So, do you still own real Amigas today?
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So, do you still own real Amigas today?
Only A500 and A1200. But also own the CDTV and CD32.
Yep, an A500, an 500+, an A600 and three A1200s in various stages of repair, see the "first Amiga" poll for more lowdown as I would just be repeating myself.
Merlin
A500 I have stashed away
Yep. An A500, A600 and an A600HD. Also three PCs (only one in use) two C64s, a C128 and I think a Sharp MZ-700 which I believe is sitting in the attic at my grandmother's, unless it's been binned. I plan to try and find it one day. Old and completely useless system, which is half the fun!
An A600 which won't read any disks at the moment (going to have to have another go at getting it working) and an A1200.
Both Amigas and PCs and others.
I currently have three Amigas. One Amiga 1200, one 500, and one CD32. I mostly use the Amiga 1200 for Demoscene purposes.
Have an A1200, with a 4.3gb hard drive.
Plus the PSP running UAEPSP, and my PCs.
Two A1200s.
One in use and one in bits.
Also have a C64.
No pc although there is one in the house.
It belongs to the missus.
A500 in the loft at my Mum's house. Last time i tried it the graphics output was a bit shifty, certain games had really flickery sprites which it didn't do before.
Did you have the A500 connected via the crappy external modulator? If so that's probably the only reason for the graphics looking a bit crap. Those A520 modulators don't tend to last as long as the actual Amigas and definitely don't like loft conditions.
I was using the A520 modulator yes, but remembered that even new, they were rubbish. So to test it I tried using the monochrome composite output on the back of the A500 and the sprite flickering still occured. It was odd as some games didn't do it at all, but others did it like crazy (and some games would be fine for a bit, then shifty for a bit, seemingly at random).
Sounds like a dry joint on one of the custom chips. Or some condensation in the system.
The loft was very warm and dry so shouldn't be condensation (it could be, but unlikely I suppose) so a dry joint sounds very possible. I did the old flexing the case trick as I heard it can help the chips fall back into their seat if they have popped out slightly - but then somone else said that this was a bit of a myth.
Either way, I'm not overly fussed at the moment, I have UAE fo any pressing Ami needs. Maybe I'll open it up and have a look but the chances are I'd struggle to find a problem let alone fix it.
The old case flexing trick was for the Atari ST, and did often work. Mine got a bit flaky towards the end of its life and that did often get it to work.
I still have my Amiga 2000 and 2500
Which I will never sell.
Franco
Still have an A500, and A1200 w/ 120 MB harddrive somewhere. I haven't touched either of them in a looong time (and I seriously doubt they even work anymore), but I'm tempted to give them a try again one of these days.
Then, there's the problem of the floppy disks - still have boxes full of them, but I bet at least 90% of them have become unreadable by now :)
You might be surprised. Most of my old disks still work perfectly and I bet at leas the A1200 still works. The A500 might, but they tend to suffer a bit more and have some motherboard or chip issues.
Sharingan wrote:
Hi Sharingan,Quote:
Then, there's the problem of the floppy disks - still have boxes full of them, but I bet at least 90% of them have become unreadable by now
Do you have any old obscure demos, packs, intros or any other demoscene related stuff in those boxes? Would be very interested to hear about it. ;)
I'd have to dig through my stash one of these days to take a looksee. I wasn't particularly into collecting demos - the only group I collected stuff from was Andromeda (if I remember the name alright). I might be surprised at what I have lingering about though :)Quote:
Originally Posted by P G
Completely off topic, but if you were interested in Andromeda back in the day then you might like to know they made a comeback this year, releasing a PC demo called Noumenon which came second at Breakpoint back during easter. That's their first production released ever since Nexus 7 in '94. And it's the original members that's behind it too, not just new guys borrowing an old name. Have a look, it's pretty good.
It's great news that Andromeda is back again. The breakpoint demo was very good and it seems like the audience thought the same, as it received a second place in the competition. A funny thing though; If one takes a look at the results from Breakpoint 2007 for example, you can quickly see many of the old Amiga groups participating (and dominating!) in the PC demo competition. Farbrausch, with old Amiga coder Chaos, won the compo. Second place went to Andromeda, one of the best Amiga groups of all time. You've also got Brainstorm on the 4th place, while Nuance on 7th, Loonies from Denmark on the 8th and Anadune from Poland on the 9th place. A bit Amiga domination in the compo for sure. :D
Anyway, wish Andromeda would release something for the Amiga in the style of Nexus 7.
I don't like PC demos very much, as nowadays everything is technically possible in demos, meaning it's just like painting a picture and the most beautiful one wins.
You are right about that. The PC's are so powerful these days, that it isn't really making the most out of the machine that counts or stretching it to its limits. You can clearly see that in the PC demos. Seems groups are focusing a whole lot more on design, but the effects remains pretty much the same as a few years ago. It is totally different on the C64. Barriers are broken even today!! I read some new on C64 demosite, and there was actually a sprite-barrier or something that had been broken this year. Truly amazing and an example of what democrews can be capable of. The ZX Spectrum scene is also incredly good - have seen a lot of prods through emulator, and its amazing what they can get out of the old machine.
Getting out the most of a 8 or 16 bit machine is the real challenge, and that is what I really enjoy and like to see. But some PC demos are nicely done, cannot moan about that. But I still prefer a 3 level scrolling over PC power graphics demos.
This is exactly why Noumenon is so good though. It is made in the style of the old days, showing of some neat coding tricks instead of focusing totally on design like modern PC demos. That screenshot on Pouet you see if you follow the earlier link for example is an infinite 3D zoomer. It keeps going and going forever into that object. Pretty impressive to look at, and there are several more effects in it that are pretty cool ideas as well.
You do need a pretty powerful PC for it run good though.
I really liked Noumenon and the infinite 3D fractal zoom was a fascinating section of the demo.
As for PC demos compared to the scene on older 8 and 16 bit systems. I am as much a fan of the PC demo scene as I am of the Amiga and other older systems.
While it is true that today's PCs are very powerful compared to older machines it does allow for something different. With older systems the amazement and fun comes from seeing some effects created by pushing the hardware beyond what was thought possible. The recent translation of am Amiga demo to the C64 is a good example of this and that really did blow me away by how much they managed to retain of the original Amiga version. In comparison PC productions can instead explore imagination and creativity and allows the groups to explore their thoughts and ideas fully without too many restrictions.
However I do still believe there is still a boundary with the PC as the hardware can be pushed to the limit if tried and some amazing particle and 3D effects can be created which look amazing.
The Demo Scene on any platform is for me true moving art, Much more so than games or any other visual and audio based form on a computer.
I own an A600 but the disk drive has let me down. I have previously owned an A500 and a CD32 but now im on the lookout for an A1200
I still have my Amiag 600 and all the games and bug controller.
And I have a PC and I have Monkey Island Bounter Pack for PC.
But I also play Monkey Island 2 on Amiga 600.
I got rid of my A500 and A600HD, now have 2 x CD32 (blew 1 up, trying to stuff SX1 inside it) and an A1200, with CF as HD, CDROM (stuffed in back) and 68882, 8MB mem.
Got a Dual Core Athlon setup (PC), mainly used for deving now.
The Amiga 500 was my first Amiga computer.
Today I have two Amiga 1200 computers and two PCs.
My Amiga is almost like new condition. I take very good
my of computers. The Amiga 1200 I use the most is in
D-Box 1200 3.4 Hard drive and cdrom Mediator 1200SX
Apollo 1230 with 32MB fast ram. Voodoo 3 3000 PCI
video card/Soundblaster/Pixelview TV turner Spider USB 2.0.
My list can go on and on but I do not to boar anybody.
It would be great to hear more about your tower A1200 santafe37. Do you have any pictures?
Look out, Harrison is after Hardware pron, ;)
@Harrison
My tower currently has one side removed exposing all the boards inside.
I can take a picture of that if you want.
As they say, whatever floats your boat.
Just thought it would be great to get some pictures of A1200 tower conversions that I can then use for the main site's hardware section. Should inspire others to want to do the same, especially if the images include the full spec, with information about each piece of hardware used.
The one thing that is very hard to find anything about online is A1200 tower conversions.
There are some basic guides on Aminet, if memory serves.
It all depends on how much you are prepared to do yourself.
Using all standed PC stuff is cheaper but harder.
Yep got an A1200 around the place with ClassicWB on. Great for the occasional game or nostalgia trip.
A PC is just an evil necessity though - they're far too convenient and cheap not to have at least one, plus the emulators available are fantastic.
My trusty Amiga 3000 system, and a dual 800mhz cpu's/512meg ram Ubuntu Linux system.
Partially out of dress eh? Kinky!;)Quote:
Originally Posted by TiredOfLife
I think we will eventually have to have a XXX rated section on the site at this rate! So many Amiga's with exposed parts we will have to introduce some censorship to the site. ;)
Give em a glimpse to keep em curious.;)
I have an A1200 plus 1 to fix up a c64 with 1541 mkII disk drive, several pc's 1 xbox 1 ps2!
I have an A1200 I use regularly which has an Apollo 040 card with 32MB Fast RAM, a 2.1GB hard drive and a Squirrel SCSI PCMCIA adaptor with a CD-ROM drive.
Also I have a couple of other broken A1200s (one of which I nicked the floppy drive out of when the one in my current 1200 stopped working) and an A500+ which also went on strike a few years ago.
Got a few A500`s including my original A500 from 1987!
A1200 with a hdd.. which I cloned and now use in Winuae..
Got a nice Amiga on my GP2x ;)
I've heard the Amiga emulation on the GP2x is pretty good. Does it run quite fast with good sound emulation? I use the Amiga emulator on the PSP and that runs a lot of stuff at full speed now but still does suffer from some slowdown in specific games.
Just an A3000, A2000, CDTV and an early A500 with KS 1.2 :D
My main machine is a Apple mac Quad G5 which I use for Logic pro Audio work.
See my sig.
I only use the 1200 and 3000 on a daily basis though.
And probably one of the 500's once a month, sometimes prefer using the real thing as opposed to starting winuae for some retro gaming :thumbs:.
Paul.
That's a nice collection of Amiga machines, Eroom. :) Do you have any expansions for the 1200 and 3000?
I've got a few pg...
The a1200 has a blizzard 1240 card, subway usb, internal scandoubler, internal cd drive, buffered ide interface and a 4gb hard drive.
I've only just got the a3000 so am part way through a refurb but at the moment its got a Cybervision 643d card, ram expansion and a buddha card which connects to a 40gb hard drive and a cdrom.
Oh and a very talented person off another amiga forum is making me a simm adaptor for a full 16mb of ram.
All my other machines are more or less standard.
I just love messing about with amigas.
Cheers. :thumbs:
Paul.