A few months ago I watched “From Bedroom to Billions“, it triggered some serious nostalgia and a lot of memories came flooding back. So on a whim, I decided to see if I could pick-up an Amiga on eBay to replay some of those old games that I loved as a child.
It turns out it’s not too hard. There’s a thriving community that still uses and loves the Amiga. There’s also a fair number of people on eBay who refurbish and upgrade them with a 4GB memory card containing workbench and a bunch of software and games. This is very handy because, even if you did manage to buy the original games, there’s no guarantee they will work due to the magnetic platters getting mouldy or damaged over the last 30 years. Yes, that’s real life bit rot in action.
The market for older computers like these and associated modern expansion cards and add-ons to make using them a little less frustrating in modern times is actually a lot larger than most people seem to think, and anything from using SD cards as boot drives to things like ethernet and WiFi are often available as well. Even if you don’t purchase these computers, it’s still fun to browse sites like eBay to see what’s on offer.
I use Amiga as well… And there are really some hefty upgrades out there. How about an Amiga500, that can crunch numbers 2,5 times faster than an standard Amiga3000? With internal harddrive and vga output? Yeah… They are still reasonable cheap to get. Not saying cheap, and not saying insanely expensive. They can be found for a fair price. Taking in that they are not exactly the most common items in the world of computing.
Yes… I have my two Amiga500’s and one Amiga600. And I love them all. They are like the most fun vintage platform to play with. And they have a soul, no other platform have. The closest that I have come to the Amiga on other platforms are Os/2 Warp 3.0 and BeOS 5 on a standard PC.
How about a super-scalar, modern, FPGA based 68080 softcore…
http://www.apollo-core.com
I’ve GOT to admire these guys. That’s some serious work they’ve put in there!
I’m just waiting on a standalone version of the Apollo and then I will be handing over my cash. I still have all my old hardware but it’s just that, old… I want a shiny new machine
Yup. I know about those FPGA solutions. The V4-Standalone looks like a great machine. Yet…. It is new hardware, and the original a500/2000 have stand the test of time. Yet modern SMD based hardware tend not to last that long. Would be sweet to have enough money to through after one of those, without having to consider how long it will last, with personal income as a factor to count in.
I have an old Amiga 500+ in storage. I wonder if it still works? I might dig it out and look at upgrades.
I did have a A1200 at one point, but it was sold on as someone offered me a good price, along with my ZX81 collection, Oric Atmos and my Amstrad CPC 464.
Check for battery damage before powering on. The Plus model is nice, yet have that battery as it’s achilles heel. Better look for a standard a500 with revision 8a.1 board. You know. The “fake” Amiga500-plus or crippeled a500-plus. Or whatever you want to call it.
One of my 500’s is the standard 500, based on that board. The silk screen say 500+ yet it came with 512k, no battery, no clock circuit and Kick 1.3 instead of the full blown Plus model. Everything else is the same as the full Plus model. And boy have I upgraded it.
– Terrible Fire 530.
– ScanPlusECS scandoubler (no, not the IndivisionECS)
– 2mb Trapdoor ram with Gary adaptor.
– Special PC-To-Amiga internal FloppyCable.
– Dual kickstart in single chip 1.3/3.1 KickSwitch.
The trapdoor mem upgrade have this Gary adaptor, and I still had to mod the board, in order to upgrade the ChipMem. As this is an 8a.1-board, then it was straight forward. I only had to remove the solder blob on JP2, and solder in a single wire on the middle pad on JP2. The wire goes straight to the trapdoor ram board and will relocate 512k out of the 2mb as Chip. The rest, 1.5mb will be used as SlowRam. On the TF530 card (50mhz and FPU), there is 2mb of Ram. It will be used as FastRam. My 500 have 1mb Chip, 2mb Fast and 1.5mb Slow as of now. Then I have a 4gb CF card as the internal harddrive as ~A^3f now, and I plan to install the romswitch board that I bought. It is a manual rom switcher (yeah, I like my stuff manually operated as much as possible), that have room for 4 Kickstart Rom’s. And with the two-in-one-chip kickstart, then I can actually have 5 kickstarts in my machine. And I actually plan on getting the 3.1.4 OS upgrade. My plan is to end up with an Amiga500 that are a crossbreed between a 500 and a 500-Plus. With the power of an highly expanded 2000 and everything internal. So far, I have used like 2 years on this project, as I am in no hurry to rush this. Last but not least. I will buy a boot-selector as well. This is only because I want feature, and because I might buy an empty or defect case for external floppy drive. That way, I can get starting on Gotek drives. And I can boot from the external drive. Not 100% required, yet I like options and features over speed. So no Vampire for this baby.
Edited 2018-12-05 09:25 UTC
You’re a lot better off going to Amibay if looking to purchase Amiga hardware and software, it’s usually a lot cheaper than the eBay option.
Use eBay as a secondary option only as it’s more expensive.
You get a lot of other retro computers on there also.
Is there less profiting on mass copyright infringement on Amibay than on eBay? :/ (well, I suppose, how the quoted by Thom part of the article states, we often don’t have much choice …but it still feels wrong :/ )
PS. But on the bright side, hurray, it’s Amiga news again!
( http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-28483217 
)