Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Ross1 on April 18, 2007, 09:19:40 PM
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I was reading this (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=28663) post and thought I would ask people what they have found inside their Amiga causing problems after purchasing it used from someone. (cheese burgers stuffed into the ram slots, Paper clips inside the floppy drive etc.)
There seems to be some people that just do not take care of them.
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I dont think much of my amigas had anything in them when I got them because the previous owner did take allright care of them.
As far as odd things, the layers and layers of dust and the dust bunnies were there too! :-o
I remember my Amiga just stayed on the purple screen and didnt go any further... and the second I cleaned all the dust, it fixed the problem.
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I recieved a rusted out A500... rust under the mobo.. thent here were chip 'standoffs' on each removeable chip that had pins. Meaning, the kickstart plugged into a standoff, which plugged into another and another..until it was about 1" off the mobo. lol
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I bought an a2000 not so long ago... The keyboard arrived with 20% of the keys missing and i found the floppy drive laying ontop of the mobo, as it did not seem to be screwed in place.
The good thing is that the a2000 seemed to work even though the floppy drive have jumping around on the mobo during shipping. The sad part is that i have no spare amiga keyboard and i dont know where to get one. :-(
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I once found a custom reset button (or I think it was) in a A4000 I once bought. Turned out it had been used on a ferry as an info kiosk or something. In addition, there was a Cyberstorm 060 MKII in there as well. One of my lucky finds I guess.
Which begs the question:
What was your luckiest Amiga find?
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Lemonty wrote:
Which begs the question:
What was your luckiest Amiga find?
Thats certainly my most recent A4000D complete with Video Toaster 4000 Flyer system for $150US
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As mentioned it or originating post... I have found a plant, complete with roots stem and leaves in the internal disk drive of an A1000. And in the external 1010 drive that came with it, an invoice for something I have yet to decipher.
My luckiest find was when I bought my 1200. The guy never turned it on, didn't know the first thing about Amigas, had it cheap in a garage sale. It had a 80mb HD and a DKB Cobra accelerator with 32mb of ram on it.
On an unrelated, related note (err?). There is this myth in the synthesizer world. One guy had bought a Minimoog but the damn thing keep going out of tune, moreso than they usually do from room temperature. He brought it to a repair shop and they found a pair of long nose pliers inside, with "Bob Moog" written on the handle.
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Fortunately, all the Amiga gear I've ever received has been OK. I've never found any "crazy" deals either (like the A4000 for $150), but I did get an A500 stash once for free, which included an A530 Turbo, an ICD AdRam 540 (fully populated), various custom chips and software, etc.
I'd love to walk into a local thrift store and find something cool (like 10 NIB A3000s), but the chances of that happening here are pretty slim . ;-)
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I've been lucky enough to get all of my Amigas (500,2000,1200,4000D) new so I got to avoid this horror. Although I am still fishing around for a used A600 NTSC right now!
However.......
If anyone out there ever bought one of my machines, I always taped a card inside saying my name and when I bought it! Anybody here have one of mine??
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I found my refurbished "new" A1200 HDD with two partitions. First was pretty much stock WB, 2nd had tons of p*rn.
Now, that I call service.
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I hesitate to talk about my luckiest Amiga find since someone here might have purchased one of my systems. I found out about a guy who had bought a pallet of computer hardware at a college surplus computer equipment auction and that there might be some Amiga equipment. Went by his shop and he was throwing the Amiga equipment away because he didn't know anything about it. Talked to him a LONG time and then made the offer. $10 apiece for the equipment. He said sounds good since he's throwing it away. Loaded it up and checked it out when I got home. Three A4000T's with 060's and four A3000's. Mind you none had mice, keyboards or monitors but boy was I LUCKY. Seven nice systems for $70 total. Sold the A4000T's for $500 apiece and one of the A3000's for like $225. Please don't hate me. 8P
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i hate you
j/k
:-D
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I've receive an A2000, with a GVP 030 combo with full memory banks (4x 4Mb GVP SIMMs! Hoorra!), 2 SCSI HDs for free.
The guy say to me the hardware was fried. Nah, the only thing fried was the floppy drive.
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Ross1 wrote:
I was reading this (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=28663) post and thought I would ask people what they have found inside their Amiga causing problems after purchasing it used from someone. (cheese burgers stuffed into the ram slots, Paper clips inside the floppy drive etc.)
There seems to be some people that just do not take care of them.
Recently, well about a few months ago I was donated a large amount of Amiga computers. Some of which I have to donate back for lack of use for them and for lack of storage space and for lack of time to pack and ship them and for... well you get the picture.
None of these machines have even been powered once in the last 13 years.
That includes a small pile of Amiga 2000... one of which had a small DEAD KITTEN in it.
Yuck!!!
The cat wasn't even rotting, it had totally dried out. It didn't even smell anything particular.
Well, that's my most disgusting Amiga story EVER... but its true.
That kitten, I suspect, probably hid in the machine when the cover was half opened. The original owner was an old man with poor eyesight and hearing problems just shut the case on the machine then brought it for repair.
My friend simply storaged the machine when the original owner died before the machine even got diagnosed.
That Amiga booted up just fine after cleaning it up.
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eslapion wrote:
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That Amiga booted up just fine after cleaning it up.
That was so disgusting that no-one possibly can think of suggesting new logo for Amikit... :sealed:
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@eslapion
That is horrible. I would probably be traumatised if that happened to me. The poor thing. What a way to die :-(
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moto
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motorollin wrote:
@eslapion
That is horrible. I would probably be traumatised if that happened to me. The poor thing. What a way to die :-(
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moto
I must admit, when I picked up the machine, the sound of what was inside moving immediately gave me the goosebumps.
Upon opening the machine, I think I turned white for a second or two. It was a serious shock.
Afterwards, when I thought of it, a computer with a big empty space in it (such as an A2000 with no Zorro card) is in fact a miniature dry sauna. It warms up the air considerably but it adds no humidity so the air becomes very dry.
The old man probably couldn't hear the small animal crying for help. The cat did try to claw his way through the accelerator and destroyed it. It was a GVP.
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What have I found in my Amiga?
Eternal Love! :angel:
(Nothing sexual of course :lol:)
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My best find was an A1200 for £1 with masses of software 80Mb hard disk, joysticks and god knows whate else! Sadly it was sold off. Should'nt have done that as it hadn't yellow'd much at all! Would love to find an A4000 one day from a guy who has no idea of it's value. You always hear of storys of neighbours giving away loads of loot but it's never I that is the lucky one. :-(
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A couple of years back I decided to transplant my A1200 from it's brown disintergrating commodore case into a brand new Amiga Technologies A1200 case (from a guy who had towered his Amiga). Upon removing my A1200 Mobo, I noticed that the whole interior was covered in very sticky, smelly hot chocolate residue... (I litterly had to chip the Mobo away from the bottom of the case!!!)
When I was younger I used to pop a mug of Hot Chocolate on top of the Vents all the time, I obviously used to spill a bit, but not much... over the course of around 7 years apparently quite a lot of hot chocolate, tea and coffee had made its way inside my A1200... I decided to not clean the mobo, as it is working fine and I really don't want to upset anything..
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eslapion wrote:
The old man probably couldn't hear the small animal crying for help. The cat did try to claw his way through the accelerator and destroyed it. It was a GVP.
:-o
Well at least it's in kitty heaven now :cry:
[EDIT]
The kitten that is, not the accelerator...
[/EDIT]
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moto
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In what heaven is the accelerator?
The Amiga heaven, of course!
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motorollin wrote:
@eslapion
That is horrible. I would probably be traumatised if that happened to me. The poor thing. What a way to die :-(
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moto
Could have been worse. e.g. It could have died in a PC.
Luckily for me, I have never found anything nasty in my Amigas :).
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A really bad packaging job from an eBay seller left me with an Amiga 2000 chalk full of popcorn packaging foam.
The cardboard box had been crushed and the faceplates on the Amiga had been busted inward. Shipping material was stuffed everywhere, even in between the power supply and the motherboard.
Suprisingly, the machine works fine.
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I found shredded newspaper and some pieces of shredded CD's along with loads of rust and stainmarks of fluid.This tried and tested A500 boots to the Workbench screen but crashes or freezesas soon as you try to actually use it from HDD or from floppy.
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the cheese burger mention was a random speculation with hyperbole sauce.
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As being an owner of many cats, that story of the kitten really made me sad... :cry:
About my cats, I must say that they ruined with their nails an A4000 carton case and a C64 Monitor 1702 carton case.
One male cat, not neutered, pissed into Monitor 1702, and another male cat, a stray cat, pissed into a Vic20 which was stored in my car box. :madashell:
But they are just as sons to me, and I tolerated these incidents...
I have some bad experiences with cats jumping and PC monitors and hardware too... :roll:
Fortunately none took my Amigas...
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About lucky findings:
In 2000 a friend of mine who is a former Amigan and working in an enormous computer warehouse in Naples, advised me that in a cleaning stage, the warehouse owners found a GVP IV24 system complete of external Genlock box (They want to throw it out in the garbage).
He stopped them saying he will found someone who could have bought it for a reasonable price, and he sended mails to all Amiga lovers he was still in contact.
I purchased GVP IV24 for 300.000 lire (about 150 euro) out of its original price of 5.000.000/6.000.000 lire (about 2500/3000 euro).
(Now I can't recall if it was 4000 euro priced at its age... Boh?)
But considering inflaction (and the fact that with Euro in Italy it doubled the prices of everything -damn speculators!-) that amount of money that it is now equal to 2500 euro, in the age of IV24 was really more and more valuable than 2500 euro of today...
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Okay, eslapion, you have me beat by miles...I thought I had it bad when I opened up the case on my A4000 Power Tower a few years ago and found mouse poop in various places in side...
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Not really quite related to the topic but close. It's about what i found in my Atari STE. I hope you don't mind.
Back when I was still living in Papua New Guinea, I had an STE that I had been using for a few months. I was doing school work when all of a sudden smoke started to come out from the top of the computer. Then a loud *pop*. I was sure my beloved STE was a goner. As I rushed for the power switch at the back, I was surprised to see the computer was still running.
I opened the case waiting to see burnt circuits and a lot of damage but to my surprise there was a small gecko (a kinda lizard) all burnt up laying on top of the PSU. I have no idea how it got there and how long it had been there. Luckily no damage had been done.
Joshua.
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Fester wrote:
A really bad packaging job from an eBay seller left me with an Amiga 2000 chalk full of popcorn packaging foam.
The cardboard box had been crushed and the faceplates on the Amiga had been busted inward. Shipping material was stuffed everywhere, even in between the power supply and the motherboard.
Suprisingly, the machine works fine.
On the "ebay shipping" side I'm always suprised that those Amiga ALWAYS work after a long international shipping! What strong machines these was :-D
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eslapion wrote:
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Recently, well about a few months ago I was donated a large amount of Amiga computers.
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That includes a small pile of Amiga 2000
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one of which had a small DEAD KITTEN in it.
You mean one of your Amigas was pregnant with a (dead) kitten?
:-o
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Tough? Damn right they are, when I was much younger and my A500 was relatively new to me, I was taking it downstairs to use on the big TV when it slipped form my hands at the top.
It tumbled end over end smashing repeatedly on the steps until it reached the ground floor, hurtled down the corridor and smashed the plate doorway glass window (which didn't exactly please my parents) at the front.
I was horrified and very gingerly picked it up, and checked it over. There was no visible damage so once it was back in my room (after the telling off, why do parents never accept that accidents do happen y'know... accidentally?) I plugged it all in. It worked first time.
I booted it up the other day too, that was probably 1990-ish when it took a tumble :-D
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AS for weird stuff I've only found dead insects, chewing gum (in a disk drive) and some newspaper clippings (A500+) they weren't even interesting ones so I just threw them away.
Andy