Buying an Amiga - Which model to buy?
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- Thinking of buying a classic Commodore Amiga machine? What's the best model for your needs?
I appreciate this may be a controversial video, so leave your thoughts below :)
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Them were the days, I worked at Commodore Australia, was in charge of customer support & Amiga User Groups in Australia what a great & fun job.
I was just coming back from holidays, walk in & everyone was saying have you heard the news, what news, Commodore is closing they are going, what a shit my great job has come to a end.
I still think the Amiga 1200 was the best, was playing with one 6mths before anyone saw one, I could even bring them home to use, it was great.
A really nice rundown of the original Amiga's, I remember the envy I had when my friend had an Amiga 500 and I was still using my Atari 800 XL to play games on lol. The sounds / music and graphics / animation looked amazing in comparison. I got given a Mega ST before I eventually bought an Amiga 500 with 14" colour monitor, printer, stacks of floppies and a black desk (optional) which I still use to this day for my stuff. I then bought an Amiga 1200 (2MB) from a friend (part cash & swap for the A500). There was some great games like Super Stardust AGA, Ruff & Tumble, Disposable Hero, Shadow Fighter, Settlers, and Cannon Fodder I played a lot of before my move to the Playstation 1. There was some great pro applications besides Deluxe Paint, such as Photogenics and Image FX I used besides various 3D programs like Cinema 4D R2 and Lightwave. I used my Amiga for music production using Octamed Sound Studio, (a sophisticated sound tracker/midi program) I connected to my Yamaha PSR 330 and Yamaha DJX keyboards. The Amiga 1200 & 4000 rivaled and surpassed many PC's for a few years tech wise, whilst another rival, the Acorn Archimedes which used RISC based architecture was technically superior to that of the Amiga 1200. The Acorn lacked the software development the Amiga had in comparison, however within the the UK, it was embraced by educational establishments such as high schools to use for video production. I still have my Amiga 1200 packed up in my loft to this day and it still works, I doubt I'd ever sell it, I still have my Atari 800 XL and games.
I just ordered a Amiga 4000 with new capacitors, no battery and also no battery damage.
I can't wait for it to be delivered!!!
Great video by the way!!!! I really like how much effort you put in it and described every system in great detail!
Yup, maybe you now would reconsider a major review of this 2013 video. Lot of new hardware has been released since then. Expandability has grown for all Amiga models. Who knows, I'll patiently wait for another "deep analysis" as good as this was! Cheers, M
Bought my first Amiga (a 2000HD running 2.04) from my high school science teacher for $100 in 1999. Bought a towerized A4000 a year later. I still get the bug every now and again!
I. Have a 500 and a 2000 the floppy alone drives me crazy, after I saw your post I bought a 4000/40 and now it's fun without the prompts, thanks for the post.
Hi Dan. I believe that you under state the Amiga 2000 systems. Here on this side of the pond, have the Amiga Toasters for video editing. Plus the bridge card supporting a few of the Intel chips, 286, and 386. this open the Amiga 2000 for many different fields of interest. By listening to you views. You sound as if the Amiga was mainly only Games. Desktop Publishing, Video Editing, Animation and broadcast are many fields this Computers were used in. Thank you for the video.
Thanks for this vid Dan, it's just inspired me to buy an A1200 and relive my youth :D. So many memories of that machine, from visiting my local computer shop with my parents, then getting the thing home and unboxing it. Good times!
Hey Dan,
After going back and forth for a long time I finally took the plunge and ordered an amiga 1200 of UK ebay, much thanks to your inspiring videos on Amiga stuff.
I also ordered an accelerator, CF adapter, PCMCIA adapter, Compact flash cards and I am looking forward to mucking about with the hardware and set it up properly.
I love old hardware, especially stuff that is as cleverly designed as the Amigas.
So anyway - love your vids, I hope you make more of them.
I bought the first Amiga sold in Virginia, USA, in Oct 1985. The box said Amiga 1000 on it. Definitely had 1000 on it.
ure lie
Good video. You've confirmed my decision to get an A1200
Thanks for the refresher, Dan, much appreciated. Subscribed.
Got the past two weeks a beautiful AMIGA 500 Revision 5 with Kickstart 3.1 and ECS Fat Angus 8372A upgrade. Got also a nice ACA500plus with 8GB CF Boot WB 3.1 and a ACA1233n-40. Tomorrow i got a A501 Revision 6 and a Goliath PSU. With the great Commodore 1084S-P1 monitor RGB 50Hz. I want the games with WHDLoad and on diskette. Later on i must get a AMIGA 1011 diskdrive. Now i re-capped the A500 Revision 5 board and clean the intern diskdrive. I had a AMIGA 500 back in 1990 and later on a AMIGA 1200 Escom Revision 1D4 and a Blizzard 1260-50. Maybe the A1200 Reloaded come this year out. Because i got a C64 Reloaded MK2 and with the A1200 Reloaded it’s a super combo.
Brilliant overview Dan, really enjoyed that :) I've always been a fan of the A600 to be honest - even back in the day when it was looked upon as a bit of a pointless purchase if you already had an A500. I thought the compactness was definitely a plus and i've got great memories of my friend sticking it in his backpack and us heading on over to my house to play it.......couldn't really do that with the bulky A500!
Yeah the 1200 is king really - one day i'll get my mitts on one!
Amigakit still have them in stock, but the manufacturer requested they be suspended from sale as the software tool to configure them has been delayed for almost a year and customers were complaining, it's finally got a beta release this week though so hopefully will be back on sale soon.
I just got a 2000 for free. Its my first Amiga and its awesome
Very cool & welcome to the world of Amiga. I have an A2000HD that I have owned now for 22 years and its actually 24 years old. I can tell you Dan's vids are addictive and very informative.
Lucky bastard!
Mine wasn't free, but I'm still glad to have it. All I need now is an accelerator that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
Lucky you ;)
got a broken 500 from ebay for 30 and a broken psu / modulator for 6, already fixed the psu , cleaned the leaked battery gunk, fitted a gotek and its alive!!!
Note that the Amiga 500 Plus and CD32 were never sold in the USA. The CD32 was sold in Canada, so an NTSC model does exist, but a patent lawsuit prevented it from being sold in the States. There is no NTSC version of the 500 Plus.
I have a 2500, which is the best machine for use as a Video Toaster due to its 68030 accelerator and large amount of internal expansion. Video Toasters were used by many TV stations to do their graphics and animation.
But they were in Europe because we took to the Amiga more than you guys.
A1200 is by far my favourite, I used to have one back in the day and I can still remember the "wow" factor it had when I first got it. I also had the A500 with a 1 MB memory expansion before the A1200. I remember the bulky A520 RF adapter on the back to get it hooked up to my TV, I would still say this is an excellent choice for a retro gaming experience. Perhaps a cleaner way of using one would be to get a proper monitor so you wouldn't need the A520 on the back. For expansion, A600 and A1200 is best unless you're planning to go overboard, in that case you should look at an A4000. A500 is fine for those who just want to keep it stock and play some retro games in the old way with floppy disks and all that. The only problem might be that good floppy disks are getting harder to find these days, so might be something that makes it much more complicated to use soon. A600 and A1200 at least have the convenience of easily added hard drive storage, which makes it easier to avoid the use of floppy disks. Then again, you may also just opt for a raspberry pi and emulators if you want it extra convenient. :)
A500 is a good choice with a gotek inside. No need of floppy disks ;)
My main Amiga was A600 but now it is A1200 in a A500 Plus case,A lot of People call them a A1700 You can find few videos on here of me making it,It did have a vga card it,Now I use a Easycap on my laytop to use it.
Great video,I always enjoy them.Thanks.Dan.
Thanks mate, yeah the 600 was great for brining around mate's houses. I even had one of those yellow and red bags made for the A600, think they were called Zapsacks or something, really just like bags you'd take to school but twice the price lol.
My A1200 had compatibility issues too with some games, but it was often fixed by pressing both mouse buttons while powering up the machine so that I saw some kind of "bios" screen where I could disable one setting that helped. Anything similar for A500+/A600?
For all Amiga fans, just bought Sony CRT TV KV-14Lt1E, and it blow me away! Flat screen,15 inch, beautifull slick design. I hooked it using Amiga-Scart cable to my 1200, picture is brilliant, colors so lovely! This TV/Monitor replaced my Commodore 1084s which i have transfer to be used with my C64. Only negative is one speaker, but it mixes left and right channels from Amiga.
Hi Great video. Only thing i would add is that a good A4000 cpu accelerator is off the scale expensive. I've been looking for an 060 upgrade for a few years with no luck.
Great video Dan, I miss my old Amiga days...
Hey Brian, they may have been! Most of the pics were from wikipedia, but one or two were off Google Images, apologies for not asking permission first. Good luck getting it restored and working again.
Ebay prices vary depending on the day, the seller and the phase of the moon. This was just a standard A590+ CBM hard disk I saw, it was mint condition though and boxed.
Another brilliant video Dan - thanks for that. Especially the battery corrosion tip. Just grabbed my A500+ from the back room, opened it up and.. corroded battery. Hadn't spilled too badly - bit on the motherboard but hoping it won't affect it. Was quite a job prying it out but have managed it. Will give it a quick power up test in a minute. Then to check my A4000T. That would be much more of a disaster if the battery destroyed it.
Great video, thanks!
Would be cool to have an update on that regarding the 2018 situation and the availability of new expension and upgrade cards today. At least the expandability of an A500 isnt't as bad as it was 2013, isn't it? And it's cheap.
Thanks Dan. Did a quick power test and it did start up (could hear the reassuring drive cicking ;) ), but will properly test it when I finally get around to sorting the back room and getting all the old beauties setup again ;) Check the A4000T and the battery had already been taken out - connected up via a dual AA battery external hack pack. Will probably hook that up to a Lithium battery holder when I get it working again.
Thanks for that video :) However You made it the way as for people who think about buying a working computer station for normal purposes (extensions, games/programs, compatibility, potential damage). Most of us buy Amiga for sentimental purposes, even if we're not collectors. I'm thinking now and then to buy the 500 (computer from my childhood that I got in 1998, when my uncle gave it to me - and yes, all the books about Amiga I'd read back then made me jealous about "modern" Amigas).
In my opinion for the case of fun and exploring the world of computing 20-30 years back there are only 3"real" Amigas: 500, 1200 and 4000. All of them were the best computers at their time and 4000 was the last "real Amiga" just before losing everything to PC. All the rest were just mistakes that made Amiga collapsed. Forcing people to use incompatible version of Workbench 2.0 (600, 500+) was a disaster because so many programmers were writing programs and games for Workbench 1.3 because of 500 popularity. 3.0 and 3.1 were the new quality and 1200 was the new star .. but it was a little too late (1987 was the year when Workbench 1.3 was introduced).
But maybe it's just my experience from Poland where models 500 and 1200 were the most popular.
Heck - I subscribe to Your channel then... You made me nostalgic again how back then in 1987 there was a computer who could make 3D demos, with fully operating graphic mouse controlled OS with windows and how PC could win this war still breaks my heart ;) How could You have all those games with music and graphics and PCs were operating on some ridiculous built-in beeper and CGA or EGA... Hell... And I know I'm not the only one... ;)
One of the things that you could get (and goes for about $100 on ebay today) was a module that you could install i the back of the CDTV which would let you connect a SCSI drive that the unit could use and boot off of.
The Amiga 1200 is probably the best option for anyone looking to buy a classic amiga because there are so many options to expand & upgrade the system. I think it's amazing what the A1200 is capable of considering it's now over 20 years old. Parts are pretty easy to find & there's a good support community online. After many years of searching I was lucky enough to obtain an Amiga 1000 & desktop A3000 which I love but to be honest they are not the most practical machines to use these days.
New, affordable internal expansions for the A500 with 8MB RAM and IDE are coming out soon, so with a CF card and a newer Kickstart and the A500 won't be such a bad option anymore, and they're the easiest to find cheap or free.
I'd say that was pretty much spot on if I were making this vid. I have the 600, 1200 and CD32 so i'm pretty much covered. I think there were too many machines in the end and the later models just didn't have enough. Would love a 4000 or to upgrade the CD32 which as you said, isn't cheap.
By the way - the one big advantage of the A3000 over the A4000/A4000T was the built-in flicker fixer, so all modes were available on a directly connected VGA screen :)
New updated video for 2019?
I have an old A1000 in the garage (with the extra 256kb daughterboard) -- are they worth anything these days? Not sure if I'd sell it - it's just nice to keep for the nostalgic value.
always love the amiga stuff dan, even though i had an ST from 1986, however that scene is very quiet these days so through got into amigas to feed my retro computing habits.
By coincedence am working in Leicester at the moment, and happened to have gem on the radio the other week in the car. Thought i recognised the voice ha ha good show
dan
With Easter Sunday right around the corner, I'm wondering if you'd be willing to do a follow up to this video considering how many more options there are today as opposed to 2013? There are now several new hardware accelerators around, new adaptors, floppy emulators everywhere, so many more options for just about every Amiga model that was previously very difficult to expand. Of course you know all this. However, there also seems an uptick of folks wanting the advice you gave in this video, but by today's standards... :)
Dan I'm afraid I have to agree. I'm much more Acorn orientated (Hello! I've seen you on the forums and Facebook), so when I bought an Amiga I went for what my mates had when I was languishing with an Acorn A3010 - an A500. Bad idea. THe PSU blew (bad caps) and I'm still waiting for a replacement ordered months ago. The addon 1MB RAM Card had the CMOS battery, so the whole thing was rusted. I mean welded shut with rust!
So I've had this Amiga 500 for six months, and never used it because of the PSU and caps. If I'd do it again then I would go for an A600 without a doubt. Luckily my A500 was very cheap and the seller lived within spitting distance so it didn't cost much. It is really badly yellowed though - retrobrite time.
I have an Acorn AKF11 and an Acorn AKF53 monitor. The AKF11 has the TTL RGB port and SCART, the AKF53 only has VGA but is multisync from 15KHz to 40 KHz so adapters should work.
With an old VHS player and DVD/HDD recorder I can play all my retro stuff through my AKF53.
Hello there - I like your videos; you come across as articulate and the content is very informative indeed. Keep it up!
If I'm not mistaken you used my A500+ battery leakage photos? I'm still working on that old machine. I've removed the affected components and the full extent of the damage is quite astonishing. The electrolyte has got underneath the solder-resist and spread like cancer across the motherboard. I will fit new components and hope for the best!
Wow! Nice find, love to more about its use there! Any pics?
Anyone know if the A1200 can play CD32 or CDTV iso's stored on a CF card? Like with the full CD audio etc?
you might be right, but replacing surface mount components is not for everyone, since they are so tiny, so an untrained person could do more damage while re-capping. I have so far delayed doing it until I feel comfortable soldering SMTs.
Back in the 90s when we were at college on our computer course with Windows PCs, we took the piss out of Michael Harris who still had his Amiga and loved it. Said it was great. To us, it looked old. Now I realise (yet never owned one) he was right :)
I have a 500 with 1 meg, Svideo video adaptor, USB floppy emulator and mouse adapter. You can get a multi-region TV and snyc it to PAL. As far as demos and games go, you can install a PAL switch to with the Palcon program to help them run on a NTSC Amiga.
Yeah that what I was led to believe but the previous owner of mine had removed it. I think some people still talked about the battery leaking in some circumstances - he probably did it as a precautionary measure.
Great video with a lot of useful info. I have an A500 and a CD32....now which Atari ST should I buy?
You can plug a A400 keyboard into the CD32. I personally kind of agree with your verdict on A600, A1200 or A4000. I've got some rare Amiga stuff (couple of Amiga 2000s, a A4000, A Escom A4000T and one of the C= Gemini prototypes. Thing is though you could emulate the Amiga on a cheap modern PC for about the same price...
unfortunately we are not allow any mobile phones or cameras on site. But it brought back memory's going to get an Amiga 1200 now Ive seen your vids thanks alot
500 +I had one of those bad boys. LOVED IT!
I played Monkey Island 2, Superfrog, Silkworm, Chuck Rock, Bubble Bobble, New Zeeland Story, Flashback, Turricane 2 and a bunch of other great games
I found a A1200 on a internet auction site, it's on it's way now :D
Heh yeah it will make the 500 easier to expand, but I still don't think it will rival a 600 or 1200 in terms of cost efficiency or ease, the Aca500 will not be as cheap as a £10 IDE adapter and CF Card, it's a nice expansion for existing 500 owners though for sure.
Hi Dan, Where is the best place to buy an Amiga 1200 in 2018? -
Ive never owned one and would love to get an Amiga!
Keep up all the great videos
I got an A500 for free some years ago. Since then I've got a HxC for genera-purpose usage, and when I use it with the Amiga I run it off the exernal floppy port with a boot-selector switch mod I added.
Sill, the 1200 is tempting, but a bit pricey at the moment considering my financial standpoint. Just got a C64 for a decent price anyways, so I got enought to keep me bussy for a while :D
And if you consider the 500 big, then you haven't seen some of the local machines preceeding it over in these areas! Just look up some of my Tiki-100 videos. Now THAT'S a beast of a machine (i'm not nessecarily talking about performance here).
Thanks, I've been wondering which Amiga to buy for a while and the 1200 it is.
I have had my old amiga 500 from the 80's added side hard drive 4 meg of ram. fatter angas a chip switcher with 1.3 and 2.0 on it also the side 28 mhz accelerator. I had 4 scsi drives on it a few are dead now . I just saw they are working on the vampire 2 for the 500 I am excited
Also for the North American out there -- get a PAL Amiga -- the vast majority of classic Amiga software around the internet are PAL only versions.
One major advantage the A3000 has especially in the land of no SCART is it's build in scan doubler. It's the only model that has this built in and allows you to display it on a standard VGA monitor including the PAL modes.
This video is quite old and the tides have changed in the few years since I would say. Personally right now my personal opinion is that the Amiga 2000 is the best model to own specifically because of the Vampire. That combined with a Kipper2k CPU slot adapter and you are talking a really really nice clean Vampire installation in a nice solid big box Amiga. I have a CF to IDE adapter mounted to the back and run a cable to the Vampire, so access to the CF from the outside is great. Running HDMI and even JTAG cables out are no issue either with no modification other than removing one slot plate cover. My Amiga 2000 is the fastest Amiga that can be had currently ;)
Yeah had heard about them Cammy, still won't be as cheap as a $10 CF Card adapter though I bet, so A600/1200 better choice still I think, less messing around too.
You mentioned the numeric keypads on the A600, as much as I wanted to use the A600 it always bugged me the lack of numeric keypads, btw I use Octamed Tracker, so its a feature I need, the numeric keypads are the mute channels.
What would be a good model to get for someone in the US who is mostly interested in gaming on it & has an old NTSC CRT TV as a monitor? Do CD-ROMs exist with virtually all the game library? Does one have to worry about NTSC compatibility, both for the system & games themselves? Did most games get dual release?
hey can you play classic amiga games on the modern amiga behind you.....
Hi Dan, big fan of your channel. I have just rescued an Amiga 500 that's been sat in my brother's shed for the last 15 years! It was in a bit of a sorry state, but after dismantling it and cleaning everything up, she looks like new! I was just wondering if you've changed your stance on the Amiga 500 since there seems to be more accelerators on the market now? Where I've saved this thing (and the A500 was my P&J back in 1989), I'd like to spoiler her with some hardware upgrades. Sadly most of the floppy discs that were with it are f*cked so maybe a USB replacement? Thanks.
hey there i was at work today and bumped into an Amiga 600 plumbed into a uranium furnace i couldn't believe my eyes still working and we make cores for our subs with that
As a former President of an Amiga computer club in the 1980s, buying an Amiga now is all about nostalgia. If your buying a retro computer, why buy one of the newer models in this day of age? My favorite is still the original A1000 model. It's more of an elegant design than the models that followed. Most of the Amiga software made over the years (especially games) was made for the A1000/A500 series. Very few games or programs took advantage of the ECS or AGA chip sets of later models and the enhancements made some of the older software not work without playing tricks when possible. Back in the day, I was able to upgrade my A1000 with a "Rejuvinator board" that fit internally, adding 1 meg of chip ram, kickstart 1.3 in rom, expansion slots (I think even a video expansion slot). I eventually owned a 2nd A1000 and being in the television/video production business I got a A2000HD with Video Toaster board. Also bought an A1200 when they came out (a waste). I had tons of software, but very few titles did not run on my original machine. I'm surprised many people still care about the Amiga in this day of age with all of the advances. You can emulate an Amiga on your PC and play the games / programs on your pc without collecting an original. Most of the games I cared about were coin-op ports which the Amiga was the best at vs other systems. The MAME emulator for Windows runs the original coin-op games, which are better. Amiga was the best for video production, but it's all HDTV now a days so pretty useless to most people in this age. I still own my 4 Amiga's, but they have not been turn on since the 90s. For sale to any serious buyers. I was a serious Amiga collector and have many accessories.
Seeing as of today A600 seems more and more appealing!
at half the size who wouldn't appeal to that
"Collect the set" :D
For me, the correct Amiga to buy is the one I attach Nostalgia too, and that exact pack. That's why I paid a hansom amount for a BOXED "A500 Batman Pack" recently. From there, I'd like to ALSO buy the Amiga I could have upgraded to, rather than jumping to PC, so that would be a A1200.
Hi. Can 1200 Amiga games be played on an Amiga 500? Is the Amiga 500 more powerful than an SNES or Applie III or Apple IIc. Thanks.
I've just inhearited my uncles A1200, he owned it since the platforms release, (but he wont part with his big base A2000 amiga). im watching all your videos (and have subscribed) as im looking to do everything to make it a fun and useable (hassle free? lol) retro machine. i have stripped and throughly cleaned the machine and now looking to the best all round setup, im thinking... 4GB CF instead of ide 2.5" hdd, accelerator (modern cheap one), a dvi output and converter to hdmi as i have a 4k 40" screen. and probably a GOTEK FD to replace the floppy disk drive). all im worried about is getting it all to work (finding the software needed to do this). any help would be greatly appreciated !
Would be interesting with an update once the Vampire 2 for the A500 is out.
I think things like the vampire 2 will have updated your opinion on several of these computers
I could be wrong here, but I believe the last Amiga to be made wasn't the CD32, but was in fact the A4000T.
Personally, I'd say it depends on what the person wants to use it for.
I'd say the CD32 is the best model for someone who just wants to play games, as you can easily burn any one of lots of easily obtainable CD images to a CD, put it in the CD32 and off you go.
For someone who wants to play games that are from later in the Amigas lifespan, or to seriously explore some of the wonderful software library of the Amiga such as DPaint, Personal Paint and so much more, an Amiga 1200 with a fast 68030 or better and at least 8MB of RAM, presents the best 'bang for buck', but will still be a fairly expensive setup to obtain, and may not be as user friendly as someone not used to the Amiga may expect.
An Amiga 500 with the 512KB trapdoor expansion and a Gotek or similar floppy drive emulator in the place of the stock 3.5" internal drive would be fantastic for games up until about 1992, but would be pretty much useless for later software.
An Amiga 600 is a good choice, because of the internal IDE and the PCMCIA, but it really needs extra RAM, not just the 1MB Trapdoor to bring it up to 2MB Chip, but another 4MB of fast RAM and preferably a faster CPU, and even then, it can't use AGA software - unless you get a vampire, and I'm not going to go more into that here. I've got an A600 myself, but I'd happily swap it for an A1200. Also, like the A500 above, swapping the internal 3.5" floppy for a Gotek may be a worthwhile change. The lack of a numeric keypad also affects use in programs such as DPaint, something I'd forgot about until after I got my A600...
What do you think of this Dan : Although I am a hard core Amiga and Commodore fan, and started building a collection, i changed my mind. In the end I sold almost
everything except 2x 1200 and 2 500+. Why? I thought why collect them
when there are people that strive to buy and use these machines, where i
can use only one at the same time. Just MHO. Cheers!
could do with an update on this given the a500 mini is coming out soon.
I Want a Commodore AMIGA for being used totally and play many of his games...My most heavy game I want to play purely on the Machine are Fears, Nemac IV and Alien Breed 3D II (Of course they are only the most exigent ones, but still I have tons of ''want to play'') Should I get a 1200 (with hix maximun capabilities) or a 4000? (Same with total power)?
I think I only ever encountered one game that wouldn't run at all on an A600. It was a PD platformer, though the name eludes me now.
Between the early bootup menu and Relokick, very little would refuse to run on an A600.
That explain a lot, I would think a properly boxed one would fetch a pretty penny. The aca500 will however probably make the 500(+) more desirable at a cost most can afford. esp since you can soft kick to 3.1 with maprom as with any aca card. you were a month too early with your video :)
Got an A500 for Christmas in 1986. We asked for a C64. What a surprise Santa brought us. Drive broke several years ago. Would love to have one modded up for hard drive with games and a digital mouse. Heard A1200 can be highly modded system. Would like to buy one. Where do I go to find one online I can buy in the US?
You can load your games from USB pen or microsd card reader through a Gotek Floppy Emulator by writing a modified firmware to it, found at: cortexamigafloppydrive.wordpress.com and replace the broken drive of your A500 with that. They cost 22-25$ with free shipping from aliexpress.com. If you want to buy an Amiga 1200 which I agree are the best, then I'd cheeck all of these: amibay.com or ebay.com or amigakit.com
Just found this video, after buying and fully kitting out a 1200. I'm glad I didn't make a mistake. ^^
Hope you manage to salvage the 500+!
what would be interesting would be the comparison with emulation as well ....
I had the A500 Plus as a kid. however, i always thought Kickstart 1.3 was the norm. then i found out later on 2.0 was the norrm.
I initially argued 1.3 was the default, (..which i later lost over majority).. However i see today when running Emulation software (WinUAE,FS-UAE) 2.0.4 is on the Amiga 500+ system, so i really don't know. I'm ot sure if KS today are upgraded,just purely due to software-freely emulation, or just a mistake in itself. My Amiga came with 512k Chip, so i thought Commodore was re-branding
I think my A600 2Mb RAM is great, had it since April 1994. Sits next to my PC and my four year old son asks to play on it. I wish they were still making a more up to date Amiga
Personally I own an old 4000/030. The problem is that the hard disk failed. I'd love suggestions for replacing both the hard disk and the workbench 3.1 OS floppies as those are corrupted like most magnetic media of that era. It's frustrating to have it and not be able to use it still. One of my favorite games for it was Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. If it weren't for archive.org I wouldn't be able to play that which would really be depressing.
An IDE hard drive up to 4 GB should work. Those are probably pretty hard to come by these days, so maybe look into IDE to CF card adapters.
I had actually tried an IDE to SD card adapter and it wasn't recognized by the system. That said it's entirely possible that it was just the adapter itself. As we all know there are hundreds of brands and they all interface differently. I'll have to take another look into that method though I'm not sure how much I trust flash memory given that it tends to wear out over time a lot faster than magnetic storage.
The AGA scandoublers seem to have gone out of stock again (and I missed the boat as well, hmph) but if you want an ECS scandoubler try amigakit.com
Thanks for the vid, your vids are really useful and informative, I didn't know about the CD32 CD torrent thing, I'll have to check that out
Yes it will function perfectly, but you will lose the battery-backed clock. This means absolutely nothing as far as loading games is concerned, but if you use the OS it would mean you have to reset the clock each time the machine is powered on. Other than that it will work perfectly.
sidecar to the amiga 500 w/8mb of ram and hard drive goes for around 100 euro. 300 gbp ought to be with an accelerator like the gvp 530. However, in about a month the 500 get a new sidecar - the aca500 - at around 70 euro with 4mb of ram, faster '00 processor and compact flash port plus port for amiga 1200 accelerator.
That's why they sell small screws which camp the case to hard drives today for the same reason. If the screws are too long they'll protrude though the case, and damage the drive..??
Perhaps this is the same reason with yours ? It would explain also why the drive seems to be ok with screws removes and loose. That wa s my first thought,.. (or it could just just the electronics are completely *** )
Being an old drive, anything's possible.
I had the seagate hard drive for the Amiga 500 with Workbench 2.0.
You said that the 600 has some of the drawbacks of the 500+. Does this include the leaky battery?
+John Collins doesnt have a battery you can buy a real time clock after adding a a604 memory expansion, 500 is pants i think because 600 has pcmcia so you can hook it to internet etc. and buy a 600 aca620 for 68020 processor upgrade
Yeah good point. The guy had hooked up a battery pack using two AA batteries - now very much corroded ;) I'm going to hook up a coin style mount at some point I think.
hi Dan, great review's interesting stuff I have a 500 and a 1200 with side HD and the Amiga monitor, loads and loads of software and magazines Amiga format cu etc, are they worth anything? are there any rare games or gear, I love the tanx game, two amy tanks separated by a mountain, used to use puller and blowers to get your shell over.
I had an A500. an A500+ with HD8+ HDD 60MB harddrive and 8MB RAM expansion (which I LOVED) and an A600 with a 20MB internal Hard drive. I loved them all but my favorite was the A500+ because of the Hard drive expansion. :)
Hi Dan just a quick question, how old where you when you got your first Amiga 500 computer?
+boyblue777 about 9!
For an American looking at the Amiga, which would you suggest? Importing a European PAL model (Not a problem, I have RGB displays), or going with a domestic unit? I hear the US Amiga library is quite lacking, and it's difficult to get PAL software to run on a NTSC Amiga.
Yeah if you're looking at games, the vast majority of the Amiga's library was in PAL mode.
Yea, and there is little price difference when you factor shipping from the UK. An Amiga 1200 may cost $150 in the US, and one from the UK could be a third of the price...the shipping will make the difference.
Can't you just use PAL video drivers (graphics library) on an NTSC model and make PAL work? If you are not getting an actual Amiga then WinUAE is really great these days :)
I like the 4000 even though it only has 1/3 of the space of my phone
Also ting is a cat so ting awesome
does the 2000 have that battery problem?,, i have a couple of them in storage and this is the first ive heard of it.
strictlysega Yes, the A2000 does have the barrel battery, and it will leak. You should open those cases up immediately and leaky or not, get those batteries out. Even if you just cut them out for now. If there has been any leakage, google how best to clean up.
+Chaniyth hey.. Can you look me up on Facebook I could really use your advice. I have some pics of my battery it's like a tiny black box with foam (yellow foam) creeping out the edges.. My name is Charlie Spooner I have a (rainbow avatar
+strictlysega Cut the battery off and get the area cleaned up as best you can, you can use Isopropyl alcohol to clean it up.
members.iinet.net.au/~davem2/overclock/batt.html
+tjlazer71 honestly i couldnt thank you enough, this was exactly what i was praying for,, thank you, thank you.
You do the best videos and you do not say 'freaking' as some do and think it is cool or something.. keep up the good work....love the Miggy.....
I'm in u.s so my problem is if I get an ntsc games might not run if there pal
I like the A500. To me it looks just like what a 80's/90's home computer should look like. It'll look great in any collection!