LGR - Amiga 500 Computer System Review
Вставка
- Опубліковано 9 жов 2010
- The Amiga is the stuff of pure legend. The A500 in particular is often looked back on with fond memories and no regrets. But is it worth buying one to a games collector today? An overview of the history, pros and cons of the machine.
The Commodore Amiga 500 Computer System
Many thanks to Borin81 for the Amiga!
/ borin81 - Розваги
Every time I come back and watch one of these videos, it's such a nostalgia trip; it's like watching classic cartoons recorded on VHS. It isn't just classy, it feels like modern LGR that is still being made today, and that's what makes this channel unique.
Happy to hear these still hold up for you!
+Jordan Woolery I agree. It IS designed like a TV show episode on VHS. However, I would say that it's more like a documentary/review show. Something like Bill Nye.
I've done this too!
nailed it
***** Thanks :)
The reason that the Workbench color scheme is the way it is, is because they designed it to be clear on the worst possible tv ever. In fact, the engineers when designing the Workbench, went to the local TV shop and asked for their worst TV. The sales guy kept on trying to sell them a good TV but they kept on telling him "No no! We want your WORST TV!" :)
Yeah, and that's part of what *killed* the Amiga as a serious computer, especially in the US - the desktop looked like hot garbage.
@@sunspot42 Dude, it was more serious then any computer at the time. Your just very anti amiga, just as all of the u.s nintendo generation was. you dont know what an amiga is. go back to your nes.
@@sjarken3979 While the Amiga was an extremely capable system for applications, Workbench when 1st booted wasn't the most pleasing looking. What you have to remember is that the American NTSC system was known for it's terrible colour reproduction (I remember a teacher referring to it as "Never The Same Colour") then go compare that to a Mac or a PC with their dedicated monitors, producing sharp (if colourless) displays. And while it was easy to plug a monitor into an Amiga, many were plugged into a TV, and 1st impressions last. It's a real pity that the PC was the system of choice in America, we all deserved better.
@@sunspot42 Maybe it wasn't the most beautiful, but was very nice to use and fast for the hardware it was running on. Also the components of the system were stored in the ROM, so disks with productivity software were loading it's own Workbench. You didn't have to load original Workbench disk before to load things like DPaint or Scala. Also versions starting from 2.0 looked different. For the time AmigaOS was very impressive system for a home computer.
@@mattx5499 unfortunately for typical Amiga 500 owner, without HDD and with 1MB of RAM, Workbench was useless, only like proof of concept. Yes, Amiga could do multitasking and stuff but at the end of the day user was usually just inserting diskette with a non-dos game, or running a Workbench from diskette with just a single icon of an utility it contained.
"expect to pay 50-80 dollars for a complete example" -2010
Cut to 2019
"Expect to pay anywhere from 200-700 dollars for an Amiga 500 or for that matter any old computer nowadays"
Tip to those looking for an Amiga on eBay: just buy a broken (also known as "untested") one, if you can make sure that the majority of the parts are still inside. The diagnosis and repair of all things Amiga is very well documented online, and almost every part is available, sometimes with some modification needed. If you don't mind a little soldering, you can save yourself a couple hundred.
If you plan on long-term ownership of an Amiga, you are going to have to learn to do Amiga repair eventually, anyway :=)
True
I regret selling my old Amiga 500. The floppy disk drive eject button was broken so I had to use a knife to get the floppies out. Surely miss it. Emulators are just not the same
@@mattcorbyny1 Alas, they seem perfectly happy to charge hundreds of dollars for broken- er, I mean "untested" machines as well.
I remember people keeping their Amigas in bad conditions after getting PCs in the late 90s. Many of them were thrown away back then. Now complete sets are as expensive as a good laptop or brand new gaming console. But there's an emulator called FS-UAE that is almost 100 percent accurate, very easy to setup and working just fine on an cheap 10 years old laptop with any USB controller. So having a real machine is a collector's stuff. Also the software is all over the internet.
I feel like I've written this before: I will never be as impressed with computer graphics as when a friend brought me along to visit a guy who had an Amiga 1000. Defender of the Crown, Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon, Deja Vu and Deluxe Paint II were the first software titles I ever saw and boy was I impressed. I couldn't sleep that night. I finally found someone who would buy my C64 with disk drive so I could save up to get a used A500, later upgraded to 1Mb. It was a really cool platform while the PC really sucked with EGA graphics and a beeper.
When I first saw Defender of the Crown on an Atari ST I was in awe until I heard it play via an Amiga 1000...super impressive. One of the first games I ever saw and played on the Amiga was Hybris...I never knew that games could look this good out of an actual arcade.
I agree PC beeper music sucks although I have a soft spot for EGA graphics because it was like a early version of Nintendo graphics colorful but not much going on screen wise.
Hey LGR! I've been watching your channel for 13 years, 7 months, and 27 days, and this was the first video of yours I ever watched! I remember booting up my Wii and entering the UA-cam channel to watch your vids (alongside AVGN) for HOURS on end! Thank you for making my childhood!
Well dang, that's awesome. Thanks for sticking around!
The true magic of this machine was how the custom chips worked together with DMA. For instance the blitter chip handled lots of software sprites and also handled the floppy disk reads and writes without tying up the CPU. The Copper handled scanline changes to the video hardware. It was all these little touches that made it feel more powerful than you would imagine a 7mhz machine to be.
Like Europe, the Amiga 500 was incredibly popular in Australia and New Zealand as well. Thanks for the video, very nostalgic to watch :)
My 1st computer, back in 1991, Brisbane. B’day present. I wanted an IMB XT, but my folks wouldn’t fork out that much, so I found one of these 2nd hand in the trading post. Best present ever 😀
My dad had an Amiga 2000 back in the 90s, sadly I think something's not working since most programs don't run properly. I'm going to try to restore it sometime.
This is another great review! A pleasure to watch and very informative.
I'm 9 years late, but hey metal Jesus rocks 👋
Did not know u existed nine years ago
no god please no MetalJesusRocks!
seconded
@@figgynewton5664 no, i specifially looked this video up
Because my father had a C64 and an Amiga in my youth, I have a career in computers today (specifically Networking). My memories of my father dialing up to the local BBS in Edmonton to download video games off of our US Robotics 9600 baud modem to download cracked video games (by crews like Razor 1911) to play, were some of my fondest memories as a child. My older brother and I used to fake being sick together so we could play split screen Battle Isle on our A500. The Amiga was ahead of its time... too bad it had a swift death.
Thanks for the video. I have been a very long time watcher of yours and love your content. I thought "I wonder if he did a video on the Amiga?"... sure enough you did.
I love your work. Keep it coming. Thanks for the nostalgia trip.
When I went to elementary school (1995-ish) I took a video editing class as an elective and we were using Amiga 2000 computers and Video Toaster to make school videos. It was a small class, 5 students and 1 computer. About 3 weeks into the class one of the components of the computer broke and all 5 students got transferred to other electives. I transferred to an architecture class, and because of that class I went on to be an architect and have been for the last 12 years. To think that if that Amiga 2000 didn't break, today I would most likely be a film editor (I grew up in Hollywood CA, which would have made it even more likely)
Ian Derzsi Terminator 2 FX were produced using Amiga's !
"(I grew up in Hollywood CA, "
So you could have had a career in harassing women?
Yup! Though it's actually the same basic hardware from 1985 in a different form factor, which is even more impressive.
Hey lgr! Is this still the best way to convert the UK power supply to US?
OMG! I JUST FOUND A PAL AMIGA 500 FROM MY GRANDMAS STORAGE ROOM! AND I FOUND PINBALL DREAMS DISK 1&2 AND THE PSU AND THE MOUSE AND JOYSTICKS AND IT WORKS!!!!
AND I ALSO FOUND LIKE 50 OTHER GAMES!!!
Mr.Leander Awesome, fantastic find!
ermegerd thats actually pretty awesome
+Mr.Leander Your very lucky indeed! I've been hoping for the last half decade that someones grandma would put one up for sale on a local classified website or even someone like me.
But had zero luck all this time despite my other great finds...
I'll likely turn to Ebay cause I'm itching for a another vintage computer and I wanted one of these for ages... They're only going to get more expensive sigh....
Speaking from experience, you really should get a second floppy drive and use that drive for disk swapping. The internal drive will come loose from too much use because Commodore just glued it to the inside. In contrast, our old C=64 never failed.
I can tell you that these computers were popular in Canada. Everyone I knew had Commodore 64 or Amigas back in the day.
You really can not appreciate what it was like to use one of these machines for the first time when they were released. The jump in sound and graphics quality was life changing (at least it felt that way)
I loved my A500... such a great machine... the games were amazing for the time
Thank you very much, glad you're enjoying!
@minnesotamother The stason FAQ covers the basics of software NTSC/PAL switching. Again, this is not what I was referring to in the video. Simply switch through software does not fix the (admittedly few) problems I had, believe me I tried for months! What I needed for many games was a proper hardware setup and the PAL machines provide that. There are mods for the 500 to get what I needed, but if I'm going to spend money and time doing that I may as well get a PAL machine, so I did and I'm happy.
I still have 2 USA Amiga 500 computer systems. Back in the day we had a simple fix for PAL games on NTSC Amiga systems. A swapper disk that would load a program that would swap it to the 50HZ the PAL games used (you needed a good monitor for it, which we did), so we had no problem playing any game that had english as a language on it. I frickin love this computer as it was my childhood. I really should plop the cash down on Amiga Forever someday...
Heh well, well, well, here we are. Two years after this post I finally bought Amiga Forever Plus just this week. So things finally came full circle.
Was going to reply that there was some little program that would switch it to PAL mode.
Wow, every time i see or hear Amiga 500 games i allways get sad and super happy at the same time; Every second i spent playing those games, i was i a better world, no worries, no bills, no illness; just pure happiness!
Boards of Canada Shirt! I am becoming a bigger and bigger fan!
@kad3t I'm constantly looking for advice on more radically awesome Amiga games to play, so any suggestions would be great.
LGR i love how you answer any comment even if it was posted like 6 years ago (totally not talking about the guy that said he didn't know how the Amiga didn't dominate)
We used to write music on the Amiga with Octamed. In a time where DOS 6.0/ Windows 3.11 was about as good as you could get on a 386/33/4MB RAM/130MB HDD, seeing what the Amiga could do (''91--'93) was ground-breaking. I've had dreams of owning an Amiga 500/1000. Only my coolest friends hand one. And they always had all the extra peripherals.
Still got my Amiga 500 and 1200 in my moms house somewhere.. along with all the games I had back then, which was hundreds and some cool demos. This video brought back some very fond memories. Thank you.
2020, this video reminded me of how old I really am, my early teens were spent with mainly the 600 version as my 500 broke. Was pretty much the same though, the amount of time I spent on that beauty was worth it. All of my spare time job money went to various upgrades and you could get a ton here in Europe, almost everyone I knew had a 500.
Lazy Game Reviews
my childhood called, it wants it's amiga 500 back.
I still have mine.
Blows marijuaja smoke on screen
best computer I ever had Amiga 500
I'm from England, grew up as a child with an Amiga 1200 and Commodore 64 at my disposal, Amiga's made a killing here back in the day. Got my cousin to buy me a 1200 with a Blizzard card upgrade for about £90 when I was roughly 13, I'm 28 now, I believe he still has it so I'll reimburse him £100 it cost which by today's standards is a steal. He has several more Commodores and Amiga's thanks to unhealthy obsession.
@crouchypony Quite correct, I noticed my lack of clarity once the video was complete. 16-colors seems to be the "base" and it does indeed go up from there, as is evident in many later games from the post-ST days.
Hey LGR, I don't usually ever take the time to write to the people I subcribe to. However after spending most of my vacation with my oculus rift watching all of your videos on youtube on like a 60 ft screen created from the rift. watching this as one of your earlier vids, look man, I just wanted to say I'm one of your biggest fans. i'm 49 years old and I was a kid of the 70s teen of the 80s. I can't say enough how much iv'e apprieated all of your stuf. thrifting is just over the top cool. thank you buddy from my heart, your a cool dude.
Thank you for the kind words. I hope you continue to enjoy!
This thing is from '87? Color me impressed!
It was capable of up to 4096 colours at once, while Im not sure if games could take advantage of that, SNES is capable of 256 colours at once (Out of 65536 colours) and Mega drive only 64 colours at once (Out of 512 colours)
Marcuss2 It could do 4096 colors using a special graphics mode which I don't think would work too well in games.
The SNES also could effectively go beyond 256 colors with alpha blending.
Marcuss2 4096 in HAM only, and was only used by some point'n'click games. It could do 32 or 64 with halfbrite tricks.
impressive indeed, but keep in mind back then it would be much cheaper to just buy an NES or sega master system. if you're just going to play games.
kylem1112 Also no nightmare of constant disk swapping lol.
This was my first computer, my dad got it used form someone and it had 300 FLOPPY DISCS SO AROUND 150 GAMES INCLUDED. Needless to say I was in heaven. I was 10 years old.
Fantastic review! I remember my parents buying my sister and I an A500 when I was about six years old. Had it all the way up to my teens. It totally shaped my childhood.
Our amiga 500 has rusted internally, and is completely in disrepair, but the childhood memories, they live on!
I commented a month ago but after viewing dozens of videos about retro gaming machines since, I now realize the Amiga beat the snot out of game consoles at the time too!
*2 months ago
There was an Amiga console too, the CD32. Basically an A1200 with a built-in CD and controllers instead of a keyboard. I had one after my A500. Can't remember off hand what other consoles were around at the same time but it was probably around the Megadrive era.
While I don't have one for the Amiga, the ones I have for other systems are totally worth it! Having a bunch of games on an SD card is a magnificent thing.
Heck yeah. 👍😎
I'm 41 this year and the Amiga 500 was my jam from 1990-96. This video was awesome, thanks!
Wow this looks like a Dharma Initiative video especially at the end :D The Amiga is one of the best computers ever made. I still have my A1200 from 1993 - now with flash drive and 68030 accelerator. You can't say many pieces of tech are still awesome after 25 years of use.
The Amiga microcomputer made the "IBM PC compatibles" of the day look like ancient relics.
Was ahead of many things but was governed by a bunch of in-fighting clowns, so it was doomed from the start. The GUI looked awful but was fixable.
That is what us Amiga users thought about any 'IBM PC compatibles' game back in the day :) Then came the 90's and it was over.
@@superviewer Yep. We where on a pretty high horse back in the days (and rightfully so!), but oh how the mighty have fallen. :'D
@@superviewer it was over but not until the mid 90s, so Amigas reign still lasted a good decade over PCs, which was nothing to sneeze about back then.
@@marcozolo3536 By 1993, top end games on the PC were often having to be cut down for the Amiga ports. A year or so later, powerful gaming PCs at affordable prices meant that a lot of kids had them. While the Amiga still had the advantage of being a bit cheaper, not needing a monitor or taking up as much space, and being easier to use, it certainly didn't make PCs look bad after 1991 or '92.
I enjoy these older videos, Clint. It's awesome to see how far you've come and the video quality. On a side note, I never ever seen a reason to subscribe to a channel on UA-cam until I discovered LGR a few years ago. My son and I make an effort to start our Sunday mornings watching your channel. Keep up the great work and look forward to seeing more LGR. P.s. the Nick camera thing you just released is pretty awesome hahaha
Fantastic resource, thanks for the information!
Awesome review!
@Zelgadis020 The Alpha version of Minecraft. It's an open-world sandbox game.
tbt when minecraft was largely unknown...
Yup, I grew up with IBM compatibles, the Tandy being one I always adored. Never got to mess around with an Amstrad PC, but the 1512 is an awesome one, especially with its extra 640×200 16 colour mode. I have some games that are compatible with it, but have yet to own one.
I love clicking on these older videos and getting that old intro. Makes my day everytime.
the Amiga was way ahead of the IBM compatible PCs
Amiga was ahead of Apple Macintosh systems too! Apple hired two of the Amiga's original designers to design and built the Apple IICi, which was actually an Amiga clone! :D
Yes, that's why everyone uses Amiga nowadays.
Clearly you have no idea why Amiga is not used nowdays.
@@ojjoooooo
There are a number of reasons we don't all use Amiga's now, but the main one is incompetence of the senior executives at Commodore US.
If you are at all interested there are a couple of really good videos about it.
ua-cam.com/video/oP1nLzT_t0o/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/ws3DJF7MbMU/v-deo.html
@@ojjoooooo Yes, maybe you should do some research instead of amuse things. Amiga went bankrupt due to bad management. That's why is't not around today. Not because the Amiga sucked. It was well ahead of its time well ahead of IBM and Apple computers in not only graphics, but sound. Also, Apple operating system looks very similar to Amiga workbench.
You, my friend, have great taste in music(I'm talking about the BoC shirt in the video).
Just ordered my first-ever one last week. It arrives around Thursday. I'm stoked!
@ZXRulezzz Kind of. Doesn't really solve my issues though. This has been discussed in detail in the comments section of this video :)
This thing beat the snot out of the PCs at the time. How did it not gain dominant market share? It could do business productivity as well!
The power and influence of IBM, for one thing :)
+Lazy Game Reviews What do you think of MIST FPGA computer as a means to run amiga software?
+JohnnyNismo Can't find the numbers again, but in the EU the Commodore computers actually did have a dominant market share in the home computer market for a little while. Not sure about the business side of things, but Amigas where used a lot in TV to do stuff like watermark the channel logos into the broadcasts; basically things that IBMs at the time just couldn't do.
+Neil Roy , I still use my amigas from time to time I've left and came back twice now I just can't get away from using them
wow I use to run a BBS here in texas also and I used the same software , I used a PC for the modem pool networked to my a2000 and a3000, I had 4 lines with roll over and a premium 56k connection for paid members, awww...the good ole days.
Eff yeah the Amiga 500 was one of my big childhood machines o_o Spent so many hours playing Ducktales: The Quest for Gold and Mortal Kombat II on it. Good times :D
The first video I ever saw on YT about Amiga way back. Then later Dan Wood videos. Thank you!
Watching this nearly 12 years later, just realize how much the Amiga community grown in recent years and how new accessories and such have made it much easier to deal with, like gotek drives, Accelerators and cheaper memory expansions.
The Amiga had some great games with even better sound tracks. I'm looking at you Lotus 3, Zool and Trurrican
I wanted one sooooo bad back in the day. I used to see the games in magazines and compared them to my lowly NES and Genesis. Plus I was a big fan of adventure games then too.
Yes mature content
I spent lot of time programmiing demos with my A500. The Amiga Hardware Manual was my bible for months :) It was a good time and I don't regret the time spent with it. I did lot of things with it: CGI with Sculpt4D, programming, games, and so on...
@Lollari2 Yes, I didn't mean to imply that it was Sweden-only. Nice information to point out, thanks!
Amiga 500s have gone up a lot in the last 6 years. Seen the current Ebay listings lately? Kind of amazing for a older computer.
Wait till you get to 2022…
So, in times when NES ruled, Amiga 500 was rivaling even the best arcade machines with its graphics and sound. This computer is truly impressive.
+Cardboard Vessel In Europe the NES didn't rule at all, home computers like the Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, BBC micro, ZX spectrum did
+ojideagu
Even Sega did better than Nintendo in Europe with the Master System outselling the NES.
huh....I never even heard about Sega until a few years ago...and I'm in Europe..
Planken the Sega Master System was the highest selling console in Europe in 1993, followed by the Megadrive. II was at school in the early 90's in the UK and Sega was bigger than Nintendo. Although the SNES and Gameboy were popular. Sega even opened their European headquarters in London. The figures don't lie, Sega sold a lot more consoles than Nintendo in Europe.
I do not question that. I just say I never heard about it until a few years ago. Huh...seems they really liked England.
I really enjoy your reviews. Just the right amount of information, not too serious, and entertaining too.
Nice review. I'm stunned how videos made only 8 years ago look so freakishly retro now, after watching your new videos this looks more like a VHS capture! Technology is taking such big leaps forward now, just like when these computers arrived, and early 2000's feels like stone age. Still, playing with my Amiga 500 and the others feels like it's only 10 years ago and with a floppy drive emulator I don't have to worry about corrupted disks anymore.
Best gaming system ever!
Paulo Lameiras Er, no. The one button joystick controls, terrible arcade ports, incessant disk swapping, and huge loading times bring it down a lot.
I have to admit that at the time, I was a little jealous of my mate who owned one of these in the late 80's. At that point in time the Amiga was easily the best gaming machine out there in terms of graphics. All I wanted to do when I went to his house was play games. The problem with the machine was that it was a little expensive (at least here in the UK anyway) and so out of the price range for allot of people for what was essentially a gaming machine. It was also allot harder to program the Amiga compared to machines like the Spectrum and Commodore. This is why it didn't dominate the market like how other machines did. I was still programming and having fun with my ZX Spectrum even after the Sega Megadrive (Genesis to you guys) came out. It was machines like the Spectrum and Commode that led me into IT
Dave I'd say the Spectrum is the better machine compared to the Amiga tbh. Had more games, and less issues.
Matthias Forelli I'd have to agree when taking into account all of the pro's and cons of the two machines. The Amiga was fine if you had a spare £1200 to throw away (I'm taking into account inflation ofc it costed around £500 from memory). It was games like Batman that got peoples attention but it didn't last long due to the arrival of the Sega Master System in 89/90. But even thinking back to the Master System, it was really expensive for its time. The games cost around £20-£30 which was allot of money back then. Personally, I loved being able to program the Speccy which is why it stayed with me until around 93 where we switched over to the PC
Dave MegaDrive hit in 1990 in the UK. Whilst the Amiga 500 was popular, against the MegaDrive it got whooped. MD was cheaper, more powerful, and had none of the shortcomings that Commodore were too fucking dumb to fix.
With the Amiga 1200 they really had a chance to fix things and still be a major player. But Commodore being Commodore, they half-arsed it and released an inferior machine than originally planned, and paid for this big time not long after. The guy running Commodore in the 90s was fucking clueless.
That's some amazing computer! The games look all great, really.
geees, cant believe you already made Videos in 2010. Good stuff. Cheers from a fellow 80ies/90ies kid, really enjoy your channel!
1. I wasn't talking about RGB, I was talking about composite output.
2. Indeed you can, but it has never worked properly for certain games with mine. Fire & Ice is one game that doesn't work with the switch, works perfectly on my PAL machine though.
3. Yes, but since you can't write bootable Amiga format 880k disk images to floppies on a PC, it doesn't help much. If there is a way, please tell!
4. Maybe it's essential for you, but some of us are too lazy. I have a SCART cable now, so no worries.
UK sales went absolutely berserk when Dave Pleasance created the Batman Pack in collaboration with Ocean Games. Initially he had an order for something like 10,000 units. The resellers were NOT happy that Commodore had exclusive rights to bundle such a big name game for two weeks before they were allowed to sell it.. I mean who the hell would want to sell a £400 computer bundle when they can sell a £40 game??........ right??....
................After 48 hours of bundle sales, they shut their mouths.
Dave Pleasance sold 189,000 units.
lol.. Dave was the first to do it though. A real shame that Petro Tyschenko/ESCOM messed everything up on Dave's consortium bid for Commodore as a whole.
You could always go the compact flash route. Apparently it's a common mod for the 1200, replacing the old HDD with compact flash.
Did they ever have a facility where you could fit a battery directly to the motherboard (battery backup for clock etc) or did you have to purchase a separate motherboard for that?
Design classic. Still looks fit as fuck. My gateway drug into the world of all things Amiga.
@ImperialProductions The Electron? Yes, I planned on reviewing it sometime next month most likely. I don't have but two games for it at the moment, so anything else would be very welcomed!
I know a guy who got an A500 last year who was 16, and he loved it. I was 21 when I got into the Amiga, I'm 25 now and never even heard of the Amiga as a kid. Sweeping assumptions are unfortunate.
I'd still love to see a Tech Tales about Commodore and Atari.
Who's watching in 2019 ?
Me, found this channel several weeks ago, and I do not understand why it wasn't recommended for me by youtube several years ago
Me
2020
Just encountered this in August 2020.
2020!
@minnesotamother I think you missed the part where I said the PAL/NTSC problem was regarding the A500. I've not found a reliable way to play *certain* PAL games on an NTSC A500 without a Fat Agnus chip. And I'm not talking about simply switching display from NTSC to PAL, I'm talking about the subtle differences in hardware that prevent *certain* PAL games from running on an NTSC machine. The mouse and degrader tricks have never worked for games like Fire & Ice for me, but games like SimCity do.
It was released on the Amiga, but for AGA graphics-capable machines. So you'd need something like the A4000 or A1200 to run it.
Bought a A500 for my kids back in the day and they loved it! I had the A1000 when it first came out which had true multitasking (And it did it in ONLY 256K memory!!! The 'tramp' didn't have multitasking till yrs later and it needed 16M of memory to run and it wasn't true multitasking!) and 4096 colors and stereo sound while the 'tramp' had no multitasking and 8 colors and just bleeps and bloops! Later I got the A2000 by trading in my A1000 (WORST thing I ever did!... wish I hadn't done that and just paid full price). Added the A4000 a bit later and still have ALL of them and they ALL work! If you read the history of the AMIGA you find that Commodore had nothing to do with it... they bought it up from Jay Minor and team and marketed it... sure wish someone with integrity and business know how would have gotten it instead! It was light years ahead of it's time and I think would still be on the market today if only someone had the vision of it's developers back then would have pushed it as a do everything platform!
You can usually switch the machine pal/ntsc using Degrader. No need for a second machine to get both video formats...
Usually, not always. It's certainly not a guaranteed fix for all games, and that's where having separate hardware is actually quite handy if you play as many PAL games as I do.
***** as i said above the difference was only a pin that you have to leave down or pull up to use pal or ntsc software in the Amiga...
maybe you're right, i try this on the Amiga 1200, and works perfectly, we've purchased a US motherboard and to change from ntsc to pal i just pulled the pin up
Rui Sousa Firstly, the A1200 had an Alice chip, not an Agnus.
Also, under Kickstart 3.x you could hold down both mouse buttons at boot and access a menu where you could change between PAL and NTSC without mucking about with hardware before booting the machine (at least, you could do this on an A1200)
Whether Kickstart 2.x had a similar pre-boot menu, I don't know and this very likely doesn't help with games that only worked under Kickstart 1.x (which you could load onto newer machines using Relokick)
I love watching stuff like this. It makes me look at the past and see from what we evolved our entertainment and work machines from. Makes me respect technology a lot more.
Great review!!! Aquired an old A500 recently. My first Amiga was the A1000 - that was the actual name; it was not retroactively named the Amiga 1000 as stated here after the Amiga 500 came out.
The story (and feud) between Atari ST and Amiga is a *really* interesting piece of computing history. Brutally simplified, the founder and CEO of Atari got fed up with the company, started a new company for developing the Amiga and ended up working for Commodore, while the founder and CEO of Commodore got sacked and bought Atari to make the Atari ST with a team of original C64 development engineers.
On another topic, a Flickerfixer / Scandoubler is a good upgrade for the Amiga, it allows the use of VGA monitors and makes highres modes usable. Also, the RGB output is compatible with SCART/Euro-AV, so you'll only need an adapter cable if you have a television with that connector. It's rare outside europe, though.
Oh, the Atari ST video addressed to this. Ah well.
Wow, what a capable machine.
It blows my mind that the Amiga did all that at the same time as the NES. Wow.
It's worth bearing in mind the NES was a tarted up Famicom, and as such is actually about two years older than the Amiga 1000
Well obviously since the two are not in the same league. The NES/Famicom was an 8 bit console while the Amiga was a 16 bit computer whose console counterpart is the SNES/Super Famicom.
More like the Sega Genesis/Megadrive as both it and the Amiga share the same Motorola 68K proc.
It's fascinating how i normally can't stand old videos because the youtuber was so bad or different back then but instead yours are as perfect as the new ones! You were born youtuber it seems! Happy you've come this far! And i only knew of you two weeks ago!
@janmansde3dede I added an annotation, as this has been brought to my attention by several. Yes, far more than 16-colors at once is capable, even 64 with EHB! I wasn't entirely accurate in listing 16-color graphics.
Who's watching in 2023?
Me
That is so passé.
I’m in 2024 granddad 😎
AMIGA Master Race
@TheDudeOfTheWOOT I read a lot. And I talk to lots of people about their experiences. It all kind of comes together in my head eventually, and when I think I've wrapped my mind around the base concepts, facts and figures I write a review and then fact-check afterward to make sure I remembered properly. It's a lot like studying for an essay exam, except really fun.
Great review of an amazing system from the past. Its interesting to imagine how the next generation will regard the current i7 processor and GTX 780 as an old but unique machine to acquire. This is the beauty of technology. Even with the latest pc components, one will still appreciate that they come a long way with a great history behind them
The Amiga was probably even better than anything Apple was producing at the time, most likely, judging by this video. And that was supposedly what the Amiga 500 was trying to compete with, in terms of the original Macs, and the Apple IIgs. Hmm... Something to think about for sure.
Both used the same Motorola CPUs - giving them the true multitasking abilities over the IBM PCs.
@@CountZero78 It wasn't so much their hardware so much as that PCs were limited to text-only OSes until 1990, when Virtual Real Mode was used on Windows 3 to run MS-DOS programs in a window, although i386 and after only.
i have an amiga 500 too
***** it should work
and it fires right up and it used to read floppy drives but i dont know at the moment
it has two big holes in the case and the protective aluminium casing inside is taken off and the floppy drive makes a ticking sound every 3 seconds or so. i have tried to hook it u to an old surveilance camera tv with the mono plugs but nothing happened, though the tv got some kind of response but not much.
now it just sits on top of my kitchen shelf for display
Mr. Katti the 3sec sound in the drive is normal. it checks for a disc every few secs.
Most amazing computer I've ever owned. Not only was it a very capable machine, but it had a big friendly community. You could just knock on a fellow Amiga owner's door and ask to swap games, write letters and exchange disks with strangers across the world and work on creative projects together.
For those who never owned one, it's hard to explain, but the Amiga had so much spirit.
started my gaming on a c64 and upgraded to a Amiga 500 was a amazing machine back then.
I still have my Amiga 600 :)
on the newer LGR its always PC and Commander keen or duke nukem, did retro pc have no other games ? amiga had hundreds!! the only reason it isn't around today is down to a lot of mismanagement, shame really
I`ve got this computer when I was 8 in 1991 (my first communion present). I loved it. Graphics and sound was very advanced.
My brother built an entire career on Amiga computers back when the Video Toaster was a thing he learned how to do 2d and 3d graphics on his own, when commodore went under he switched to PC and now he is a multimedia professor at a college, he still has his Amiga 1200 LOL
mmh. I've never owned one, but I did have a friend who between him and his parents had both an Amiga 500 and 2000...
Those things were pretty impressive back in the day, even if I already had an SNES by the point I first saw one, which made it seem less dramatically impressive.
I do think if I felt inclined to get a retro computer, this would be near the top of my list though. It's just so impressive overall what it can do for a computer that old...
Boards of Canada 👍
@Dakkiller1 Several of these are available in the US, most weren't (at least not easily-found).
I don't "only" show UK games. It's just that more often than not theirs were the best.
@niceandgames A PAL machine is incredible for the sheer amount of games and how easy it is to transfer them to the machine and know they'll work 95% of the time. An NTSC machine is still great fun, but there are so many incompatible or buggy games (since most were made for PAL machines and the online cracked ones are even worse for compatibility) that it can get discouraging to use. Still, any Amiga is a good time once you figure out the quirks. Glad you enjoyed and good luck on your quest!
lol, $50-$80. Now it's $200 minimum for a bare system that's been minimally tested.
Who’s here looking for an Amiga in 2021
An excellent short and honest review.
Yet another spectacular review Clint, I have a lot of memories with this Machine as my sisters classmate had this back in 1987 and we played Flight Simulator for hours on in. = )