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Various Amiga Schwag, and the Amiga Zone

Posted: Sat Mar 30, 2019 8:49 am
by intric8
A few weeks ago I ran across a random post on Ebay for a strange looking mug. It claimed to have never been used and stored since the year 2000. It had this groovy logo in the style of The Twilight Zone on the side, and was labeled along with the timeless Amiga Boing Ball as, "Amiga Zone". I didn't even know what Amiga Zone was, or meant, but I liked it. The seller was asking for $10 but agreed to sell me 2 for $15.
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I had purchased a NOS still-in-the-original-bag black wired mouse for my CDTV from the same seller, too, and I think that's the only reason I fell across these things. Not really a big deal, but I thought it was cool.

Curious about "The Amiga Zone" I tried to look it up. It appears it had been a BBS back in the day run by Harv Laser. Laser is an interesting person in his own right. From his website:
have been a self-employed journalist since 1985 and have had over a thousand articles and product reviews published in sixteen different print magazines and web sites.

I started out back in 1985 writing about Amiga computers for over a dozen different print magazines.
So it appears he had a thriving amiga community BBS, but he also had an early days internet-based interface that leveraged the BBS somehow. Using the WayBackMachine, I found this from 1998 (I miss old sites like this):
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Don't you know that banner logo would have taken a while to load with a dial-up modem? Hah!

Going back even further to 1997, I found this awesome example (fun stuff!):
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In any case, the Amiga Zone was one a cool place for Amigans to hang out. I wasn't a part of it, but it all sounds very cool and I'm glad to have a tiny piece of it represented on my desk.

Back to the Amigan I got the mug from, he decided to send me a second box of goodies for free when he realized he forgot to pack one of the mugs in the first shipment! I got all kinds a crazy stuff from the later Escom/Gateway era days.

Check this stuff out. This all mostly came from some conference in the late 1990s.
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I created a photo caption contest on Reddit about these matches. The highest voted caption was "Amiga - Setting your balls on fire since 1985" :D

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So many things.

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Do you know what this is? Look very closely at the logo, my friends.

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The ink in the pen is dead, but WHO CARES? LOOK AT THIS! (And the pen uses an extremely common refill.)

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There ya go.

He also threw in a Mac Simulator for Amiga machines in the box, which comes on a CD-ROM. Talk about some weird, cool shiz! Anyhoo I'm going to try and see if Harv would want to chat about the old days at some point in the future. That would be very cool indeed.

Re: Various Amiga Schwag, and the Amiga Zone

Posted: Sat Mar 30, 2019 11:28 am
by intric8
I mentioned a CDTV NOS wired mouse in the post above. Here's what that looks like.
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Always a primo mouse moment when it still has the roller ball foam brake still in place.

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Re: Various Amiga Schwag, and the Amiga Zone

Posted: Sat Mar 30, 2019 5:25 pm
by rpiguy9907
Great find. I also had never heard of the AmigaZone. The black mouse would make me want to order a black case and keyboard for my Amiga 500... Bad thoughts, bad thoughts...

Re: Various Amiga Schwag, and the Amiga Zone

Posted: Sat Mar 30, 2019 11:13 pm
by intric8
The black mouse would make me want to order a black case and keyboard for my Amiga 500... Bad thoughts, bad thoughts...
Hah! Luckily the CDTV comes with a very nice black keyboard. And the CDTV is basically an A500 on steroids as it is. So, really, all you need is a CDTV! ;)

Re: Various Amiga Schwag, and the Amiga Zone

Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2019 8:36 pm
by intric8
Tomorrow in my neighborhood is trash day. So I always spend Sunday night breaking down all of the recyclables and whatnot.

Anyway I started to break down the box I got all of the schwag in, and I noticed something shiny at the bottom I hadn't seen before. It was in a plastic bag. Honestly my first thought was it was some random and forgotten part to some cheap Ikea furniture that the sender accidentally sent my way.

But I reached down and picked it up. Then I flipped it over. I couldn't believe what I was looking at! (And it took me a while to ponder what the hell it even was.)
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It's just a bit larger than a nickel (5 cent piece).

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On the back is this strange hinged clasp. It's fairly delicate, and has an opening on one side.

After a while of thinking about it, I figured it out.
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Voila! An Amiga Boing Ball button cover. Hah!

Re: Various Amiga Schwag, and the Amiga Zone

Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2019 10:23 am
by Zippy Zapp
Now that is cool.

I could use a few button covers.