Thanks for watching! You can find part 1 of this series here: th-cam.com/video/w2qUlA36Evs/w-d-xo.html Did you buy an Amiga 1000 back in the day? I'd love to hear your memories of how you came to the decisiion to buy it instead of the competition, leave a comment! Neil - RMC
About your Ultrasonic Cleaner - I just yesterday watched a video about building your own ultrasonic cleaner because the shape of the larger ones (so they can fit medium to large boards) seems to also increase the DEPTH tremendously.. AS WELL AS THE PRICE. Well he used a FOOD PAN as the container and it was just the right shape!! Now I'm not sure if this is something that would interest you (or Mark even) but he managed to put it all together for I THINK about $120, instead of the $300 or so for a premade cleaner large enough to fit the type of motherboards he typically needs to clean. Well I'm going to post the link to the video and HOPEFULLY am 'allowed' to post links in the comment section. Otherwise I'm pretty sure this entire comment will be deleted.... OH WELL... If you are able to get the link then I hope the video helps you out :D
I had more experience with the c64, but one of my friends had an Amiga. I clearly remember watching his dad play loom and the graphics blowing my mind! It was amazing what the Amiga could do but they weren't sold in my town and we're far too expensive even if they were.
Yeah, I do enjoy his method of going over the publications of the time, which definitely makes it easier to understand the thoughts back then. Most people will do things where they compare two computers from different era's or even cost brackets and wonder why it didn't do well at the time without realizing they were totally different markets and I think Neil is bringing in that perspective well. This comes from a family where I had the Atari ST but my dad had the Amiga, because of course I was the kid and he was the adult and the person paying the bills gets the more expensive machine. I'll be honest too, I never wished I had the amiga instead because my ST ran everything I wanted to run and all I saw my dad run on his Amiga was boring stuff. Hahaha. I do still have my original 520ST and now have his Amiga 3000 in my collection so I guess in the end, I am the big winner. :)
@@brianv2871 Similar story here, my dad was thinking of getting me and Amiga or Atari ST after seen me struggle with the limited capabilities of my C64 back then and finally he bought me a PC which was almost 3 times more expensive but it payed off in the end.
@@VladoT Yeah, even though I had an ST, and besides my dad's Amiga, we also had an IBM XT that my mom got and used and I honestly used that more than my ST. Even though my ST was better and heck, color (our PC was amber) there was something I really found interesting about the PC and eventually I got into BBSing and the PC exceled at that (with it's super clear 80 column text mode) so my ST didn't get used as much as it deserved.
I bought my Amiga 1000 (still have it) in 1985 with 256k expansion and a Sony monitor. I knew I had to have it after seeing the Boing and Robo-city demos. It was a replacement for my Atari 800 (still have it). Took out my first ever loan to pay half of the cost.
I got an Amiga 500 later into it's life (second hand) but still fondly remember all it's games and making animations and attempting to make music, not sure me or my friends even knew about the Amiga 1000...
3:44: Neil, Neil - I can already see the headline in the news: "RMC demands all computer owners take up smoking as to preserve the original coloring of their computers' cases for future retro computing enthusiasts"
Exactly. Because everyone who knew what was possible on a 1000 but couldn't afford one, could actually now afford an Amiga. Making the 500 was the one business decision Commodore actually got right!
Wow, really enjoying this series of videos. Looking back myself, coming from the ZX Spectrum i saw some of what the hardware could do and really wanted that large colour palette (4096 with HAM mode aside, 32 on screen) but i eventually opted for the 520STFM. Cheaper, on the CPU side marginally faster, single sided 360K floppy and 512K RAM. A seriously good comprise, i was not disappointed. The Amiga A500 however changed all that, and when a game title developed specifically for the Amiga came along. Psygnoiss' "Shadow Of The Beast", a landmark title if ever i saw one. The rest is history.
The first time I saw 8-bit guy do it I was hooked. Never thought I'd relax by watching old computers being cleaned. I don't really understand why, but dang if it isn't satisfying to watch...
Best series on TH-cam! Another A-1000 brought back to life, thank you very much! Why an Amiga, you ask? I saw the A-1000 in the shop and I knew I need it, whatever it takes. It was from another time or world, it was that good in 1986! Still have it and my 4000/040.
I haven't watched Part 3 but the A500 completely changed the price / performance figures. A colleague borrowed my Atari ST to check out ............. then went and bought himself an A500.
I was deep into the Commodore ecosystem thanks to the C64, and to me, the Amiga was the logical upgrade path after seeing it heavily advertised in the Commodore-centric magazines I bought back then. I instantly wanted one, and wasn't about to switch to some other company even if their machines were cheaper. I suspect that with millions of C64s sold, there had to have been quite a few people like me, which helped keep the Amiga from sliding into oblivion. My first Amiga wasn't the 1000 though, I got the A500 Bonus Pack for Christmas somewhere around 1992-93 and it was glorious.
I went the ST 520 route and was more than happy with it. i only sold the ST and moved to the Amiga when the A1200 came out. i still have it with the Blizzard a1220 I bought for it.
Having bought an ST my STE came from a friend who had just bought an A1200 and overspent by adding a hard drive. The A600 and A1200 were probably the cheapest computers to add an HDD to at the time, A SCSI adaptor for the ST cost me £100. Even with PCs people were messing around with expensive "Hard Cards".
Hi, nice to see polish retro computer magazines on bookshelf. It is MikroKlan i think no.1 from 1986 year. And IKS (Informatyka Komputery Systemy). Greetings from Poland!
Great video as always 👍🏻 😀 Sorry to hear you’ve been down with a cold, especially if you were trying to have a week off, but thanks for rising from your sick bed to make us a cracking video. Not sure you should have done that, but thank you anyway 😊.
I was an Archimedes guy myself but always preferred the Amiga over the ST! The Arc always went for brute force but this series is a great watch fair play! Cannot wait for part 3!
Lets not forget that when these came out they were a serious investment. To put things in context in 1986 I bought my first house, with a deposit of £1800. With a mortgage to pay I didn't think about upgrading from my MSX1 for another five years.
I was a Commodore user from 1982 to 1995 starting with a VIC, then a C64, an A2000 and finally an A3000. My main focuses were programming and gaming. I didn't do any business stuff. The VIC and the C64 were easy decisions once the price had come down to be affordable. I remember at the time it came out thinking that the Amiga would be a great machine, but way out of my price range, which is ironic since when I did get an Amiga finally in 1988 it was an A2000. College wasn't nearly as expensive back then (at least mine wasn't and I had scholarships) and I convinced my mom that I could do my comp-sci homework better by having an Amiga 2000 with an IBM Bridgeboard, so we used some of the money saved for college to buy it. Then I did my programming homework on the Bridgeboard side, and played games on the Amiga side. Otherwise I probably would have ended up with an A500 eventually. If I remember right I had gotten a 3 1/2" disk drive and a video card to work with the Bridgeboard, but it still only had 512k, which kind of sucked. After college I traded in my 2000 on a 3000 and used that until Commodore had gone under and Doom became the killer PC app, at which point I bought a PC with a Pentium. I got the retro bug a while back so I now have a small collection of Commodores, Apples and Ataris. I really enjoy your videos, thanks!
The A1000 was so far ahead of its time, its just so sad that Commodore imploded with management stupidity and greed wiping out this amazing machine in the process. I read about the development of the proposed later chipsets and they sounded fantastic. Sigh.
That could have changed history completely. Who knows what could have happened if they could have stayed competitive with pc's for a few more years and intel never became as dominint as it did.
It shows how important having a proper business model is. The ST and Amiga were developed on a shoestring - they may have been good value at the time but their manufacturers went bankrupt. The Amiga had an ingenious chipset but Commodore couldn't afford to fund software for it. They also had no money to develop the chipset (to any significant degree), which meant it lost its technical lead. By the early 90's the 4th gen consoles were creaming it for games, and the PC's 486 / VGA combo had it beat for productivity. Further, a lot of what made the Amiga great in the mid-80's were the clever hardware tricks it used. Unfortunately, these resulted in lots of restrictions and caveats (e.g. with HAM mode's colour palette) that weren't convenient. As transistor counts increased, these approaches didn't make sense. If it had survived, the Amiga would have lost much of its differentiation and just would up as a kind of budget Mac, only running AmigaOS.
A friend bought an A1000 new, back in the day. He invested quite a bit of cash into it at the time. Bought some external RAM and SCSI expansions for it for example. Then he bought a Phoenix replacement motherboard for it which I installed for him. Later he bought an A3000. Good times! Good man too!
Neil very nice idea the naration through the magazines! It describes exactly the vibe of the industry and the feelings of the potential buyers! Great series! Pt3 please!!!!
We cant ignore power of persuasion and I bought my a1000 in the first 3 months of launch in the uk. I went to the nova tel hotel in london and saw it running and spoke to commodore direct along with guests like jeff minter. I was 17 years old and £1299.00 was and is a lot of cash to a young man in a YTS role but it happened and that was the start of my amiga journey. Ohhhhh and my first game was Mindwalker. Look that one up for a shock of a game good or bad from someone who knew the vic20 and c64 for 6 years previous. Excelsior sir
Interestingly, you can run a clone of "TOS & GEM" natively on an Amiga now, even as a Kickstart ROM replacement in the form of EmuTOS. It fields so weird to see an Amiga boot like an ST and natively run Atari ST software - of course the software has to be OS friendly and not hit the hardware directly.
It's funny how big the whole 'emulation' stuff was back in the day, but now it's mostly just a silly oddity. I had an ST growing up but my dad had an Amiga which he pawned off on me recently and it had a bridgeboard in it.. I messed with it a little bit but eventually just pulled it out because it's not that interesting now when you can pretty much get any age relevant system if that's what you're interested in. Back then you wanted to gloat about how your system runs all these other systems software (admittedly pretty poorly), now you just want to use those old systems to run the software (basically games) that are for those machines.
This is almost the same retrobrite method I used 2017. Now I'm even more concerned about plastic and only using sunlight. I did it with a cheesy looking doll for couple of weeks and it resulted with an almost perfect result.
If you do a serious amount of retro-brighting you should consider making a black light box. Those mainly ultra-violet LEDs are very efficient. The box to prevent your contact with UV, which ages skin, can damage eyes, etc. Perhaps with a safety cut out when box opened. A turn table to even exposure, and possibly mirrors to direct more of the UV onto the item.
The real mystery to me is why it took off in Europe and never really did in the US. In 1986 my college had an Amiga in the art department, I remember my photography teacher demonstrating how you could digitize a color photo using a b&w video camera and red, green and blue filters, but then you didn't really hear about it again until Video Toaster was popular. Atari went away and there just wasn't anything competing at a lower price point than PC-compatibles ever again. Business folks had PCs, people who could afford them had Macs and generally kids didn't have computers at all until the web came along.
Until the Playstation games consoles were never really popular in the U.K. All through the 1980s the U.K. Government was saying that if children didn't learn how t use and program computers they would be unemployable. Any computer was considered to be far better than a brain numbing, and surprisingly expensive, Atari 2600. Check out th-cam.com/video/jtMWEiCdsfc/w-d-xo.html to see an early example. PCs, and especially Macs were too expensive. By 1990 the ST and A500 were the right computers at the right price p.s. Fun fact. Without this TV programme it would be highly unlikely that the ARM processor would ever have been designed.
I loved the Amiga had the a500 and later a1200, I then jumped ship to a pc in 1992. I still have fond memories of it especially around 1987/88 playing gunship and cinemaware games
I had both an Atari 1040ST and an Amiga 500. I loved them both. Both were a joy to own and use. The ST was a fantastic machine, with its dual monitors, dual floppies, a Hard Drive and modem, and despite its limitations compared to the A500, If I really had to choose between the two, and only pick one of them, I'd go with the Atari 1040ST. That's just me. I've always had a soft spot for Atari computers. Prior to the ST, I had an Atari 800XL, and man was that one beast of an 8Bit computer! Now, I wish I had all three! I have in my possession (and in working condition) a TRS-80 Model 4, an Apple Macintosh Plus, a Tandy CoCo Model 1, and an IBM AT 5170 with an original Model M keyboard! Those, along with my modern PC's, make for one decent collection!
Yeah, I had an ST and my dad had an Amiga. Spec wise the Amiga is better, but as a kid who just wants to play games and the game situation was pretty close (with porting going on between the two systems causing some limitations on both fronts) that spending half the money on the ST made more sense at the time especially if you were trying to talk your parents into one. :)
@@brianv2871 Other than my previous love for Atari with the 800XL, I decided on the ST for two reasons: My love for Atari, and the price. The Amiga, at the time, was just too expensive for me to take the chance with, so I got the 1040ST. But later on, when I got more into the ST, I decided to get an Amiga 500. As you said, spec wise, the Amiga was the better computer, but there was just something about that ST that I so loved and miss to this day!
@@CarnorJast1138 yeah, i was an atari fan as well, and prior to the ST i had an atari 800 (original, not the xl). Out of all the computers i had as a kid, my ataris were all i still have. The ST didn't survive storage very well so took a bit of work to get back functioning, but the 800... That tank still worked 30 years later when i went to use it again.
@@brianv2871 I envy you, sir! To have an original Atari 800 is a treat to behold! I had two friends in early high school, back in 1982, and they had Atari 800's, and I was totally fascinated by them. My friend from band was into Tandy, and had a TRS-80 Model III. We spent many hours on that system playing Zork! I miss those days from the early to mid 1980's!
@@brianv2871 Atari ST was cheaper and also had untapped potential in the sense that Atari had the ability to make exclusive(ish) 1st party games for their consoles & PCs like star raiders, centipede, Millipede & super breakout but they didn't make as many as they should have especially since after 1984 Atari games & Atari corporation were separate companies ,while Commodore barely tried with the idea of 1st party games , I'm not aware of any 1st party amiga games & I only know 2 on the C64 which is international soccer & jack attack.
I so completely agree. I wanted a Mac II in those days, but couldn't come close to affording it. It's cheaper, but similar, competitors were the Atari ST and the Amiga 1000 at the time. All three used the 68000 processor. I finally bought the Amiga 1000 (a refurbished one) as it had, by far, the best built-in sound hardware and the ability to generate NTSC video out of the box. It was SOO much more powerful than the Mac II and even than the Atari when it was released (or it was way cheaper for the same abilities, either way), with a multitasking GUI and I loved it.
I just watched the previous part, nice to have this one right afterwards. The new studio is looking great, you even had some MikroBittis there, it was *the* computer magazine back then in Finland.
Really enjoying this series Neil! Love the approach you’ve taken, putting everything in the context of the time. Hope this can be used for later series! I got an A500+ in the early 90’s, and whilst I’d no interest in petty playground squabbles I did feel the Amiga was the superior machine. However, it now feels unfair to compare the ST to the wedge shaped Amiga offerings, given how much sooner it was on the market. In the context of the time I’d have been saving hard for a ST. However, if the first Amiga to hit the market had of been the A500 it would have been an entirely different story.
Back in the day my parents went, $1k for the kids computer is ok. It was a weird time in California USA. It was either a well old PC with nearly nothing, or an Atari ST. Two years later we saw the Amiga, it was really late in the states, and didn't have MIDI. At that point most Atarians I knew either upgraded to a mega st or high spec PC.
I missed out on the Commodore 128, Atari ST, and the Amiga. I got a 64 from Christmas in 1985 when I was ten, and I had to make do with that until I bought a well-used IBM PC in 1991. When you look at those prices they don't seem so high, but taking inflation into account, computers back then were a luxury for wealthy people. I was very lucky to have the 64 and a 1541 disk drive, and I made the most of it. Got my first program published in Run Magazine in 1987. I switched to programming DOS in 1991, and Linux in 1994.
I had an Amiga 1000 on my desk at work for assessment in 1985. I thought it was a great machine and thought about buying one personally. As it ended up I recommended that we stick to IBM PCs at work and I kept my Apple IIe at home due to available software and add on cards for so many optional tasks. I now wish I had bought an Amiga then.
Looks great. After this it's time to liberate that FM Towns from it's glass cabinet and get it up and running. Really enjoyed last weekends visit to the cave, will be along again very soon. That was one of the most severe cases of yellowing I have seen, did well to get it looking as good as it did!
The best method to remove smokers' residue from plastic is kitchen degreaser. Not sure about any brands in the UK, but the stuff you would use to clean up any areas in your kitchen where you got greasy cooking deposits. A former friend of mine acquired two "office containers".. (not sure again what the proper English term is, but the kind of thing you'd use on a large construction site to house break rooms, bathrooms, construction offices, etc. Sized like a shpping container). Those he got were used at a junk yard and must have been home to people who had at least three cigarettes burning at any time. We used this kitchen degreaser on the plastic-covered wall panels and they came out like new. Of course, they were not yellowed like the case there, but everything on the surface washed right off.
After the C64 the Amiga 1000 was my next computer and my first Amiga. I sold the A1000 at one point and took out a bank loan and purchased the Amiga 2000HD
Neil, I have to ask, were you sick when you recorded this video, or did you change your mic? Your voice sounds different in this video. If you were sick, here's to a speedy recovery!
I'd love to have seen games take advantage of the Amiga A4000 hardware but unfortunately it didn't happen. That machine should have been the basis for the amiga CD 32 instead of the A1200 and commodore should have made exclusive 1st party games for their own systems don't really understand why they didn't besides a few C64 games like international soccer
Enjoying the series, I recently picked up my own A1000 and going through my own restoration. It was machine I would have loved to upgrade to from the C64 back in the day but with the PC Clone onslaught in North America at that time it had a small window before a "cheap" clone with VGA and a sound card was a no brainer.
I love the format of this series! Good job. I've little to nothing experience with retrobrighting but if i understand correctly, it works thanks to the ozone and UV light from the sun. So, why do not use ozone generator instead of hydrogen paroxide?
I moved from a Commodore 64, purchased the day after its massive price drop to the Amiga 1000. Subsequently I owned the 2000, 3000, 4000 and basically every desktop. When Amiga died and Atari was basically dead I had a choice to made between Mac or Windows. I moved to Mac and never left the Apple ecosystem.
I bought an A1000 a few years ago and it looks just as stunning as it did in 1985 when my local computer shop had one on display. BUT! The only "problem" is that is is much smaller than it appears in photos, so I really really wish (are you listening Steve Jones?) someone would take the design and scale it up until a regular keyboard would fit under it and it would be tall enough for expansion cards to fit.
I think a lot of people don`t know that there was an upgrade on the graphics with the AGA Chip in later versions. With 262,144 colors in HAM8 Mode it was quiet good for its time (1992) But there was always the chance to upgrade the system with a 24bit graphics board like the Retina at least for the Amiga 2000/3000/4000.
I started off on a TRS-80 Coco during high school, and a couple years later an Apple //c as well. Started college in fall of '85 at Virginia Tech going into Computer Eng. and the eng dept was already requiring incoming freshmen to buy IBM PCs. They had a deal with IBM and while you COULD get a clone (I really wanted a Tandy 1000) they made it sound like you'd have problems with incompatibilities and since we knew nothing of the PC world, I got stuck with an IBM PC Portable. Always regretted not getting the Tandy - way more machine for the money. Anyway getting into the IBM world at that time meant I regretfully didn't pay any attention to the Atari / Amiga offerings. The only blip it made at that point was there was on guy on my hall in the dorm in CS who was using an Amiga 1000 for his classes. The CS dept required Macs at the time (Mac XLs running AUX, later Mac IIs) so not sure how he got away with that since you had to turn in floppies with your assignments. Though early 90's when I heard about the Video Toaster I was blown away and really wanted an Amiga after that. Sadly I never got one, but hope to pick one up sometime! Loving this series! Great format and the perspective from the time is really interesting. Thanks for this!
For me it was an easy choise. I had the C64 and when the Amiga arrived I just didn't have the money. Though, I had one classmate and one other friend that got one. They both showed what the Amiga could do so when I eventually had the cash I got myself the A500 and I've never even had a thought of regretting that. I had a few other friends that were Atari fans that got the 1040. I was not impressed by them. I still have that same A500, as well as an A4000 that I got used in the mid 90's.
i used to have that small joystick for my atari 2600 and loved it. i currently have an atari 2600 and just might get another pair of those controllers.
Many folk with deep pockets in the market for a high end machine in 1986 would have waited until June 1987 and gone for an Acorn Archimedes. I saw my first Archimedes in the sixth form, which would have been late '87 or maybe early '88.
I actually had an Atari joystick that was designed by Amiga (Amiga written all over the PCB). I guess this was at a time just before Atari wanted to purchase Amiga before Commodore stepped in at the 11th hour. It was the Atari Pro-line CX24 joystick.
Hi Neil. As usual a very interesting video. I must admit that back in the day I would have liked one of the higher spec Amigas as they looked amazing. However, I was far too practical to consider buying it. Having started computing on the command line and learning to program in text mode I really didn't feel comfortable in a GUI for some time. A friend of mine from London had suggested that I buy an A500 with an XT card. However, in my mind, the desktop appeared cluttered and far from intuitive and the card would have added a layer of complexity I didn't need. In fact, in 1991 I bought a used IBM XT with a Hercules monitor and in 1992 I ended up buying a 386sx notebook with 4MB ram and MS Dos 4, which I actually still have. Shortly afterwards my then future brother-in-law asked me to help him computerise his business. He sat me down in front of an A600 and I didn't know where to start. Up to that point I had only ever used an A500 to play games and that was pretty much all the Amiga was known for in my circles. On the other hand, I was writing my own programs in Basic and Turbo Pascal under Dos and had already ported a proprietary MSX Dos database to MS Dos for a local business. Anyway, I showed him a simple spreadsheet and flat-file database that I had written for myself, the software available for IBM compatibles and their reputation as business machines. Within a week he exchanged his Amiga for an XT. In hindsight, a lot of the reputation associated with the Amiga as not being a serious machine was down to very poor marketing and the price.
I like the history and restoration but the references to byte magazine have set the series apart. I would like to see more and maybe references to UK magazines too such a Personal Computer world and the way each Sinclair cover had a chimp. keep up the good work.
I just commented about PCW elsewhere. I have a copy with the newly launched A1200 on the cover, and an advert inside explaining why a £10000 CD writer would be a good investment for your business. Remember New Computer Express. That was a weekly magazine, reflecting how quickly the market was changing back then.
Since I could afford neither an Amiga nor an ST when they came out and was into machine code programming and graphics I lusted after the machine which had the more impressive graphics I lusted over the one that had better graphics hardware, the Amiga. I had a friend who had some connection to Melbourne House and used to give me machine code programming tips and rumours of games that were still the works. He was the first one who started talking about the Amiga and making it sound amazing. Then a friend's older brother bought an A1000 with compensation money from a motobike accident and after being allowed to use it a few times I was utterly convinced. Looking at STs in shops didn't give me the same thrill. I scoured the classified ads until the first secondhand one appeared for sale. Somehow I had saved enough money. I think I paid $1000 Australian and it included a rare 1081 monitor with the Sony Trinitron picture tube. I sold off a huge collection of 48K Speccy games and hardware. I've always the Amiga generally was the spiritual successor to the Speccy and C64 as well since it was the bedroom coder's dream machine, especially when the A500 appeared later. Sadly, I never figured out how to program it in assembly. That had to wait until I got my A2000 with 030 years later.
This is pure perfection Neil! This restoration series is perfectly balanced with info as well! And: Amiga ;) One of my favourites out of everything you have made so far this series.
I was working at Boeing when the Amiga and Atari came out in 1985. It was love at first sight, but Autocad and other engineering software like Turbo Pascal, FORTRAN and C compilers, were only available for the IBM PC with a math co-processor. That guy was not joking or an IBM employee. I loved the 68000 and remember reading the datasheet everyday in the bus to and from work. I kick myself for not buying both the Amiga 1000 AND the Atari 520ST. My brain was too young and stupid back then.
The 68k line of CPUs have their own FPU ? According to wikipedia the 6881 and 68882 are designed to be used with 68020 and 030 so idk if there was any wat to make the Amiga A1000 equal to a IBM PC with an 8088 + 8087
I have often thought what I would've done in early 1986 if I were to buy a 16-bit micro at the time. I have often had the suspicion that yes, while the Amiga 1000 (or just Amiga at the time) is a fantastic machine, the real "Atari killer" didn't appear until the 500 was launched in 1987. Now seeing that even the Atari 1040ST was available for under $1,000 already at the time just underlines this more for me. Those summer bundles look really nice though and could maybe have swayed me. Of course, I wasn't buying a micro at the time, I was only four and we had recently gotten a Commodore 128 (with a 1541-II though, not a 1571) so that one served us well for the next years. First time I saw an Amiga 500 was in 1990 when a villager got one after his confirmation. And yes, we all thought that an Amiga 2000 had to be a way better machine because well 2000 is more than 500. Yes, I know the 2500/30 was out in 1990 but we didn't know it back then. Oh well, I guess this is just a very wordy way for me to say: Dang it, I wish I had been around bargain bins back in those days when people stopped wanting these machines. EDIT: "This keyboard desperately wants to be a banana." Now, that I know is a reference to the Space Invaders keyboard for that Amiga 500 restoration video from oh so many moons ago. Probably also to the Amiga 600 video where a banana also made a cameo, IIRC. Is that you teasing that a video on the Space Invaders keyboard is finally on the doorstep? :)
I went Spectrum, 8-bit Atari with a side trip to the Megadrive before settling on the Atari STFM. From there I went the PC route with an early 286. I could have gone to the Amiga when I left my STFM behind but though superior it wasn't a big enough jump and in addition it was becoming obvious that the Amiga was stagnating. Even the new Atari machines were struggling. I don't really think anybody expected the market to drop off as suddenly as it did. Those early days of PC gaming were tough with the only high points being conversions of games I'd already played and even those were few and far between. No wonder the consoles did so well. If either player had brought out a PC compatible with the ability to run the old libraries I'd have been sold. I might even have bought them both.
In my case my Cousin DID actually take the Atari ST. But he was always complaining about how almost every magazine review wound up giving the Amiga version of games just a couple of points more, so when time came for me to get one years later, that had an effect on me and I got an A600. Of course the truth is that you had to be in the 16bit market to even make that choice and it was long time before I was in any position to upgrade really.
Love these Amigas, for reference the best product I have used for removing yellowing is Magic Eraser. I've used it on very yellow looking photocopiers which should be cream and it magically removes the yellow without damaging the surface. I couldn't believe how effective it is and quick too. Have you tried this method before as I'm sure it would save you time and agro ?
It was the best computer launch of all time. I have not seen any Apple or Microsoft launch prior to this, but if both of those companies did not subsequently, directly copy this launch then I'd be very surprised. Iconic. Bob Pariseau is a legend.
3:14 - random and tragic factoid. Many years ago at this exact cleaning moment a friend of mine had his large dog jump into his bath, land bang on the middle of the same section of A1000 plastic, and snap it in half! Sad & funny in equal measure but mainly sad!
Hmm, I never heard of Microshop in Tustin, and I was pretty in tune with the local computer stores. I remember looking at an Amiga 1000 in my city (Orange), but they didn't last long. I would go over to a store in neighboring Anaheim, but would've loved to visit an Amiga dealer in Tustin, since that address would've been a bit closer.
Thanks for watching! You can find part 1 of this series here: th-cam.com/video/w2qUlA36Evs/w-d-xo.html
Did you buy an Amiga 1000 back in the day? I'd love to hear your memories of how you came to the decisiion to buy it instead of the competition, leave a comment!
Neil - RMC
About your Ultrasonic Cleaner - I just yesterday watched a video about building your own ultrasonic cleaner because the shape of the larger ones (so they can fit medium to large boards) seems to also increase the DEPTH tremendously.. AS WELL AS THE PRICE. Well he used a FOOD PAN as the container and it was just the right shape!!
Now I'm not sure if this is something that would interest you (or Mark even) but he managed to put it all together for I THINK about $120, instead of the $300 or so for a premade cleaner large enough to fit the type of motherboards he typically needs to clean.
Well I'm going to post the link to the video and HOPEFULLY am 'allowed' to post links in the comment section. Otherwise I'm pretty sure this entire comment will be deleted.... OH WELL... If you are able to get the link then I hope the video helps you out :D
I had more experience with the c64, but one of my friends had an Amiga. I clearly remember watching his dad play loom and the graphics blowing my mind! It was amazing what the Amiga could do but they weren't sold in my town and we're far too expensive even if they were.
This video format of half documentary / half restoration is actually brilliant.
Thank you
Yeah, I do enjoy his method of going over the publications of the time, which definitely makes it easier to understand the thoughts back then. Most people will do things where they compare two computers from different era's or even cost brackets and wonder why it didn't do well at the time without realizing they were totally different markets and I think Neil is bringing in that perspective well. This comes from a family where I had the Atari ST but my dad had the Amiga, because of course I was the kid and he was the adult and the person paying the bills gets the more expensive machine. I'll be honest too, I never wished I had the amiga instead because my ST ran everything I wanted to run and all I saw my dad run on his Amiga was boring stuff. Hahaha. I do still have my original 520ST and now have his Amiga 3000 in my collection so I guess in the end, I am the big winner. :)
@@brianv2871 Similar story here, my dad was thinking of getting me and Amiga or Atari ST after seen me struggle with the limited capabilities of my C64 back then and finally he bought me a PC which was almost 3 times more expensive but it payed off in the end.
@@VladoT Yeah, even though I had an ST, and besides my dad's Amiga, we also had an IBM XT that my mom got and used and I honestly used that more than my ST. Even though my ST was better and heck, color (our PC was amber) there was something I really found interesting about the PC and eventually I got into BBSing and the PC exceled at that (with it's super clear 80 column text mode) so my ST didn't get used as much as it deserved.
I totally agree with this. Congratulations for this format for your videos !
I bought my Amiga 1000 (still have it) in 1985 with 256k expansion and a Sony monitor. I knew I had to have it after seeing the Boing and Robo-city demos. It was a replacement for my Atari 800 (still have it). Took out my first ever loan to pay half of the cost.
The Amiga 1000 is the spiritual successor to the Atari 800 .... Half the team formed the Amiga Group.
@@garrygreig6348 I've always felt it was the successor to the 800. The Atari 16bit machines had no connection to the 800.
@@RichardCreel The Atari 16 bit machines were actually designed by ex Commodore employees who went over to Atari shortly after Jack Tramiel.
Oh yeah, that Boing demo! It was game-changing at the time!
That's the reason why I think early adopters like me chose the ST. Given my limited funds it was the clear upgrade path from my Speccy.
Given the Amiga's AMAZING graphical powers, that letter seems suspect. Calling it lacking on graphics is a dead giveaway.
The balance between restoration and research is perfect in this series. Great stuff.
i disagee....
I got an Amiga 500 later into it's life (second hand) but still fondly remember all it's games and making animations and attempting to make music, not sure me or my friends even knew about the Amiga 1000...
3:44: Neil, Neil - I can already see the headline in the news: "RMC demands all computer owners take up smoking as to preserve the original coloring of their computers' cases for future retro computing enthusiasts"
It really was the Amiga 500 that made it popular.
Exactly. Because everyone who knew what was possible on a 1000 but couldn't afford one, could actually now afford an Amiga. Making the 500 was the one business decision Commodore actually got right!
Wow, really enjoying this series of videos.
Looking back myself, coming from the ZX Spectrum i saw some of what the hardware could do and really wanted that large colour palette (4096 with HAM mode aside, 32 on screen) but i eventually opted for the 520STFM. Cheaper, on the CPU side marginally faster, single sided 360K floppy and 512K RAM. A seriously good comprise, i was not disappointed.
The Amiga A500 however changed all that, and when a game title developed specifically for the Amiga came along. Psygnoiss' "Shadow Of The Beast", a landmark title if ever i saw one. The rest is history.
The first time I saw 8-bit guy do it I was hooked. Never thought I'd relax by watching old computers being cleaned.
I don't really understand why, but dang if it isn't satisfying to watch...
Best series on TH-cam! Another A-1000 brought back to life, thank you very much!
Why an Amiga, you ask? I saw the A-1000 in the shop and I knew I need it, whatever it takes. It was from another time or world, it was that good in 1986!
Still have it and my 4000/040.
I haven't watched Part 3 but the A500 completely changed the price / performance figures. A colleague borrowed my Atari ST to check out ............. then went and bought himself an A500.
I was deep into the Commodore ecosystem thanks to the C64, and to me, the Amiga was the logical upgrade path after seeing it heavily advertised in the Commodore-centric magazines I bought back then. I instantly wanted one, and wasn't about to switch to some other company even if their machines were cheaper. I suspect that with millions of C64s sold, there had to have been quite a few people like me, which helped keep the Amiga from sliding into oblivion. My first Amiga wasn't the 1000 though, I got the A500 Bonus Pack for Christmas somewhere around 1992-93 and it was glorious.
I went the ST 520 route and was more than happy with it. i only sold the ST and moved to the Amiga when the A1200 came out. i still have it with the Blizzard a1220 I bought for it.
Having bought an ST my STE came from a friend who had just bought an A1200 and overspent by adding a hard drive. The A600 and A1200 were probably the cheapest computers to add an HDD to at the time, A SCSI adaptor for the ST cost me £100. Even with PCs people were messing around with expensive "Hard Cards".
Hi, nice to see polish retro computer magazines on bookshelf. It is MikroKlan i think no.1 from 1986 year. And IKS (Informatyka Komputery Systemy).
Greetings from Poland!
Great video as always 👍🏻 😀
Sorry to hear you’ve been down with a cold, especially if you were trying to have a week off, but thanks for rising from your sick bed to make us a cracking video. Not sure you should have done that, but thank you anyway 😊.
Thanks Jamie!
Love seeing these machines brought back to life!
I was an Archimedes guy myself but always preferred the Amiga over the ST! The Arc always went for brute force but this series is a great watch fair play! Cannot wait for part 3!
The Archimedes was a great computer and we Amiga users really liked it and it's speed. Sadly I never saw or used one personally.
I'm loving this hybrid style of video with the refurbishment and opinion/history piece spliced in. More please.
Lets not forget that when these came out they were a serious investment. To put things in context in 1986 I bought my first house, with a deposit of £1800. With a mortgage to pay I didn't think about upgrading from my MSX1 for another five years.
I was a Commodore user from 1982 to 1995 starting with a VIC, then a C64, an A2000 and finally an A3000. My main focuses were programming and gaming. I didn't do any business stuff. The VIC and the C64 were easy decisions once the price had come down to be affordable.
I remember at the time it came out thinking that the Amiga would be a great machine, but way out of my price range, which is ironic since when I did get an Amiga finally in 1988 it was an A2000. College wasn't nearly as expensive back then (at least mine wasn't and I had scholarships) and I convinced my mom that I could do my comp-sci homework better by having an Amiga 2000 with an IBM Bridgeboard, so we used some of the money saved for college to buy it.
Then I did my programming homework on the Bridgeboard side, and played games on the Amiga side. Otherwise I probably would have ended up with an A500 eventually. If I remember right I had gotten a 3 1/2" disk drive and a video card to work with the Bridgeboard, but it still only had 512k, which kind of sucked.
After college I traded in my 2000 on a 3000 and used that until Commodore had gone under and Doom became the killer PC app, at which point I bought a PC with a Pentium.
I got the retro bug a while back so I now have a small collection of Commodores, Apples and Ataris.
I really enjoy your videos, thanks!
The A1000 was so far ahead of its time, its just so sad that Commodore imploded with management stupidity and greed wiping out this amazing machine in the process. I read about the development of the proposed later chipsets and they sounded fantastic. Sigh.
That could have changed history completely. Who knows what could have happened if they could have stayed competitive with pc's for a few more years and intel never became as dominint as it did.
Minor correction. It was just Amiga, the 1000 was added later when the 500 came out to distinguish.
It shows how important having a proper business model is. The ST and Amiga were developed on a shoestring - they may have been good value at the time but their manufacturers went bankrupt.
The Amiga had an ingenious chipset but Commodore couldn't afford to fund software for it. They also had no money to develop the chipset (to any significant degree), which meant it lost its technical lead. By the early 90's the 4th gen consoles were creaming it for games, and the PC's 486 / VGA combo had it beat for productivity.
Further, a lot of what made the Amiga great in the mid-80's were the clever hardware tricks it used. Unfortunately, these resulted in lots of restrictions and caveats (e.g. with HAM mode's colour palette) that weren't convenient. As transistor counts increased, these approaches didn't make sense. If it had survived, the Amiga would have lost much of its differentiation and just would up as a kind of budget Mac, only running AmigaOS.
A friend bought an A1000 new, back in the day. He invested quite a bit of cash into it at the time. Bought some external RAM and SCSI expansions for it for example. Then he bought a Phoenix replacement motherboard for it which I installed for him. Later he bought an A3000. Good times! Good man too!
Neil very nice idea the naration through the magazines! It describes exactly the vibe of the industry and the feelings of the potential buyers! Great series! Pt3 please!!!!
We cant ignore power of persuasion and I bought my a1000 in the first 3 months of launch in the uk. I went to the nova tel hotel in london and saw it running and spoke to commodore direct along with guests like jeff minter. I was 17 years old and £1299.00 was and is a lot of cash to a young man in a YTS role but it happened and that was the start of my amiga journey. Ohhhhh and my first game was Mindwalker. Look that one up for a shock of a game good or bad from someone who knew the vic20 and c64 for 6 years previous. Excelsior sir
Thanks for the shout out and glad to see the process helped towards the restoration :)
You could sell that leftover washing water to a vape shop 😄
oh man I am a complete sucker for the trash to treasure series 💕 hands down my favourite on YT
The Amiga 1000 used really amazing quality capacitors. It was over-engineered in every aspect. But we're looking at over 35 years now.
Interestingly, you can run a clone of "TOS & GEM" natively on an Amiga now, even as a Kickstart ROM replacement in the form of EmuTOS. It fields so weird to see an Amiga boot like an ST and natively run Atari ST software - of course the software has to be OS friendly and not hit the hardware directly.
It's funny how big the whole 'emulation' stuff was back in the day, but now it's mostly just a silly oddity. I had an ST growing up but my dad had an Amiga which he pawned off on me recently and it had a bridgeboard in it.. I messed with it a little bit but eventually just pulled it out because it's not that interesting now when you can pretty much get any age relevant system if that's what you're interested in. Back then you wanted to gloat about how your system runs all these other systems software (admittedly pretty poorly), now you just want to use those old systems to run the software (basically games) that are for those machines.
Whoa! Casual stack of PVMs in the background!
4:19 "Tarry Jank" was the name of my band in college. 😉
Absolutely love the point in time historical analysis/debate. Please keep this approach for future videos! :)
Thanks again for mentioning the solder temps !
Great video, did a double-take at 22:08: Two wild misspelling cover-ups appear from the shadows.
This is almost the same retrobrite method I used 2017. Now I'm even more concerned about plastic and only using sunlight. I did it with a cheesy looking doll for couple of weeks and it resulted with an almost perfect result.
It’s good to dry the boards faster then just natural evaporation. An oven set to 60C or just sunlight is best. Corrosion can form really fast.
I've been facing 45 C when i was living in Athens,Greece . I can imagine what it looks like to have high and unusual temperatures
It’s a dream machine for me. I have wanted o e for so many years
WHY do I find Neil cleaning stuff so soothing?
These have been absolutely amazing videos :) So clever to take the perspective of a potential buyer from back then. Looking forward to the next one!
If you do a serious amount of retro-brighting you should consider making a black light box. Those mainly ultra-violet LEDs are very efficient. The box to prevent your contact with UV, which ages skin, can damage eyes, etc. Perhaps with a safety cut out when box opened. A turn table to even exposure, and possibly mirrors to direct more of the UV onto the item.
Seen lots of restoration vids over the years but that has gotta be the yellowist plastic I've ever seen! Great vid Neil, looking forward to part 3
The real mystery to me is why it took off in Europe and never really did in the US. In 1986 my college had an Amiga in the art department, I remember my photography teacher demonstrating how you could digitize a color photo using a b&w video camera and red, green and blue filters, but then you didn't really hear about it again until Video Toaster was popular. Atari went away and there just wasn't anything competing at a lower price point than PC-compatibles ever again. Business folks had PCs, people who could afford them had Macs and generally kids didn't have computers at all until the web came along.
Until the Playstation games consoles were never really popular in the U.K. All through the 1980s the U.K. Government was saying that if children didn't learn how t use and program computers they would be unemployable. Any computer was considered to be far better than a brain numbing, and surprisingly expensive, Atari 2600.
Check out th-cam.com/video/jtMWEiCdsfc/w-d-xo.html to see an early example. PCs, and especially Macs were too expensive. By 1990 the ST and A500 were the right computers at the right price
p.s. Fun fact. Without this TV programme it would be highly unlikely that the ARM processor would ever have been designed.
Just starting the video and love the three Sony BVM just sat peacefully in the background
I loved the Amiga had the a500 and later a1200, I then jumped ship to a pc in 1992. I still have fond memories of it especially around 1987/88 playing gunship and cinemaware games
I had both an Atari 1040ST and an Amiga 500. I loved them both. Both were a joy to own and use. The ST was a fantastic machine, with its dual monitors, dual floppies, a Hard Drive and modem, and despite its limitations compared to the A500, If I really had to choose between the two, and only pick one of them, I'd go with the Atari 1040ST. That's just me. I've always had a soft spot for Atari computers. Prior to the ST, I had an Atari 800XL, and man was that one beast of an 8Bit computer! Now, I wish I had all three! I have in my possession (and in working condition) a TRS-80 Model 4, an Apple Macintosh Plus, a Tandy CoCo Model 1, and an IBM AT 5170 with an original Model M keyboard! Those, along with my modern PC's, make for one decent collection!
Yeah, I had an ST and my dad had an Amiga. Spec wise the Amiga is better, but as a kid who just wants to play games and the game situation was pretty close (with porting going on between the two systems causing some limitations on both fronts) that spending half the money on the ST made more sense at the time especially if you were trying to talk your parents into one. :)
@@brianv2871 Other than my previous love for Atari with the 800XL, I decided on the ST for two reasons: My love for Atari, and the price. The Amiga, at the time, was just too expensive for me to take the chance with, so I got the 1040ST. But later on, when I got more into the ST, I decided to get an Amiga 500. As you said, spec wise, the Amiga was the better computer, but there was just something about that ST that I so loved and miss to this day!
@@CarnorJast1138 yeah, i was an atari fan as well, and prior to the ST i had an atari 800 (original, not the xl). Out of all the computers i had as a kid, my ataris were all i still have. The ST didn't survive storage very well so took a bit of work to get back functioning, but the 800... That tank still worked 30 years later when i went to use it again.
@@brianv2871 I envy you, sir! To have an original Atari 800 is a treat to behold! I had two friends in early high school, back in 1982, and they had Atari 800's, and I was totally fascinated by them. My friend from band was into Tandy, and had a TRS-80 Model III. We spent many hours on that system playing Zork! I miss those days from the early to mid 1980's!
@@brianv2871 Atari ST was cheaper and also had untapped potential in the sense that Atari had the ability to make exclusive(ish) 1st party games for their consoles & PCs like star raiders, centipede, Millipede & super breakout but they didn't make as many as they should have especially since after 1984 Atari games & Atari corporation were separate companies ,while Commodore barely tried with the idea of 1st party games , I'm not aware of any 1st party amiga games & I only know 2 on the C64 which is international soccer & jack attack.
I so completely agree. I wanted a Mac II in those days, but couldn't come close to affording it. It's cheaper, but similar, competitors were the Atari ST and the Amiga 1000 at the time. All three used the 68000 processor. I finally bought the Amiga 1000 (a refurbished one) as it had, by far, the best built-in sound hardware and the ability to generate NTSC video out of the box. It was SOO much more powerful than the Mac II and even than the Atari when it was released (or it was way cheaper for the same abilities, either way), with a multitasking GUI and I loved it.
I just watched the previous part, nice to have this one right afterwards. The new studio is looking great, you even had some MikroBittis there, it was *the* computer magazine back then in Finland.
Really enjoying this series Neil! Love the approach you’ve taken, putting everything in the context of the time. Hope this can be used for later series!
I got an A500+ in the early 90’s, and whilst I’d no interest in petty playground squabbles I did feel the Amiga was the superior machine. However, it now feels unfair to compare the ST to the wedge shaped Amiga offerings, given how much sooner it was on the market.
In the context of the time I’d have been saving hard for a ST. However, if the first Amiga to hit the market had of been the A500 it would have been an entirely different story.
Back in the day my parents went, $1k for the kids computer is ok. It was a weird time in California USA. It was either a well old PC with nearly nothing, or an Atari ST. Two years later we saw the Amiga, it was really late in the states, and didn't have MIDI. At that point most Atarians I knew either upgraded to a mega st or high spec PC.
Great fun to see this legendary machine, and follow your commentary. And great music, LOL
really enjoyed that! so interesting to see the amiga in the context of its time :) i love old magazines for that sort of insight
I missed out on the Commodore 128, Atari ST, and the Amiga. I got a 64 from Christmas in 1985 when I was ten, and I had to make do with that until I bought a well-used IBM PC in 1991. When you look at those prices they don't seem so high, but taking inflation into account, computers back then were a luxury for wealthy people. I was very lucky to have the 64 and a 1541 disk drive, and I made the most of it. Got my first program published in Run Magazine in 1987. I switched to programming DOS in 1991, and Linux in 1994.
But by 1991 you could have bought a cheap A500 instead.
I had an Amiga 1000 on my desk at work for assessment in 1985. I thought it was a great machine and thought about buying one personally. As it ended up I recommended that we stick to IBM PCs at work and I kept my Apple IIe at home due to available software and add on cards for so many optional tasks. I now wish I had bought an Amiga then.
Looks great. After this it's time to liberate that FM Towns from it's glass cabinet and get it up and running. Really enjoyed last weekends visit to the cave, will be along again very soon. That was one of the most severe cases of yellowing I have seen, did well to get it looking as good as it did!
Fantastic research and restoration
A computer I know little about this was a education.
The best method to remove smokers' residue from plastic is kitchen degreaser. Not sure about any brands in the UK, but the stuff you would use to clean up any areas in your kitchen where you got greasy cooking deposits. A former friend of mine acquired two "office containers".. (not sure again what the proper English term is, but the kind of thing you'd use on a large construction site to house break rooms, bathrooms, construction offices, etc. Sized like a shpping container). Those he got were used at a junk yard and must have been home to people who had at least three cigarettes burning at any time.
We used this kitchen degreaser on the plastic-covered wall panels and they came out like new. Of course, they were not yellowed like the case there, but everything on the surface washed right off.
After the C64 the Amiga 1000 was my next computer and my first Amiga. I sold the A1000 at one point and took out a bank loan and purchased the Amiga 2000HD
Neil, I have to ask, were you sick when you recorded this video, or did you change your mic? Your voice sounds different in this video.
If you were sick, here's to a speedy recovery!
My fanboi Amiga was the A4000 🤩 Would love to have one
@@nemesis2264 Im thumbing up your post in sympathy, sorry to hear that!
I'd love to have seen games take advantage of the Amiga A4000 hardware but unfortunately it didn't happen. That machine should have been the basis for the amiga CD 32 instead of the A1200 and commodore should have made exclusive 1st party games for their own systems don't really understand why they didn't besides a few C64 games like international soccer
Enjoying the series, I recently picked up my own A1000 and going through my own restoration. It was machine I would have loved to upgrade to from the C64 back in the day but with the PC Clone onslaught in North America at that time it had a small window before a "cheap" clone with VGA and a sound card was a no brainer.
I love the format of this series! Good job. I've little to nothing experience with retrobrighting but if i understand correctly, it works thanks to the ozone and UV light from the sun. So, why do not use ozone generator instead of hydrogen paroxide?
I moved from a Commodore 64, purchased the day after its massive price drop to the Amiga 1000. Subsequently I owned the 2000, 3000, 4000 and basically every desktop. When Amiga died and Atari was basically dead I had a choice to made between Mac or Windows. I moved to Mac and never left the Apple ecosystem.
I bought an A1000 a few years ago and it looks just as stunning as it did in 1985 when my local computer shop had one on display. BUT! The only "problem" is that is is much smaller than it appears in photos, so I really really wish (are you listening Steve Jones?) someone would take the design and scale it up until a regular keyboard would fit under it and it would be tall enough for expansion cards to fit.
I think a lot of people don`t know that there was an upgrade on the graphics with the AGA Chip in later versions. With 262,144 colors in HAM8 Mode it was quiet good for its time (1992) But there was always the chance to upgrade the system with a 24bit graphics board like the Retina at least for the Amiga 2000/3000/4000.
I started off on a TRS-80 Coco during high school, and a couple years later an Apple //c as well. Started college in fall of '85 at Virginia Tech going into Computer Eng. and the eng dept was already requiring incoming freshmen to buy IBM PCs. They had a deal with IBM and while you COULD get a clone (I really wanted a Tandy 1000) they made it sound like you'd have problems with incompatibilities and since we knew nothing of the PC world, I got stuck with an IBM PC Portable. Always regretted not getting the Tandy - way more machine for the money. Anyway getting into the IBM world at that time meant I regretfully didn't pay any attention to the Atari / Amiga offerings. The only blip it made at that point was there was on guy on my hall in the dorm in CS who was using an Amiga 1000 for his classes. The CS dept required Macs at the time (Mac XLs running AUX, later Mac IIs) so not sure how he got away with that since you had to turn in floppies with your assignments. Though early 90's when I heard about the Video Toaster I was blown away and really wanted an Amiga after that. Sadly I never got one, but hope to pick one up sometime!
Loving this series! Great format and the perspective from the time is really interesting. Thanks for this!
There are some restoration channels here on YT, that restored some consoles shells with UV lights, and the results are great.
For me it was an easy choise. I had the C64 and when the Amiga arrived I just didn't have the money. Though, I had one classmate and one other friend that got one. They both showed what the Amiga could do so when I eventually had the cash I got myself the A500 and I've never even had a thought of regretting that. I had a few other friends that were Atari fans that got the 1040. I was not impressed by them.
I still have that same A500, as well as an A4000 that I got used in the mid 90's.
Crazy in the context of the time really. That 256k alone is a sticking point.
i used to have that small joystick for my atari 2600 and loved it. i currently have an atari 2600 and just might get another pair of those controllers.
Many folk with deep pockets in the market for a high end machine in 1986 would have waited until June 1987 and gone for an Acorn Archimedes. I saw my first Archimedes in the sixth form, which would have been late '87 or maybe early '88.
Another wonderful episode, love the way you are going through the Byte articles and advertisements as they came out, it is working really well.
Heard somewhere recently that going over it with a heat gun sorts out the marbling after retrobrighting, think it was on one of Mr Lurch's videos.
I actually had an Atari joystick that was designed by Amiga (Amiga written all over the PCB). I guess this was at a time just before Atari wanted to purchase Amiga before Commodore stepped in at the 11th hour. It was the Atari Pro-line CX24 joystick.
Hi Neil. As usual a very interesting video. I must admit that back in the day I would have liked one of the higher spec Amigas as they looked amazing. However, I was far too practical to consider buying it. Having started computing on the command line and learning to program in text mode I really didn't feel comfortable in a GUI for some time. A friend of mine from London had suggested that I buy an A500 with an XT card. However, in my mind, the desktop appeared cluttered and far from intuitive and the card would have added a layer of complexity I didn't need. In fact, in 1991 I bought a used IBM XT with a Hercules monitor and in 1992 I ended up buying a 386sx notebook with 4MB ram and MS Dos 4, which I actually still have. Shortly afterwards my then future brother-in-law asked me to help him computerise his business. He sat me down in front of an A600 and I didn't know where to start. Up to that point I had only ever used an A500 to play games and that was pretty much all the Amiga was known for in my circles. On the other hand, I was writing my own programs in Basic and Turbo Pascal under Dos and had already ported a proprietary MSX Dos database to MS Dos for a local business. Anyway, I showed him a simple spreadsheet and flat-file database that I had written for myself, the software available for IBM compatibles and their reputation as business machines. Within a week he exchanged his Amiga for an XT. In hindsight, a lot of the reputation associated with the Amiga as not being a serious machine was down to very poor marketing and the price.
I like the history and restoration but the references to byte magazine have set the series apart. I would like to see more and maybe references to UK magazines too such a Personal Computer world and the way each Sinclair cover had a chimp. keep up the good work.
I just commented about PCW elsewhere. I have a copy with the newly launched A1200 on the cover, and an advert inside explaining why a £10000 CD writer would be a good investment for your business.
Remember New Computer Express. That was a weekly magazine, reflecting how quickly the market was changing back then.
"just need to wait for the sun".......sometimes you do get what you wish for.....hope it didnt melt😂😂
22:02
An Interesting video, I'm am amazed how you repair these machines.
Since I could afford neither an Amiga nor an ST when they came out and was into machine code programming and graphics I lusted after the machine which had the more impressive graphics I lusted over the one that had better graphics hardware, the Amiga. I had a friend who had some connection to Melbourne House and used to give me machine code programming tips and rumours of games that were still the works. He was the first one who started talking about the Amiga and making it sound amazing. Then a friend's older brother bought an A1000 with compensation money from a motobike accident and after being allowed to use it a few times I was utterly convinced. Looking at STs in shops didn't give me the same thrill. I scoured the classified ads until the first secondhand one appeared for sale. Somehow I had saved enough money. I think I paid $1000 Australian and it included a rare 1081 monitor with the Sony Trinitron picture tube. I sold off a huge collection of 48K Speccy games and hardware. I've always the Amiga generally was the spiritual successor to the Speccy and C64 as well since it was the bedroom coder's dream machine, especially when the A500 appeared later. Sadly, I never figured out how to program it in assembly. That had to wait until I got my A2000 with 030 years later.
This is pure perfection Neil! This restoration series is perfectly balanced with info as well! And: Amiga ;) One of my favourites out of everything you have made so far this series.
I was working at Boeing when the Amiga and Atari came out in 1985.
It was love at first sight, but Autocad and other engineering software like Turbo Pascal, FORTRAN and C compilers, were only available for the IBM PC with a math co-processor.
That guy was not joking or an IBM employee. I loved the 68000 and remember reading the datasheet everyday in the bus to and from work.
I kick myself for not buying both the Amiga 1000 AND the Atari 520ST. My brain was too young and stupid back then.
The 68k line of CPUs have their own FPU ? According to wikipedia the 6881 and 68882 are designed to be used with 68020 and 030 so idk if there was any wat to make the Amiga A1000 equal to a IBM PC with an 8088 + 8087
I have often thought what I would've done in early 1986 if I were to buy a 16-bit micro at the time. I have often had the suspicion that yes, while the Amiga 1000 (or just Amiga at the time) is a fantastic machine, the real "Atari killer" didn't appear until the 500 was launched in 1987. Now seeing that even the Atari 1040ST was available for under $1,000 already at the time just underlines this more for me. Those summer bundles look really nice though and could maybe have swayed me. Of course, I wasn't buying a micro at the time, I was only four and we had recently gotten a Commodore 128 (with a 1541-II though, not a 1571) so that one served us well for the next years. First time I saw an Amiga 500 was in 1990 when a villager got one after his confirmation. And yes, we all thought that an Amiga 2000 had to be a way better machine because well 2000 is more than 500. Yes, I know the 2500/30 was out in 1990 but we didn't know it back then. Oh well, I guess this is just a very wordy way for me to say: Dang it, I wish I had been around bargain bins back in those days when people stopped wanting these machines.
EDIT: "This keyboard desperately wants to be a banana." Now, that I know is a reference to the Space Invaders keyboard for that Amiga 500 restoration video from oh so many moons ago. Probably also to the Amiga 600 video where a banana also made a cameo, IIRC. Is that you teasing that a video on the Space Invaders keyboard is finally on the doorstep? :)
Love this series, thanks for putting it together!
When retrobrighting I simply use 12% cream, the oven at 50C/120F and don't need to care about the sun. Five hours and averything looks like new. :)
I went Spectrum, 8-bit Atari with a side trip to the Megadrive before settling on the Atari STFM. From there I went the PC route with an early 286. I could have gone to the Amiga when I left my STFM behind but though superior it wasn't a big enough jump and in addition it was becoming obvious that the Amiga was stagnating. Even the new Atari machines were struggling. I don't really think anybody expected the market to drop off as suddenly as it did. Those early days of PC gaming were tough with the only high points being conversions of games I'd already played and even those were few and far between. No wonder the consoles did so well. If either player had brought out a PC compatible with the ability to run the old libraries I'd have been sold. I might even have bought them both.
It's quite apt, that while restoring an old smoker's Amiga, Neil also sounds like a smoker! :D I hope whatever lurgy that was, it's gone now. :)
Much better now thank you!
In my case my Cousin DID actually take the Atari ST. But he was always complaining about how almost every magazine review wound up giving the Amiga version of games just a couple of points more, so when time came for me to get one years later, that had an effect on me and I got an A600.
Of course the truth is that you had to be in the 16bit market to even make that choice and it was long time before I was in any position to upgrade really.
5:10 So until that happens... - as bright sunlight floods through the windows 😄
This series is great.
Great video as always.
I have sourced some aquarium bits (UV, Heat controllers etc.) that I hope to try with retrobriting
Plenty of SUN over there at the moment.... uh, Keep up the good work
That ultrasonic cleaner looks familiar! ;)
Love these Amigas, for reference the best product I have used for removing yellowing is Magic Eraser. I've used it on very yellow looking photocopiers which should be cream and it magically removes the yellow without damaging the surface. I couldn't believe how effective it is and quick too. Have you tried this method before as I'm sure it would save you time and agro ?
Great vid! Recovering from a cold Neil? Couldn't help notice 😊
It was the best computer launch of all time. I have not seen any Apple or Microsoft launch prior to this, but if both of those companies did not subsequently, directly copy this launch then I'd be very surprised. Iconic. Bob Pariseau is a legend.
3:14 - random and tragic factoid. Many years ago at this exact cleaning moment a friend of mine had his large dog jump into his bath, land bang on the middle of the same section of A1000 plastic, and snap it in half! Sad & funny in equal measure but mainly sad!
Hmm, I never heard of Microshop in Tustin, and I was pretty in tune with the local computer stores. I remember looking at an Amiga 1000 in my city (Orange), but they didn't last long. I would go over to a store in neighboring Anaheim, but would've loved to visit an Amiga dealer in Tustin, since that address would've been a bit closer.
Thoroughly enjoyed this.
"We just need to wait for the sun to come out." Careful what you wish for!