Hi... My goodness Day 3 already.

Anyway to my third in this C-A-R Advent Calendar thingy...

And to the Amiga 2000 no less.

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz109.htm

No other Amiga that I have collected is so robust.
You really can chuck this machine around a lot
and never fails to work. The case is bullet proof :-)
or so it seems, and takes a great deal of hammering.
The amount of uses this machine was put to is
enormous and the stories of users when selling 
are varied and fascinating... Like this one.

scuzz blog... Amiga 2000 A collectors dream.

I won this A2000 off the Bay and when I contacted
the seller he knew very little about the computer. 
For the last ten years it had been used to prop open
a door to his sons bedroom. The machine he believed
had been used in a water treatment works. There
was a label on the front that said.. ' This is a computer
do not switch off '. He really was just glad to see it
go. He didn't think it worked as nothing happened
when he switched it on.

Anyway the A2000 arrived safely and I plugged in.
You got the boot screen so that was great. I decided
to check inside... Whoo hooo... There was a GVP
hard drive and scsi controller with hard drive. I plugged
the drive in and pressed the old button... To my
surprise there was a fully customised version of
Amiga 1.3 but with a twist. The hard drive was filled to
the brim with Eric Schwartz animations, cartoons, art
work etc etc. I mean, it was endless. I must have
spent hours going through the drive and still to this
day haven't looked at everything.. A real treasure.

I have many A2000s, and never turn them away. I have
some which are fully loaded with accelerator etc, and
even one with an A1200 inside. But, my favourite is
this A2000, the hardrive of which I will treasure always.
We often talk about the hardwear, but sadly I guess the
software and works of others, are generally lost when
kit is sold. The amount of hours computer users put
into their machines that just get discarded is very very
sad... For my part, I still have pretty well everything I have
ever created on computer, and that goes back to my
ZX81, Spectrum, PCW9512 and Amigas plus the PC stuff.
And on the whole I still have all these machines working.
I know we are a forward thinking society but occasionally
its nice to go back.... Looking at the sum of our achievements
is great when you have a computer that records that
fragment of your history. I do love looking back at mine...

Of late I seem to be both collecting other peoples past,
and helping folk retrace their past by sending copies of
stuff from the collection, sometimes even their own work.

Anyway to Eric Schwartz and an extract from Area97
on my website.. A tribute to a ' Great Survivor '

Lest we forget....

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz179.htm

A few words from Eric

'The Amiga is also a testament to having advantages that double 
as disadvantages. The Amiga has custom-made graphic and sound 
chips that are heavily interdependent with the main processor 
and the OS. This means graphics, animation, video, and multimedia 
applications are very powerful, fast, and capable regardless of 
the processor speed. It also means it's not so simple to set up a 
retargetable display (it's easier now than it used to be) or
change the system over to a faster processor type such as PowerPC.
The Amiga has a very efficient graphic operating system with 
preemptive multitasking that uses little memory (under 1 meg)
and disk space (a minimal system can run from a DD floppy).
It doesn't take much imagination to guess the benefits of
such a system, considering the Mac and PC can't match it's
efficiency, and probably never will. Unfortunately, a lightweight
system doesn't match the other's feature set and polish, such
as built in networking, virtual memory, and a Minesweeper game.
There are other examples in this vein, but you get the idea.
The Amiga is far from a perfect computer platform, but nothing
else is either. I prefer the Amiga, pure and simple. I admit,
you have to work to get the stuff you want for it, but I look 
at it as a classic car sorta thing. It's a lot easier to live 
with a new overpriced Toyota fatass car, if I didn't have any
pride or spirit in me, but I'll stick it out for as long as
it takes with my Amiga Mustang with the rust spots in the rear
fender and laugh at you all. A lot of you might be saying
"It's only a computer!", to which my response is "It's only a car.
It's only a college. It's only a religion." There's a lot less
difference from your own causes than you might think, so don't
bug me about being an Amiga advocate until you can tie a name 
to your computer, and 'Packard Bell' doesn't count.'

Eric W. Schwartz 

[ end quote ]

I`ll say no more

scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

Hi

Just won the last of the items I was watching on Ebay.
A boxed OpalVision card for the A2000. Not much interest
in a card that previously had gone for quite a tidy sum.
The OpalVision fits into the video slot on the A2000 if
I recall, the other side of the main zorro slots. Technically
also, if I recall, its not a true graphics card.  Saying all that
it has been on my wish list for some time.

Thats that then. The watch list is cleared. Not much chance
of getting anything much else for Christmas. So I`ll wait on
the last ten items then settle back to update the webpage.

The first guy who bid on the Opal was a chap called MainActor
who I have come across before.. You may recognise the
name from a well known Amiga application... 

More on the OpalVision card, all nicely boxed as
original. ' Expandable Amiga 24-Bit Graphics and
Video System '.  NTSC and PAL compatible and
includes OpalPaint, Opal Presents, OpalVision 
HotKey and King of Karate..( ugh !! )..

Displays 16.8 million colors available for every pixel.
Uncompromised 24 Bit higher-than-broadcast crystal
clear images which far surpass any composite or
HAM system.  Double buffered 24 Bit and and 15 Bit
animations can be performed in medium and low 
resolutions... etc etc.

The card can be loaded up with the live video special 
effects processor.

scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com

Commodore Amiga 2000

New Amiga 2000 arrival