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Thread: My last time hacking on Amiga ~ then time to say goodbye ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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    Default My last time hacking on Amiga ~ then time to say goodbye ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    As title suggests, time to pimp my last 2 Amigas and then sell them ~ they go very much unused around here, and emulation (in either hardware or software) has come far enough, that I do really need real Amiga hardware anymore, to relive the way things were. There's always 2 schools of thought here (3, if you count those who would throw this stuff to the tip =) -- one is to keep the machines in original condition, the other is to mod the begeezuz out of the machines, adding any/all (modern) embellishments, to bring the machines as far as they can go with technologies that came into being 10years and more after the fact.

    Realistically, if you're going down the original spec route, that infers you've got a 13" CRT monitor connected to these machines, which could do the almost-CGA video output signals Amigas used. Truth be told, I still have the original displays for both of of the machines I have left (the venerable 1084S monitor, and a 1942 bisync), but alas the EHT tranny is dead in both of them, and that's a battle I'm not interested in.

    In fact, nowadays if I see any display less than 19" I expect it to be a touchscreen =) Usually I'm standing at an ATM having that thought. It's one of the technical aspects that helped kill the Amiga ; the advancements in VDU technology (and the fact C= never did the required R&D to keep up with it) -- if they'd at least got it to VGA standard, life would've been so much easier.

    I actually started this project a few years ago, but got stumped when I couldn't source a new keyboard membrane for the A1200 (but I sorted other mods outs for storage/video before putting it away again), and the A500 although working fine with the A590 sidecar (and 50MB seagate scsi harddrive for old time computer sound effects =), still had the video output dilemma to deal with (ECS chipset not as capable as AGA), -and- apart from the 1meg chipram mod & fastRAM/RTC card in the trapdoor (+2meg fastram on the A590), it was still without an accelerator and the only thing fancy is it's got 2.04 rom, and I was umming and ahhing about what to do...I was thinking an ACA A500Plus might be the best way to jump, considering the facilities it offered, but going to buy one they were also out of stock with a long lead time, so that machine got put away as well. Years pass, I move house, 2 years after that I find the box full of Amiga stuff, so I try to pick up where I left off.

    The A590 sidecar is really of no use to the A500 machine, once you decide which accelerator route you're going to take --- you no longer need the fastram or 50mb of coffee-grinder scsi storage. Indeed, the fact that old drive stills goes through the slow whining spindle spinup routine and actually still works, is a thing rare and worth preserving, because it 'no longer matters', and one day it will stop working, and when it does good luck trying to find a scsi I/II 50pin drive to replace it with, and there's buckly's on finding a working 8bit XT IDE drive. There is a way out, scsi->sata and scsi->cf-card, but why bother when there exists solutions that offer more fastram than you'll ever need, and as much storage as you want on cf/sdcard or USB sticks? SO to me, it makes no sense to do anything to/with the A590, and sell it in working condition, and let someone else not me face the day when Fred & Wilma stop blinking.

    The A500 is the first target....



    Guess =)



Look Here ->
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    Ahhh the amiga - I miss mine - I loved creating music tracks in protracker on it and playing games! I'd often throw it into a gym bag and take it to friends houses for gaming nights or simple to mess around on.

    I still have a working Commodore 64C model which I recapped. It has a tapuino for the full nostalgic experience (emulates the c2N and thus the 5+ minute load times) as well as a 1541. The computer and disk drive have a jiffydos installed which speed up loading, and for instant gratification I have an easyflash III cartridge.

    I traded the Commodore 64 for an amp and speakers (my friend didn't have a sound system but had two commodore 64's, so I said "I have these spare, I cant turn them up here as it'll disturb the neighbours - swap ya for one of your comoodores?"

    From the parts in your picture it looks like you have an Add-IDE adapter board that allows you to fit an internal 2.5" ide hdd, I had one of these, an adapter ribbon and a 3.5" hdd sitting on top of the computer inside a box I built, complete with power and activity leds. 80Mb was the drive size and just like the side car, it spooled up like a helicopter engine!

    IF its not an AddIDE board, my other guess is the board fits the cpu socket and allows the pi to become the new cpu, providing heaps more performance plus storage on the SD card.
    Last edited by vk2emp; 02-09-22 at 11:51 AM.

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    Had the Amiga 1000 with sidecar & 1084 monitor in excellent working condition - Sold them to a collector that paid me good $$.

    Great computer, especially the monitor.. Also, hard to get but collectors always ask for the Workbench disks ?

    Last edited by Johnno; 02-09-22 at 12:31 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Johnno View Post
    Had the Amiga 1000 with sidecar & 1084 monitor in excellent working condition - Sold them to a collector that paid me good $$.

    Great computer, especially the monitor.. Also, hard to get but collectors always ask for the Workbench disks ?
    I've got a 1084S & 1942 'multisync' (they were dual sync really) in the shed, both need repair but I believe the flyback trannies and picture tubes are good ; display technology has moved on =)

    They had a very clever architecture, and made the most of the video standards of the day (this ended up being part of their downfall) ; AmigaOS ...aka. Workbench ...was ahead of it's time, but it too was leveraging the custom hardware...but the fact that it was in ROM and pre-emptive, was what really set it apart.

    I imagine these collectors you speak of, are after the -original- Workbench disks that shipped with the machine ; the floppy media itself is likely long dead, but I can sense they'll be after the original disk artwork/labeling ...they were different for each locale the Amigas were shipped to.

    If you search on ebay for 'amiga workbench disk' ...looking at the results...there'll be a number that are knockoffs/reprints, some are the genuine article by the looks...but I tell you now I don't see any AU/NZ market workbench1.3 disks (nor the rarer 1.1/1.2 workbench disks that came out with the A1000), so my guess is it's these things they're pining for (ADF files of all the workbench disks can be downloaded online =)

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    I think I chucked my Workbench disks a few years ago but I’ll have to check. Still have a 2000 and CD32 sitting on a shelf. The 2000 was upgraded with a hard drive, extra memory, extra serial ports and a Janus card.

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    Quote Originally Posted by vk2emp View Post
    Ahhh the amiga - I miss mine - I loved creating music tracks in protracker on it and playing games! I'd often throw it into a gym bag and take it to friends houses for gaming nights or simple to mess around on.

    I still have a working Commodore 64C model which I recapped. It has a tapuino for the full nostalgic experience (emulates the c2N and thus the 5+ minute load times) as well as a 1541. The computer and disk drive have a jiffydos installed which speed up loading, and for instant gratification I have an easyflash III cartridge.

    I traded the Commodore 64 for an amp and speakers (my friend didn't have a sound system but had two commodore 64's, so I said "I have these spare, I cant turn them up here as it'll disturb the neighbours - swap ya for one of your comoodores?"

    From the parts in your picture it looks like you have an Add-IDE adapter board that allows you to fit an internal 2.5" ide hdd, I had one of these, an adapter ribbon and a 3.5" hdd sitting on top of the computer inside a box I built, complete with power and activity leds. 80Mb was the drive size and just like the side car, it spooled up like a helicopter engine!

    IF its not an AddIDE board, my other guess is the board fits the cpu socket and allows the pi to become the new cpu, providing heaps more performance plus storage on the SD card.

    Yeah, the 40pin header is the GPIO header between the pistorm CPLD and the RPi ~ you can do a 68060/50mhz with the setup. Storage is provided by the RPi (best to think of storage in the UAE style wherein you keep hardfiles on the RPi's microsd card, and mount them at DH0:, DH1:...etc etc). You can treat it like a go-tek drive as well, to mount floppy images (ADF files).

    Perhaps the best thing is being able to use RTG on the A500 video output. so you can pipe it via the RPi's HDMI output to newer style monitors without any hassles (but it's a good idea to look for 4:3 aspect LCD/LED monitors, 16:9/10 looks wacky =)

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    Pretty awesome what you can do with a RPi and vintage computer hardware these days. whoda thunk a 68060 would be available for ~$50 + the cost of the CPLD!

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    Check this out (will only mean something to Amigans =) ...

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    WHOA!! That's pretty amazing stuff wotnot. Amiga fans will jump all over that.
    Those 1084s CRT monitors also doubled up as a good TV. Great picture for those days and in stereo. (I thought the 'S' stood for stereo ?) lol

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    Quote Originally Posted by Johnno View Post
    WHOA!! That's pretty amazing stuff wotnot. Amiga fans will jump all over that.
    Those 1084s CRT monitors also doubled up as a good TV. Great picture for those days and in stereo. (I thought the 'S' stood for stereo ?) lol
    Yeah, who would've thought..Agnus / Fat Agnus / Fatter Agnus all in the one construct, very cool. It'd be groovy if someone did a similar thing to replace Denise/Lisa, to build the RTG into there to be able to directly address SVGA monitors.

    Yes, the 'S' stood for built in stereo amp/speakers. They were pretty capable VDUs if you needed 15kHz @ 50/60Hz ...and composite support for NTSC/PAL ..there were variants..

    Like I said before, ultimately this video support the Amiga revolved around, was both it's boon and it's bust --- by the time VGA appeared, which was pretty much the first video standard that moved away from what 'TV type' monitors were (wrt scanrate), the Amiga chipset video wise was immediately rendered obsolete. Dave Haynie obviously knew this, with creation of the AAA chipset, but C= went bust before that happened. Fact was it was the tip of the iceberg, they needed more CPU as well, and in retrospect they would've done better to follow the path Apple did -- move to PowerPC and get a 3rd party vendor to do the video chip ; it's cheaper =)

    ...there could've been a dream about an Amiga A6000 running PPC604 with graphics by 3DFX ..so the rumours go B)

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