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[#] Wed May 05 2021 17:50:41 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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Sounds like an A500, but an A500 very rarely had an internal hard-drive inside the case. They had a sidecar expansion where the drive would go. 

The A600 could have an internal drive - and did not have a numeric keypad, so it wasn't as big... actually barely bigger than a laptop of that era. 

 

Wed May 05 2021 10:02:07 EDT from Nurb432

I think i had a 500? I forget now. It didnt have a power supply so never turned it on before i gave it away. Got it with a pallet of other stuff i wanted.  Had a HD in it. could see it thru the vents. I assume that was aftermarket?

 

It was a similar form factor as a single piece ST/STE ( not a mega but the low profile case )

 

Wed May 05 2021 09:28:57 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

I had a genuine NTSC Amiga 1000, with the onboard expansion to bring it to its full 512 KB glory :)

So ahead of its time.

 



 



[#] Wed May 05 2021 20:23:05 UTC from Nurb432

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Looking at some pictures now that i have time, ya it had to be a 500 as it had the keypad.

I figured that was not normal to have a drive shoved in there and it looked out of place.   I guess i should have kept it, might have been something special.



[#] Thu May 06 2021 14:49:13 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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It may have been. There are a number of weird, rare things that are super collectible now. 

But also, because a lot of Amiga 500s were owned by kids - there are a lot of butchered, hacked machines that are just curiosities - and potentially impossible to support today, too. 

It is a strange collector's scene. 

You don't have any old pictures of it, do you? 

 

Wed May 05 2021 16:23:05 EDT from Nurb432

Looking at some pictures now that i have time, ya it had to be a 500 as it had the keypad.

I figured that was not normal to have a drive shoved in there and it looked out of place.   I guess i should have kept it, might have been something special.



 



[#] Thu May 06 2021 18:09:39 UTC from Nurb432

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No pictures. Amiga was of no interest to me at all.  It just happened to be in the bottom of a box of Atari stuff i got from the local PC recycle center.   If it wasn't 'modern' they put it in a box for scrap.  I happened to hear about it and bought a couple boxes before they went off to be crushed. 



[#] Thu May 06 2021 21:44:37 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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Heh. It is probably worth about $250-$400 today, depending on what was in it. :) 

 

Thu May 06 2021 14:09:39 EDT from Nurb432

No pictures. Amiga was of no interest to me at all.  It just happened to be in the bottom of a box of Atari stuff i got from the local PC recycle center.   If it wasn't 'modern' they put it in a box for scrap.  I happened to hear about it and bought a couple boxes before they went off to be crushed. 



 



[#] Fri May 07 2021 13:29:38 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

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The Amiga was so cutting edge, I knew I just had to have one the moment I saw it. I want to say "ahead of its time" but it was really other computers that weren't keeping up. It would be more than a decade before other computers could do what the Amiga handled with ease.

And really, modern graphics systems don't really do what the Amiga did. They just added a few billion transistors and got better at drawing things with brute force.

[#] Fri May 07 2021 14:01:38 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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Yup. Same. Some friend of a friend in the modem scene got an A1000 in 1985. He didn't live in a particularly wealthy part of town - just some lower middle class kid. We went over, and got to play a game of Archon and watch a few mind-blowing demos. 

In March 1987, as soon as the A2000 dropped, I bought one. Kikcstart in rom, 1mb of ram stock, expansion slots like a PC... 

I should have waited for the A500... and the worst disappointment - EA had done something weird with the bootloader of Archon so it was broken on KS 1.3 rom Amigas - it only worked on the A1000. But... it didn't matter. There were lots of other incredible things to distract me from that disappointment. 

Best computer ever. Nothing before or since has been as genuinely revolutionary and mind blowing as the Amiga was. 

 

Fri May 07 2021 09:29:38 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar
The Amiga was so cutting edge, I knew I just had to have one the moment I saw it. I want to say "ahead of its time" but it was really other computers that weren't keeping up. It would be more than a decade before other computers could do what the Amiga handled with ease.

And really, modern graphics systems don't really do what the Amiga did. They just added a few billion transistors and got better at drawing things with brute force.

 



[#] Fri May 07 2021 15:22:31 UTC from Nurb432

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oooo Atari/Amiga flame wars! Go!  Kidding aside, while we all were too busy fighting among ourselves back in the 90s and not paying attention around us, IBM and Microsoft zoomed past us in the market with lesser quality stuff. But they won.

 

Still wish i could have got an STBook and an ATW.   



[#] Fri May 07 2021 15:28:39 UTC from Nurb432

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speaking of. was out in the garage last night, and apparently i didnt donate my SM124.. it was pushed behind some boxes. 



[#] Fri May 07 2021 23:36:16 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

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IBM could have put their logo on a Timex/Sinclair 1000 and still "won".  That was how things were back then.



[#] Tue May 11 2021 03:43:32 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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Don't get me wrong... I was always pissing off my Amiga friends talking about how awesome Midimaze was and how there was nothing like it anywhere... 

I've always liked trolling ALL sides. :D 

But, seriously - I liked my Atari 1040ST. The 520ST was kind of useless - and I did think it was hilarious that the Atari Drop Test was a real thing to get it reading your floppy drive again. :) 

The Amiga may have Gurued every 3rd boot - but dropping it from 7" above the desk wasn't a legitimate troubleshooting technique. :) 

Seriously - you nailed it. The first time I saw Wing Commander with digitized voice and cut scenes on a 386 - I knew they were both dead-PCs walking. :) 

 

Fri May 07 2021 11:22:31 EDT from Nurb432

oooo Atari/Amiga flame wars! Go!  Kidding aside, while we all were too busy fighting among ourselves back in the 90s and not paying attention around us, IBM and Microsoft zoomed past us in the market with lesser quality stuff. But they won.

 

Still wish i could have got an STBook and an ATW.   



 



[#] Tue May 11 2021 12:47:18 UTC from Nurb432

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My 520 didnt have an internal floppy.  but i did upgrade it to 4MB.  I only read about the 'drop reset' thing. never had to do it myself. 

My 1040, was internal ( i dont think they came any other way, i dont remember now )  it also had 4mb



[#] Tue May 11 2021 14:47:42 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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The 520 never had an internal floppy that I am aware of. Mine had an external drive too- the same model you describe above. 

I know I had to do it on my 1040ST. basically when you drop it the keyboard compresses and reseats the loose chip. Smarter people just kept their case unscrewed and reseated it by hand when it worked its way loose. 

I was not that smart. :) 

 

Tue May 11 2021 08:47:18 EDT from Nurb432

My 520 didnt have an internal floppy.  but i did upgrade it to 4MB.  I only read about the 'drop reset' thing. never had to do it myself. 

My 1040, was internal ( i dont think they came any other way, i dont remember now )  it also had 4mb



 



[#] Tue May 11 2021 16:59:06 UTC from Nurb432

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And even smarter people pulled all their chips, cleaned them, re-bend the legs and put them back in. I did that when i upgraded the ram in both of them.  Just thought it was a good idea, it was before i heard of the drop fix.  

Oh, and my 2nd 520 which was not new when i bought it.... that i killed during that upgrade process.  I tried to cheat and use a Dremel instead of soldering.  On a new board it would have worked, but it was old and brittle. Broke a few traces down below somewhere.

Almost bought a Falcon, and a STacy.   But the local store closed a week before i went back with cash in hand.   So i lived with the 1040 for a few more years. 



[#] Tue May 11 2021 21:24:59 UTC from zooer

Subject: How Pitfall Builds its World

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How Pitfall Builds its World

It was quite an innovation to have multiple rooms [in Adventure], and the fact that Adventure managed to have 30 was revolutionary. But Pitfall!, made by David Crane and released in 1983, had 255, all of which were much more elaborate (graphically speaking) than anything in Adventure. In this article we'll talk about how this was done.

https://evoniuk.github.io/posts/pitfall.html



[#] Tue May 11 2021 21:46:18 UTC from Nurb432

Subject: Re: How Pitfall Builds its World

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Funny. i was just thumbing thru a 1977 popular electronics magazine.   40 column printer only 250

( the cosmac elf,  part 1 )

Back when it was still fun. 



[#] Tue May 11 2021 23:34:47 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

Subject: Re: How Pitfall Builds its World

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Very cool. I read the whole thing. Pitfall was teh r0x0r.

[#] Wed May 12 2021 04:31:19 UTC from ASCII Express

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Well as usual when everyone else gets three or four choices, the blind get one. Only the Apple II/e had a speech synthesizer and screen reader, so my family got that. They didn't build it in, we had to purchase the card and software from a company, and my Mom and a family friend had to install it. As a seven-year-old I could only cheer them on, but it worked! I love that machine. I still have it, and it still works. Sadly I lent it to a friend when I switched to the PC and she lost all the discs but one. It does still have TextTalker at least.

[#] Wed May 12 2021 06:06:16 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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Those disks can be replaced fairly easily these days, ASCII. They're all available in disk image format and there are ways to burn them back from disk image to a physical disk, or to make the Apple read the disk images from an SD card. 

That is so cool that your parents were savvy enough to figure out that being blind wasn't an obstacle to you being engaged in the computer revolution and found the technology to enable that. 

Wed May 12 2021 00:31:19 EDT from ASCII Express
Well as usual when everyone else gets three or four choices, the blind get one. Only the Apple II/e had a speech synthesizer and screen reader, so my family got that. They didn't build it in, we had to purchase the card and software from a company, and my Mom and a family friend had to install it. As a seven-year-old I could only cheer them on, but it worked! I love that machine. I still have it, and it still works. Sadly I lent it to a friend when I switched to the PC and she lost all the discs but one. It does still have TextTalker at least.

 



[#] Wed May 12 2021 10:13:44 UTC from Nurb432

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In my case it was a friend that i helped out instead of his parents ( back in high school in the 80s ).  He was perhaps 80% blind then. Slowly last that bit over the years.  I hear hes getting along fine, given the situation ( we had a falling out at one point perhaps 15+ years ago, so we dont talk much now )

Last time i saw him was about 5 years ago in the hospital, he got ran over by a car. ( he always felt everyone should cater to him as he was disabled, and looked down on many people, so would not bother with traffic lights and such. Restaurants: "you are the help, serve me". ).  Few broken ribs and a leg.



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