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A10001986
1986

Posted Sun Jun 03, 2018 1:17 am

What a beauty.

I never got anything like that when I bought the Amiga package back then. In fact, I don't think I got anything remotely resembling something like a "manual" for Mind Walker at all.

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primitivefunction

Posted Sun Jun 03, 2018 4:10 am

It must have been tough without the manual! Do you remember which demos came packed with the German A1000? I know that the Dan Silva Kaleidoscope demo came with NTSC machines. I wasn't aware of others. Curious to know.

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A10001986
1986

Posted Sun Jun 03, 2018 9:18 am

Mine (mid 1986, American keyboard, true PAL, no piggy-back) came with eight floppy disks:

- Kickstart 1.1
- WB 1.1
- Extras (AmigaBASIC, Amiga Tutor)
- Demo 1 (Molly, Charts, H.A.M. etc; EA's "Polyscope" - I think this is the same as "Kaleidoscope")
- Demo 2 (Music, Speechtoy)
- GraphiCraft 1.1
- TextCraft 1.1
- Mind Walker

All in English (thank god). Later machines came with somewhat "germanized" floppy discs, but IIRC all Commodore did was translating the folder names.

As regards paper manuals there were
- English manuals for TextCraft and GraphiCraft (probably the same that were included in the US),
- a German leaflet of 10 or so pages with short explanations of Demo 1, Demo 2, Amiga Tutor, Mind Walker (so I stand corrected, there was a "manual"), TextCraft, GraphiCraft
- a case for eight floppy disks.

Two friends of mine who got theirs even earlier got piggy-back, pseudo-PAL machines, but exactly the same floppy disk set and paper stuff.
IMG_4458.jpg
IMG_4460.jpg
IMG_4461.jpg
Last edited by A10001986 on Sun Jun 03, 2018 9:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
A10001986
1986

Posted Sun Jun 03, 2018 9:19 am

The cheap looking case for the floppy disks:
IMG_4459.jpg

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Sun Jun 03, 2018 9:21 am

Those are really great photos @primitive function. I have all of the same packaging, too. And you’re right - it really is spectacular.

It’ll definitely go into the Game Library at some stage this summer.

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Sun Jun 03, 2018 9:25 am

@A10001986 that’s super interesting. Your packed software and manuals is indeed different. I’d never really thought of the differences between packages in the various regions. Very cool.

US versions seem to all be stand-alone software that was included in a “bundle”. Yours was all put into one package (probably helped cut down shipping at the time I’m guessing).

User avatar
A10001986
1986

Posted Sun Jun 03, 2018 9:44 am

You could buy an Amiga and it came bundled with all that, in one big box. There were no options, you could not buy any of the programs separately. If memory serves me right, you also could only buy the machine with the 256k front memory expansion already in place, there were no 256k machines sold.

I think they probably thought it would help marketing if all necessary stuff is included.

Just opened the TextCraft and GraphiCraft boxes. While the GraphiCraft manual is a proper ring bound book, the TextCraft manual is only loose sheets with holes for a ring binder (but for a US standard ring binder, good luck finding a matching one in Europe).

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Sun Jun 03, 2018 10:04 am

you also could only buy the machine with the 256k front memory expansion already in place, there were no 256k machines sold.
That's not a bad thing. According to one of the engineers that worked on the Amiga/Commodore transition, the 1000 couldn't truly multi-task (one of its main selling features) with productivity software off the original 256k.

You pretty much had to have the expansion.

User avatar
A10001986
1986

Posted Sun Jun 03, 2018 10:11 am

Miner wanted the machine to have 512k at least, it was Commodore who thought 256k would do. But who could blame them, back then 64k ought to be enough for anybody. Oh wait.... :D

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Sun Jun 03, 2018 1:24 pm

I think Dave Needle also disagreed with Jay about that and admitted later he'd been wrong. Ah well... water under the bridge.





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