In the first of a two part special, renowned Amiga expert Wally Dug shows you the best way to upgrade your machine

Over the years, I have encountered many different people in my shop, but in all that time, I have only ever seen two kinds.

Customer One is the father-with-son-aged-eleven-and-daughter-aged-nine who wants to buy "a computer for the weans to help them at school" - you know the sort; show him a Commodore 64, say, briefly, it's good points, tell him how many games are available and bingo!, you have a sale.

Customer Two is the other, and better, type of customer. This customer already has an Amiga and when he comes in, only has one question to ask: "Wally, what is the best way to upgrade my machine?"

Multi-sync monitor

This is the first thing that I recommend to those money-eyed, er, starry-eyed customers. Admittedly, a multi-sync monitor is an expensive item to buy, but you can't beat the quality of their display when it comes to the 24-bit colour hi-res interlace overscan HAM images that seem to be pouring out of the Amiga these days.

Printer

A favourite upgrade is a printer. This is an excellent choice for two reasons.

Reason One: A printer opens up to the Amiga user a vast platform for him to show his work. With a printer, the user can produce many masterpieces, whether it be his latest novel created using a word processor like Jeffrey Archer or his interpretation of the epic Mona Lisa by da Louvre.

Reason Two: Printers have dropped in price in recent years and you can now pick up a bargain. In fact, as a special offer to JAM readers only, Wally Dug's PDL is able to offer a dot matrix printer for under £100! Yes, the Brother HR-5 Thermal Printer can be yours for "a meagre" sum of £99.99! This printer is fully compatible with any Amiga software as it uses the Generic Emulation Mode (GEM) found in Preferences. To order, simply 'phone Wally Dug's PDL on 041 321 1500 and complete "I read Wally Dug in JAM because..." in words of no less than two syllables and this fabulous printer can be yours for only £99.99 (plus p&p).

Memory

Another favourite upgrade for users is increased memory. This, in fact, is not necessary. Why spend a couple of hundred pounds on something which does nothing except increase the numbers on your Workbench memory meter?

By spending just a couple of pounds, WD's Memory Master will increase your memory meter to whatever number you want! And not only that, with the money that you save, you will be able to take up my printer offer!

Accelerator board

This is an excellent upgrade for the ray tracing fans out there. However, at £2000 for the Motorola 68040, it can be a bit expensive for the hobbyist!

But, if speed is everything and you really must have a faster CPU, then perhaps I can help. I have a friend who works in a certain factory in East Kilbride (no names, no pack drill). Lets just say that he is the Quality Control Supervisor for this company's latest and, as yet, unannounced product. For a small fee, he can supply me with "seconds" that he has "rejected". So if any of you are interested in a 68050, give me a call on the usual number, although I cannot guarantee delivery timescales.

Maths co-processor

A chip which goes hand-in-hand with an accelerator board is the maths co-processor.

This, however, is totally unnecessary. All a maths co-processor does is just that - maths. Save a few pounds and buy yourself a decent scientific calculator which does just the same job. And its portable.

Hard drive

And now to the upgrade which must rank as the most popular of all - the hard drive.

Hard drives are good for the reasons already explained in my "Beginners Guide to the Amiga" (JAM #17). However, hard drives are now obsolete due to the arrival of the second best thing in the Amiga world - CDTV.

What's the difference between Commodore's CDTV and Wally Dug's CDTV? Find out next month in Part Two of this special series when we have a step-by-step Build-It! feature to the world of CD-Rom systems in "Wally Dug's Build-It Guide to CDTV".

Copyright © Wally Dug Multimedia 1998