The Complete Amiga 1200 User Guide by Peter Hutchison © 2006 Revised: 11/12/2006 Contents Introduction Page 3 Setting up the Amiga for First Time Page 4 Guide to Workbench 3.0 Page 6 Menus Page 6 Mouse Page 8 Programs Page 9 Preferences Page 13 Beyond Workbench 3.0 Page 20 Adding more Memory to the A1 200 Page 20 Upgrading the Processor Page 21 Upgrading Expansion on the A1200 Page 23 Upgrading the Kickstart and Workbench Pa ge 24 The Motherboard in details Page 25 Backward Compatibility Page 26 Adding a Hard Disk to A1 200 Page 27 Installing Workbench onto a Hard Disk Page 29 Introduction Welcome to the Commodore Amiga A1 200, one of the most popular Amiga models of its time. It was affordable and easy to use. It had a wide range of software, in particular, games which Jay Minor, the creator of the Amiga, had designed it for. The Amiga A1200 is based on the Motorola 68020 14MHz Processor with 2MbRAM, a single 880K floppy drive with support for three more floppy drives, a Custom Chipset that provides the Sound and Graphics. The Amiga runs the Operating System called AmigaOS which consists of the Kickstart ROM which contains some essential libraries and devices needed to load Workbench which is the desktop: Rhl&a Hprlhfrrifh 1 . E= S 7 . ^ 1 E- jrap-hlic hih t e-thtr hih H Figure 1 You can a while menu bar at the top and all the disks mounted on the right hand of the screen. The Ram Disk is a special one which is a disk in memory basically. More on Workbench will be explained later. Setting up the Amiga for First Time Before setting up the Amiga make sure you have the following items ready: Amiga A1 200 Monitor or TV Set Mouse Power Supply Joystick (optional) Speakers (optional) External Disk drives (optional) Withe Amiga facing you, first plug the sguare end of the Power Supply cable to the Power socket on the top left hand at the back of the Amiga. Plug the other end into a power socket but DO NOT switch on yet. If you have a monitor, plug the monitor cable into the Video socket, if you have a TV Set then plug it into the RF or Composite socket and also plug the power cable into a power socket. Next plug the Mouse into Port 1 of the D shaped sockets on the right-hand side at the back. Plug any Joystick onto Port 2 next to it. The stereo speakers can be plugged into the Left and Right speaker sockets in the middle at the back. The speakers can be either stand-alone ones or part of the monitor so if necessary, plug the other ends into the Left/Right sockets on the monitor. Plug in to power supply as necessary. Finally if you have any external floppy disk drives plug them in to the External Drive socket on the back of the Amiga. Further drives can be added to other drives. If you have an external hard disk, remove the cover from the Expansion port on the left- hand side of the Amiga and slot in the drive. Now switch on the power and press the power switch located on the Power Supply for the Amiga and switch on the monitor. If you do not have disks inserted you will see the Insert Disk screen below: Figure 2 You can then insert either a Workbench disk or any other bootable disk such as a game into the floppy drive on the right-hand side of the Amiga (called DFO: - Disk Floppy Zero). Insert your Original Workbench disk and wait for the workbench screen to appear. Before continuing, I recommend that you make one or more copies of your original Workbench disks to use rather than the Original as that can become damaged over time and you may need to make other copies later. To make a copy, get hold of a blank 880K double-density disk ready, then move the white arrow (called a pointer) with the mouse over the Workbench 3.0 disk and click the left mouse button once (this will select the disk), then move the pointer to the top left of the screen and click and HOLD the right-hand mouse button and a menu appear, make sure the Icons menu is selected, move the mouse down the menu and select Copy IhStcL disk ta (M rc-in (SOUHCE disk? in toukt of?. V but Um Figure 3 It will say 'Put the SOURCE disk (FROM disk) in drive DFO:', remove the disk from the floppy drive, and make sure it is your original Workbench disk, at the top there is a hole, make sure it is covered with the black tab to protect the disk during this operation. Reinsert the disk, and with the left mouse button click once on Continue. Once the read operation is complete, it will ask you to insert the DESTINATION (TO disk) in drive DFO:. Press the eject button to remove your original Workbench disk, and insert your Blank disk. Click on Continue to write the information to your new disk. You may need to repeat the disk swap a couple of times more until the operation is completed. Now you will have a disk called 'copy of Workbench', you can rename this by selecting the disk, then select Rename from the Workbench menu and change it to just 'Workbench'. You should put your original disk somewhere safe and then use your copy of Workbench from now on. Reboot with your new Workbench disk in DFO. Guide to Workbench 3.0 Contents 1. The Menus 2. The Mouse 3. WB Programs 4. AmigaDOS 5. Common Problems 1. The Menus At the top of the screen, there are three menus which are accessible when you move the pointer to the top of the screen and click the Right Mouse Button. (RMB). 1.1 Workbench menu 1.1.1 Backdrop Turns the backdrop window on of off which surrounds the desktop. 1.1.2 Execute Command This displays an input box where you can enter any AmigaDOS command or launch any Workbench program by entering its name. For example, typing NewShell will open a Command Shell window. 1.1.3 Redraw All This redraws all the icons on the desktop. 1.1.4 Update All Reload all the icons and redraw them. 1.1.5 Last Message Display the last error or information message on the title bar. 1.1.6 About Display Kickstart and Workbench versions and Copyright information. 1.1.7 Quit Exit Workbench, this will quit workbench and leave the workbench screen open. You should open a command window before quitting otherwise a reboot is required. 1.2 Window menu 1.2.1 New Drawer Create a new drawer (or directory or folder) in the current window. 1.2.2 Open Parent Open the parent window of the current window. 1.2.3 Close Close the current window 1.2.4 Update Update icons in the current window. 1.2.5 Select Contents Select all the icons in the current window. 1.2.6 Clean Up Tidy up the icons into a standard left to right and top to bottom layout. 1.2.7 Snapshot 1.2.7.1 Window Save the current window size and position in icon information 1.2.7.2 All Save the window and all icon size and position information in their respective icon files. 1.2.8 Show 1.2.8.1 Only Icons Displays files that have an icon file and hides all other files. 1.2.8.2 All Files Display all files in window wether or not they have an icon file or not. 1.2.9 View By 1.2.9.1 Icon Display files using Icons only. 1.2.9.2 Name Display files using Name and displays protection flags, size and date and time last changed. 1.2.9.3 Date Display files in date order using same format as Name with the newest files at the top. 1.2.9.4 Size Display files in size order using same format as Name with the smallest files at the top. 1.3 Icons 1.3.1. Open This opens or runs the currently selected file or drawer. 1.3.2 Copy Copies one or more files and prefixes file(s) with Copy_of_ e.g. Copy_of_MyFile 1.3.3 Rename Changes the name of the file. A Rename dialogue box appears with the current name 1.3.4 Information Displays information about the file, drawer or disk. Includes information about the icon, type, size, comment and protection flags. 1.3.5 Snapshot Saves the current position of file within window. 1.3.6 Unsnapshot Removes positioning saved information from a file. 1.3.7 Leave Out Places the file on the desktop but the file is still located in its original location. A backdrop file contains a list of files left out. 1.3.8 Put Away Returns a file left off the desktop back to its original location. 1.3.9 Delete This deletes a file or drawer permanently. It does not use the Trashcan. 1.3.10 Format Disk Formats or prepares a disk to be used to store files and drawers. 1.3.11 Empty Trash Empties the content of the Trashcan folder on the boot disk. 1.4 Tools 1.4.1 ResetWB Reloads Workbench and redraws the screen 2. The Mouse On the Amiga mouse there are two buttons: the Left Mouse Button (LMB) and the Right Mouse Button (RMB). Moving the mouse will move the arrow or pointer on the screen. 2.1 Using the Right Mouse Button To use the menus, press down the RMB and move the pointer to the title bar at the top of the screen. Move the pointer over one of the menu names and some menu items will appear. Now, still with the RMB pressed, move the pointer down to the selected menu item and release the RMB to select that item. 2.2 Using the Left Mouse Button This button is mainly used to select and move icons around and click on gadgets (or buttons). 2.2.1 Clicking To select an icon, move the pointer over the desired icon and then click the LMB once. The icon will change to a reverse or an alternative image to indicate it has been selected. When using gadgets such as those on windows (there are four gadgets on a window: Close, Window-to-Front, Window-to-Back and Resize) move the pointer over the desired gadget and click once to use that gadget. The gadget will change briefly and also change the window. 2.2.2 Double-Clicking This is sometimes a ...
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