Tygerboi
New member
Hiya everyone!
I recently discovered AmiBay whilst performing various Amiga-related Google searches, and have browsed particular threads here and there, so decided that it was time to actually join the community on here, as it makes interaction possible. So anyway, to introduce myself:
My name is Geoff, and I live in a village just outside of Lincoln, UK. My first experience of computerised technology occurred in 1982 when I was about five years old. My older brother and I were given Nintendo "Game and Watch" handheld devices for Christmas ('Manhole' and 'Fire'), which proved to be by far the family favourites in our collection, which ultimately included 'Mario's Cement Factory', and then the duel/split-screen games 'Oil Panic', 'Donkey Kong II' and 'Mario Bros' (before they became plumbers, lol). Unfortunately, most of these fell by the wayside back in the 80's (we had two replacements of 'Fire' due to them getting damaged), but I do still have Manhole and Mario's Cement Factory. I would love to pick up 'Fire' again, if I could get it at anything approaching a sensible price. Or maybe some modern incarnation that includes it along with the other aforementioned games.
In 1983 my bro was given a rubber-keyed ZX Spectrum 48K ("Speccy"), which was revolutionary (for us) because it was an actual computer, and there were hundreds of cheaply-available games with multi-colour graphics, and better sound than the G&W devices could ever manage. This became our sole gaming platform for the next six years and was very well used - and well battered when we got frustrated with games! Fortunately, it was very robust.
By 1989 the Speccy was pretty much dead and had been eclipsed by 16-bit computers. My bro wanted a 'serious' computer for his secondary school work, so Christmas that year brought him an Amstrad PCW8256 with a green mono screen, 3-inch disks and a daisy-wheel printer, and me an Atari 520STFM. I loved the ST for gaming (I never liked the hideous garish green of the GEM Desktop, or "TOS" as the acronym for the operating system) as the graphics and sound utterly eclipsed the Speccy. However, during the course of the following year, I discovered that all my school friends had Commodore Amiga 500s, and I was almost the only person that had an ST (apart from my music teacher, who used a 1040STE for Midi sequencing), and I was being strongly encouraged to trade in the ST for an Amiga.
So that's exactly what I did in 1991 to become, at the tender age of 14, the proud owner of an Amiga 500 Plus (Cartoon Classics Pack) with a built-in Kickstart switcher for games backward-compatibility. The games that I had played on the ST (Space Harrier, Bomb Jack. Rainbow Islands, Lemmings and a few others) were all so much better on the Amiga, the bundled 'Bart vs The Space Mutants' games was fab, and I could also copy games from my friends. Speedball 2 became an instant addiction, along with Lemmings 1/2, Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, Turrican II and so many others. And Workbench 2.04 was much more appealing to use than the insipid green of the Atari ST, and even the comparatively pleasant blue of WB3.1, which I never really used much because why would I when WB2.04 was so much better in every way? Deluxe Paint III was also great fun to use.
The release of the A1200 saw me trade in my 500+ Cartoon Classics Pack and a few of the extra games I'd bought, at the shop where I'd originally bought it, in what was effectively a straight swap for an A1200 Desktop Dynamite Pack. The bundled games weren't up to much, but I didn't care as I already had a large library. And now I had the cutting edge of Amiga technology (for home users) - a 32-bit computer with AGA graphics, and a word processor for me to do my homework. I had a software Kickstart switcher for the older/badly-written games, but also access to the high-colour versions of the new game releases (something of a mixed bag, to start with, as it turned out, but hey ho). Workbench 3.0 was better still to use than its predecessor, as was DPaint IV AGA. I absolutely loved this Amiga, and became very proficient with Workbench config, Shell commands, etc - all of which I have now completely forgotten, after not having those skills for about 25 years. It was definitely responsible for igniting my interest in the more techie side of computing, as well as just playing games.
By 1995 I was at college, Commodore had collapsed, and the Amiga platform appeared to be dead in the water. I was encouraged by my bro to sell my Amiga (a decision I now deeply regret) to get my first PC (a 486SX33 with 4MB RAM and a 250MB hard drive - undeniably technically better than the A1200, except for the lack of sound), as that was the way forward, particularly as I was doing a Computer Studies course at college, and all the computers there were PCs with MS Office. The existence of a pirate copy of Doom on the college computers definitely helped to sway my decision. Shortly thereafter, I picked up a "Multimedia Upgrade Pack" to get CD drive and Sound Blaster 16 card, and then Doom really had me hooked. My Amiga days were well and truly over...
...Until about 2004, when I was searching emulation web sites looking for a decent Windows-based Speccy emulator (funnily enough, the one I settled on was called "ZX Spectrum Emulator") and stumbled across WinUAE, so downloaded that as well, and also a few ADF games. Further searching revealed two "Amiga Emulation CDs" in ISO format - "Lazarus Amiga Decade" and "Mark's Amiga Project v3". They were both reasonably comprehensive (for the time) collections of ADF games, demos, etc, but the licensing was dubious, and the Lazarus one had various games with viruses in the ADFs. Not a problem since I was using WinUAE, but far from ideal (I have since deleted all of these and downloaded WHDLoad versions). Mark's CD was much better, and cleaner, and had some hard drive software, including WHDLoad 16.7, but unfortunately, whoever Mark was, his life must have taken him away from any further development of this project in 2006 because no newer versions are available.
However, this was enough to persuade me to try and obtain an actual Amiga 1200 again. Somewhere around 2006/2007 I bought from eBay a complete, boxed Magic Pack that was in very good condition. Unfortunately, I only had it connected up for long enough to ensure that it turned on and booted into Workbench (it had a 180MB IDE hard drive) before boxing it up again because I unexpectedly needed the room it was in to accommodate a new housemate. It went into cupboard storage, where it remained (except for relocation during a house move) until December 2023, when I was inspired to excavate it and get it going again after having discovered the online Amiga community, and also joining the "Amiga 4Ever" Facebook group.
Having tried and failed to get it working with my 52" Sony Bravia TV via the RF cable, I invested in an RGB-Scart-HDMI converter setup, and this time the TV and A1200 were happy to work together, and I got the purple Kickstart 3.1 boot screen in crystal clear, flicker-free 1920x1080. The hard drive turned out to be virtually empty, other than WB of course, but it did have an HD install from the floppy disk version of Robocod AGA (that had come with the Magic Pack when I'd bought it) so I was finally able to play on a genuine Amiga for the first time in 27 years! Apart from being a little dark, the graphics looked fab on the TV. Connecting it to the second HDMI port on my 24" 1080p PC monitor eliminated that issue. The A1200 itself had a pretty yellowed keyboard, but was otherwise in very good physical condition, and very clean internally.
I have, within the last couple of months, locally sold this A1200 via a Facebook sale site (I kept the Magic Pack box and software) as I'd been lucky enough to land a good deal on a mint-condition Commodore A1200 on eBay that had a 4GB CF hard drive, a replacement A1200.net keyboard, no yellowing of the case, and also an external Roctec floppy disk drive. The seller had also thrown a few unannounced bonus extras into the box (for no extra charge), the most notable of which was a similarly-perfect-condition (with original keyboard) Amiga 600! It too has a 4GB CF hard drive, and also a GoTek internal drive (the original floppy drive was also supplied in the box), a 1MB RAM-and-RTC expansion port upgrade, and an internal 5.5MB RAM upgrade. Both machines had been updated with Kickstart 3.1 ROMs and Workbench 3.1 installed. As you can imagine, I was overjoyed. For a total spend that came to slightly less than the RRP of an A1200 in the 90's, I am now the proud owner of two virtually-perfect-condition, non-retrobrited, possibly-recapped, fully functional Amigas! I have also recently bought a TF1260 'LC' with MMU (no FPU) and 128MB RAM for my A1200, and will very soon be updating both Amigas to OS3.2.2 (inc ROMs). I am now in the process of regaining my Workbench proficiency, and look forwards to being able to play WHDLoad games, DPaint, mods, etc, on my A1200. My youngest daughter (13) has expressed an interest in doing the same on the A600, as I managed to get her interested in Amigas when we attended the Kickstart 02 expo a few months ago.
Anyway, if you've made it this far, thank you muchly for reading!
Geoff
I recently discovered AmiBay whilst performing various Amiga-related Google searches, and have browsed particular threads here and there, so decided that it was time to actually join the community on here, as it makes interaction possible. So anyway, to introduce myself:
My name is Geoff, and I live in a village just outside of Lincoln, UK. My first experience of computerised technology occurred in 1982 when I was about five years old. My older brother and I were given Nintendo "Game and Watch" handheld devices for Christmas ('Manhole' and 'Fire'), which proved to be by far the family favourites in our collection, which ultimately included 'Mario's Cement Factory', and then the duel/split-screen games 'Oil Panic', 'Donkey Kong II' and 'Mario Bros' (before they became plumbers, lol). Unfortunately, most of these fell by the wayside back in the 80's (we had two replacements of 'Fire' due to them getting damaged), but I do still have Manhole and Mario's Cement Factory. I would love to pick up 'Fire' again, if I could get it at anything approaching a sensible price. Or maybe some modern incarnation that includes it along with the other aforementioned games.
In 1983 my bro was given a rubber-keyed ZX Spectrum 48K ("Speccy"), which was revolutionary (for us) because it was an actual computer, and there were hundreds of cheaply-available games with multi-colour graphics, and better sound than the G&W devices could ever manage. This became our sole gaming platform for the next six years and was very well used - and well battered when we got frustrated with games! Fortunately, it was very robust.
By 1989 the Speccy was pretty much dead and had been eclipsed by 16-bit computers. My bro wanted a 'serious' computer for his secondary school work, so Christmas that year brought him an Amstrad PCW8256 with a green mono screen, 3-inch disks and a daisy-wheel printer, and me an Atari 520STFM. I loved the ST for gaming (I never liked the hideous garish green of the GEM Desktop, or "TOS" as the acronym for the operating system) as the graphics and sound utterly eclipsed the Speccy. However, during the course of the following year, I discovered that all my school friends had Commodore Amiga 500s, and I was almost the only person that had an ST (apart from my music teacher, who used a 1040STE for Midi sequencing), and I was being strongly encouraged to trade in the ST for an Amiga.
So that's exactly what I did in 1991 to become, at the tender age of 14, the proud owner of an Amiga 500 Plus (Cartoon Classics Pack) with a built-in Kickstart switcher for games backward-compatibility. The games that I had played on the ST (Space Harrier, Bomb Jack. Rainbow Islands, Lemmings and a few others) were all so much better on the Amiga, the bundled 'Bart vs The Space Mutants' games was fab, and I could also copy games from my friends. Speedball 2 became an instant addiction, along with Lemmings 1/2, Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, Turrican II and so many others. And Workbench 2.04 was much more appealing to use than the insipid green of the Atari ST, and even the comparatively pleasant blue of WB3.1, which I never really used much because why would I when WB2.04 was so much better in every way? Deluxe Paint III was also great fun to use.
The release of the A1200 saw me trade in my 500+ Cartoon Classics Pack and a few of the extra games I'd bought, at the shop where I'd originally bought it, in what was effectively a straight swap for an A1200 Desktop Dynamite Pack. The bundled games weren't up to much, but I didn't care as I already had a large library. And now I had the cutting edge of Amiga technology (for home users) - a 32-bit computer with AGA graphics, and a word processor for me to do my homework. I had a software Kickstart switcher for the older/badly-written games, but also access to the high-colour versions of the new game releases (something of a mixed bag, to start with, as it turned out, but hey ho). Workbench 3.0 was better still to use than its predecessor, as was DPaint IV AGA. I absolutely loved this Amiga, and became very proficient with Workbench config, Shell commands, etc - all of which I have now completely forgotten, after not having those skills for about 25 years. It was definitely responsible for igniting my interest in the more techie side of computing, as well as just playing games.
By 1995 I was at college, Commodore had collapsed, and the Amiga platform appeared to be dead in the water. I was encouraged by my bro to sell my Amiga (a decision I now deeply regret) to get my first PC (a 486SX33 with 4MB RAM and a 250MB hard drive - undeniably technically better than the A1200, except for the lack of sound), as that was the way forward, particularly as I was doing a Computer Studies course at college, and all the computers there were PCs with MS Office. The existence of a pirate copy of Doom on the college computers definitely helped to sway my decision. Shortly thereafter, I picked up a "Multimedia Upgrade Pack" to get CD drive and Sound Blaster 16 card, and then Doom really had me hooked. My Amiga days were well and truly over...
...Until about 2004, when I was searching emulation web sites looking for a decent Windows-based Speccy emulator (funnily enough, the one I settled on was called "ZX Spectrum Emulator") and stumbled across WinUAE, so downloaded that as well, and also a few ADF games. Further searching revealed two "Amiga Emulation CDs" in ISO format - "Lazarus Amiga Decade" and "Mark's Amiga Project v3". They were both reasonably comprehensive (for the time) collections of ADF games, demos, etc, but the licensing was dubious, and the Lazarus one had various games with viruses in the ADFs. Not a problem since I was using WinUAE, but far from ideal (I have since deleted all of these and downloaded WHDLoad versions). Mark's CD was much better, and cleaner, and had some hard drive software, including WHDLoad 16.7, but unfortunately, whoever Mark was, his life must have taken him away from any further development of this project in 2006 because no newer versions are available.
However, this was enough to persuade me to try and obtain an actual Amiga 1200 again. Somewhere around 2006/2007 I bought from eBay a complete, boxed Magic Pack that was in very good condition. Unfortunately, I only had it connected up for long enough to ensure that it turned on and booted into Workbench (it had a 180MB IDE hard drive) before boxing it up again because I unexpectedly needed the room it was in to accommodate a new housemate. It went into cupboard storage, where it remained (except for relocation during a house move) until December 2023, when I was inspired to excavate it and get it going again after having discovered the online Amiga community, and also joining the "Amiga 4Ever" Facebook group.
Having tried and failed to get it working with my 52" Sony Bravia TV via the RF cable, I invested in an RGB-Scart-HDMI converter setup, and this time the TV and A1200 were happy to work together, and I got the purple Kickstart 3.1 boot screen in crystal clear, flicker-free 1920x1080. The hard drive turned out to be virtually empty, other than WB of course, but it did have an HD install from the floppy disk version of Robocod AGA (that had come with the Magic Pack when I'd bought it) so I was finally able to play on a genuine Amiga for the first time in 27 years! Apart from being a little dark, the graphics looked fab on the TV. Connecting it to the second HDMI port on my 24" 1080p PC monitor eliminated that issue. The A1200 itself had a pretty yellowed keyboard, but was otherwise in very good physical condition, and very clean internally.
I have, within the last couple of months, locally sold this A1200 via a Facebook sale site (I kept the Magic Pack box and software) as I'd been lucky enough to land a good deal on a mint-condition Commodore A1200 on eBay that had a 4GB CF hard drive, a replacement A1200.net keyboard, no yellowing of the case, and also an external Roctec floppy disk drive. The seller had also thrown a few unannounced bonus extras into the box (for no extra charge), the most notable of which was a similarly-perfect-condition (with original keyboard) Amiga 600! It too has a 4GB CF hard drive, and also a GoTek internal drive (the original floppy drive was also supplied in the box), a 1MB RAM-and-RTC expansion port upgrade, and an internal 5.5MB RAM upgrade. Both machines had been updated with Kickstart 3.1 ROMs and Workbench 3.1 installed. As you can imagine, I was overjoyed. For a total spend that came to slightly less than the RRP of an A1200 in the 90's, I am now the proud owner of two virtually-perfect-condition, non-retrobrited, possibly-recapped, fully functional Amigas! I have also recently bought a TF1260 'LC' with MMU (no FPU) and 128MB RAM for my A1200, and will very soon be updating both Amigas to OS3.2.2 (inc ROMs). I am now in the process of regaining my Workbench proficiency, and look forwards to being able to play WHDLoad games, DPaint, mods, etc, on my A1200. My youngest daughter (13) has expressed an interest in doing the same on the A600, as I managed to get her interested in Amigas when we attended the Kickstart 02 expo a few months ago.
Anyway, if you've made it this far, thank you muchly for reading!
Geoff
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