Amiga DOWNGRADING Frenzy?

[YouKnowWho]

I've developed a new obsession...stock or near-stock Amiga.

I'm talking Amiga 500+ with standard CPU and just some storage and maybe memory.
I'm talking Amiga 1200 with just a CF card and 4MB fast RAM. Or even a 2GB HDD...if you can find one.

Just clean cases, re-cap, cleaned keycaps, everything original like back in the day. So pure. So lovely. And no 68060 100Mhz, PPC, RTG being dreamed about at all. Back-to-basics. It is so freeing to leave the "Maximum-Overdrive" wing of the Amiga museum and discover the "I'm just a kid with no upgrade budget" area. I've even started to treat yellowing as a mark of time worthy of preserving. And oh...the money savings, just unbelievable!

UNDERRATED: Basic Amiga configurations.

Anyone rocking and rolling near-stock like it is 1994? Or 1991? Or...1987?

 

[Xanxi]

I have also followed the path of a bit of downgrading lately, but only for smaller Amiga and not fully stock to still be useful.

- A600 with ROM 2.05 and 2MC chip, RTC, 8 MB fast and RGB2HDMI with 6 GB Microdrive : serves the purpose of helping me repair and test floppy drives (external or internal with external adapters) and maybe launch a game or test a program on 68000 : to stay problem free the A600 needs to be as simple as possible, otherwise you get much trouble.
- A500 Plus, my orginal computer with ROM 2.05 as i have misplaced my old 2.04 chip, once with a 68020, now lowered to Spitfire with 68010, 2MB Chip (with 1MB provided by the KCS PowerPC card), 8MB Fast, A570 and AMax II with external Mac drive. If i had all this in the 90's i would have been fully satisfied. I only lack the proper SCSI adapter for the A570 to be able at last to have a working harddrive for the KCS PowerPC and the AMax.

Lower than this, i don't have enough room to have any use for it.

 

[YouKnowWho]

Yes, a bit of quality of life boost for sure.

My goodness - A500 Plus with an A570 and Spitfire - that is FANCY! Basic, and yet...wow. Can we see what that looks like please? How is the colour match between the A500+ and A570? C= logo on the A570 and everything? I would have surely bought one of those from Software Hut on clearout if I was lucky enough to have an Amiga 500+ back then. Very nice.

 

[Amiga Forever]

Amiga 600 is Amazing because it is Small and Cute. You can move round so easily as not heavy

Just imaging if there ever been Amiga 600 Laptop(yes, I know it would be super expensive but it would be coolest to owned it )

 

[HomeLate]

Yes, I have a stock Amiga 500 which I occasionally use with either an A590 or an A570. The only upgrade it had, is a memory upgrade to 1Mb. There's also a Vortex AtOnce Plus in there which dislikes accelerators and '68k-socket'-memory upgrades.

 

[YouKnowWho]

@HomeLate...it seems like your most logical solution is to downgrade away from that Vortex.

It would not be terrible to have 2MB of Fast in either of those 500 side devices. I must admit, since @Xanxi mentioned an A570 I can't get it out of my mind. Suddenly my downgrading frenzy is bringing up temptations I must resist. Remember YouKnowWhat, you rarely if ever load up a CD...you don't need a beautiful sleek A570 that turns a 500 into a CDTV as a bonus. Must resist!

@Amiga Forever - If there ever was a case for a MISTer DE-10 Nano use, it is to make a retro FPGA laptop, which of course would also give us an Amiga laptop. There is incredible potential here for a product. And in my view, the styling MUST be that of 20 years back boxy type of laptop with a 4:3 LCD, which leaves plenty of room to work with. With the DE-10 Nano being such a small and efficient device already, this thing could have a battery that lasts days.

 

[Adonay]

I did the opposite have had everything from 2x Blizzard ppc, blizzard 1230/1240/1260 Apollo1260 Mediator 1200 and sold it all over the years to go back to a blizz 1220 and an Aca 1230 after that . I could never get used to the chipmem limitation in WB so ended up not using the 1200 computers. Bit the bullet and got an Apollo Icedrake and now a Pistorm 32 . I am finally enjoying the Amiga 1200 life again the Pi-storm system being my favorite system.

I will never try to use an Amiga without RTG ever again . Also Winuae is ok but not the first temptation when i turn on my PC

 

[HomeLate]

@YouKnowWho I have that annoying habit of collecting Bridgeboards I have to admit, this Vortex is terrible slow and it's only useful running old office apps like WordPerfect 5.0 or Lotus 123. I recently build a Vortex AtOnce 386SX replica to use in the Atari ST-line. That one is much more usefull.

Yes, find an A570. It's not useful but cool to own

 

[HomeLate]

I did the opposite have had everything from 2x Blizzard ppc, blizzard 1230/1240/1260 Apollo1260 Mediator 1200 and sold it all over the years to go back to a blizz 1220 and an Aca 1230 after that . I could never get used to the chipmem limitation in WB so ended up not using the 1200 computers. Bit the bullet and got an Apollo Icedrake and now a Pistorm 32 . I am finally enjoying the Amiga 1200 life again the Pi-storm system being my favorite system.

I will never try to use an Amiga without RTG ever again . Also Winuae is ok but not the first temptation when i turn on my PC

My Pistormed A1200 is my daily driver nowadays. I sold my Amiga 4000 this year and I do not regret it (regret comes usually later). I also have a Vamperized A1200 (V2) which I like to use a lot.

 

[Adonay]

My Pistormed A1200 is my daily driver nowadays. I sold my Amiga 4000 this year and I do not regret it (regret comes usually later). I also have a Vamperized A1200 (V2) which I like to use a lot.

I am finally having fun with the Amiga's again . Only issue i have now is peripherals like joysticks and mice for the non vampire Amiga. Also bought a Dell (NEW) screen that supports 15khz . I wish i could enjoy the purist view of an expanded Amiga but i think my expectations are higher these day then they were in 1995

 

[YouKnowWho]

@HomeLate - I solved that Bridgeboard temptation by remembering that to get a decent looking experience I'll need a VGA card, which means monitor source switching anyway. At that point I may as well just use a KVM switch Amiga-to-PS/2 keyboard adapter and deploy a proper PC experience on an SBC inside a bigbox Amiga. I'm just finalizing a setup of an Advantech PCA-6011 SBC card based on LGA 775 Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM and Intel GMA X4500 (FYI - you can get TWO of these for going prices of one ATonce!). I believe that type of board in the ISA slot will put the nail in the coffin of every Bridgboard available out there. I'm perfectly OK that it autoboots in the backgroud with the Amiga on powerup too, no icon clicking needed.

Hey quit tempting with that A570. It is indeed very cool. Used to suck because of expansion limitations once you had it on the side, but now that we have something easy and sweet like a Spitfire to give us 8MB Fast and internal IDE, the A570 is disgustingly awesome add-on in a 500. So...stop tempting me!

FYI...it's much easier for me to ignore your tempting A570 words now that you brought PiStorm 1200 and Vampire 1200 into the discussion. Just one word of my personal opinion for both...YUK!

@Adonay - Of what ChipRAM limitations do you speak? I always wondered why I'm even upgrading a 500+ to 2MB chip, if it never gets used. What appliations demand more than 1MB? I mean...don't get me wrong, with the 500+ it is so easy and relatively cheap that it feels almost like an obligation to get that extra 1MB of chip in there. But what NEEDs more than 2MB of chip, ever? Or for that matter more than 1MB of chip? Even the Video Toaster doesn't need more than 1MB on the 2000. What applications cause you to bounce against the 2MB limitations? Is there no FastRAM in these machines?

 

[miggymad]

Unexpanded Amiga's ???

How very ... boring

 

[Adonay]

@Adonay - Of what ChipRAM limitations do you speak? I always wondered why I'm even upgrading a 500+ to 2MB chip, if it never gets used. What appliations demand more than 1MB? I mean...don't get me wrong, with the 500+ it is so easy and relatively cheap that it feels almost like an obligation to get that extra 1MB of chip in there. But what NEEDs more than 2MB of chip, ever? Or for that matter more than 1MB of chip? Even the Video Toaster doesn't need more than 1MB on the 2000. What applications cause you to bounce against the 2MB limitations? Is there no FastRAM in these machines?

Well mostly for high res workbench and browser stuff thing is if i use the Amiga i like a more modern look and feel than the std grey WB . . 2 meg chip disappear really quick with more than 16colours on screen . Also need to drop the screen-mode just to run a whdload game from the workbench. If all i did was booting WB off floppies and playing floppy games the 2 meg chip would be fine

 

[YouKnowWho]

Minimalism is always in style @miggymad.

@Adonay - understood. Thank you for explanation. I guess since I stay 800x600 max, and don't browse on it, I haven't bumped into the more modern demands. EDIT: You know...this makes me wonder if newer software coding is becoming more bloated and resource heavy. The skill of lean and mean efficient code is perhaps getting lost as programmers are not bound by hardware limitations. There was beauty to the art of achieving much with little. That's the end era Amiga lived in.

 

[miggymad]

@YouKnowWho

When it comes to Amiga's in my house , it's always a big no no not to have an accelerator card shoved in the trapdoor.

 

[MikeyBad]

You mean like this little beauty. A completely stock Amiga 2000HD (Rev 6.2 Motherboard) with WB 1.3 ... She had the battery pulled and is about to get a re-cap and a CR2032/diode battery fix .... has its original Quantum drive (working) , floppy (tested/working), keyboard (working), tank mouse (working) and the 1080 Monitor as you can see. One owner machine (Me!) .... tho she might come up for sale in the future as I have 6 other Amigas getting the same treatment ...

 

[Boing-ball]

Sorry. So used to a workbench with an RTG output these days. Just can’t used to going back to the standard low res desktop now…. ewwwww!

 

[YouKnowWho]

That's it! @miggymad @Boing-ball - I'm clicking REPORT on your comments!

Can't live without accelerators and RTG? Have you forgotten why we love the Amiga? It's easy to love the super-models.

@MikeyBad - YES! Hey, a little bit of fast RAM no one will frown. But come on! Like with vintage cars, can't beat all-original condition!

EDIT: The A2091 in the 2000HD is ready for 2MB, which is a nice boost. I bought some of these chips for mine, but they didn't end up working for some reason, so still just 1MB.

 

[Xanxi]

When downgrading, everything will seem much faster by not using OS 3.x.
OS 2.1 i extremely efficient and fast on a 68000 and has some modern features such as localization and dosdrivers instead of crude mountlists. Only it has no datatypes.

 

[YouKnowWho]

What can I say!