Installation of the CF card or Hard Disk on the internal IDE port of the AMIGA 1200

What is an AMIGA 1200 Compact Flash or Internal Hard Disk in 2021?

The Amiga 1200 has an internal IDE port similar to the laptop of its 1992 era.

Here is a picture of the internal IDE port on the AMIGA 1200 motherboard.

The IDE port is the part with lots of spikes

To this IDE port you need to connect a 2.5″ IDE to 2.5″ or 2.5″ to 3.5″ IDE ribbon cable with an external power supply that takes the power from the 3.5″ IDE hard disk to the power port of the AMIGA floppy drive (or a 44 pin 2.5″ IDE to 40 pin 3.5″ IDE Adapter + Power Supply)

These cables are available on the MicroMiga website for example at this address (link 08/03/2021):

https://www.micromiga.com/categorie-produit/disque-dur/page/2/

Finally, of course, you need an AMIGA-compatible hard disk or, more simply, a Compact Flash card that is always compatible with an AMIGA 1200. ( Preferably a maximum capacity of 4 GB with ROMS 3.0 )

Hard disks:
Hard disks are quite difficult to find because they too must be a maximum of 4GB in size and also be IDE compatible. The easiest way to find them is to look on Ebay type sites and cross your fingers on the quality of the material.

Looking today with the search: “hard disk 2.5 ide”.
Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything compatible, so this is a very complicated avenue to explore, but with patience it should be possible to find something, there is still the question of the price of these rarities.

Compact Flash (CF) cards:
Fortunately there is a very effective plan B which consists of using Compact Flash technology to act as a hard disk for the AMIGA 1200.

For this you also need a 2.5″ to 2.5″ ribbon like for hard disks and you need a Compact Flash card adapter and a compatible Compact Flash card.

It is possible to find both on the site of MicroMiga.com for example:

https://www.micromiga.com/categorie-produit/disque-dur/

Please note that at MicroMiga, at this time, the Compact Flash cards are tested to ensure compatibility with the AMIGA 1200.

Once all the ingredients are in place, simply install it in the AMIGA 1200 as shown in the photo below.

The other advantage of Compact Flash Cards for AMIGA is that you can prepare your card on WinUAE or Amiga Forever and then run it directly on the real AMIGA, which is very practical. If needed I will prepare an article on this.