The Luggage

by Volker Mohr

The computer in the pictures is an Amiga 1200, the last ever built and the only Amiga that is still available. This machine originally had an Motorola 68EC020 running at 14 MHz and only 2 MB RAM, called "chip-mem" for the Amiga's custom chips. The internal IDE controller is used for a 4.3 GB hard drive. (Originally it was an 170 MB HD). Of course, this is not enough nowadays, so it has an accelerator board with an Motorola 68060, running at 50 MHz. And compared to a Mac Quadra 840 that is indeed running

Some other extras are 48 MB of "fast-ram" (for non Amigans, that is RAM which is not shared with the custom chips) and a SCSI controller for an external CD-ROM.

And most importantly: the 10.4" TFT color-display. It is connected to the standard Amiga video outlet, using the "Multiscan Productivity" mode of the Amiga's custom chips. This mode is compatible with the normal VGA mode. Unfortunally I can use in this mode only in 256 colors. A scandoubler will work only with NTSC mode, not with our European PAL modes. But in NTSC I could have up to 307,200 (= 640 x 480, the number of pixels of the LCD) different colors.

The case for the LCD is made of aluminium; it is used as a lid for the A 1200. That sounds more difficult than it is. With a jigsaw you can work with aluminium like with wood. This was my third Amiga "laptop" after an experiment with an A 600 and a second-hand b/w LCD in a wooden case, and a completely new made case for the same Amiga 1200 I use now. (I have pictures of the earlier experiments. The A 600 was bigger than an A 3000. The black A 1200 case seems to be smaller, but it is not. The trick was that it is lateral to the original direction of the motherboard. There is a large part behind the LCD.)

The operating systems running on the A 1200 are AmigaOS 3.5 and MacOS 8.1 (using the emulator Fusion from Microcode-solutions). So it is not only a portable Amiga, it is a 68k-Powerbook clone as well, and at the same time the fastest 68k Powerbook ever made

One thing many people ask me is if I can use a battery. Maybe this would be possible, but I don`t thing it would make any sense. Even without the CD-ROM, the Amiga needs 20 Watts. This would empty a battery much to fast. The Amiga is portable, but not really notebook-sized. I have no need to use it in a train (I have a car), it is too big for using in a plane, and I don`t know anybody without electricity in their home. So I`ve connected a cable to the PSU of a flat SCSI-case (which houses the CD-ROM for the Amiga) which I can plug into the Amiga. If I don`t need the CD-ROM, I can use the original Amiga PSU, which has only 30 W, but is much smaller than the SCSI case.