Fitzsteve's Amiga Journey - Part 1

fitzsteve

Retired Slacker
AmiBayer
Blogger
Joined
Aug 19, 2009
Posts
20,058
Country
UK
Region
Sevenoaks
Welcome to my Amiga Journey, this story is set over 10 chapters.

It is possible to read back to back these chapters if you follow the link at the end of each chapter as this will link you onto the next.


Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the story of my return to the Amiga Scene.



Fitzsteve's Amiga Journey - Part 1


I’d always longed for an Amiga growing up but alas before I could afford one along came those pesky Consoles like the Snes and I went that route.

But I still longed to play my favourite Speccy games with ‘Amiga graphics’ and like most kids that didn’t get what they wanted as a grown up I started my Amiga collection!

So here’s where it all started! My trusty A1200 that I picked up at a Car boot sale in around 2002

IMG_5326.jpg


And for those games that wouldn’t run on the A1200 I had my trusty A500

IMG_5342.jpg


These were my pride and joy, setup in my office space for years until we moved in about 2005 and they ended up in storage in the loft.

It was a sad day in 2009 that I decided to sell this unused collection so I took them of their boxes to take pics and list them on ebay. In searching for their values I found some awesome Amiga sites (EAB and Amibay!)

Whilst Mrs Fitz talked me into letting go of the A500 and 3 cases of games I soon realised during testing that I could not sell my beloved A1200!

IMG_5328.jpg


So here started a mad journey that would see me build up a pretty decent Amiga collection!

The first hurdle was to find out why my A1200 which I was sure has 8mb Fast Ram was only showing 2mb and Mr Guru making frequent visits.

Well it was soon clear upon inspecting my Elbox 1200/8 what the problem was, whilst in storage the clock battery had leaked and destroyed the jumpers for selecting memory and probably tracks as well.

IMG_5323.jpg


I tried to clean it up and restore the card but really had no idea what I was doing and offloaded it as spares/repairs on ebay!

And after a month or two of searching found this awesome little replacement:

mem2.jpg


mem1.jpg


Finally I could enjoy the awesome Classic Workbench I’d spent so much time setting up and all those KG WHDload packs! (Thanks KG & Bloodwych)

IMG_6419.jpg


It wasn’t long before I was seriously bitten by the upgrade bug, and all the awesome activity still very much alive in the community.

So I setup a wanted thread for my very first 030 Accelerator and very much interested in trying out SCSI I asked for a Card with that facilty.

A nice chap called Andrew offered to sell me his Typhoon 030 after seeing pics of the card I had to have it!

IMG_6451.jpg


I was really pleased with the speed increase and all the new apps and emulators available to me, plus I got to setup a CDROM on the SCSI, all this with the help of my new found friends at EAB and Amibay.

So here it was, my dream A1200 setup:

IMG_6976.jpg


IMG_6993.jpg


Click here for Part 2
 
Last edited:
Awesome! What a neat idea for a thread, too. I might have to tell my Amiga journey some time (along with pics, of course!)
 
Nice stuff mate! I had an A500 and A1200 - I started off with an 040 as first turbo card.
 
Awesome! What a neat idea for a thread, too. I might have to tell my Amiga journey some time (along with pics, of course!)

Thanks mate, and of course pictures are a must (y)

@jvdbossc, Cheers! & 040 is a nice place to start :)
 
Super thread Steve and great pics too!

I second Andy in that its a great idea for a thread :) Perhaps other users who want to tell their story can do one too (y)
 
Glad you enjoyed it Taj, parts 2-10 to come :cool:
 
Nice idea & stuff Steve.. (y)

Now, I have in mind to open a thread like this.. :)
 
nice thread Steve, worked out well in the end, you certainly have a great collection. (y)
 
Very cool. I have to say, I love that joystick you have sitting on your desk in the final desk picture. What kind of joystick is that, and is is possible to ever find one of those again?
 
Very cool. I have to say, I love that joystick you have sitting on your desk in the final desk picture. What kind of joystick is that, and is is possible to ever find one of those again?

Yeah these are Quickshot Pro's and they are plentiful. They have a selector switch for Master System, Amstrad, Amiga, etc. They are on the other bay all the time :)

They are solid and have a nice arcade feel to them, of course 2 button Amiga games work just fine with it in Sega mode (y)

Steve.
 
Just read through Pt1 there Steve while on lunch - fab stuff mate - enjoying it so far... on to part 2...

J
 
Thought I'd bump this for anyone whose not read how I got back into the Amiga scene :)

I might be ready to start the next chapter or my epic journey soon so this'll give new readers a chance to catch up with the story!

PS, I wrote this all before being made redundant from my last job, there was no work for the last three months of me being there there hence why I had so much time on my hands!

Anyway, if you missed this the first time, enjoy! (y)

Fitz! :ninja:
 
Nice work there Steve, you have some awesome hardware!

I can understand how you have spent so much on it though. My very modest few bits so far have cost me a fair price, and there isnt a single piece of my kit ready for use as a production machine just yet, my living room looks like an Amiga workshop :LOL:

Im starting small here and have plans for a couple of machines. So upto now just a couple of 500's Im working on, a 500+ and an A530 (Soon to be 2 of those!) and a seemingly huge stack of peripheral bits such as modulators, couple of goliath PSUs and the like. Those bits seem to growing at a rapid rate of knots.

But I know I have the basis for a solid starter setup at least.

At least now I know where i can come if I need upgrade advice/help!

:)
 
Thanks for the kind words WonkyDonkey! :)

Good luck with your projects and just remember Rome wasn't built in a day! Some of my projects took months and months of work and troubleshooting to compete and in fact they're still never finished because I keep chopping and changing parts/upgrades! Since writing these I have at least two more projects which you can find in the photobooth (A4000T/Elbox Mirage Pro w/CSPPC) :LOL:

Of course if you ever need any advice feel free to PM me, I'm always happy to help fellow Amigans (y)

And if you find yourself with a load of spares you don't need offer them back to your fellow Amibayers and before you know it you'll have enough in PayPal for your next upgrade fix :coffee:

Steve.

ps. if you think your Living room looks like a workshop, you should see mine - It's like C='s factory!!!!
 
Well I have a little of the C= look as I managed to find 2 keyboards with C= keys amongst other bits. Theyre the good heavy duty ones too, not the mitsumi cheap ones.

And, fingers crossed, I *may* have just bagged an A2000 base unit in decent nick too.

:)

Edit : I was kinda planning to document what I do in a similar way to yourself as well, hence starting the A530 restoration thread. Thats my favourite piece of hardware by a long measure.

Well for now anyway :)
 
Hey, It's around 9 years since I returned to the scene and have read through my old Amiga Journey threads this morning, I was surprised to see all the images still embedded and ready to read back to back. Links to next thread are at the bottom of each so you can continue reading. Maybe worth a read if you missed them the first time or if you like to look at a lot of Amiga pics :)
 
Well I must say that I enjoyed the first part and will read the next part soon (got to walk the dog first), I don't know how I haven't noticed this before but it is good to find things like this laid out for all to see. My place is like a bomb site with loads of ideas that hardly ever get finished ;)
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom