New User from Australia

[Exfso]

Have just found this forum and it looks to be very nice indeed.  I have both the Amiga 2500 and 4000 and just trying to get them both up and running after hiding in my shed for years.  The 4000 has just been re capped and the battery replaced with associated damaged traces and RTC clock chip.  All tested by the tech on his own amiga and passed all tests.  However my Hard drive has given up the ghost and am in the process of getting a CF card option going. It has a warp engine fitted and GVP graphics card.  Have all original disks so that is a plus.
My biggest problem is re learning the system as I have not used it for at least 20 years.
So I am in a learning process on this and being in my 70s it is a bit of a challenge.  I will be very much grateful for any assistance, fancy being a learner at my age!

[giZmo350]

Welcome to the forum Exfso! I've never owned an A4000 and can't help much there however, sounds like you have a real beauty of an Amiga! I would also like to point out that if you ever need any local help down under (BIG country, I know!) that there is also a fairly new Amiga site based in Brisbane. https://www.amigaretro.com/

We have many A4000 experts here that I'm sure can offer assistance. Again, Welcome! 

[Exfso]

Thanks for the welcome, appreciate your advice.  It is a pretty steep learning curve at present, I have totally forgotten everything I knew about these machines in the last 20 or so years. I originally, or should I say the ex had the Amigas and when she left, she decided she had no further interest, and I had quite a limited knowledge, so basically they both went into storage.  I did not know about the battery issue until about 18 months ago when I decided it was probably worth trying to stoke them up and see what happens, yep, absolutely nothing.  Both machines hard drives have obviously died and the batteries were covered in this white powder. I did not realise what damage was done, but I think I got off pretty well when it went to an aquaintance in Sydney who is into the Amiga and does re-capping.  He did a full diagnostic of the motherboard and only found a couple of damaged traces and re-capped the whole motherboard. So all was working, at least on his Amiga 4000, different stuff on mine though with all sorts of strange images coming up when I powered it up.  The main hard drive is a SCSI operating off my Warp Engine that is affixed to the motherboard, it tried to boot but all sorts of odd stuff was showing up, definitely not the workbench screen or anything like that.  Needless to say it is a work in progress now. There are all sorts of cards attached which I have to get my head around as well. Enough of my ramblings..



tha

[RobertB]

...I think I got off pretty well when it went to an aquaintance in Sydney who is into the Amiga...

Ah, if you are in the Sydney area, then there is the Sydney Amiga User Group.  http://www.saug.org.au

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group - http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm

[Exfso]

Robert, I actually live in Adelaide, the tech that did the job for me was based in Sydney.  Really first class guy extremely helpful.

[Exfso]

Just checked that user group in Sydney, and the guy that did the work for me looks to be one of the people running the site.  I seem to remember him telling me about the group.

[klx300r]

@ Exfso
welcome back to Amiga! Great that you got your 2500 and 4000 back up & I'm positive you'll get all the help you need to keep em running for many more years

[Exfso]

Thanks, the 2500 appears to be as dead as a dodo, so work needs to be done on that and I have hard drive issues with the 4000, like they are dead and I am trying to set up a CF card and adapter.  The adapter that was sent was a V.B1 when it should have been a V.H2 so that was a bit of a mess up. The actual connector on the adapter does not fit any IDE cables that I have for the 4000, so I gather they are differently configured.
I am now waiting on the 4000 CF card reader pre formatted from Amiga Kit, with associated cables, it says they are for the 4000, so we shall see when it gets here, hopefully this year!!

[tiffers]

Welcome Exfso,

If you're in Adelaide, perhaps check out Epsilon's Amiga blog at:

http://amigax1000.blogspot.com/

He's in Adelaide and is a member of the Adelaide Amiga user group.

[RobertB]

Robert, I actually live in Adelaide...

Oh, Adelaide.  Well, I was there for the March Adelaide Retro-Computing meeting (formerly, Adelaide Amiga and Retro-Computing), and there were no Commodore/Amiga users there!    The dozen or so people at the meeting had modern PC desktops!  And they were playing those 3-D, POV, networked games!  The oldest computer there was a Windows 98 (or was it ME?) machine.

I was the only person with any Commodore/Amiga content, showing off my videos of Trevor Dickinson and his C= laptops and Tabor A1222, showing the classic C64 DTV, and demonstrating my A.L.I.C.E. laptop.  At least, there were a few people who interested in what I had to show - Mike, Chris (a newbie to the meeting), and Michael.  The latter had brought his Raspberry PI emulators, though none of them were running Commodore or Amiga.  He assured Chris that the previous month there had been several C64's.

Epsilon was not there.  Overall, I was very disapppointed with the meeting.  The one bright spot in my visit to Adelaide was my visit to veteran C= user Gaelyne Gasson who lives in Old Reynella.

My photos to come later,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group - http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm
Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network - http://www.portcommodore.com/sccan

[Exfso]

Thanks Robert, made an attempt to contact the local guys, not much luck, they seem pretty uninterested, which is sad.

[RobertB]

Yeah, it's sad.  When I visited the group in 2016, it was still Adelaide Amiga & Retro-computing, and the Amiga and Commodore users were out in force (so many were there!) to greet Trevor Dickinson to the meeting.  There was so much enthusiasm!

However, since then, there seems to have been a reorganization (even to the point that the group was off-line/disbanded for a while).  After the reorganization, it became Adelaide Retro-computing, and that's situation we have today.

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group - http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm
Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network - http://www.portcommodore.com/sccan

[matt020]

G'day from WA