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sportbikepilot

Posted Mon Feb 03, 2020 2:51 pm

My name is Chris. I live in San Diego County, California.

I owned a beat up Amiga 1000 when I was about 13 or 14 years old. I found it on a BBS for $25. When I picked it up, it wasn't working. The floppy drive was jammed, it was missing the eject button, and there was no cover over the RAM expansion. That same day, I picked up some off-brand composite monitor for it. It came with a keyboard and keyboard cable, a Kickstart and Workbench disk set, but that was it. It was yellow as all heck, but it didn't matter to me.

Got home, and somehow by pure accident, managed to get the floppy drive unjammed and able to take and eject disks. Luckily, we had a computer store in the next city over that dealt in Amiga products in addition to PC stuff. I was able to buy an aftermarket mouse there. Eventually I came across an 1010 disk drive, and a 1020 disk drive.

I got home and managed to get everything to work! I remember how exciting it was to get a MOD player working, and how some popular songs on the Amiga sounded just like the real thing. I was blown away. For a few years afterwards I kept using the machine. It never did get a RAM cover or an eject button, I always used the corner of a disk to eject whatever was in there at the time. Oh would I couldn't do with the 512k RAM it had though! Sure it was slow and everything was disk based, but it didn't matter. It was way too cool.

Well, life goes on and the Amiga saw less and less use. At the same time, the PC saw more and more use. My parents pushed me to part with the older systems I had, since I wasn't using them. A "friend" from school who was very interested in computers was "loaned" all of my older, somewhat exotic machines. I had intended to get them back at some point.

When the time came for me to retrieve the Amiga, it tuns out the "friend" had sold it at a yard sale. It was heartbreaking to hear, and was the end of my "friendship" with him. Evidently he didn't understand that it was a "loan" and not a "gift".

Over the years, I had thought about the Amiga and how I would love to get an exact replacement of what I had. I toyed with the idea from time to time, checking things out on eBay and Craigslist, but never doing anything.

I met a guy at a place I volunteer at who happened to mention his first computer (that he no longer had) was an Amiga 2000. It struck up a conversation about my involvement with the Amiga computer. Somehow as a result of that conversation things stuck in my head and I reached out on another Amiga group looking for an A1000.

I ended up buying a week ago an Amiga 1000 with Amiga RGB monitor, serial/parallel cables, and a 1010 external disk drive. Original Amiga keyboard and mouse included. Bought it from Brian Deneen up in Northern California. Spent the next two days fussing with it and the PC, and finally got them communicating. AmigaTerm lets me reliably transfer files between the PC and the Amiga, and now that I have Amiga Explorer working, it's even easier.

Enjoyed taking a step back to my teenage years (I'm 38 now) playing Amiga Lemmings. Man, I can't wait to see what else I can do with the A1000. I'm thinking a Classic 520 is in my future. I welcome any suggestions!

Thanks for letting me be a part of the group. This forum was recommended to me by Brian as a good place to be for someone who owns an A1000.

Sorry for the life story, but I figured it'd be a good intro ;)

-Chris

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Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Mon Feb 03, 2020 6:37 pm

Awesome story and Welcome!

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oldbull

Posted Thu Feb 06, 2020 8:40 pm

Welcome.

Besides yourself there's at least three other A1000 owners here. Intric8 even has a pre-production system. Also, this guy is part of our community:

https://youtu.be/uWWYF35c6Zo

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Feb 06, 2020 9:13 pm

Sorry for the late welcome, sportbikepilot. My last 1.5 weeks have been kinda crazy. But from one A1000 owner to another, you picked well, brother.

I've been obsessed with the "Amiga" (as the A1000 was originally called) for some time. It is easily one of the most beautiful 1980's computers ever made and has one of the most exquisite keyboards. The upgrades for it are few and far between, but it all depends on what you really want to do with it. And by and large most software will run on it. It really will.

A lot of us get caught up in maxing this and speeding up that, but most software from back in the day (excluding some flight sims, heavy duty action-based games and 3D software) could really care less. And honestly, when it comes to the Amiga gaming scene, 95% of the games considered the best of the best run on it just fine - especially if you add a little memory to get it to 1-2MB.

There's a sweet (and cheap) non-destructive RAM mod you can install that'll get it to 8MB Fast RAM, which is more than enough.

Welcome, and enjoy the ride. You're in the right place. <3

User avatar
sportbikepilot

Posted Thu Feb 06, 2020 10:06 pm

intric8 wrote:
Thu Feb 06, 2020 9:13 pm
There's a sweet (and cheap) non-destructive RAM mod you can install that'll get it to 8MB Fast RAM, which is more than enough.
Tell me more!



User avatar
sportbikepilot

Posted Sat Feb 15, 2020 7:13 pm

intric8 wrote:
Fri Feb 07, 2020 9:15 am
Here ya go!
Bought it! Now the waiting game begins...





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