Commodore Amiga owners thread!

It's a Philips monitor and it looks like it comes with what I think is some kind of breakout box thing which If I recall a very old LGR video allows it to be used on different monitors?

Ehhhh it's a lot of money for something I'm not sure I am interested in! Also no guarantee it works and I won't be able to troubleshoot and fix it like I would an old PC!

https://www.gumtree.com/p/desktop-workstation-pcs/for-sale-amiga-commodore-a500/1359412311

I was also thinking of getting a monitor this Black Friday.
 
That is REALLY tidy. The Philips monitors were also pretty damn good from memory

If is guaranteed working it's a great little setup and worth more than that

The little break out box to the left of the Amiga itself in photo? That is the RF modulator so you can play like a peasant on a TV (like me lol)
 
almoststew1990 said:
I'm going to arrange to view it tomorrow. When I turn it on it should just display the kick start floppy disk image right? Unless I've put a floppy in. I've never used one before.
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Yeah, test that it'll display the screen and load Deluxe paint or a word processor. You could use the WP to check all the keys on the keyboard work, individual keys can fail and need the membrane replacing (pita).

I don't see a mouse, so you'll probably want to test the tablet works too. Tbh the seller should be trying to demonstrate the unit works, otherwise you can haggle the price down.

Generally nothing here is unfixable, but it can be a pain trying to source certain bits. Imo the monitor is worth the best part of £100, if it works, so it may not be a total loss if other parts are not 100% working.
 
Well, it's done.

Ixtf8ql.jpg

The chap demod it a bit and it seems to work fine. The floppy drive was working fine too. It comes with a mouse, a mouse house too which I find hilarious. I powered it on when I got home to check I hadn't killed it in the car ride home, and now I think I'm either going to just use it or take it apart and clean it (it's been in the loft for 15 years.. eek).

uqXDLT6.jpg

Euta3Ao.jpg

GzyBQZ2.jpg

Looking forward to trying Paint Deluxe II with that tablet thing!
 
Yeah I checked that - no battery on the main board. It did have a 512k expansion but it doesn't seem to have a battery (although it does have a on off switch...?)

This afternoon I took it all apart and gave it a good clean. It wasn't so bad inside except for the keyboard. I haven't had computer parts in the shower for a long time! It does look a bit better but it wasn't that bad to begin with.

I then managed to crack the spacebar trying to take it off to clean the keyboard, which is pretty noticeable. Ah well, I am more of a user than a collector. There doesn't seem to be spares on eBay either - but blimey my £100 purchase was pretty good considering the prices for just the base units!

The main issue it has is that the mouse will only scroll up and down, not side to side. Even if I manually move the roller thing inside the mouse. I tried my serial mouse as it is the same 9 pin connector but that didn't work at all. I nee to somehow work out if it is the mouse or the system...
 
You can pick up an amiga mouse easy enough. Amigakit also do laser versions, I have one and it's great. You can also get adaptors for pc mice, but I've never tried one. If you want to game, you'll need a joystick. There's a few options here too.
 
I've not really done much with it other than try out a few demo demo disks but a couple of quick questions:

When it is loading something, the screen (or perhaps just the white bits of the screen) flash all different colours. Is this normal?

The power light goes out if I haven't pressed anything for a while. Is this normal too? The system responds fine though.

The sound on it is amazing though, for 1987. I think I prefer it to basic Adlib FM Synthesis. Most of the disks are magazine cover disks from 1990.

I'm playing a few Amiga games "on my pc" to see if I want to go full-in and get a Gotek floppy drive, mouse, joystick (not sure why I bought it really otherwise).
 
almoststew1990 said:
I've not really done much with it other than try out a few demo demo disks but a couple of quick questions:

When it is loading something, the screen (or perhaps just the white bits of the screen) flash all different colours. Is this normal?

The power light goes out if I haven't pressed anything for a while. Is this normal too? The system responds fine though.

The sound on it is amazing though, for 1987. I think I prefer it to basic Adlib FM Synthesis. Most of the disks are magazine cover disks from 1990.

I'm playing a few Amiga games "on my pc" to see if I want to go full-in and get a Gotek floppy drive, mouse, joystick (not sure why I bought it really otherwise).
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Congrats on the purchase. I'm going through a bit of an Amiga phase right now too trying to pickup some bargains!

The flashing bars is usually when a program or exe is decompressing. I think it does that to show you its doing something so you don't think it has crashed.

If you're using an A500 then I belive the light goes off when audio uses the low pass filter. The red light amiga do this and so do the earlier green models. In a later revision I belive the light dims, rather than going off.

It sounds like everything is working as it should, no cause for any alarms.

My only recommendation is to look into getting the capacitors replaced sooner rather than later as they can leak and eat up the board causing major issues. I'm currently waiting on a black Friday deal to take up amiga passion to do this for me as my soldering skills haven't been used since the psx days!!

Edit: just seen your pictures. I remember the gumtree ad but didn't realise you bought it. Very good price I think. Sounds like everything I mentioned above should be correct as its a red light amiga. :-) definitely look into a gotek if you're having trouble with your drive but sounds like it is fine. You should be able to get one in the future if it fails.
 
My brother had the Amiga 500 and that got me into gaming. It was an awesome machine with lots of games. I liked James pond AKA Robocod, The new zeland story and I think that was classed as one of amigas hardest games along with ghouls n ghosts. I use to mainly play adventure games from the classic monkey island to the 15 something discs operation stealth.

I can remember we went on holiday and my brother leant it to his mate for the week and it came back with a virus which we tried to get rid of with amiga virus checker but that also got the virus. To say the least my brother never talked to him again.

Been looking for some old skool gaming systems but there a bit much. I just want to re live them days again where i played games for fun and to complete. These days i quit and start again at the slight mistake. I play for survival these like in fallout 4 if I die I restart. If I died back then I would continue.
 
Digital X said:
Is there any shop that does custom cases for Amiga 500/1200 ?
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AmigaKit is probably the biggest Amiga Supplier out there. I got a basic tower kit for my A1200 from there.

If you ever get a HD attached to the Amiga I'd highly recommend looking at ClassicWB and WHDLoad as they are fantastic pieces of software. ClassicWB is like a pre-configured Workbench (needs the original Workbench images to install the copyright stuff). WHDLoad essentially is a program that allows installation of Amiga disks to Hard-drive and then runs them without any disks. You can also get pre-installed files.

Finally if you have an IDE to USB (or even an old PC) you can mount this in WinUAE and work on it. So you can install ClassicWB to a destination on your PC install all of your games then attach the Amiga HD and copy it across and it will be all nice and pre-configured for you.



M.
 
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