on FPGA development, like Amicube, or Pocketstorm (Fpga + Pistorm) and even consider Vampire v4. 

What amazes me, is the options Amiga fans have now! Thanks again to all the devs/stores/fans that work on these projects, its great!

Also bit late but happy April fools https://amigang.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/a1220000.jpg