[rescue] Amigas arrived

[Mark]

On 18 May 2007, at 02:01, Bill Bradford wrote:

> the OTHER box ... won't get here till tomorrow.

Gotta love parcel carriers, they always deliver the wrong bit first ;)

> Amiga 4000:
>
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbill/sets/72157600226133061/

Looks nice and clean at least, and little yellowing.

> Has a Retina BLT Z3 "retargetable graphics" card

*That's* what an RTG card is. It's no a bad one either. :)

> an Emplant Macintosh-emulation card (which I don't need/want/wont  
> be using)

Shame, it was a bit of marvel in it's day. Still you, like me,  
probably have at least 1 real 68040 Mac (I have about 12!) somewhere!

> and a Warp Engine '040 accelerator w/SCSI!

Purdy! That's about the best you can get to short of fitting an 060  
board. WarpEngines are very nice, quick cards and the SCSI makes the  
whole machine run way faster than the crappy PIO 0 mode IDE.

When you get it up and running I strongly recommend investing in 3.1  
ROMs and OS 3.9 for it. Any 030 or better can run 3.9, but 1200s,  
3000s and 4000s do it best (that said my 2000/040 isn't *bad*).  
You'll certainly want OS 3.1 at least. If you need help sourcing ROMs  
and Workbench disks then drop me a line, they are generally easier to  
find in the UK.

Once you have 3.1 or higher you can grab the universal Picassso96  
graphics system (available on AmigaForver, which I really recommend  
highly even for real Amigas) which will give you, via RTG, access to  
high res modes for Workbench screens, which work (most of the time!)  
on modern monitors.

> Amiga 2000:
>
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbill/sets/72157600226142951/

Again, looks in good condition.

> Has a GVP '030 accelerator card with a RAM-8 expansion board (which  
> takes
> stock standard 30-pin SIMMs instead of proprietary GVP sticks);  
> otherwise
> it's pretty standard except for the extra floppy drive.  I'll  
> probably take
> the GVP card out and put it in the other 2K.  I think it has 1.3 ROMs.

I *believe* the 2000 was available in a dual floppy config early in  
it's life. The same rig was sold later in it's life as the Amiga 1500  
in the UK only.

> I'm looking forward to getting the A4K fired up properly.

Yup, they are a fine machine indeed, despite the crappy case. Just be  
careful moving it around with the mouse attached though, I caught my  
mouse plug on a shelf rack and sheered the plug off the cable :\ That  
led to one of those moments Gary was talking about :)

-- 
Mark Benson

My Blog:
<http://mdblog.68kmac.org>
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"Never send a human to do a machine's job..."