Hi All,
My name is Henry and I have been using Amigas since about 1988 when I got my 512k 500. Upgraded it to 1 meg within about a week. Got a 2000HD a year or so later. I started a part time BBS called Blue Moon in 1990 that went full time once I got a second phone line. Got a 25mhz A3000 in 1991 and started doing semi-serious GFX work. Got an A4000/040 in 1992 and a second one about a year later. A WarpEngine 4040 went in one 4000 and a CS '060 and Cybervision went in the other. I slapped one of the 3640's in the 3000. In '95 I got an A4000T with a CSPPC/060, CVPPC and 15k Raptor drive. What a great machine! between 1990 and 1994 or so the BBS grew to 20 phone lines and one of the 4000's was stuffed with two A2232 7 port serial boards and a Comports 8 serial board and had 5 SCSI seven disc CD changers filled with PD CDs for downloading in addition to many gigs of HD downloadables. In 1995 I started a local ISP business that connected the BBS to the internet and added 30 more phone lines. As the internet caught on the BBS activity slowed more and more until I reluctantly closed the BBS in 2000. In 2000 I built my first liquid cooled PC with a fast GFX card and as result I used the Amigas less and less until they were finally packed away in storage. A good friend ("Opus") gave me his old A500 and A1200 as he had gone PC a few years before. I still have all my Amigas save for the 2000 HD, which I had foolishly left in the damp basement and it rusted away to nothingness.
I installed WinUAE on my main workstation back sometime in the 'oughts so I could play some old games like Populous and Millennium 2.2 I still have several instances of WinUAE installed. A couple of years ago I decided to drag out the Amigas to see if I could get a 4000 working. A few years ago I decided to see if I could get one of the 4000's running again. I knew it would probably need a recap so I was prepared for that. One of the 4000D's looked mostly ok. The hated Varta had barfed, but not too badly. That was the first thing I took care of. I scrubbed the battery area with cider vinegar and then IPA until it looked as good as it would get. The Farta had only roached one cap and none of the ICs so I replaced the cap from my own stock as the recap kit hadn't arrived yet. I cleaned the rest of the motherboard and reseated the WarpEngine, connected an old 1080 monitor, held my breath and fired it up without any drives connected. Nothing happened aside from the power LED lighting, completely black screen, no video signal. I was bummed out, but I wasn't going to give up that easy. I reseated all the socketed chips and the backplane daughterboard. Still nothing. I pulled the backplane out of the other 4000 as it looked to be in better shape and swapped it in. I didn't know if the 1080 monitor still worked or not and since I had a virtually new A2320 Amber board and VGA monitors up the wazoo I decided to try it. I even left the 1080 connected. Still nothing. It was very frustrating. A minute later I turned back to the 4000 and there staring me in the face was the purple 3.0 KS screen on BOTH monitors! WOW! I still don't know why it hadn't started in the first place, but it was running and once I connected up one of my numerous Amiga hard drives it booted right up with no problem. I was amazed. I managed to find a keyboard that worked 98% or so and an Amiga mouse that wasn't too stuttery and I'll be darned if the relic didn't work just fine. I fitted a coin cell 2032 battery holder to it to get the clock back. Over the next few weeks I ordered a set of DiagROMs and a CF to IDE adapter and to my utter amazement all but one of my Amiga hard drives still worked, both IDE and SCSI. I backed them all up to CF cards. I have my complete BBS from 2000! The recap kit came, but I haven't needed to replace any more than the one cap so far. Even the sound works 100%. I upgraded the KS ROMs to 3.2 and the old girl just purrs along.
Since some games just won't work well on a 4000 I decided to see if Opus' old 1200 would work. I disassembled and cleaned it, but none of the three 500/1200 power supplies would work. I cut the cable off of the worst looking of the three and cobbled together a unit using a peecee PS with a breakout board that works great. It took some fiddling, but I did manage to get the 1200 running and I put a CF to 44 pin IDE adapter in it and replaced the keyboard membrane to make it a fully functioning unit again. I built an 8 GB Amiga CF card games installation in WinUAE and built an adjustable joystick rapid fire adapter board for it and it's a great games machine. It also has a DKB 1202 8 meg board with math-co so its acceptably quick.
Ok, I know I wrote a bit of a book, but it only scratches the surface of my Amiga travels. I could literally write a book about it! I have to quit because wife.device has dinner ready
Best,
Henry
My name is Henry and I have been using Amigas since about 1988 when I got my 512k 500. Upgraded it to 1 meg within about a week. Got a 2000HD a year or so later. I started a part time BBS called Blue Moon in 1990 that went full time once I got a second phone line. Got a 25mhz A3000 in 1991 and started doing semi-serious GFX work. Got an A4000/040 in 1992 and a second one about a year later. A WarpEngine 4040 went in one 4000 and a CS '060 and Cybervision went in the other. I slapped one of the 3640's in the 3000. In '95 I got an A4000T with a CSPPC/060, CVPPC and 15k Raptor drive. What a great machine! between 1990 and 1994 or so the BBS grew to 20 phone lines and one of the 4000's was stuffed with two A2232 7 port serial boards and a Comports 8 serial board and had 5 SCSI seven disc CD changers filled with PD CDs for downloading in addition to many gigs of HD downloadables. In 1995 I started a local ISP business that connected the BBS to the internet and added 30 more phone lines. As the internet caught on the BBS activity slowed more and more until I reluctantly closed the BBS in 2000. In 2000 I built my first liquid cooled PC with a fast GFX card and as result I used the Amigas less and less until they were finally packed away in storage. A good friend ("Opus") gave me his old A500 and A1200 as he had gone PC a few years before. I still have all my Amigas save for the 2000 HD, which I had foolishly left in the damp basement and it rusted away to nothingness.
I installed WinUAE on my main workstation back sometime in the 'oughts so I could play some old games like Populous and Millennium 2.2 I still have several instances of WinUAE installed. A couple of years ago I decided to drag out the Amigas to see if I could get a 4000 working. A few years ago I decided to see if I could get one of the 4000's running again. I knew it would probably need a recap so I was prepared for that. One of the 4000D's looked mostly ok. The hated Varta had barfed, but not too badly. That was the first thing I took care of. I scrubbed the battery area with cider vinegar and then IPA until it looked as good as it would get. The Farta had only roached one cap and none of the ICs so I replaced the cap from my own stock as the recap kit hadn't arrived yet. I cleaned the rest of the motherboard and reseated the WarpEngine, connected an old 1080 monitor, held my breath and fired it up without any drives connected. Nothing happened aside from the power LED lighting, completely black screen, no video signal. I was bummed out, but I wasn't going to give up that easy. I reseated all the socketed chips and the backplane daughterboard. Still nothing. I pulled the backplane out of the other 4000 as it looked to be in better shape and swapped it in. I didn't know if the 1080 monitor still worked or not and since I had a virtually new A2320 Amber board and VGA monitors up the wazoo I decided to try it. I even left the 1080 connected. Still nothing. It was very frustrating. A minute later I turned back to the 4000 and there staring me in the face was the purple 3.0 KS screen on BOTH monitors! WOW! I still don't know why it hadn't started in the first place, but it was running and once I connected up one of my numerous Amiga hard drives it booted right up with no problem. I was amazed. I managed to find a keyboard that worked 98% or so and an Amiga mouse that wasn't too stuttery and I'll be darned if the relic didn't work just fine. I fitted a coin cell 2032 battery holder to it to get the clock back. Over the next few weeks I ordered a set of DiagROMs and a CF to IDE adapter and to my utter amazement all but one of my Amiga hard drives still worked, both IDE and SCSI. I backed them all up to CF cards. I have my complete BBS from 2000! The recap kit came, but I haven't needed to replace any more than the one cap so far. Even the sound works 100%. I upgraded the KS ROMs to 3.2 and the old girl just purrs along.
Since some games just won't work well on a 4000 I decided to see if Opus' old 1200 would work. I disassembled and cleaned it, but none of the three 500/1200 power supplies would work. I cut the cable off of the worst looking of the three and cobbled together a unit using a peecee PS with a breakout board that works great. It took some fiddling, but I did manage to get the 1200 running and I put a CF to 44 pin IDE adapter in it and replaced the keyboard membrane to make it a fully functioning unit again. I built an 8 GB Amiga CF card games installation in WinUAE and built an adjustable joystick rapid fire adapter board for it and it's a great games machine. It also has a DKB 1202 8 meg board with math-co so its acceptably quick.
Ok, I know I wrote a bit of a book, but it only scratches the surface of my Amiga travels. I could literally write a book about it! I have to quit because wife.device has dinner ready
Best,
Henry
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