Some time ago I’ve decided to start using my old Amiga again.
It was bought as a new machine in 199X, and it’s pretty much the most important computer in my life. I remember how it changed my mind on what was possible on a home computer, and it was the first machine that I’ve used to connect to the Internet. I’ve got computers before and after that, even some other Amigas (A2000 which drowned in a flooding of my basement and A1200 which I unfortunately sold), but A600 was my first true love.
Since it became obsolete I’ve stored it in very good conditions and now at first glance it looks almost as good as 20 years ago. It seemed that not only external looks are in order as after hooking it up I was greeted with the Kickstart screen and the sound of the floppy drive searching for a disk. To my own surprise I found a Workbench disk and it booted up.
It works, I thought.
Looks can be deceiving.
I forgot about that old adage and started shopping online for upgrades. I’ve bought a Compact Flash to IDE adapter, a new Kickstart ROM 3.1 since the adapter doesn’t work with 2.1 ROMs and a 1MB PCMCIA SRAM memory expansion (which becomes FAST RAM on Amigas). The other memory expansion shown below was bought in 90s and is a 1MB SLOW RAM expansion sadly without real time clock.
I’ve prepared the CF card under Windows using WinUAE and installed a Workbench 3.1 onto it. It’s quite nice btw that WinUAE allows using real physical drives on a PC as Amiga disks.
With all of those upgrades in place it was time to test my new old Amiga, once again everything worked and I’ve booted into Workbench. Unfortunately, after some time I’ve noticed some of the keys don’t work. I’ve checked the keyboard’s connector and noticed that almost all the connections at it’s end are worn out. First I’ve tried cutting it a little so the worn connections won’t be there anymore and the remaining bit will do the trick … it didn’t. The rest of the tape was covered with some kind of protective varnish so I thought if i can get it off somehow it’ll connect. It took me about 2 hours of cutting the tape by 5mm at a time and trying to scrub off the covering substance without destroying the circuits below.
The tape is now almost half it’s normal length, but the keyboard works again!
Booting back to Workbench I was sure nothing else will go wrong.
When preparing the CF card I’ve put some WHDLoad games on it. It’s a great way to avoid using diskettes, specially when you have more memory installed in your system. After some problems I’ve managed to run most of them.
Thing was the sound was completely messed up. It sounded like it was coming from a bottom of a well. I’ve tried connecting it differently to the TV but nothing worked. To top it off after some time the video got messed up to and colors started to randomly change.
I’m not happy.
I know that’s the fault’s probably in the motherboard’s capacitors and I’m planning to have them swapped with new ones as soon as possible, but it’s just kind of sad.
To be continued …
HIGHER RESOLUTION IMAGES: http://zdzieblowski.com/_/AMIGAREVIVAL/A600.zip
(includes normal pngs and "retro" gifs ;))
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I still have Amiga 4000 with 68060, Cybervision 64bit gfxcard, 72MB ram and few harddrives that total 1GB of HD space. :)
I haven't tested it in many, many years so the power supply might not work anymore. I think that those old harddrives also degrade in time.
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I really love computer nostalgia. It really reminds us of some of the great inventions that got us to where we are today.
I can't believe Commodore went out of business when it did.
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Unfortunately good tech isn't always enough to make for bad business decisions ... good examples are 3dfx and Atari ... Apple almost followed that path too ...
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Had Apple not given so many free Macs out to schools and press places they likely would have. They built up a market of people that got used to doing things the Apple way and wouldn't want to learn to do it some other way if they were not forced to. It created a loyal market. Plus, they didn't do the stupid crap that Commodore executives did.
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I miss my Amiga. I owned an Amiga 2000 and I really loved that machine. I wrote hundreds of MOD songs using MED and OctaMED. I coded some AI things, some fractal things, and played many a game. I tinkered with the OS to get the best RAM disk version of the OS going that I could.
The last I remember of my machine was my young son sticking playing cards through the cracks in the chasis like he was inserting disks like he had seen me do. I opened the case to most of a deck of cards inside. Nothing was damaged and it was an image that will always remain in my mind.
I was much like Mac fanboys when it came to my Amiga. However, I made it to that point where I needed to decide Windows or Mac. One of my artist friends went the Mac route. I was tired of driving to obscure locations to buy from a limited selection of games (I've always been a gamer) and I knew that almost any job I had would likely be on a Windows based PC. I went the Windows route. Though I still feel as though the Amiga was easily 5 years ahead of any competitor it was just bungled by the executives at Commodore who felt they needed to hold their shareholders meetings in the Bahamas. They were way ahead of Apple and IBM when the Amiga came out, they just failed miserably to capitalize on that advantage.
EDIT: I am not dismissing Linux in this process. At the time I made my decisions Linux was not an option. These days I work on Linux daily, and I also develop for Windows. I consider developing for the Mac but Apple seems interested in closing the system down more so I am thinking that is becoming harder to justify.
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Loved my Amiga500. Amazing what 'she' could do. Making music, Deluxe Paint and programming in AMOS.
Made a scanner from an dumped A3 matrix printer. Programmed steering and image calculation in AMOS. The thrill, the Eureka that gave when the first scan appeared on screen in carefully chosen 32 shades of blue. Not HAM, to comlex for that purose.
Good days, happy days...
Hope you manage to fix your A600!
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wow! now I feel a bit sad about my MSX.I had to get rid of it, but I've removed the Z80 processor and the EPROM.
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Yeah I had a Timex Sinclair 1000 which was the same as the Z80 with 2K of RAM then I got the 16K RAM add-on... eventually saved up (I was a 12 or 13) and bought a Commodore 64. :) Later bought my Amiga 2000. Then tons of PCs since then. :)
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My line-up too. Those huge blocks on TV, playing a flight sim. :-) Later C64, Amiga500 and now Linux based. But the Timex was mind blowing at the time.
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Very nice post. Hmm why don't people write the same way about girlfriends, with the same romantic nostalgia :)
I started coding 2 years ago and by learning a bit of computer history, I found out about Commodore Amiga computers, so I bought an Amiga 500 (initially wanted a 600, like yours). Amiga has taught me so much about this world, and how all this tech around us began, and I feel a bit ashamed that I have not found out about it earlier in my life :)
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Nice post! I just registered here on steemit and thought about sharing some Amiga love too :) A600 was my step up from the C64 sometimes in 1992 as well.
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Nice post! I got an A500 back in '87 and it really opened my eyes to the idea of using computers for creative purposes (Deluxe Paint, Digi-View, DSS8+, etc).
I remember the A600 being panned when it first came out, with Commodore defending it mostly as a cost-saving measure. In retrospect, the A600 was somewhat ahead of its time - if there were more devices available for PCMCIA at launch time, it could have been a worthy precursor to USB as an all-purpose interface. The A600 would have been a powerhouse.
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