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One of the few computers I regret getting rid of is my Amiga 500. What would I use it for? Not sure. But… Something.
by bjelkeman-again 3y ago
One of the few computers I regret getting rid of is my Amiga 500. What would I use it for? Not sure. But… Something.
- ElCapitanMarkla 3y agoI saw our old A600 in storage at my parents last weekend. I’ll go get it one day, so many good games on there.
- actionfromafar 3y agoThey are throwing it out next weekend, better hurry.
- snvzz 3y agoCan't stress that enough. Every week in retrocomputing forums there's some such story. Simply cannot expect family to actually value your treasures.
- BallyBrain 3y agoOh man, I did the same thing and very much regret it. It's like I gave away a important part of my childhood. When I have the time I'll buy another one and probably just fiddle around with it. Play all the old games I used to like too I guess.
- finnjohnsen2 3y agoIf you go after it and buy an Amiga, don't forget it is much about preserving a vintage computer at this point. And not just the computing/gaming or whatever you remember doing. I did this, and I'm not sure it was what I wanted.
- mysterydip 3y agoIf you're looking just for the experience and not the burden of caring for vintage equipment, the A500 mini has good reviews (and looks like they're making a large size version later this year).
- snvzz 3y agoSave yourself the money and just use the raspbian they based it on. That works on the Raspberry Pi you probably already have. There's also PiMiga, WinUAE, fs-uae and minimig (miSTer branch).
- bowsamic 3y agoCan you go into more detail? How much effort is it to keep it working?
- finnjohnsen2 3y agoApologies for giving you the boring 'it depends', but it really does depend ALOT where you start off and what you wanna do. I can tell you my experience. If you start off with a stock Amiga finding off the attic you can pretty much expect anything. This is rock bottom. I did this and in hinsight it was a mistake. Decades of sticky filthy dust, bugs, rust, yellowing, bumps, scratches, stickers, missing port pins, screws, ram lid, cracked up soldering, leaky batteties, unresponsive keys. But I had a working floppy, and it actually booted. Lucky me. You should buy a confirmed working Amiga from an enthusiast. These guys usually have a lot of them accumulated over the years and has probably tended to at least basic things. I did this after I gave up my first. You'll find them on Facebook and they are great helpful people in your demography probably. Now you want a screen. Do you really want an old CRT, or do you wanna adapt to a modern (HDMI!) screen? No approach is correct, you just have to pick one Now you want data. The floppys are old and were already a flimsy tech when new. Many don't work anymote. I found I wanna work around this with and download floppy images off the internet instead. There are many ways to do this by fitting something modern on the Amiga. Gotek to name one solution. Sorry for the long answer, but to go back to my original point. This is a huge topic with a large community and many commercial actors who can sell you things to fix old computers.
- andoma 3y agoI don’t miss my old Amiga that much. But I do regret that I didn’t keep copies of source code for various projects I did on the Amiga. Mostly for nostalgic reasons of course.
- stuff4ben 3y agoI threw out my 2 A500's into the electronics recycling when I moved houses 15 years ago. I wish I had kept them now that I have the space. I didn't have a monitor though since my 1084s was busted so I never used the computers.