I finally got an Amiga, after years and years of bashing it (yes, I was a die-hard Atari user for many years during the 80's). It feels good to be on the other side.
I was rummaging through a garage sale a few weeks ago, and saw an old Commodore monitor. I really like Commodore monitors (I have a few already). I asked the guy how much for the Monitor and he told me $10. He then told me that he has an Amiga computer as well somewhere for sale for cheap. So I told him to take it out, and I'd see if I wanted it. It was an Amiga 500. From what I remembered Amiga 500's were the low-end of the Amigas, so I didn't really feel like getting it, and would probably wait and try to find something that packs a little bit more punch.
But along with the Amiga 500 came a slew of disks (many which don't work anymore) and this little device, which I later learnt was a sidecar, and somewhat of a precious gem for A500 users. A GVP 330 (might have the number wrong, too lazy to go check). Basically, a 68030/40 processor, with 4 MEGS, a hard drive (A PUNY 65MEGS or so, which I later upgraded to 1.2GIG with an OLD SCSI hard drive that I had lying around from an old MAC) and an external SCSI port (can't wait to get a SCSI CD-ROM to see if it actually works!!!).
Anyways, a few days ago, a friend of mine after hearing that I got an AMIGA 500 offered me his old AMIGA 2000 with a bunch of disks (arrgh, more disks to sort through!!!). Unfortunately, the AMIGA 2000 doesn't work. After closer inspection, I realized that the battery had leaked all over the motherboard, and the 68000 CPU pins had turned green. There is more ACID corrosion elsewhere but it seems to be only aesthetic. Upon removal of the CHIP, some of the inside connections on the socket broke. I'll try changing the socket and re-inserting the CPU later on this week and hopefully that's the only problem with this machine.
Anyways, I want to start using my Amiga, and have, but I feel like I'm getting nowhere, I'm simply using it to test out the disks that I have (over 300) to see if they boot up or not.
I'd really be able to use a NEWBIE guide to the AMIGA sort of FAQ right now, as I have so many "simple" questions, such as:
What's the most recent workbench/kickstart that I can use on my A500? Do I need to upgrade any of the chips to use the newest OS? In accelerated mode, what does my computer compare to? Amiga 2000,3000? I want to be able to store all of my disks on my HD so I can launch them from the HD and not have to insert the disks all the time, how do I do that with bootable disks? ... how do I transfer images from PC to the AMIGA (ahhh, the famous question, you thought I wouldn't ask that one, eh?), what's the best terminal program on the Amiga. I have one, but it looks kinda crappy, and the ANSI emulation isn't good.
Anyways, that's it for me,
MontrealCL
