Commodore Amiga owners thread!

Cern · 22 Oct 2016 at 22:04

I have an A500 and an A1200 in the cupboard, plus all manner of accessories including a GVP500 memory / hard drive addon (huge beast of a thing shaped like a giant cheese wedge that plugged into the side of the A500). It all still works as far as I know, I just lack a suitable monitor or TV to plug it into.

My favourite things back in the day were Deluxe Paint (loved doing animations with that) and games like Sensible Soccer, UFO, Cannon Fodder, Eye Of the Beholder, Worms, Civ, Populous, Day Of The Tentacle, Monkey Island, Elite and the X Wing / Tie Fighter series.

itchy · 22 Oct 2016 at 22:16

I remember the hack I think it was, to run the Amiga in NTSC and it ran at 60 fps as opposed to 50 fps UK PAL, or was it the hz :confused:

Spent many a days on octamed for the amiga, all them hex numbers to change pitch etc......

Chaos · 22 Oct 2016 at 23:59

Bitmap books made a nice Amiga book if anyones interested -

http://www.bitmapbooks.co.uk/products/commodore-amiga-a-visual-commpendium?variant=7047182915

So many great games.

Guest2 · 23 Oct 2016 at 10:07

Chaos said:
Bitmap books made a nice Amiga book if anyones interested -

http://www.bitmapbooks.co.uk/products/commodore-amiga-a-visual-commpendium?variant=7047182915

So many great games.

Instantly ordered. Damn you

Bubo · 23 Oct 2016 at 10:24

digitalx said:
I have an Amiga 1200, and Commodore 64. Both in need of a "de-yellowing" I'll post pics in a sec.

https://imgur.com/a/JUSmt

Hard to get a decent pic, sunlight and stuff.

I'll see your "de-yellowing" and raise you a "de-oranging"

UTmaniac · 23 Oct 2016 at 12:10

I lost many hours on my post-GCSE Amiga A500 from 1990, playing the likes of...
Speedball I+II
Kick Off
Xenon 2

And a load of others that my feeble memory cannot recall. Was great at the time, but it's incredible how far we have come in 27 years, not just in terms of computing power but also how online multiplayer has transformed how we we these days.

Sliver · 23 Oct 2016 at 12:14

UTmaniac said:
I lost many hours on my post-GCSE Amiga A500 from 1990, playing the likes of...
Speedball I+II
Kick Off
Xenon 2

And a load of others that my feeble memory cannot recall. Was great at the time, but it's incredible how far we have come in 27 years, not just in terms of computing power but also how online multiplayer has transformed how we we these days.

I must have wasted many hours playing Speedball. Epic game at the time.

Sliver · 23 Oct 2016 at 12:22

Here's a game I spent untold hours on in my teenage years. It's kinda like wonder pizza drizzled with a little awesome sauce.

ZG002 · 23 Oct 2016 at 12:35

Just noticed he goes up in belt colour lol, it's the little things

Digital X · 23 Oct 2016 at 12:42

@Bubo, bloody hell. How do you get rid?

RockLobster · 23 Oct 2016 at 17:24

!bluetonic! said:
The Amiga community is alive and well.

In September, I was at the 'South West Amiga Group' meet here in Swindon.

The recent 'Vampire' card for the A600 gives the machine a healthy upgrade of 128 MB or RAM, HDMI output, SD Card storage and makes it faster than a 68060 Amiga 1200.

I started with the 'Class of the 90s' Amiga 500.

I then moved to an Amiga 1200 'Desktop Dynamite' pack. This came with a 60 MB hard drive.

This is still up and running and now with the ACA 1221 and the MapRom option for Kickstart 3.1. 4GB CF running "Classic" Workbench 3.1. Internet access on wired or wifi and the Gotek Floppy USB Adapter.

Basically numerous games are stored on the CF drive and can be run from Workbench using WHD Load.

The internet does work using AWeb, but on my setup, https isn't supported, not is Javascript and only basic websites work.

Large images in Spoiler tag:

Companies such as AmigaKit in Cardiff still have an online shop.

Bubo · 23 Oct 2016 at 20:49

digitalx said:
@Bubo, bloody hell. How do you get rid?

There are a few methods involving chemicals according to google. I'm not going to bother though, unless I ever thought of selling it on, which I almost certainly never will. No idea why it has gone as bad as it has, since its been in its box for the last 15 years and it wasn't that colour when I put it away.

mistersprinkles · 23 Oct 2016 at 21:32

Wow! 3 pages of responses! I never thought this thread would be so popular. For those of you with yellowing Amigas, there is a product available called RETROBRIGHT. Follow the instructions. It will de yellow or de orange your machine for you.

Funny story- my dad broke my favorite joystick on my amiga playing ZOOM! which was a freakin' awesome game. I made a copy of my school's disk to get that one (shhh). We were playing and he was right into it and he snapped the neck of the joystick clean in half. He's always been a hyper sort and honestly I'm not surprised this happened looking back. That was one of the only games he ever played with me when I was a kid. The other one was on our Intellivision (I'm old) when I was really young but I don't remember what it was called.

Some of you have really awesome Amigas, 4000's and such. I never experienced an Amiga with anything more than a 68000 chip. I know you could do some amazing stuff with the later Amigas.

I remember when we went to buy my 500 we were in the store and I saw the 3000 there running this amazing looking (for the time) fireworks animation and I told my mom "I WANT THE 3000!!!!" and she looked at the price difference and laughed at me hysterically and then told the clerk at the store we would be buying the 500. Lol.

Looking back it's really amazing how much use I got out of that 500 considering that it had no internet connectivity or anything like that. I wrote countless homework assignments on it, did tons of animations, played tons of games. Good times. I remember it took me about a year to get past the first level of Wrath of the Demon, which is sad, because that's not a difficult game in the grand scheme of things. The graphics were amazing though for the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yULAmih--M

Looking at the first level on the horse I count ten layers of scrolling foreground and background. SNES couldn't do that even in 1994 with DKC. AFAIK SNES was packing a 68000 just like the Amiga.

Question: Video toaster people- do you still have any of your old Video Toaster projects laying around on tape anywhere? Any chance you could throw them on the youtubes for us to have a look?

Video toaster was so ahead of its time. Shows like "Home improvement" with Tim Allen (I know it's a long shot that anybody in the UK has seen this but it bears mentioning) were made entirely on zee toaster!

I wonder what kind of world it would have been if Commodore hadn't been run into the ground by idiotic management (I realize their management in UK/EURO zone was much better). What kind of Amiga machines would we have today? They'd be using Intel processors no doubt but what kind of wonderful things would you be able to do with an Amiga produced in the 21st century? Addon boards like the Vampire give us a sneak peak but they are not full blown powerhouses.

Here's a treat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyGCYoZ5Nlk

Computer Chronicles clip about the Amiga Video Toaster. Computer Chronicles is an amazing show and all episodes are on youtube. It's funny to watch them talk about things like "New: Hard disk drives!"

And here's a bigger treat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seznQmDp2pU

AMAZE-BALLS video toaster demo reel.

Smit · 24 Oct 2016 at 09:03

Never actually owned an Amiga but my friend did and we always used to play Sensible Soccer, Sensible Golf and Brutal Sports.

There was another football game we used to play where you could run in to the post and knock your guy out but can't remember what it was. Football Glory or something possibly.

ZG002 · 24 Oct 2016 at 09:17

So what's the general consensus? A1200 the one to go for?

Been watching videos and looking about at eBay all last night lol

wedrum · 24 Oct 2016 at 09:18

haha yes Brutal Sports was amazeballs.

mistersprinkles · 24 Oct 2016 at 11:25

ZG002 said:
So what's the general consensus? A1200 the one to go for?

Been watching videos and looking about at eBay all last night lol

In terms of being able to turn it into a sexy beast with crazy upgrades, yes, 1200 is where it's at right now. Pick up a vampire 2 board with it.

ov_sjo · 24 Oct 2016 at 11:43

Chaos said:
Bitmap books made a nice Amiga book if anyones interested

Ordered, thanks

Komedy · 24 Oct 2016 at 12:01

this game has yet to be beaten on any platform

2004typer · 24 Oct 2016 at 12:11

Still have an A500+, was originally a 13th birthday present 24 years ago! Can't believe it was that long ago lol.

Still occasionally fire her up to reminisce over the games I used to play, Cannon Fodder, Monkey Island 1 & 2 and The Settlers were a few I really enjoyed.

Was also hooked on Deluxe Paint 3 as well.

I also remember thinking it was really cool that you could get the Amiga to talk using the application in Workbench, many hours spent as a teenager getting the Amiga to speak profanities lol.

Also subscribed to Amiga Power, kept the subscription almost up until the end after the Escom takeover.