I Love Amiga !
Despite the advances in technology over the last few years and my love
of gadgets I’ve never ever lost my enthusiasm for the Amiga although admittedly my towered A1200 has slipped down the
pecking order.
The last major spend was the purchase of a Blizzard 603 ppc board with 64MB RAM and a BVision card. What a combination and the
addition of a graphics card certainly increased the wow factor. Luke had done similar with his Amiga and paraded his Tower at
the World Of Amiga Show in 1999 when the Coventry Commodore Club took their part in the initiative to get back to the root and
involve user groups. I don’t think people believed there was a standard A1200 lurking in the box. Sadly those 2 cards were
very scarce and I don’t recall them being available for sale at the show.
Downhill all the way from there onwards and other commitments meant I strayed away from the club although I did bump into members
occasionally at computer fairs. Sadly the Amiga was not the main topic of conversation. Even I’ve benefited from the PC market
by teaching myself how to build them. Sadly not much fun but my groundings in the Amiga certainly helped. I’ve kept
my eye on developments in the Amiga market but sadly had grown to the conclusion enough was enough and apart from upgrading
Amiga Forever at each release my Tower remained unused. Despite all the hot air nothing seemed to materialise and even the early
promise seemed to be getting nowhere. In the meantime Windows, Mac OS and Linux seemed to go from strength to strength.
However sometimes it’s takes a small spark to ignite a fire and I spotted a prompt on the Amiga.org web site. My hunch was right and I discovered the true identity of this Mr Nice Guy 1979 who was making strenuous efforts to track Amiga users in the Midlands. A couple of e mails later and I was onboard !!
Of course this meant an excuse to get my Amiga out of storage and hope
that it would be worthy of parading again particularly as some users had been brave and bought Amiga Ones.
Well talk about challenges. My Amiga has never let me down but it was probably the thought it was going to be put into use that set
off a chain of events.
First problem was the erratic output from the Bvision. Sods law if you can’t get a picture. I also suspect my video switch was playing up however the uniqueness of these items meant spares were non existence and even a posting on Amiga.org failed to get a solution. I sadly therefore concluded my Bvision was no more however the thought of reverting back to AGA screens did not appeal. Despite having a scan doubler even that played a part in this disaster and damaged my video output port. I’d got one spare motherboard but was not certain that was 100% OK and I was correct. Where could I get a replacement A1200? E bay came to the rescue and I sourced an Amiga Magic pack which meant I got 3.1 ROMS. Quite a package as I inherited a Philips monitor, 5 joysticks, 2 external drives and games a plenty. However the Amiga was in excellent working order and my hard sought bid of £77 was well worth it. No disrespect to sellers of “brand new” Amiga Magic packs but £150 is out of order. I also decided to bid for other Amigas on E Bay so I at least had a working back up. £35 got me a plain vanilla A1200 with a Commodore 1085S monitor and yet more games !!
Enthused by this I still had the prospect of an AGA Amiga but the chance of picking a replacement Bvision card was either non
existent or out of my price range. I liked however the look of the Elbox Dragon card but not the price! I therefore got my thinking
cap on and concluded addition of PCI cards was more attractive and I’d probably got a few spare from my PC building. No problem
with sound and network cards but compatible PCI graphics cards are almost non existent. Once again I’d been thwarted. Back to
E Bay : a search for Voodoo and a few PCI were up for grabs. I scrapped for a Voodoo 5 64 Mb card and eventually won so I decided to
proceed with the purchase of the Mediator Lt and as Elbox were offering free shipping also order a fast ATA controller given the
significant changes in hard drives and ROMS over the years. The ATA controllers are a bit of a sod to fit however the difference was
noticeable even with an old Western Digital 2.1Gb drive. The Mediator is surprisingly easy to fit and you can still keep your
Blizzard card. Instructions however are poor but there is an excellent web site for assistance. It was such a joy to fire up and
choose a non AGA mode. The Voodoo cards use Picasso 96 software. Given time I’ll get the sound and networking up and running
but graphics were my priority.
Thinking all was over and I could bring all along to the first MAG meeting disaster once again struck and my hard drive developed a
serious fault oh and just to add insult my keyboard packed in!! Good job I’d got a spare keyboard with the old style DIN plug.
Another visit to E Bay and I picked up an X Box Hard drive for a fiver – ideal for the Amiga rather that having loads of empty
space.
So, touch wood game over and a case now of digging out old floppies and CDROMS and packing the hard drive.
Was it worth it ?? Well despite having got an order in for an Amiga UA1-c board I still have fondness for the classic Amiga and despite not appearing to be the gaming type still enjoy a whole raft of Amiga games. Can’t get on with multiple button pushing Give me Superfrog, Sensible Soccer, Cannon Fodder and Pinball games any day.
So thanks to E Bay, some tough bidding and a lot of dedication my Tower lives and will sit proudly my Amiga Ones at future MAG meetings.