Hey folks.
Not sure if this is the done thing, or the norm or anything like that - but, I wanted to keep a record of my journey back into the retro Amiga scene by creating a blog of sorts on what I'm up to with my newly acquired Amiga 1200.
No doubt there will be some mess up's along the way and some questionable choices for mods but wanted to create something for posterity and this forum seemed the perfect place.
So - without further ado, I'll kick off with my first update on purchasing my Amiga 1200
- - - Updated - - -
Part #1: Sourcing & Purchasing my Amiga 1200.
While trawling through Facebook Marketplace, I came across perhaps the most depressing pictures of someone advertising an Amiga 1200. The pictures were terrible and I couldn't really make out everything included. The seller had taken photograph's of pictures of the computer taken on a tablet. Alarm bells rang a little bit that this could be a scam, but with the seller being listed as only located 15 minutes from where I worked I thought worst case, I could always go and pop to see it. If it was a bag of spanners I could always walk away.
They had it listed for a reasonable price - I thought I could likely barter some money off and if it was in full working order it could be something I was interested in. I could see it at least booted and output to the TV if that picture was to be believed - so I bit the bullet and flew a message off to the seller to first see if it was available - then get a little bit more info as to what was actually included.
The seller got back to me almost straight away. I was in luck - the system was still available. It was actually her husbands and they were having a clear out of their garage. It had been tucked away in a box for years and they'd only got it out for him to take a picture of it to sell. She wasn't tech savvy which is why she'd done the pictures the way she had, but she was more than happy to tell me that along with the Amiga 1200, it had an external floppy drive (she didn't know if it worked), power supply, Quick Shot joystick, a mouse and cables needed to connect it up. There were a few other things in the box, including some games - but she was going to sell the games separately but I was welcome to everything else.
My interest was peaked - other things in a box and it had an external drive, which definitely wasn't in the pictures that I could see. With my haggling skills I was sure I could snag a bargain, so arranged a time to pop around one evening after work and have a look (whilst observing social distancing measure in place of course!).
Fast forward to the evening in question. I'd finished work for the day and set off to their house. I arrived promptly on time and knocked on the door. An elderly lady appeared at the window and cracked it open - we spoke briefly and she told me I had been chatting to her, but her husband was in the garage if I wanted to head around and he would meet me there.
Now at this point, I was fearing the worst. A computer in a garage, in a box for years - it could be rotten inside, but hey - I'm here, let's go have a look. Well - this was no normal garage. This guy, must have been in his late 70's and there were aerofix models everywhere. Clearly he had pride in his garage and it was really well looked after. He had a plastic box on one side with a few bits and pieces in and the Amiga already hooked up to the TV. My first thought as I entered was - OMG - it's been stored in an air tight container. I asked him if it had and he confirmed the same. Result !
A few quick demo's later and it became apparent the CTRL+AMIGA+AMIGA soft reset didn't work - but other than that, everything else we checked worked fine. Internal & external disk drives span up lovely and we could boot games from each. All the lights worked, PSU and Amiga looked in great condition - there was some yellowing to one side, but he explained it was where the light came in from one of the windows when he used to play it and had yellowed that bit. The rest of the system overall was in good condition.
When we got to the box of bits, there were two items of note which caught my eye. The first, a Techno Sound Turbo dongle - we didn't have the wires of S/W to test it, but he did say it was working when he last used it. Unfortunately he had misplaced a box of floppies which the software was in (along with Workbench discs, annoyingly) and only the big box games were what he'd been able to find - I was welcome to have it along with everything else, except the Big Box games - which I could look through and buy separately (I passed on the games in the end - nothing really there which took my fancy - lots of flight stuff - the aerofix models kinda gave that one away lol). The second, was a Slik Stik joystick. I recall back in the day that was a joystick of choice for many. Unfortunately the fire button was missing and a screw had come loose - but again, he said I was welcome to have it. (Update: I've already bought the bits to fix it.)
After a bit of haggling, we finally settled on a price which worked for us both. I knew I would be getting it recapped and worst case, would have to swap the membrane on the keyboard so with that in mind and the extra bits included I thought I hadn't done too bad on the deal. It was a working Amiga 1200 after all ! They even threw in the Steve Davis game.
Here's a couple of pictures below of my new baby when I got her home:
So - first post done - the purchase of my new(old) Amiga 1200. I'll add another update soon with the next leg of my journey back into the Amiga
Best regards,
Matt.
Not sure if this is the done thing, or the norm or anything like that - but, I wanted to keep a record of my journey back into the retro Amiga scene by creating a blog of sorts on what I'm up to with my newly acquired Amiga 1200.
No doubt there will be some mess up's along the way and some questionable choices for mods but wanted to create something for posterity and this forum seemed the perfect place.
So - without further ado, I'll kick off with my first update on purchasing my Amiga 1200
- - - Updated - - -
Part #1: Sourcing & Purchasing my Amiga 1200.
While trawling through Facebook Marketplace, I came across perhaps the most depressing pictures of someone advertising an Amiga 1200. The pictures were terrible and I couldn't really make out everything included. The seller had taken photograph's of pictures of the computer taken on a tablet. Alarm bells rang a little bit that this could be a scam, but with the seller being listed as only located 15 minutes from where I worked I thought worst case, I could always go and pop to see it. If it was a bag of spanners I could always walk away.
They had it listed for a reasonable price - I thought I could likely barter some money off and if it was in full working order it could be something I was interested in. I could see it at least booted and output to the TV if that picture was to be believed - so I bit the bullet and flew a message off to the seller to first see if it was available - then get a little bit more info as to what was actually included.
The seller got back to me almost straight away. I was in luck - the system was still available. It was actually her husbands and they were having a clear out of their garage. It had been tucked away in a box for years and they'd only got it out for him to take a picture of it to sell. She wasn't tech savvy which is why she'd done the pictures the way she had, but she was more than happy to tell me that along with the Amiga 1200, it had an external floppy drive (she didn't know if it worked), power supply, Quick Shot joystick, a mouse and cables needed to connect it up. There were a few other things in the box, including some games - but she was going to sell the games separately but I was welcome to everything else.
My interest was peaked - other things in a box and it had an external drive, which definitely wasn't in the pictures that I could see. With my haggling skills I was sure I could snag a bargain, so arranged a time to pop around one evening after work and have a look (whilst observing social distancing measure in place of course!).
Fast forward to the evening in question. I'd finished work for the day and set off to their house. I arrived promptly on time and knocked on the door. An elderly lady appeared at the window and cracked it open - we spoke briefly and she told me I had been chatting to her, but her husband was in the garage if I wanted to head around and he would meet me there.
Now at this point, I was fearing the worst. A computer in a garage, in a box for years - it could be rotten inside, but hey - I'm here, let's go have a look. Well - this was no normal garage. This guy, must have been in his late 70's and there were aerofix models everywhere. Clearly he had pride in his garage and it was really well looked after. He had a plastic box on one side with a few bits and pieces in and the Amiga already hooked up to the TV. My first thought as I entered was - OMG - it's been stored in an air tight container. I asked him if it had and he confirmed the same. Result !
A few quick demo's later and it became apparent the CTRL+AMIGA+AMIGA soft reset didn't work - but other than that, everything else we checked worked fine. Internal & external disk drives span up lovely and we could boot games from each. All the lights worked, PSU and Amiga looked in great condition - there was some yellowing to one side, but he explained it was where the light came in from one of the windows when he used to play it and had yellowed that bit. The rest of the system overall was in good condition.
When we got to the box of bits, there were two items of note which caught my eye. The first, a Techno Sound Turbo dongle - we didn't have the wires of S/W to test it, but he did say it was working when he last used it. Unfortunately he had misplaced a box of floppies which the software was in (along with Workbench discs, annoyingly) and only the big box games were what he'd been able to find - I was welcome to have it along with everything else, except the Big Box games - which I could look through and buy separately (I passed on the games in the end - nothing really there which took my fancy - lots of flight stuff - the aerofix models kinda gave that one away lol). The second, was a Slik Stik joystick. I recall back in the day that was a joystick of choice for many. Unfortunately the fire button was missing and a screw had come loose - but again, he said I was welcome to have it. (Update: I've already bought the bits to fix it.)
After a bit of haggling, we finally settled on a price which worked for us both. I knew I would be getting it recapped and worst case, would have to swap the membrane on the keyboard so with that in mind and the extra bits included I thought I hadn't done too bad on the deal. It was a working Amiga 1200 after all ! They even threw in the Steve Davis game.
Here's a couple of pictures below of my new baby when I got her home:
So - first post done - the purchase of my new(old) Amiga 1200. I'll add another update soon with the next leg of my journey back into the Amiga
Best regards,
Matt.
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