My Experiences with the Amiga A1222+

Introduction

In this article, I share some of my general experiences of building and using the Amiga A1222+ computer. With the official pre-built systems lacking an optical drive, I opted to purchase just the motherboard and assemble the system myself. For me, the process of selecting components and putting everything together is half the fun!

AmigaOS 4.1 Installation

I started by building the system to a point where I could begin installing AmigaOS 4.1. It was here that I encountered my first issue, and I confess that I must take full responsibility for this one. The AmigaOS 4.1 installer comes on a recovery USB drive. I must have missed a step as the installer started overwriting files on the USB drive leading to corruption and preventing me from fully installing the OS. Fortunately, I had created an image of the recovery USB drive beforehand allowing me to restore it to its original state.

The next issue I faced was that the system would not boot from the USB drive. The A1222+ must be a bit fussy about which USB port is used for boot devices as switching to a different port resolved the issue and I was able to install the OS without any further hitches.

Screen Modes

My main monitor has a resolution of 3440 x 1440. I have had issues with some other systems not being able to handle this resolution, and I am happy to report that the A1222+ booted to Workbench using the monitor’s native resolution automatically with no problems. However, I did notice that the Workbench’s screen preferences tool did not automatically recognise all available screen modes (e.g. 1920 x 1080). I suspect this may be an issue with my monitor not communicating these options with the A1222+. I can manually configure the other screen modes, but I have not been able to successfully configure the monitor’s native resolution manually.

Optical Drive SATA Issue

While building my A1222+ system, I connected a DVD drive to one of the onboard SATA ports. Initially, this seemed to work fine, but I soon experienced frequent disconnections of the DVD drive during copy operations, leading to a dreaded Grim Reaper error from the “Mounter Task.”

After discussing the issue on one of the Amiga forums, I learned that early versions of the SATA driver did not support removable media, and this limitation still appears to exist. To remedy the situation, I purchased a USB to SATA adapter which allowed me to connect the DVD drive via USB. Since doing this, I have not encountered any further issues with the DVD drive.

Lack of HDMI Audio Output

Currently, the A1222+ does not support audio output via HDMI. While this may not be a problem for most users, it posed a challenge for me since my soundbar lacks a 3.5mm audio jack and only supports optical, HDMI or Bluetooth connections. I experimented with several HDMI audio inserter devices (example in the photo below) to find one compatible with my setup. Some devices did not support my monitor’s resolution, and in one case, did not output a compatible audio stream for my soundbar; however, I eventually found a working solution.

USB Ports Underpowered

The USB ports on the A1222+ are somewhat underpowered. They work fine for low-power devices like USB drives, but even the most energy-efficient USB optical drive I found failed to operate reliably, with AmigaOS indicating that too much power was being drawn. The system also struggled with my keyboard, which admittedly falls into the higher-powered category as it has a lot of smart features and lighting. I resolved these power issues by installing a powered internal USB hub connected to a SATA power connector, as shown in the image below. An added benefit of using this type of hub is that it provides additional USB ports.

A1222+ Freezes During Copy Operations

I occasionally experienced freezes when copying files using Workbench, although copying files using the Shell worked fine. Copying more than the RAM: drive could handle would also cause the system to freeze. After discussing this on an Amiga forum, I learned that there is a bug with ASyncWB. Disabling the ExtMem feature with the command "SYS:Kickstart/ram-handler.kmod ExtMem=NO" provided a workaround and I have not had this issue since.

Enhancer Software Issues

I encountered problems with the Enhancer version of the sound preferences tool. For some reason, the gain setting goes astronomically high, as shown in the image below. Before I had the system hooked up to my soundbar, I was using headphones – and that was a painful moment for my ears when the sound came through!

I also experienced another issue with the sound where I think, as part of the adaptive volume settings, it would set the DAC mixer level to minimum, resulting in the sound no longer being audible. Restoring the original version of the sound preferences tool supplied with AmigaOS 4.1 resolved these issues.

Similarly, I found that the Enhancer version of the time preferences tool causes issues, particularly with daylight saving adjustments. Again, reverting to version supplied with AmigaOS 4.1 fixed these problems.

Updater and AMIStore Issues

Not to be confused with the AmiUpdate tool, I found that A-EON’s Updater has some issues. When I originally built my A1222+ system, I was unable to download some of the updates, but this issue appears to have partly sorted itself recently. There also appears to be some confusion with version numbers, as shown in the image below, which indicates the latest version as being 2.2, while the downloaded version is incorrectly reported as 7.3c.

I also discovered that some updates I was able to download, such as AmiPDF, are incompatible with the A1222+, so I had to revert to the originally installed versions. Similarly to the Updater tool, AMIStore also has issues with some of the reported version numbers being incorrect, as shown in the image below.

Software

Odyssey is a very good web browser that has a high compatibility with many modern websites, even to the point of being able to watch YouTube videos. My main gripes with it, however, are the time it takes to start the application as it spends a long time loading the fonts. Additionally, if I click on something that wants to open a webpage, it opens another instance of the browser, again taking a long time to load up.

CubicIDE was my main C programming IDE and text editor when I had my first AmigaOS 4 system. Sadly, I have been unsuccessful getting this to work with the A1222+. For my C programming needs, CodeBench has been a top-notch replacement.

Other Things

I believe this is already a known problem which also affects some of the other AmigaOS 4 systems – pressing CTRL-AMIGA-AMIGA to reset the system does not work very well as the computer will just boot with a blank screen. CTRL-ALT-ALT will work though.

I find that there is a bit of a lag when keypresses are registered by the system. This results in some characters being missed when I’m typing at my normal speed, which has led to some frustration.

The mouse I use has a left/right scroll-wheel in addition to the up/down one. It’s a minor inconvenience, but the system does not appear to recognise this.

I quite like the default A1222+ wallpaper and it would have been nice if it came in other resolutions or aspect ratios.

Final Words

In my usage of the A1222+, I have tended to stick with what I mainly bought it for, so I have perhaps not been as adventurous as some others in trying out everything that it has to offer.

The more minor issues that I have come across I have left in the hope that things will improve with future software updates. Other issues I have found that the Amiga forums are invaluable for advice on how to resolve them.

Despite its shortfalls, I am very pleased with the A1222+. There are niggles with software compatibility and software bugs, but I am hopeful that these will eventually be addressed over time.