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Always good to see people re-discovering the Amiga. It truly is a wonderful machine. My (current) collection: http://www.jaruzel.com/amiga/collection http://ww

Always good to see people re-discovering the Amiga. It truly is a wonderful machine. My (current) collection: http://www.jaruzel.com/amiga/collection http://www.jaruzel.com/amiga/collection Not shown is the shelves and shelves of spare parts, expansion cards, cases, keyboards and broken A500s/A1200s I also have. Collecting them becomes addictive quite quickly!

sundvor 8y ago
That's pretty impressive! Nice work man. I had the 500 with memory upgrade, then upgraded to the 3000 - where I got a new CPU, either the 020 or the 030, and my first ever HDD. I think it was a massive 50MB. I searched some of the demo archives and could find an intro of kinds that I wrote as a teenager. I was able to start it up in an emulator, and it was a fairly good representation ... memories long lost, revived! The most fun was probably reading the fantastic crap I wrote in the greeting scrolltext - it was like a portal into a former self. :) And, no, none of my folks had video records back in the 80s, so that's all lost.
lathiat 8y ago
I had 2x A500 including the commodore monitors that somehow got lost/thrown out in a family move somewhere much to my dismay :( Loved those machines, and AMIGA BASIC - between that and QBasic was the start of me learning to program. Always did want an A1200
- jacquesm 8y ago
  > I had 2x A500 including the commodore monitors that somehow got lost/thrown out in a family move somewhere much to my dismay :( I totally feel your pain. All my family heirlooms got thrown out because someone decided to give away the $5 ikea box they were stored in marked 'keep safely' and put them in a gray plastic garbage bag instead. On the plus side you might be able to find some replacement monitors somewhere. An easy way might be to tell your local recycling compound that that is what you are looking for, just ask them to toss anything labelled 'Commodore' or 'CBM' on a pile and promise to buy it by the pound once every month. You'll be surprised what turns up.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    Oh I did not know you were an Amiga user back in the days :)
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      I wasn't but I fixed quite a lot of them (and regular 64's in a 10x larger number). I used the ST quite a bit though, totally different beast software wise, the Amiga was a multimedia powerhouse whereas the ST was more like a 'Mac light'.
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
From the perspective of now, getting rid of my Amigas turns out to have been one of my more short sighted decisions. I have no nostalgia for any of the 8 bits I had or any other machines. I have tons for the Amiga and there's still so much they did first or better. I really should have left them in that cupboard, as I was so reluctant to retire them in the first place. It was more to clear the two cupboards full of software, manuals and addons. Oh well. :) The future never arrived as instead of building on Amiga we built on PCs and Windows. Edit: Amiga Super Hang On not in the games list? Shocking! Anyone wanting some Dungeon Master nostalgia can get Legend of Grimrock on most platforms, which is a very nice re-implementation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_Grimrock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_Grimrock
Kurtz79 8y ago
The A500 is my favorite machine ever, it basically merged the best of both worlds from PCs (interface, general purpose OS, programmability) and consoles (dedicated audio and video chipsets, you could use a normal TV as monitor). It took full adoption of the 256 colors VGA and Sound Blaster cards for the PC to catch-up and eventually surpass it (late games started coming out in 10+ floppy disks and it was clear it had reached its limits).
welly 8y ago
Nice collection! Genuine question. What do you do with all these Amigas? Do you use them for anything productive, are any of them your "daily driver"? Or do you just fire them up from time to time for nostalgic reasons, or something else?
- Jaruzel 8y ago
  I just muck about with them when I feel like doing something different to my main 'PC' based computing. Right now, I'm trying to resurrect an old SCSI hard disk controller for the Amiga 500 using newer SCSI disks (which should be backwards compatible) but it's just not playing ball. :/
  - fit2rule 8y ago
    I'm also into retrocomputing, although my collection is more focused around the 8-bit machines of the UK and Europe (Oric-1/Atmos, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, etc.) I was just wondering if you'd heard of the RaSCSI device, and/or one of its clones? https://github.com/fran-cap/RASCSI-68kmlaver https://github.com/fran-cap/RASCSI-68kmlaver Also, SCSI2SD? http://www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index.php/SCSI2SD http://www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index.php/SCSI2SD As I have a number of other items in my collection, studio-gear, with SCSI this is my next foray into keeping the machines alive: replacing SCSI with something modern/servicable...
    - Jaruzel 8y ago
      I was hoping to keep the full retro experience complete with whirring disks and head clicking, but if I can't get these old controllers to talk to newer drives, then yeah, I may have to go down the SCSI-SDCard route. :( I'm also trying NOT to expand into Commodore 64/128 as well, as I'm rapidly running out of room... but I never owned a C128 back in the day, and I REALLY want one!
      - fit2rule 8y ago
        Yeah, I understand the authentic vibe, but there's something to be said about having every bit of software, ever written for the machine, on a single solid-state SD card. ;) Re: C128 - I know the feeling .. a pal of mine in the retro-computing group at a local hackrrspace recently set up his C128 for some great assembly hacking (he's building a new game engine for it in assembly) and it has totally inspired me to take another look at it as a machine. Retro-Computing really has such rewards!

sundvor 8y ago

That's pretty impressive! Nice work man. I had the 500 with memory upgrade, then upgraded to the 3000 - where I got a new CPU, either the 020 or the 030, and my first ever HDD. I think it was a massive 50MB. I searched some of the demo archives and could find an intro of kinds that I wrote as a teenager. I was able to start it up in an emulator, and it was a fairly good representation ... memories long lost, revived! The most fun was probably reading the fantastic crap I wrote in the greeting scrolltext - it was like a portal into a former self. :) And, no, none of my folks had video records back in the 80s, so that's all lost.

lathiat 8y ago

I had 2x A500 including the commodore monitors that somehow got lost/thrown out in a family move somewhere much to my dismay :( Loved those machines, and AMIGA BASIC - between that and QBasic was the start of me learning to program. Always did want an A1200

jacquesm 8y ago
> I had 2x A500 including the commodore monitors that somehow got lost/thrown out in a family move somewhere much to my dismay :( I totally feel your pain. All my family heirlooms got thrown out because someone decided to give away the $5 ikea box they were stored in marked 'keep safely' and put them in a gray plastic garbage bag instead. On the plus side you might be able to find some replacement monitors somewhere. An easy way might be to tell your local recycling compound that that is what you are looking for, just ask them to toss anything labelled 'Commodore' or 'CBM' on a pile and promise to buy it by the pound once every month. You'll be surprised what turns up.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  Oh I did not know you were an Amiga user back in the days :)
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    I wasn't but I fixed quite a lot of them (and regular 64's in a 10x larger number). I used the ST quite a bit though, totally different beast software wise, the Amiga was a multimedia powerhouse whereas the ST was more like a 'Mac light'.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

From the perspective of now, getting rid of my Amigas turns out to have been one of my more short sighted decisions. I have no nostalgia for any of the 8 bits I had or any other machines. I have tons for the Amiga and there's still so much they did first or better. I really should have left them in that cupboard, as I was so reluctant to retire them in the first place. It was more to clear the two cupboards full of software, manuals and addons. Oh well. :) The future never arrived as instead of building on Amiga we built on PCs and Windows. Edit: Amiga Super Hang On not in the games list? Shocking! Anyone wanting some Dungeon Master nostalgia can get Legend of Grimrock on most platforms, which is a very nice re-implementation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_Grimrock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_Grimrock

Kurtz79 8y ago

The A500 is my favorite machine ever, it basically merged the best of both worlds from PCs (interface, general purpose OS, programmability) and consoles (dedicated audio and video chipsets, you could use a normal TV as monitor). It took full adoption of the 256 colors VGA and Sound Blaster cards for the PC to catch-up and eventually surpass it (late games started coming out in 10+ floppy disks and it was clear it had reached its limits).

welly 8y ago

Nice collection! Genuine question. What do you do with all these Amigas? Do you use them for anything productive, are any of them your "daily driver"? Or do you just fire them up from time to time for nostalgic reasons, or something else?

Jaruzel 8y ago
I just muck about with them when I feel like doing something different to my main 'PC' based computing. Right now, I'm trying to resurrect an old SCSI hard disk controller for the Amiga 500 using newer SCSI disks (which should be backwards compatible) but it's just not playing ball. :/
- fit2rule 8y ago
  I'm also into retrocomputing, although my collection is more focused around the 8-bit machines of the UK and Europe (Oric-1/Atmos, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, etc.) I was just wondering if you'd heard of the RaSCSI device, and/or one of its clones? https://github.com/fran-cap/RASCSI-68kmlaver https://github.com/fran-cap/RASCSI-68kmlaver Also, SCSI2SD? http://www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index.php/SCSI2SD http://www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index.php/SCSI2SD As I have a number of other items in my collection, studio-gear, with SCSI this is my next foray into keeping the machines alive: replacing SCSI with something modern/servicable...
  - Jaruzel 8y ago
    I was hoping to keep the full retro experience complete with whirring disks and head clicking, but if I can't get these old controllers to talk to newer drives, then yeah, I may have to go down the SCSI-SDCard route. :( I'm also trying NOT to expand into Commodore 64/128 as well, as I'm rapidly running out of room... but I never owned a C128 back in the day, and I REALLY want one!
    - fit2rule 8y ago
      Yeah, I understand the authentic vibe, but there's something to be said about having every bit of software, ever written for the machine, on a single solid-state SD card. ;) Re: C128 - I know the feeling .. a pal of mine in the retro-computing group at a local hackrrspace recently set up his C128 for some great assembly hacking (he's building a new game engine for it in assembly) and it has totally inspired me to take another look at it as a machine. Retro-Computing really has such rewards!