Getting Your Amiga Online
Despite what many people will say, you can access the Internet using a fairly low specification machine. The inspiration for this article was a recent newspaper article published in the UK that really got me annoyed. It said, very clearly: "The only way to access the Internet is using a PC with an Intel 486 or better processor, 16 Mb RAM and Windows 95." Rubbish! This month, I'm going to offer a simple introduction to getting your Amiga online - highlighting the hardware, software and pitfalls.
However, the specification of your machine is important. While you can get online with an Amiga using version 2.04 of the operating system, the software support isn't great. An OS 3.0 machine is pretty much the base minimum nowadays - and therefore will be assumed for this article. The OS upgrade is available for all Amigas (except the original A1000), and even comes as part of the Viper520 accelerator board if you fancy dusting off and upgrading an A500 - there are no excuses!
Most Amigas nowadays have at least an 020 or 030 running at an acceptable speed, and a huge proportion are running 040s, 060s and PowerPCs. I find my 25 MHz 68030 fine for web browsing, so can safely recommend it as a good minimum. A base A1200 should be just usable, but it's not ideal - upgrade as soon as possible if you want to have a comfortable Internet experience.
If you aren't planning to use the Web much, you can actually get away with any processor - e-mail and newsgroups aren't particularly demanding services. However, most Internet software use either MUI or ClassAct GUI libraries which can have a noticeable effect on speed and memory. If you have to use either (particularly MUI), consider nothing less than a 68020.
Memory is an important issue to consider, particularly if you aren't using a graphics card. Chip RAM on Amigas is a precious commodity - 2Mb is recommended if you don't have a graphics card and want to make use of the Web. Having said that, most of the common Amiga browsers now store images in Fast RAM, so Chip is becoming less important. Fast RAM is therefore essential - AWeb can permit a 2Mb machine to access the web, but 4Mb is a wise starting point. I've got 18Mb installed and have yet to encounter anything which soaks this up, though. RAM is very cheap, so there's no excuse for picking up a few megs. Zorro-equipped machines should aim to invest in a graphics card - shop around for a
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