i had the amiga 500 and 500+. befor that, commordor 16 with 16 ram. i lernt to program on it and write games for my son. but the amiga 5oo, now that was like a commputer from the gods. great courlor, great sound, instead of the beep sound you could play real music on it. could it have run the internet?
@turnermedman1231 You can go on the internet with an Amiga 500 yes, I know many people used to dial up BBS and I have even seen upgraded ones on the web too :)
@techguruuk thanks for info. yes, i remember when the spectrum came out, there was a program on tv where they dialed up the web. very basic, but it worked in text
I had an Amiga A500+ in around 1991 with the best add on card, the Action Replay mkIII (happy days). Anyway, after watching this video I had a look on ebay and I got a A600 including 1mb trapdoor expansion, 2 joysticks, mouse and PSU for £56.50. 4GB Compact flash card and interface £37.99 (for the internal HD). New kickstart rom chip £7.99. Total spent £102.48 (including postage). Fired it up today and all working fine, played Turrican 2 and Alien Breed SE.
I just got one of those little profound "wow" moments when the following fact occurred to me:
The majority of Amiga owners who bought this new in 1992, if they had opened it up at the time, would probably have had no idea what the url on the lower right board actually meant. If they were into computers they might have been more likely to know, but probably more than 90% of the general public would have looked at it and never even guessed...
Today even grannies would know. How far we've come...
The only thing I didnt like about the Amiga 500+ was that some older games were not compatible with it. Toki was a game I loved and I remember that being one of the games that wouldnt run on the 500+, Operation Wolf was another game that didnt run.
My first Amiga was the 500+ which looking back I was lucky to get since it wasn't on the shelves that long, it was a step up from the A500 as it had 1MB ram and KS2.0.4 but really not enough of a difference to make A500 owners upgrade. I still wish I'd kept it though but sold it to buy a CD32 instead.
I didn't know WHDload worked on unexpanded (processor-wise) Amigas; I thought it needed a minimum 020. Interesting... I've dozens and dozens of Amiga games from back in the day, plus several each of A500, 600, and 1200's, plus an A1000 and an A4000. The A600 with some classic games on would be a fun thing.
Bit of a random question for anybody listening in the UK. Does anybody have some 256x4bit DIP 20 pin dram chips at 120ns or faster? I need 16 to total 2meg for an a590 ram upgrade. You used to get them on some simm modules but also on old isa sound cards and isa video cards. Also in some printer memory upgrades like old Postscript printers (IBM 4019).
but I *much* prefer the keyboard of a certain A500 variant. I don't know the exact one.
After seeing the C64X, for some reason i'd like a C64C with pc internals or better still ARM.. retro chunky keyboard, and small footprint, and amiga-esque styling.
Hehe, did you try to count how many times you said the word 'literally'? :) Anyway, good review, thanks. A friend of mine had it and I had a classic A500. I remember he was missing the numeric keypad in some games and some Kickstart 1.3 games didn't work without loading up a software Kickstart ROM version.
The Amiga500 (and +) was around £400 when it was sold. It held that price for a long time. The A1200 went from around £400 to £250 rather quickly. I remember when the A600 and A1200 were released. I thought the same then as I do now. Commodore should have skipped the A600 altogether and released the A1200 with a CD drive built in. It would have upped the price but could have gone from £600 to £400, holding the £400 price. People would have bought it. Games would have improved and piracy dropped.
@TableWolfMusic Well I would think that upgrading the external floppy drive port to accept CD drives would be great, the price of the machine would be same likely
@janmansde3dede The PCMCIA on the a600 or a1200 accepts CDROM drives with that interface but nobody wanted to spend the money on them so the price of them as a peripheral stayed high (circa £200 or £250). If they had built it in, then the cost would have gone down as they would have been bought as part of every unit. Silly thing is you can plug a external CDROM into the parallel port of any computer as long as you've a driver. 6xspeed to fit an ide drive caddies were commonplace.
Nice machine! I love how compact it is. I had a A500 and A1200 in past though AMIGA had a fairly small presence in Canada I would have loved to have this back in the day also, I would still want one lol! Amiga 1200/600/500 most are in UK and even if I find reasonable price the shipping is crazy high PLUS I get screwed on border taxes too. My biggest regret of my collection to this day is getting rid of my AMIGA stuff!
Maybe not a bad investment in the UK, but unfortunately none of the personal use Amiga's ever caught on in the US, really. I've seen old 2500's used for Videotoaster production (don't have those either), but never seen an Amiga 500/1200/600. And Commodore did do well here actually, w/ the C64 which I often find boxed every blue moon.
It's a drag not to have one, but maybe I should look into that AROS OS? I've had tremendous difficulty using UAE, is all.
Great Amiga videos, btw. :D I'm not sure whether the electronics were good enough at that time, but I think Commodore missed out on integrating the PSU here... the A600 was still stuck with that bulky old external brick. :D
@FreeWinSlave I dunno I'm not really looking for one and I'm broke now so bad time to ask! Seriously I wouldn't pay too much for one. I don't even know what they're worth compared to an A500 to be honest.
PCMCIA slot? Seriously that's crazy I never would have expected an Amiga 600 to have that. That is much smaller than the 500 I have and it came with a Hard Drive too. I kinda like it quite a bit. Oh shit and it has composite out? Man I want one now. I know RGB looks way better but it's a pain in the butt to lug out it's own monitor everytime I want to play a game on it. This one I can hook right up to the TV. I want one of these!
Smallest Amiga ever, but A500+ was a real miss (supposed to be A600 at least for IDE hard drive advancement). Smalest Amiga ever, shame it wasnt used as base for laptop! It would be better if it had 68020 and FAST RAM, in reality was slower then A500 due to more demanding WB 2.x PCMCIA and IDE were nice!
Have to say glad I have skipped it for A1200HD
Also, it was less expandable Amiga due to high integration (68030 as best expansion)
awesome video, i still own 500 and 1200 - thumbs up
sethlanz 4 days ago
i had the amiga 500 and 500+. befor that, commordor 16 with 16 ram. i lernt to program on it and write games for my son. but the amiga 5oo, now that was like a commputer from the gods. great courlor, great sound, instead of the beep sound you could play real music on it. could it have run the internet?
turnermedman1231 2 weeks ago
@turnermedman1231 You can go on the internet with an Amiga 500 yes, I know many people used to dial up BBS and I have even seen upgraded ones on the web too :)
techguruuk 1 week ago
@techguruuk thanks for info. yes, i remember when the spectrum came out, there was a program on tv where they dialed up the web. very basic, but it worked in text
turnermedman1231 1 week ago
I had an Amiga A500+ in around 1991 with the best add on card, the Action Replay mkIII (happy days). Anyway, after watching this video I had a look on ebay and I got a A600 including 1mb trapdoor expansion, 2 joysticks, mouse and PSU for £56.50. 4GB Compact flash card and interface £37.99 (for the internal HD). New kickstart rom chip £7.99. Total spent £102.48 (including postage). Fired it up today and all working fine, played Turrican 2 and Alien Breed SE.
doncasterrunner 2 weeks ago
what partition program did you use ??
vabis1200 3 weeks ago
@vabis1200 just HDToolbox
techguruuk 1 week ago
I just got one of those little profound "wow" moments when the following fact occurred to me:
The majority of Amiga owners who bought this new in 1992, if they had opened it up at the time, would probably have had no idea what the url on the lower right board actually meant. If they were into computers they might have been more likely to know, but probably more than 90% of the general public would have looked at it and never even guessed...
Today even grannies would know. How far we've come...
Bloodgod40 4 weeks ago
And oddly enough, said URL actually still works too. I tried it just now. It leads to the website of Individual Computers.
Bloodgod40 4 weeks ago
@Bloodgod40 The board is a recent product, it was only manufactured in 2010 :) Individual Computers are a company making new Amiga expansions.
techguruuk 1 week ago
The only thing I didnt like about the Amiga 500+ was that some older games were not compatible with it. Toki was a game I loved and I remember that being one of the games that wouldnt run on the 500+, Operation Wolf was another game that didnt run.
Carbon657 4 weeks ago
My first Amiga was the 500+ which looking back I was lucky to get since it wasn't on the shelves that long, it was a step up from the A500 as it had 1MB ram and KS2.0.4 but really not enough of a difference to make A500 owners upgrade. I still wish I'd kept it though but sold it to buy a CD32 instead.
KeXithG 1 month ago
I really, really wanted an Amiga back in the day. They had the best games.
Danny77uk 1 month ago
I didn't know WHDload worked on unexpanded (processor-wise) Amigas; I thought it needed a minimum 020. Interesting... I've dozens and dozens of Amiga games from back in the day, plus several each of A500, 600, and 1200's, plus an A1000 and an A4000. The A600 with some classic games on would be a fun thing.
MarkTheMorose 1 month ago
The Powerbrick is great as a feetwarmer :)
MrBarrelson 2 months ago
Bit of a random question for anybody listening in the UK. Does anybody have some 256x4bit DIP 20 pin dram chips at 120ns or faster? I need 16 to total 2meg for an a590 ram upgrade. You used to get them on some simm modules but also on old isa sound cards and isa video cards. Also in some printer memory upgrades like old Postscript printers (IBM 4019).
TableWolfMusic 2 months ago
Still got one of these hooked up under my TV, I love it!
TotalMorgo 2 months ago
I hated this at the time.
In retrospect the small footprint IS nice.
but I *much* prefer the keyboard of a certain A500 variant. I don't know the exact one.
After seeing the C64X, for some reason i'd like a C64C with pc internals or better still ARM.. retro chunky keyboard, and small footprint, and amiga-esque styling.
walter0bz 2 months ago
Hehe, did you try to count how many times you said the word 'literally'? :) Anyway, good review, thanks. A friend of mine had it and I had a classic A500. I remember he was missing the numeric keypad in some games and some Kickstart 1.3 games didn't work without loading up a software Kickstart ROM version.
factor6 2 months ago
The Amiga500 (and +) was around £400 when it was sold. It held that price for a long time. The A1200 went from around £400 to £250 rather quickly. I remember when the A600 and A1200 were released. I thought the same then as I do now. Commodore should have skipped the A600 altogether and released the A1200 with a CD drive built in. It would have upped the price but could have gone from £600 to £400, holding the £400 price. People would have bought it. Games would have improved and piracy dropped.
TableWolfMusic 2 months ago
@TableWolfMusic Well I would think that upgrading the external floppy drive port to accept CD drives would be great, the price of the machine would be same likely
janmansde3dede 2 months ago
@janmansde3dede The PCMCIA on the a600 or a1200 accepts CDROM drives with that interface but nobody wanted to spend the money on them so the price of them as a peripheral stayed high (circa £200 or £250). If they had built it in, then the cost would have gone down as they would have been bought as part of every unit. Silly thing is you can plug a external CDROM into the parallel port of any computer as long as you've a driver. 6xspeed to fit an ide drive caddies were commonplace.
TableWolfMusic 2 months ago
Nice machine! I love how compact it is. I had a A500 and A1200 in past though AMIGA had a fairly small presence in Canada I would have loved to have this back in the day also, I would still want one lol! Amiga 1200/600/500 most are in UK and even if I find reasonable price the shipping is crazy high PLUS I get screwed on border taxes too. My biggest regret of my collection to this day is getting rid of my AMIGA stuff!
MaximumRD 2 months ago
Hugely informative and well commented.
Well done Tech!
Ever considered presenting on TV? ;-)
Greets,
Nia
manumores 3 months ago
Does the amiga 600 work with games like Shadow of the beast? I am looking to buy one.
thepirategamerboy12 3 months ago
@thepirategamerboy12 It sure will!
techguruuk 3 months ago
Maybe not a bad investment in the UK, but unfortunately none of the personal use Amiga's ever caught on in the US, really. I've seen old 2500's used for Videotoaster production (don't have those either), but never seen an Amiga 500/1200/600. And Commodore did do well here actually, w/ the C64 which I often find boxed every blue moon.
It's a drag not to have one, but maybe I should look into that AROS OS? I've had tremendous difficulty using UAE, is all.
Great vid, though. Nice echo chamber. XD
AlbertHamik 4 months ago
Wow. Awesome. I actually own a mint Amiga 600 HD. I think I will do some of these upgrades!
cbmeeks 4 months ago
See how advanced the Amiga really was.
bazfanv2 4 months ago
Great Amiga videos, btw. :D I'm not sure whether the electronics were good enough at that time, but I think Commodore missed out on integrating the PSU here... the A600 was still stuck with that bulky old external brick. :D
photopuppet 5 months ago
Great vid!!! ill try to film my 600 when get the new HDD in ;)
TheNovum 6 months ago
merci pour cette video...good old time. tx u commodore and atari!
corgan59 6 months ago
tim tim por tim tim
gnuguz 6 months ago
@FreeWinSlave I dunno I'm not really looking for one and I'm broke now so bad time to ask! Seriously I wouldn't pay too much for one. I don't even know what they're worth compared to an A500 to be honest.
MN12BIRD 7 months ago
Nice video. There will always be a spot in my heart for the 600 although my main use amiga is a heavily expanded 1200. Thanks for sharing.
Dooglesman 11 months ago
PCMCIA slot? Seriously that's crazy I never would have expected an Amiga 600 to have that. That is much smaller than the 500 I have and it came with a Hard Drive too. I kinda like it quite a bit. Oh shit and it has composite out? Man I want one now. I know RGB looks way better but it's a pain in the butt to lug out it's own monitor everytime I want to play a game on it. This one I can hook right up to the TV. I want one of these!
MN12BIRD 1 year ago
@MN12BIRD Very few PCMCIA cards worked with the 600 due to lack of drivers and various other problems
sleary7878 5 months ago
Smallest Amiga ever, but A500+ was a real miss (supposed to be A600 at least for IDE hard drive advancement). Smalest Amiga ever, shame it wasnt used as base for laptop! It would be better if it had 68020 and FAST RAM, in reality was slower then A500 due to more demanding WB 2.x PCMCIA and IDE were nice!
Have to say glad I have skipped it for A1200HD
Also, it was less expandable Amiga due to high integration (68030 as best expansion)
vojinvidanovic79 1 year ago