Considering selling the Walker

[Brian]

I'd love to see a copy of the ROM and SYS:... someone should take a cast of the chassi and make available too for purchase. I'd love to mod an A1200 MoBo + 030 into that chassi... considering there's only 2 out there it'll be the closest most of us whould ever come to owning a Walker.

[tone007]

Some guy over on EAB (or actually it may have been two separate guys) put together their own Walker case replicas, one of them was looking pretty good.

[Trev]

The Walker design was ugly then, and it's ugly now. The system inside is interesting, but certainly not revolutionary. It wasn't even evolutionary.

[jorkany]

The Walker design was ugly then, and it's ugly now. The system inside is interesting, but certainly not revolutionary. It wasn't even evolutionary.

Luckily only two were ever made. But then again, two is all it takes to breed!

[wawrzon]

walker was just another frantic attempt to do something original carried out by people given not a slightest bit of imagination. it quite resembles the x1k initiative of today.

[Ral-Clan]

walker was just another frantic attempt to do something original carried out by people given not a slightest bit of imagination. it quite resembles the x1k initiative of today.

I can't believe you guys are complaining about the walker!  Remember, this was in 1996.  At least SOMEONE was seriously attempting to revive the Amiga with new hardware while there was still a chance, given that it had only been three years since Commodore had gone under.  

You expected a small design team to come up with something revolutionary?  At least they were trying to get something slightly updated (new WB, PCI slots) back to the market in order to make money and THEN do R&D on new systems.

In 1996 a 68030 was still a reasonable, middle of the road system for home use.  A good market to go after when you are starting up.  Not bad when you consider the competition was the Intel 486.

Frankly, I would have much rather have seen the Walker come to market rather than the way things played out.

[minator]

Even if he allowed the circuit board to be photographed then it would do the Amiga community a good service.

Ahem - How many years ago did I post this?
http://www.blachford.info/computer/walker/walker_inside.html

Well, the synth Minator is interested in seems to be in the $3000-$4000 range on eBay and he's proposed a swap for the synth on the offchance someone here has one, so that might be a starting point...

What I'd like and what I get are often two different things!
Anyway, the price is   ...whatever it goes for!  I haven't set one.
BTW I'd also swap it for a CS80 ;-)

Out of curiosity was was Toni, what did it do?

I think it's a memory controller.

It belongs in a museum!

I'm inclined to agree.  Whoever gets it could always loan it to a museum.

I am interested in buying it for the case, I think a new MSI board with an AMD 6 core processor should bring it right up to date, and don't worry, I will even put win UAE into it, so it can be used as an ultra fast Amiga.

The idea of someone buying it and putting another board in it absolutely horrifies me.
You just don't do that to old very rare machines!

That said, it's a prototype.  There are no mounting points for anything and you'd have to cut holes in the back to put cables through .

What did you pay for it yourself?

I'll say after  It was something of a bargain. I got it at the Thendic-France bankruptcy auction.

I think its value is solely as a prototype/curiosity. What is there to gain in making it work 100%/reproducing it? It's a 33mhz A1200 compatible system, and an incomplete one at that, probably with some unresolved hurdles.

Correct.  It's a prototype.  Given the number of patch wires on the board I suspect it would of needed quite a bit more work before putting it into production.

Some guy over on EAB (or actually it may have been two separate guys) put together their own Walker case replicas, one of them was looking pretty good.

Yes.  That looked amazing!  It's probably better made than the real thing.
If you wanted a Walker case that's the way to do it.

Walker was just another frantic attempt to do something original carried out by people given not a slightest bit of imagination

I don't agree at all. AT were pushing towards moving to PPC and the Walker was an intermediate step to update the range before the PowerPC machines were ready.

Certainly *nobody* was doing cases like that in 1995.  It was all beige boxes back then - even from Apple!

Unfortunately the case if anything was too imaginative, if AT had continued it would have been sold in a different case.


BTW Apparently I haven't read my own pages in a long time - it did read from the floppy when it worked.

I tried to fire it up last night but it wasn't playing ball.  It may be the capacitors have gone or something like that but it needs someone qualified to look at it.

[AmigaNG]

That case build project was started by me, but I decided it was going to be just too difficult to do, but another user salax52 got pritty far with project.
Original thread here: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=48069

At the same time I got into google sketchup and made a 3d version of the case http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=bbdd531f7e373cbb8e729875f416f9e1

And I also have my own little web page on the Walker
http://www.vincentperkins.com/AmigaNG/walker.php (remember early beta of my site so spelling, grammar and further information is yet be added)

Just to prove that I have had more than a passing interest in this machine.

[minator]

Quick update:

Looks like there are some interested collectors here so I'll probably list it on ebay in the next few days.

There will be a reserve price, probably around £250 (I never said I wanted thousands!)

As mentioned on the first post of this thread it will be *collect only*.  It is very fragile so I am not posting it anywhere.  That said I'm a 10 minute walk from a well connected train station - I can get to London in just over an hour and Paris in 4-5 hours.

The full package will include:
The Walker.
A painted Amiga keyboard (German I think).
A non functional black Amiga branded mouse (it never worked).
An Amiga branded M1438S CRT monitor.

Regarding it's functional status:
I've been trying to get it to boot and it's being temperamental as ever. It does power up but it's not going into the boot sequence, but is getting confused sometimes and goes into a reset cycle. This is actually not unusual, it always used to do this.  It *might* actually still be working and I just haven't been patient enough.

If you fix the RDB on the HD and sit pressing reset and/or random keys for an hour you might get lucky!

I have consequently changed the status in the first post to "probably not working".

--

I've taken a few pictures and I took a few more to get some measurements.
I will be keeping the Walker web site going so maybe I'll post them some year.

BTW According to my web stats lots of people have visited the walker site in the last couple of days.  Disappointingly >80% are running Windows and if there are Amigas they're not even showing up in the stats!

[minator]

Still trying to get her to try and boot (it should display a guru like message) but no luck yet.

I did discover the keyboard probably wasn't connecting so I made sure it did and indeed the caps lock light did light up - you need to be an engineer to get this thing to do anything!

I might get the PSU checked out, it's a standard PC supply but maybe it's gone.  Who knows.

I took it to an ANT meeting a couple of years back and it did go into the boot sequence and display the guruesq message once so I'm hoping I can get it to do that again.

Even if I can talk in into working, this isn't a machine you'd ever want to use as a desktop - it's far too unstable.

The fact you need to dismantle it just to power it up doesn't help!

[smerf]

Hi,

So now you see, by me replacing that old shoddy intermittent board with a new MSI board and a new AMD 6 core processor, I would be doing it a favor for now it would boot up everytime.

and

What is a few new holes in the case to have a working Walker emulated by winUAE.

smerf

[ddniUK]

I have seen and handled this Walker.
It is a very interesting bit of tech and as a 90's design statement it is priceless.

As Nicholas says, the case is very fragile.

I captured a short video at the ANT meeting last year,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI2gSEZSPfg

[minator]

OK, an update:

I'm still thinking of selling it but it might be a while yet:

I'm going to try a bit more to get her working.  I'll see if I can get the HD RDB fixed as well - I have instructions for this but don't know if they'll work on a PC.

I've been asked a few times to save Kickstart / Workbench 3.2.  I have a copy of the data on the disc but I'll see about getting the ROMs dumped as well.

I am also now considering opening up the sale to international folks.
I think I have figured out a way to get it transported without destroying the case.  It involves dismantling it and putting the bits into a wooden box full of bubble wrap or polystyrene bits.  It'll be expensive to ship but should be transportable to pretty much anywhere then.

[persia]

@minator

What's international to you?

[MelbourneBen]

Are you thinking of buying it Persia?? Would be great to see the Walker on our shores!!!

[Duce]

Agreed, make detailed documentation on the thing before you sell it - measurements of the case, pics, etc.

I made a Walker-ish clone case a year or two back for my SAM, but never having seen the thing IRL and no measurements to go off, my version is likely way off dimensionally.

Thing needs to go to a good home, or a museum!