Petro: 500 units new Amiga 1200 Magic Pac

[Blinx123]

I hope you manage to save them.  Test them, stick them on eBay and find them a new home.  

Well. If I manage to save them, I'll probably keep some (would be great to have an original C64 again. Especially as I never managed to mod my C64DTV) and sell the rest on here.

Never been much of a fan of Ebay.

Sure. Would be nice to find a sucker on Ebay who'd pay me a fortune so I could stock up on expansions for my Amiga and perhaps a MorphOS machine. But is it really worth the hassle? I mean, how many Ebay sellers actually end up earning that kind of money? The great majority probably loses money to Ebay.


EDIT: Will ZorRam/BigRAMPlus actually be recognized by an Amiga 1200 with a Z3i busboard? Would be quite cool to have that sort of RAM in an Amiga 1200. Furthermore, do you guys think it would be difficult to place a modern mechanical keyboard inside an Amiga 1200 desktop case? I consider towerizing mine in the future which, in return, would leave the original case an empty shell.

[Blinx123]

I get a lot of stuff off there (picked up a PET and a C128D this year).  There are some bargains and a lot of fair sellers.  I mainly suggested it because it does reach a wide audience and if you save some machines and test them then I think you deserve some pay for your time and effort.  Just start the bidding low, be realistic on the shipping and don't "BUY IT NOW - $3000!".  

Ok. I'll consider it.
Probably gonna open up a thread and link to Ebay from there.

As for pricing: If I can find an Amiga 500 and decide not to keep it, it will go for $100US buy now. If that's not too much.

If I can find an Amiga 1000 though, people will have to dump my dead body in a lake before I'll leave my hands of it (I wanted one ever since finding out about Jay Miner's and Mitchie's signatures).

There are some internal A1200 keyboard adapters that allow for a PS2 keyboard.  You'll just need to hunt for one that you can fit in the existing space with minimal cutting and run the cable inside.

I'd rather get rid of the internal keyboard components.
It's actually the only thing I don't like about my new Amiga 1200. The handling is just really bad. Worse than that of many modern keyboards. I get like zero response.
I kinda imagined it to be clicky.

[Blinx123]

Sounds like a plan



My main machines (Minimig, FPGA Arcade, A4000 (tower) and A1200 (tower)) all use PC keyboards so I'm kind of used to them now.  My wedge A1200 is on a shelf.  Only the A2000 and A3000 have their original keybaords in use and I think they're a better quality than the A1200 or perhaps it is just the design.

I don't know about the Amiga 3000, but at least the Amiga 2000 keyboard was available with Cherry MX switches which were quite tactile.

Personally, I'd love to own an Amiga with IBM style buckling springs. If it's even possible to fit those inside an Amiga 1200 case.


So to sum it all up: The Amiga of my dreams would be a towerized Amiga 1200 with a 80MHz 68060, several hundred MB RAM (recently read about people adding more RAM by adding Radeon 9000 series cards to their Amigas), two 1TB HDDs and a Voodoo 5 5500 (my favourite GPU of all times) all snugged inside an oversized Amiga 1000 replica case with the signatures of Jay Miner and Mitchy glued to the front.  Lol.

[Blinx123]

Did anyone else find his NOS Amiga 1200 to be a POS?
Mine won't boot from any floppy and a guy in another forum complains about his Amiga not recognizing any accelerators*.

Makes me wonder if I shouldn't have bought a used Amiga on Ebay for about the same price instead. Now I might end up spending several hundred euros on repair bills (I do hope mine will accept accelerators, but if it doesn't, I'm probably sol? No way to fix this without investing in a new mainboard, right?)


*Replacing the Elcos seemed to make matters worse for this guy, as the machine will now crash on the Kickstart screen whenever he's got an accelerator installed.

[Blinx123]

No problems with mine, the accelerator not working could be due to timing problems with AT A1200 motherboards possibly.

I thought this only applied to Jen's expansions and not the ones from Phase5/DCE/GVP?

So would this prevent the Amiga from booting altogether? I thought it just made the system unstable but still bootable.

[Blinx123]

I had an Amiga Tech A1200 back in the day, and it wouldn't work with a BPPC card I had, oddly it did work with an apollo 040 / 40 mhz card.. From what I can see its always been an issue with 1D4 and 2B motherboards.

Ok. So it will need the timing fix then, right?
Makes me somewhat happier again. Really feared it would be a busted mainboard.

[Blinx123]

As I've said before, sorry but anybody buying one of his NOS Amigas has no right to complain. He said they had been sitting in a warehouse for 15 years, and that they were untested. If you wanted one to play with, you should have bought a used tested one for a fraction of the price from eBay.

Why is everyone so protective about Petro?

Sure. Good work at bringing us NOS Amigas and I think most of us who purchased one did read the disclaimer.

Here's the thing though.

He never mentioned that these supposedly NOS Amigas came with a whole bunch of retroactively fitted parts. I mean, just from looking at the manuals inside the Magic Pack software bundle you can tell those have been thrown in used (lots of stains on them). The Amigas have also been taken out of their package at least once before being shipped (the seal on the back has been broken and the case looks like it has been cleaned).

Lastly, what I (a former student of European economics) find rather disturbing is the fact that he (as a CEO of a company) doesn't really seem to know a lot about EU consumer laws.

If someone was willing to sue him, I'm sure this person would've a good chance to win the case.

The disclaimer that could be found on any of his invoices is very much at odds with EU directive 1999/44/EC, which outlines a seller's obligation to take returns on faulty items for 2 years (due to some technicalities, it actually comes down to only a six month period upon which the consumer may return faulty items at all times with no penalties applied. But that's a different story altoghether).

Worse still, some national laws (including the law of the country Petro has set up business in) grant consumers a 14 day right of withdrawal on any physical good bought online*.

What I basically want to say with all this is that while I'm certainly grateful he made this possible, he should try to learn a thing or two about today's business laws before getting his current company into legal troubles.

*What makes this the worse part (from a sellers point of view), is the fact that his inability to inform costumers of this right lead to an extension to 30 months (German law) or one year (if that EU directive is already in place. I'm admittedly a bit rusty myself).

[Blinx123]

I believe he even charges Vat which makes the sales "official" and liable to European consumer laws.

Yes he does.
He even sold these under his company name.

Power Service GmbH could get into serious trouble because of this, as the whole practice could be understood as money laundering by some.

[Blinx123]

Well you have certainly changed your tune since post #245 when you were praising Petro for the computer being in such pristine condition.
The packaging manuals, floppies sitting in a warehouse for 15+ years I would imagine should look a little worn by now.

That was before I unpacked the rest of the unit, actually.

The Amiga itself is in pristine condition (even though I've now found out that this may be due to aforementioned modifications). However, everything inside the Magic Pack bundle looks extremly dirty.

Shockingly, neither the outer packaging nor the Amiga/Amiga Workbench manuals look anywhere near as bad.

Which bears the question: How can the interior look that much worse than the packaging, if everything is, supposedly, NOS.

[Blinx123]

Don't go there people. Seriosly. You will ruin the second batch deal for us who do want them.
We all understood what these unearthed Amigas were, and nobody claimed otherwise. Petro even emphasized that he could not guarantee anything. So it's a risk. Take it or leave it. If someone expects brand new Amigas with 2 year guarantee in 2012/13 then he should think again.

Don't act like brats.

No one is acting like a brat.

Fact is, there never was a risk for anyone of us. The only one who claimed otherwise was Petro and he, quite frankly, has the obligation to offer two years of sales warranty (effectively six months, as pointed out earlier) and accept returns for a minimum of 14 days.

Personally, I don't care what some weird disclaimer says, knowing full well my rights as a citizen of the European Union.

The disclaimer could, as well, have asked me to agree to live a life of servitude and it wouldn't have made much of a difference.

[Blinx123]

Perhaps he should have doubled his price to cover himself?  Would everyone have been happy then?

And where exactly can you find 1200s for a "fraction of the price" on eBay?

I don't know what you're unto with that, but

a) There are things other than pricing to cover oneself. Otherwise, how would you explain the prosperity of smaller electronic stores in Europe?

b) It wasn't that cheap. In fact, three mint bundles were sold on Ebay.co.uk the very same day I paid for mine, all going for just as much (if not less) than the ones he sold.

Perhaps that stuff is simply more expensive in the US, but here in Europe (especially in the UK) we can have Amiga 1200s for quite a bit less than the 200 euros he asked for.

[Blinx123]

Just leave it be, Kremlar.

You obviously don't understand enough about European consumer laws.

If everyone else has to cover 15 year old electronics (and much older stuff, as well), I don't see why he wouldn't be forced to either. After all, he wasn't shy when it came to VAT*.

Furthermore, I didn't say the price wasn't fair. It certainly would've been fair for a working NOS Amiga with warranty (used ones I've seen that day were actually going for 90-120 quid, albeit most of them only included Kickstarter 3.0, hence I didn't buy one. Out of the three bundles, two came with a EU sales warranty though. The last one being sold privately).

And again. It wasn't a risky purchase. Not by a far stretch. Not by any EU consumer law.
He will have a liability to his customers for at least the next 5 months. No matter what he says or does. Nothing can change that. The law is very clear on that.


*You simply don't charge VAT when you are trying to sell something privately.

[Blinx123]

If the invoice/sales docket says the item is 2nd hand then all consumer law relating to new items is rendered moot, only any laws covering sales of 2nd hand gear applies.

Almost correct.
Our consumer laws also cover used items.
The only difference between a used item and a brand new one is that the seller may reduce the warrany time-window to a 12 month term (which doesn't really alter anything, since it's almost impossible to return something after the first 6 months anyways*).

He will have to outline this before the sale is conducted, otherwise the usual 24 months apply.


*You'd have to pay an expert to prove that the good already showed signs of this fault during the first 6 months, which almost never works and costs more than most standard consumer good.

Euro consumer protections are very similar to Aussie ones, we have 7 days (14 in some states) to return a defective item even on 2nd hand gear - only exception is if was sold in unknown or not working condition, then it's buyer beware.

We have 14 days to return an item, regardless if it's defective or we simply don't like it anymore (postage is paid by the buyer, if the product is either bulky or cost less than 40 euros).

The not in working condition clause is also renderered mood by the fact that VAT was applied. Defective goods are tax exempt.


@Kremlar

I would prefer no 3

- Not behaving like an ignorant sheep, selling something in a way that is against the very law of the country he set up shop in.

I wouldn't even complain, had he not charged VAT and, in all certainty, written off expenses.

[Blinx123]

@edd_jedi

FYI. I'm not talking about a guarantee (which is what you're obviously referring to. Not sure if you know the difference, but thought it was worth pointing out) but about a basic (sales) warranty.

It doesn't matter if the company which manufactured the units still exists or not. A warranty is extended from the trader towards the costumer. Every basic good purchased on a non-private level (i. e. not sold from one individual to the next but through a legal body such as a company is) comes with 24 months of warranty and, if purchased online, the basic right to return it within 14 days.

@Everblue

I'd agree to the stance of not offering any warranty, had he sold these units himself.
Instead, he charged VAT, wrote them off and whatnot.

Considering the many ways he and his company have of making some money of these units, he probably made at least double of what he sold them for (if the company is just as thorough as I think every company would be in such an economic climate and with the many loopholes in place).  


@mc68070

Exactly.

These units were either refurbished years ago or Power Service GmbH (the legal body which sold them under orders of Petro, the current CEO) did indeed check them (and even  replaced a few, cheap basic parts) but dispatched broken units nontheless.