New Amiga Owner Wants Opinions

[jasongins]

I never had an Amiga - my parents wouldn't upgrade me from my C64 at the time. They got a PC, so that was the direction I wound up going. I got a used Amiga 500 a while back, but I think the floppy drive or power supply/connector may be flakey.  Floppy drive operation is very inconsistant and sometimes improved by lifting up on the power supply connector while it is plugged in the unit.

Anyway, on to my question:

I recently aquired an Amiga 500 new-in-box refurb.  My original thought when I ordered it was to use it.  I was hoping to see what I missed. Anyway, the unit has arrived, and I got the feeling upon examining it that maybe I shouldn't disturb it. Everything is sealed, packed, and mint. The question I have is this: Would it be "wrong" to unpack it, open the manuals and disks, and start using it? Does keeping it packed and stored do more forAmiga 500 preservation than becoming a user? What do you think?

[Stew]

  Well I myself am a user type rather than a collector. I would use it, but it might be worth more in the future unused. You could alway buy a 500 or a floppy drive off ebay cheap.

  BTW if I did try to collect stuff my wife would throw it out anyway.


Stew

[Kees]

I'd say ... keep it sealed for 50 years ... then sell it  :-)
There is always a nut who will pay you good money for it then.

In the meantime, get yourself an A1200 or an A4000 to play with ... then you can easilly put a harddrive in it and maybe a faster cpu.

[jasongins]

I should probably investigate the floppy drive issue further. Do the newer HD floppies work properly in the older drives? It seemed the unit had difficulty duplicating disks (the duplicates didn't work upon completion), and the drive seemed to have difficulty mounting disks. Jiggling the power connector seemed to promote drive activity, but I can't say it made any real improvement. Any suggestions?

[jasongins]

The box itself isn't sealed, but the mouse is in bubble wrap, all the documentation is sealed except for the Amiga Basic book, and the A500 itself has some kind of foam wrap on it. Are the boxes normally sealed in plastic when new?

[artman]

I'd say just use it and enjoy it.  Can't see it being much of a collectors item, but maybe I'm wrong.  You'll find many folks here at Amiga.org willing to help out newcomers, so don't hesitate to ask for help.  The Amiga in all of it's incarnations is a wonderful hobby.  Best regards....Art
 :-D

[DonnyEMU]

There are Amiga collectors out there I am one of them.. I buy anything I see that's Commodore-Amiga when I find it on e-bay..

My dream would be to move to westchester pa and turn the original commodore offices into a museum...

[levelLORD]

I'm not quite sure what are you referring to, but if you are trying to use HD  disks in Amiga 500, that wouldn't work. You need DD floppy disk to copy from source to destination. Destination disk must be DD disk. Source disk, I assume is DD. Which app are you using for disk copy?

Regards,

levelLORD

[DonnyEMU]

My fave Amiga collector's item is a paper boing ball christmas tree bulb that has the logo and says "Amiga's first Christmas"..

Still have it on the tree every year..

[aardvark]

I'd go ahead and use it.  Mostly it would be good for retro gaming and although he'd probably have to get an accellerator off of ebay to do anything "serious" with it; he would get the flavour of it, maybe whetting his appetite for a 4000 or 3000 (or even 2000) bigger box that is more expandable.  He  should probably be mad aware of the Amiga battery problems which might even affect a "new" Amiga that is several years old. ;-)

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

DonnyEMU wrote:

My dream would be to move to westchester pa and turn the original commodore offices into a museum...

@DonnyEMU -

Any idea what's there now?  I imagine the guys at Software Hut aren't too far away, if you wanted someone to ask...

Best,
Mike

[Coder]

@Stew

BTW if I did try to collect stuff my wife would throw it out anyway.

I hear yah Stew. Where did it all went wrong? Remember when we could put our stuff any place we want? An no one telling us to clean it up.

Anyway it's not like the shoes, clothes, make-up take so much space, right?

Coder
p.s. You might see a -Edit- here soon and we all know why.

[Kronos]

Coder wrote:
@Stew

BTW if I did try to collect stuff my wife would throw it out anyway.

I hear yah Stew. Where did it all went wrong? Remember when we could put our stuff any place we want? An no one telling us to clean it up.

Anyway it's not like the shoes, clothes, make-up take so much space, right?

Coder
p.s. You might see a -Edit- here soon and we all know why.

That should help against edits .....

 :-D

[Floid]

levelLORD wrote:
I'm not quite sure what are you referring to, but if you are trying to use HD  disks in Amiga 500, that wouldn't work. You need DD floppy disk to copy from source to destination. Destination disk must be DD disk. Source disk, I assume is DD. Which app are you using for disk copy?

Regards,

levelLORD

The main difference is the little hole in the corner of a HD (High Density) disk.  If you have 2.x and are trying to shuffle things back and forth with the built-in CrossDOS support, you'll have to wedge something sturdy into the hole - without interfering with the disk - and cover it with tape.  Most HD floppy mechanisms use a physical switch to detect the hole, so it has to be enough to push it down as an old DD floppy would.  If you're only using them in the DD Amiga drives (pre-1200), they shouldn't have switches/sensors for such, so that wouldn't be a problem.

Next up are slight differences in the ferrous emulsion of the disk; the magnetic sensitivity specified for DD and HD is a bit different, since HD needs higher 'resolution' in the magnetic layer, and the magnetic write power was a bit different between the two specs, etc.  You could often get by without worrying about it (I own a bunch of DD disks 'doubled' with a special punch back when HDs were more expensive, and the converse has held for quick transfers using the 'hole-blocking method above), but it's something to consider when looking for reliability.  Further, if you're trying to read decades-old floppies, you have to consider they may have degraded naturally by now...

...or your floppy could be out of alignment, or just need a simple cleaning.

If the power supply is a problem (I don't have schematics around, so I couldn't tell you if it supplies a voltage *only* used by the floppy and nothing else), there's nothing 'holy' about the mysterious C128-style plug.  If you're positive that's the problem, and have half an ounce of soldering skill, you can slice the power supply cord about 3 inches back, pull out a continuity tester/ohmmeter, match up the colors to a new set of connectors of your choice (a DIN could probably cram in that spot on the 500's backplate, with some creative bending of pins?), and do the simple resoldering on the 500 and the PS.  If you *do* do this, the savvy thing to do is to get 3 of your favorite new sort of connector - one for the power supply cord, one for the 500... and a third to solder on to the possibly-flaky original square connector, so you're left with an 'adaptor stub' around if you ever want to try reusing the supply on a normal machine with the original connector.

And/or you could just clean the power connections with some WD40 and pipecleaners...  (Don't use lubricants on the floppy heads, though!)

[carls]

Personally, I wouldn't mind using it but I'd take good care of it. Dust it of once a week, keep it out of the sun etc.

But like someone said, if you want to get the Amiga Experience (tm), I would recommend an A1200 with a hard drive. Better OS, better graphics, and it can still run a lot of the old A500 games.