So I got my first Amiga delivered yesterday.
I have a few Amiga memories from when I was younger. My cousins had an Amiga which I remember playing Lemmings on and a couple of friends had them too and I remember Monkey Island, Sensi and a few other games. I recall Walker running on an Amiga in somewhere like Currys or PC World (maybe Dixons) which always blew me away.
I went from Spectrum to consoles and then to a 486 so never had my own but I've always had a bit of a soft spot for the Amiga and I've been wanting to get one for a while.
Emulation is great and all but there's something about the original machine that has always fascinated me.
The listing said that it had been power cycled, but it hadn't been properly tested beyond that. I didn't actually pay enough attention to that distinction until after I'd won the auction.
It came with the Amiga 500 itself, the power supply, tank mouse. some cables and a rather manky-looking, well-used joystick.
The Amiga itself looks to be in really nice condition. It's obviously quite yellowed, as you'd expect after 30+ years, but the warranty seals were still intact, so it looks as though it may never have been opened.
I checked the trapdoor underneath, hoping there might be a RAM expansion lurking in there, but unfortunately there wasn't one.
I'd heard horror stories about leaky batteries and capacitors so first job was to open it up and take a look.
I'm really impressed by how clean the motherboard is. There's no obvious corrosion or damage, and there isn't a battery/RTC circuit to worry about on this particular board from what I read so thankfully there's no battery leakage to deal with either.
The capacitors don't show any obvious signs of trouble, although unless they were leaking or charred I probably wouldn't know any better.
The power supply is another matter. The one that came with it is dated 1990, so it's obviously getting on a bit. I'm a little wary of plugging a really old PSU into the Amiga without being able to check its output first. I don't have a multimeter, so I'm going to have to work out the safest way of approaching that, any thoughts or should I just invest in a new one regardless?
Apparently the seller did power-cycle it, so at least it has presumably been switched on relatively recently, but I'd still rather not just blindly plug it in and hope for the best.
I also don't currently have any Workbench disks. I have previously bought Amiga Essentials on Android which includes ROM/Kickstart files, but I'm not sure whether there's any practical way for me to get what I need from that onto a physical Amiga floppy.
It looks like Cloanto sell Workbench disk sets, so that's one possibility.
I've included the motherboard photos because I'm interested to see what people can identify from it. I'm particularly interested in the board revision, chips, and anything else that might be unusual or noteworthy about this particular machine. I ran them through ChatGPT but it kept giving me conflicting and wrong information or making up stuff like it has Rev 5 printed on the board when it clearly doesn't.
I'm very much a newcomer to owning an Amiga rather than an expert, so I'm looking forward to learning about it, and hopefully getting it up and running.
I have a few Amiga memories from when I was younger. My cousins had an Amiga which I remember playing Lemmings on and a couple of friends had them too and I remember Monkey Island, Sensi and a few other games. I recall Walker running on an Amiga in somewhere like Currys or PC World (maybe Dixons) which always blew me away.
I went from Spectrum to consoles and then to a 486 so never had my own but I've always had a bit of a soft spot for the Amiga and I've been wanting to get one for a while.
Emulation is great and all but there's something about the original machine that has always fascinated me.
The listing said that it had been power cycled, but it hadn't been properly tested beyond that. I didn't actually pay enough attention to that distinction until after I'd won the auction.
It came with the Amiga 500 itself, the power supply, tank mouse. some cables and a rather manky-looking, well-used joystick.
The Amiga itself looks to be in really nice condition. It's obviously quite yellowed, as you'd expect after 30+ years, but the warranty seals were still intact, so it looks as though it may never have been opened.
I checked the trapdoor underneath, hoping there might be a RAM expansion lurking in there, but unfortunately there wasn't one.
I'd heard horror stories about leaky batteries and capacitors so first job was to open it up and take a look.
I'm really impressed by how clean the motherboard is. There's no obvious corrosion or damage, and there isn't a battery/RTC circuit to worry about on this particular board from what I read so thankfully there's no battery leakage to deal with either.
The capacitors don't show any obvious signs of trouble, although unless they were leaking or charred I probably wouldn't know any better.
The power supply is another matter. The one that came with it is dated 1990, so it's obviously getting on a bit. I'm a little wary of plugging a really old PSU into the Amiga without being able to check its output first. I don't have a multimeter, so I'm going to have to work out the safest way of approaching that, any thoughts or should I just invest in a new one regardless?
Apparently the seller did power-cycle it, so at least it has presumably been switched on relatively recently, but I'd still rather not just blindly plug it in and hope for the best.
I also don't currently have any Workbench disks. I have previously bought Amiga Essentials on Android which includes ROM/Kickstart files, but I'm not sure whether there's any practical way for me to get what I need from that onto a physical Amiga floppy.
It looks like Cloanto sell Workbench disk sets, so that's one possibility.
I've included the motherboard photos because I'm interested to see what people can identify from it. I'm particularly interested in the board revision, chips, and anything else that might be unusual or noteworthy about this particular machine. I ran them through ChatGPT but it kept giving me conflicting and wrong information or making up stuff like it has Rev 5 printed on the board when it clearly doesn't.
I'm very much a newcomer to owning an Amiga rather than an expert, so I'm looking forward to learning about it, and hopefully getting it up and running.
- I too have a powershark with a seperate modified power supply as well for the A500. If he does buy a powershark power supply, I can tell him exactly what USB-C charger and cable he needs.