Greeting to fellow Amiga lovers from the woods of northwestern Wisconsin. I'm a retired Ph.D. medical researcher (UCLA, Tufts) trying to simplify my life by unloading things I don't really need. I am the original owner of an Amiga 4000/40 (2M Chip and 4M Fast RAM) and 1084S monitor both very clean, seldom used since about 2007, but well stored. It is equipped with a DPS Personal time-base corrector, an Alfa Data MultifaceCard3 (serial/parallel expansion card), and a Digital Creations SuperGen SX video mixer. It has a Seagate ST3144A hard drive, working well, and a Chinon FZ-357A floppy which evidently doesn't work. Since I have no Amiga floppy disks left with which to test it, I ordered the set of Workbench 3.1 disks from AmigaKit (which they assured me was OK even though my system currently runs Workbench 3.0). Obviously I cannot sell a system with no means of disc input. The system is also missing a 3.5" low profile faceplate, and the green LED for disk activity doesn't work. I found places on the web where I can buy the LED by the thousands, but I've asked AmigaKit if they could furnish one and also the faceplate. No response so far.
Let me digress a minute to tell you what I was using the Amiga for. I had a startup business called SportLabs in the late 1980's for improved teaching of the golf swing. In about 1984 I was getting tired of academic politics at the Univ. of California and decided to try my hand at biomechanics using an Apple II computer and pictures of Jack Nicklaus' golf swing from front and side (down the line). I got a Phase I SBIR Grant for $50,000 from the NIH to get started. I purchased an Apollo workstation, and by digitizing 21 key points on the body from two or more angles using color 16mm film of a number of golf pros, was able using FORTRAN programming to generate 3D models of the "ideal" golf swing. Then using the Amiga 2500 initially, with C programming help from Ron Peterson of Amherst, MA was able to put together a system including Panasonic AG-1960 video tape recorders of the golf students' golf swings, we were able to superimpose subject and model using real 3D perspective from any angle and camera distance. One exceptional feature of our video/computer system was that we were able to stop action on student videos with jitter-free 60 images per second (freeze field), using the additional horizontal resolution of S-VHS. Everything, including the VCRs was controlled from the Amiga keyboard using various keystrokes and a well-labeled keyboard. Three of my systems were in use at the PGA National golf course by teaching pro Mike Adams in Palm Beach Gardens, FL. See Utube video of the system in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLZC7hXIpP0. It worked out well for Mike, but financially I lost my shirt, not being well enough funded and not having the time to do both technical and marketing. The collapse of Amiga really put the nail in the coffin. But the whole venture was very interesting, and I learned a lot -- still an avid golfer at 80 years old.
Of course, I've forgotten much about the Amiga since I last used it 15 years ago, spending my time writing books on military history, so bear with me. When I connected the 4000 to the monitor and turned them on, it booted up almost immediately, maybe after a couple tries. I took the system apart and removed the not too messy battery, cleaned it up, and replaced it with the new button battery from AmigaKit. Shortly thereafter the power switch on the monitor failed, and I replaced that with a part also from England. The fully reassembled system worked pretty well for 4 or 5 days. I was stymied why the system couldn't find the battery-backed clock, and began to wonder if the missing dongle (for joystick port, basically 4 resistors whose values I forget) or perhaps our modifications to the Startup-Sequence was making the system unusable. So I started boning back up on AmigaDos, and today I found a version of the golf model software that required no dongle, and was very pleased to be running it again. The program seemed to freeze up. I was not able to quit gracefully, so I turned off the computer. And I have not been able to restart it since.
I get no colored screens of any kind after removing the SIMM cards, both together, or fast RAM only. Maybe it's time for the first recapping of the system? Any suggestions out there? I'd be very happy to receive your suggestions, and also willing to pay for consulting.
Best regards,
Jim