After having packed away 3 Amigas around March of 1998, they moved with me 3 different times but were never used in all those years. My first Amiga was a 500 which I bought around the end of 1989. I then acquired 2 more around the end of 1997 from a co-worker who was about to drop them at the local Goodwill. Those were a 1000 and a 4000/040 Desktop.
I had modded my 500 pretty heavily for the time, including a MegaChip, the 512K trapdoor clock/card, an Alfa-Data 120MB HD with an additional 2MB of RAM sidecar, a Super Denise, and a Kickstart selector which had v1.3 that came with that machine and v2.04 which I purchased. After many years of use, I recall when I packed it away, it was having problems booting. Sure enough, only the power light goes on when I turn it on. This one will require a lot of TLC to get working again, if it's even possible.
I also recently acquired another 500 from a cousin who no longer uses it in trade from some drum equipment since I no longer play. His wasn't quite as modded as my own (I was the one who convinced him to buy it back in the early 90s and I helped him mod his as well), but it still works. I may end up cobbling together one system from his and my own using the best parts. A project for another day.
I've also recently purchased from a user on AtariAge a highly modded NTSC Amiga 600, but I made a boo-boo in my haste to work with it, blowing out a few capacitors in the process by not checking that everything was connected after UPS must have given it quite a shake-up in delivering it. The capacitors need redoing anyway, so I'll end up sending this out for a complete capacitor replacement when I have more money to dedicate to it. I've only found one guy here in the US who does this as a service but he told me he's pretty backed up right now. I don't relish the cost and worry of shipping it overseas.
I've also added a highly modded 500 from the same user (it's actually a PAL 500+ board) which I've not yet unpacked. Looking forward to checking that one out when I have more time.
I'm happy to say the 1000 boots fine, but it is pretty much in the original shipped condition with no expansion at all. The Kickstart disks I had were all bad, something I'm sadly finding with a lot of the diskettes in my collection. Another kind user at AtariAge sent me a working Kickstart v1.3 diskette. I need to replace the keyboard cable which I'm hoping is as simple as attaching a new telephone handset cord to it. It looks to be the same type of cable, but I'll need to test it to be sure. I don't know if or what I'll do with this machine yet. I removed the case but holy crap there's a lot to disassemble inside this thing to get to the board!
So my main project right now is to get the 4000 up to modern standards. I've already installed the 3.1 Kickstart (it still had 3.0) and have replaced the 200MB hard drive with a CF reader which really flies. I have ordered a Gotek USB floppy emulator as well, although I know with the CF reader, that may be overkill. For the price, it's worth having, at least in my opinion. I've also ordered some more RAM (came with 6MB total - 2 chip and 4 fast) and am debating connecting an optical drive to it as well. Due to the lack of space inside this machine, it's difficult to fit all these things in there. Oh, and the HD 3.5" drive needed some work but it is now functional. I am also using a 1010 3.5 drive attached to the 23-pin connector on the rear of the machine which performs like a pro all these years later. I'm also working on connecting this via HDMI. I'd love to get the capacitors replaced on this one too, but wow, there's a lot involved in that. I know it really needs to be done though.
Looks like the retro bug has bit me and I'm looking forward to re-discovering the computer that was love-at-first-sight for me back in the late 80s and am hoping to tap this site as a resource.
I had modded my 500 pretty heavily for the time, including a MegaChip, the 512K trapdoor clock/card, an Alfa-Data 120MB HD with an additional 2MB of RAM sidecar, a Super Denise, and a Kickstart selector which had v1.3 that came with that machine and v2.04 which I purchased. After many years of use, I recall when I packed it away, it was having problems booting. Sure enough, only the power light goes on when I turn it on. This one will require a lot of TLC to get working again, if it's even possible.
I also recently acquired another 500 from a cousin who no longer uses it in trade from some drum equipment since I no longer play. His wasn't quite as modded as my own (I was the one who convinced him to buy it back in the early 90s and I helped him mod his as well), but it still works. I may end up cobbling together one system from his and my own using the best parts. A project for another day.
I've also recently purchased from a user on AtariAge a highly modded NTSC Amiga 600, but I made a boo-boo in my haste to work with it, blowing out a few capacitors in the process by not checking that everything was connected after UPS must have given it quite a shake-up in delivering it. The capacitors need redoing anyway, so I'll end up sending this out for a complete capacitor replacement when I have more money to dedicate to it. I've only found one guy here in the US who does this as a service but he told me he's pretty backed up right now. I don't relish the cost and worry of shipping it overseas.
I've also added a highly modded 500 from the same user (it's actually a PAL 500+ board) which I've not yet unpacked. Looking forward to checking that one out when I have more time.
I'm happy to say the 1000 boots fine, but it is pretty much in the original shipped condition with no expansion at all. The Kickstart disks I had were all bad, something I'm sadly finding with a lot of the diskettes in my collection. Another kind user at AtariAge sent me a working Kickstart v1.3 diskette. I need to replace the keyboard cable which I'm hoping is as simple as attaching a new telephone handset cord to it. It looks to be the same type of cable, but I'll need to test it to be sure. I don't know if or what I'll do with this machine yet. I removed the case but holy crap there's a lot to disassemble inside this thing to get to the board!
So my main project right now is to get the 4000 up to modern standards. I've already installed the 3.1 Kickstart (it still had 3.0) and have replaced the 200MB hard drive with a CF reader which really flies. I have ordered a Gotek USB floppy emulator as well, although I know with the CF reader, that may be overkill. For the price, it's worth having, at least in my opinion. I've also ordered some more RAM (came with 6MB total - 2 chip and 4 fast) and am debating connecting an optical drive to it as well. Due to the lack of space inside this machine, it's difficult to fit all these things in there. Oh, and the HD 3.5" drive needed some work but it is now functional. I am also using a 1010 3.5 drive attached to the 23-pin connector on the rear of the machine which performs like a pro all these years later. I'm also working on connecting this via HDMI. I'd love to get the capacitors replaced on this one too, but wow, there's a lot involved in that. I know it really needs to be done though.
Looks like the retro bug has bit me and I'm looking forward to re-discovering the computer that was love-at-first-sight for me back in the late 80s and am hoping to tap this site as a resource.
