A1200
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| Manufacturer | Commodore International, Amiga Technologies GmbH |
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| Type | Personal computer |
| Release date | October 1992 |
| Discontinued | 1996 |
| Operating system | AmigaOS 3.0/3.1 |
| CPU | Motorola 68EC020 @ 14 MHz |
| Memory | 2 MB |
| Predecessor | Amiga 600 |
The Amiga 1200, or A1200 (code-named "Channel Z"), is Commodore International's third-generation Amiga computer, aimed at the home computer market. It was launched on October 21, 1992, at a base price of £399 in the United Kingdom and $599 in the United States.
The A1200 was launched a few months after the Amiga 600 using a similar, slimline design that replaced the earlier Amiga 500 Plus and Amiga 500. Whereas the A600 used the 16-bit Motorola 68000 of earlier Amigas, the A1200 was built around a faster, more powerful variant of the Motorola 68020. Physically the A1200 is an all-in-one design incorporating the CPU, keyboard, and disk drives (including the option of an internal 2.5" hard disk drive) in one physical unit. The A1200 has a similar hardware architecture to Commodore's Amiga CD32 game console.
Initially, only 30,000 A1200s were available at the UK launch. During the first year of its life the system reportedly sold well, but Commodore ran into cash flow problems and filed for bankruptcy. Worldwide sales figures for the A1200 are unknown, but 95,000 systems were sold in Germany before Commodore's bankruptcy.
After Commodore’s demise in 1994, the A1200 almost disappeared from the market but was later relaunched by Escom in 1995. The new Escom A1200 was priced at £399, and it came bundled with two games, seven applications and AmigaOS 3.1. It was initially criticized for being priced 150 pounds higher than the Commodore variant that had been sold for two years prior. It also came with a modified PC floppy disk drive that is incompatible with some Amiga software. The A1200 was finally discontinued in 1996 as the parent company folded.
The A1200 offers a number of advantages over earlier lower-budget Amiga models. Specifically, it is a 32-bit design; the 68EC020 microprocessor is faster than the 68000 and has 2 MB of RAM as standard. The AGA chipset used in the A1200 is a significant improvement. AGA increases the color palette from 4096 colors to 16.8 million colors with up to 256 on-screen colors normally, and an improved HAM mode allowing 262,144 on-screen colors. The graphics hardware also features improved sprite capacity and faster graphics performance mainly due to faster video memory. Additionally, compared to the A600 the A1200 offers greater expansion possibilities.
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