Amiga 1200

My brother has been bugging me for a long time to "get back to your roots" by becoming a retro PC collecter. He has built himself a wall dedicated to C= machines of the 8-bit family, such as the C64, C128, C16, Plus4 and peripherals.
I grew up with the 128 and a literal box full of 64s. But when it was time to buy my OWN machine, I chose an Amiga 2000.  Then, a second A2000. I had done some subtatial upgrades on one, with a Motorola 060 50mHz accelerator card and Picasso IV video. I even had an A1000 and busted 500 for a short time (a garage sale loot. I wanted only one item in the box, but had to take it all! Pitiful me!).
Eventually, I attempted a trade up to an A1200 tower, with ISA bus board and everything. Well.. it turned out the tower case was absolutely cheap plastic and falling apart. The installation of the system was poorly done, and the whole thing was unstable. I think I managed to get it to boot all of twice. At this point, I gave up completely on the Amiga line and switched to PC, trading the A1200 tower for other goods. It was a poor trade, but I was just fed up with it.
I look on that moment with regret.
So, fast forward a bit to about 2 years ago. I went home for Christmas, and my brother presented me with a C128 to take back to Japan with me. Including that massive brick power supply. But no floppy. And.. um.. no easy way to get decent video off it. Well, I plan on hacking a bit on it, but you will have to wait for another project post on that I guess...  ;)
But it got me excited about Amiga hardware again. Honestly, I am not a big nostalgia gamer. And compared to today's PCs, it's not at all usable for much desktop computing. Even so, I really regret never getting that A1200 working.
So, after many months looking at auctions, I finally bid on an A1200 basic system. And won. From Italy.
Thank you SOOO much to that guy in Italy who went to the post office 3 different times, and repackaged it all up twice, just to get it here, at a reasonable price!
So.. In the coming months, I will be posting some blogs in a 'loose project' format regarding the A1200 expansion and mods I have done/will do. If you are here from the Projects section of my site, you should find the related works below.
Also, check out my other project logs: Amiga 2000, Amiga Open Hardware (coming soon..ish), and the C=128.