Project: RetroNephew

Hello Amigans, how are you today?

Here's a question for you: If as a six year old, someone had given you a pre-loaded computer, full of games, educational software, demos and music, would that have been a good present or would you be too young?

I understand that some of you, at six years old, existed before the dawn of computing. You'll need to just imagine it was possible

My idea is to load up an A500 with what I can, tie a ribbon round it and deliver it to the little lad on Christmas morning. I'm fat and have a beard (whoa, saying it like that makes me sound like some kind of computer nerd. Oh Jesus...) so the Santa analogies will work well.

And the big question is, how can I get an A500 working reliably, considering the drive is probably not at it's best (working, but lets be fair, 26yrs old) and disks are passe. Call the budget, lets say, £75 max. Lets have some out-of-the-box thinking here!

:roll:

i'm not sure a 6 year old would get it, also i would suggest an A600 with a hard drive and some whdload goodness

Justin said:

i'm not sure a 6 year old would get it, also i would suggest an A600 with a hard drive and some whdload goodness

Click to expand...

+1

Dave G

As mush as i dislike the 600, i agree and a laptop ide drive can be bought for just a few pounds.

or go the CF route and copy stuff over from the PC. Scart will give a good picture on a modern TV.

but how about an A1200 with WHDload? although £75 could be pushing it a bit...

I think a six year old could benefit from an Amiga. It's a great machine to play games on and it is simple to use. Running games from floppies are easy on the Amiga, just insert them and off you go. The problem is faulty disks and dodgy drives..

Have you thought about a CD32? I think it is a great console and there are many cool games available for it. With the CD32, your nephew only has to pop a CD into the tray and the game starts right away. It also comes with a nice joypad.

ISO's are easily available Online. You can download ten or twenty of them, burn them to discs (no copy protection, just be sure that you write at a low speed) and bundle them with the console. There are also game compilations for the CD32 that contains hundreds of regular Amiga games. All available from a simple and user-friendly menu. The CD32 is of course not a computer with a keyboard and the other bells and whistles, but it will give your nephew months and years of old-fashion fun.

Since you live in the UK, you should be able to get a CD32 within your budget with the necessary accesories. You can, as mentioned, download the games and educational software Online.

The Amiga 600 with WHD-load is a cool option as well. A nice little machine with access to plenty of good games. It could also prove inspiring later on, when he can draw in Deluxe Paint and try various educational programs for kids (many of these are available for the Amiga).

Hope this was of some help.

I used a computer when I was six and had a blast. I think it's cool that you are going to do this. He'll be happy for sure. He's not to young in my opinion, one should not underestimate the abilities of kids today. The daughter of a friend, five years old, is hooked on the Nintendo DS and can play on the PC as well.

- The Amiga CD32 - Have you got what it takes?

An A500 isn't really suitable. A hard disk will take up almost all of your budget and will be really loud and slow, and that and the A500 itself will be absolutely massive.

A600 is best bet but I'd be impressed if you got everything under budget.

Oh hells yes. I was hardly older than that (eight, I think) when we got our first computer, and I was all over that thing any time I could get my parents to let me use it. An Amiga with WB3.1 would be just the thing for a kid to learn computers on, and an appropriate selection of games and creativity software will engage him and make sure that he doesn't lose interest

I think it's a great idea (I had my first computer at 4 and a half years old)
However, for ease (& budget) ofset against quality of experience, I think an A600 or an A1200 would be the better choice!

An A600 with a 4Gb CF hard drive or a Microdrive would sort you out for the nephew. A CF should also survive, should he drop the machine whilst carrying it (worth thinking about).

Most of the games are for the ECS chipset anyway, so he's not likely to notice the difference with AGA graphics at his age. Add a Sega joypad and he should be happy for hours.

mike_cc said:

Hello Amigans, how are you today?

Here's a question for you: If as a six year old, someone had given you a pre-loaded computer, full of games, educational software, demos and music, would that have been a good present or would you be too young?

:roll:

Click to expand...

I would introduce the kid to it prior to giving it, just to see if the retro style has any appeal. You might be lucky and he would think it is the best thing since cars 2, and you might be unlucky that he wants the newest game console instead, and is angry that you spent the amount that could buy that on something from yesteryear.

My kid will know retro computers from early age. god knows if he will enjoy it or not. dad has at least enough fun games to last him a lifetime.

If the nephew thinks that a Game Boy is still cool, then an A600 is going to rock...

Blimey o'reilly! Well chaps, call this intuition or the finely tuned instincts of a ninja assassin...but I am feeling the A600 might be the ideal option.

I'd like to make use of the three A500s I already have... but they need to make way, I understand.

I considered getting him a 1200 but that could be an upgrade down the line.

Ok, I'll check out what A600s are out there and see how far the budget will stretch, although you may be right and I might need to extend it a little.

By the way, it warms my cockles to see the A600 so well represented these days. Given their entry into the market all those years ago, having their thunder quickly stolen by the A1200, it's a wonderful thing that they now have their place.

rofl, nah i still hate the A600

Justin said:

rofl, nah i still hate the A600

Click to expand...

Well I've just bought one, along with a blank cf card and adapter. Went a bit click happy.

Now I just need an upgrade for the A600, what would be best (in a budget, although quite frankly that's already blown out of the water, grumble grumble).

:grouphug:

I'd think either a basic accelerator or a scan-doubler would be good upgrade choices; for your purposes, that's probably all that's really needed.

good choice on the a600 with CF card

get the 1Meg chip ram expansion for the trap door at the very least
then try find some fast ram

yep gotta be a ram upgrade 1st

When I was six, I got a ZX Spectrum for Christmas. Possibly the best present I ever received, that was. Six or seven is an ideal age to get kids into computing.

AndyLandy said:

When I was six, I got a ZX Spectrum for Christmas. Possibly the best present I ever received, that was. Six or seven is an ideal age to get kids into computing.

Click to expand...

That's encouraging to hear. He's a pretty intelligent lad and a good all rounder (likes to run around and do sporty things but he doesn't lick windows) so I think he'll get a lot out of it.

I got to play on friends' computers and consoles from an early age but I don't think I was much older than you when I got my first 128k +2 (second hand) with about 4 carrier bags of games.

I spent every waking hour on it, wore out the RF connector on the back of mum and dad's Trinitron and in dark, impatient moments, predicted flash thumb drives, many years before they hit the market!

With the wealth of software available for the A600, he's going to have even more choice than I had.

Righto, gonna ask here for an upgrade, wish me luck!

:help:

---------- Post added at 12:24 ---------- Previous post was at 11:33 ----------

Sorry for the double posting but I have a question about the CF HD. I've got a working one in my A1200, is there any reason it couldn't be transplanted into the A600? This would take the pressure off as it's already all preinstalled and I can then replace mine in due course. My concerns are:

1. The kickstart version of the A600, I don't actually know yet, until it arrives. Assuming it's the original one, could that stop workbench 3.1 or WHDLoad from working? Would a card configured for the A1200 not work because of this perhaps?
2. The AGA games on the CF card will need to go as his A600 wont run them, I could replace them with educational software.
3. Once the card + IDE adaptor is installed, will I be able to run the Amiga Explorer software (currently installed on the A1200) to xfer more educational style software over? Or can I do that on the PC with WinUAE?
4. Lastly, I cannot find any utility or productivity sofware WHDLoad packs (or individual files for that matter). Does anyone have a better idea about finding these?

:boxer:

At 4 I had an Atari 800xl. (Well my family did, but I used it the most)
At 6 I had an A500 and loved it. Was always jealous of my mates playing Super Mario, Zelda and Sonic though. Turns out they were jealous too of R-Type and Turrican 2