Got my Amiga A500 out after 15 years

pault2007

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I got my 1MB Ram Commodore Amiga A500 out the other day after 15 years covered up in a box.

Call me mad if you wish but I spent £60 on accessories from AmigaKit to get it working again (power supply, RGB to Scart cable, digital joypad, mouse).

I thought the Amiga would look really weird on my 26" LCD after it was last used on a 14" CRT TV but it actually looks pretty good.

The keyboard's quite yellow now (I read that most Amigas ended up like this) but it still looks like a nice colour.

I had an A520 TV modulator somewhere but can't find it now.

Amazingly, all of 10 games I tried worked perfectly (even a couple that weren't in a box or cassette).

Games I've been playing are:

Sid Meier's Colonization
Top Gear 2
European Champions
Thundercats
Mercenary Escape from Targ and The Second City compendium
Insanity Fight
Barbarian - The Ultimate Warrior
Ikari Warriors
Captain Fizz
Soccer Mania

I've also got a boxed office suite, which I haven't tested, called InterOffice 2.0.



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Top Gear 2 game

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Sid Meier's Colonization game

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Nice not had my Amiga out for a while, got it out about 6months ago for some cannon fodder :D

Boxed
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1mb Upgrade :eek: :laugh:
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Hi Ya
One of the best home computers there was, have not got mine any more(had a 500 then a 1200) but i do have Amiga Forever which is a pretty good emulator. Been playing Xenomorph and Carrier command!!


Cheers
Steve
 

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Red power led and therefore probably a green floppy drive led means it's an early A500 (i had one of these) wouldn't be surprised if this is running kickstart 1.2, before it was replaced with the much commoner green power led and amber floppy led of kickstart 1.3 (all that info from leaving the power on) :D

You can never get a better power supply than the original A500 brick type though which weighed a ton, anything that followed, the A600 and 1200 power supplies were crap in comparison (feel the weight difference and compare the failure rates), todays replacements will never compare. :smashin:
 
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I also remember getting this free when i bought the 500! F18 Interceptor


Makes me want to buy a proper Amiga now! Still got loads of
games at the parents in the loft!!
Off the top of my head....
Hired Guns
Elite 2
Carrier Command( of course!)
Star Glider 2
Eye of the beholder 1 & 2
Magnetic Scrolls Alice, The Pawn
er rise of the robots? think thats what it was called

Cheers
Steve
 

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I've had one of those beauties (Amiga 500) loooooong time ago (18-20 years ago?). It was upgraded to 1mb of ram and had floppy diskette drive. I remember most of the games wouldn't load though, as one of the memory sticks must have been broken. I don't remember the name of the game, but it was Formula 1 game with the view from top (like in GTA1) and every single time after 1 lap it would freeze on me. I had to reload the game (took couple of minutes), play one lap, freeze, reload, 1 lap, freeze... :laugh: Loved that game!
 
I've had one of those beauties (Amiga 500) loooooong time ago (18-20 years ago?). It was upgraded to 1mb of ram and had floppy diskette drive. I remember most of the games wouldn't load though, as one of the memory sticks must have been broken. I don't remember the name of the game, but it was Formula 1 game with the view from top (like in GTA1) and every single time after 1 lap it would freeze on me. I had to reload the game (took couple of minutes), play one lap, freeze, reload, 1 lap, freeze... :laugh: Loved that game!

Really? that's one thing i never had with my Amiga was a freeze, never.
And all the games i tried last time still worked fine aswell. :)
 
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Red power led and therefore probably a green floppy drive led means it's an early A500 (i had one of these) wouldn't be surprised if this is running kickstart 1.2, before it was replaced with the much commoner green power led and amber floppy led of kickstart 1.3 (all that info from leaving the power on) :D

You can never get a better power supply than the original A500 brick type though which weighed a ton, anything that followed, the A600 and 1200 power supplies were crap in comparison (feel the weight difference and compare the failure rates), todays replacements will never compare. :smashin:


Wow - I never knew that the next version of Kickstart gave to a different power and floppy LED.

Yep - I've got Kickstart 1.2 with Workbench 1.3.

I've turned my power supply on and off about 10 times since buying it and it's still working, so hopefully, it'll last a few years yet.

I must've had the original power supply but don't remember it being really heavy.
 
Really? that's one thing i never had with my Amiga was a freeze, never.
And all the games i tried last time still worked fine aswell. :)

I suspect now it was a memory problem (never knew that then), never had it repaired and after a while I sold it.
 
I very nearly got an Atari ST instead of the Amiga (think it was the 520).

I think a mate of a mate was selling both and after some deliberation, I decided to go for the Amiga because of the games.

I think I paid £50 for it.

The thing that drew me to Amigas when I had a Spectrum was the Amiga screenshots on the back of the 'big box' games - it was like the publishers were too embarrassed to put the Spectrum shots on the back.

The A500 can't half produce some music - I was almost bopping along to the music in my games last night.
 
Wish i had space to have mine out all the time, the hassle of having to faff around means it dont come out as much as it should, and my mouse sucked a bit too.

Look what i found :smashin:

Think the only boxed game i have left all other boxes gone missing over years.
Wish i could find the Microprose Grand Prix box and manual. :mad:
 

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Wish i had space to have mine out all the time, the hassle of having to faff around means it dont come out as much as it should, and my mouse sucked a bit too.

Look what i found :smashin:

Think the only boxed game i have left all other boxes gone missing over years.
Wish i could find the Microprose Grand Prix box and manual. :mad:

Thats another great game!!
A friend of mine at the time worked for Bullfrog and i think he worked on the PC version of Syndicate and he called one of the agents after me "Floyd" :)
 
I know what you mean - I'm still shocked at how big the keyboard is on my bedroom floor (almost as deep as my leather chair).

The keyboard's also so wide that I sometimes clip it with my trainer when I try and step over it.

Was Microprose Grand Prix really good?

I might take some photos of my other games later to put on here - what do you think?
 
Yeah Loved Grand Prix back then, just to be fair like syndicate needed the extra Mhz of the A1200 to run nicer but was a absolute cracker in it's day.
 
Where would people say are the best places to get games from?

I just want 5 or so really decent ones to replace the ones I've already got and aren't really interested in.

Is Retrogames a bit steep for games? They charge around £7 on average.
 
Has anyone played the game Jim Power?

The graphics are incredible - don't know if this was done on an A500 or A1200.
That worked on any amiga and was an ocs/ecs game.

If you want top end A500 platformer graphics and animation look at Ruff 'n' Tumble or flashback, maybe even kid chaos (might be ks 2.0 if i remember though).

If you go the A1200 route anytime soon then grab disneys aladdin, lionking and look at pinball illusions, slamtilt the later being my favourite amiga game of all time.
 
The earliest a500's had a couple of purely cosmetic differences too!, i wonder if they'd be worth any more nowadays if you still had one for collectors sake.

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