Hi

Day 15 of the C-A-R Advent Calendar collection retrospective, 
and today I remember the generosity of the Amiga community.

http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com/amiga/amiga_scuzz20.htm

Sometimes from winning kit and software off Ebay I get to
chatting with the seller. This happened when I purchased a
boxed version of Wordworth of this guy in London. Amazingly
right out the blue he offered me his boxed Amiga 1500, all
mint and as new, just cus he liked the site, and cus we
communicated well off the Bay. At first I thought there
may have been some catch, but as we talked it became
apparent that he just couldn't bare to see his kit go
to an unknown. He was more than happy to see his beloved
Amiga go to a good home...

And so it was that I travelled to London. And wow was
I surprised, cus not only did he have a car full of stuff
for me, but he offered his mates kit also. That included
and Amstrad computer, and a quite rare early Commodore
monitor. I was beside myself with joy.. My goodness. 
What generosity.. Amazing when you think.

The Amiga 1500 was in great shape, all as original, even
with the outer, outer box. 

I told the guy that the first thing I do is check the
battery. He was amazed to discover later that it had
been leaking. I saved the motherboard just in time.

Some while later a package arrived at the house, and
inside was even further trinkets from the Digita House
with leaflets and other goodies relating to Wordworth.
So you see it does pay to be pleasant on Ebay. I use
my ' ME ' page to good affect.. promoting the collection.
As ever, this would not be possible without Ebay. To
Ebay and to these true Amigans, I say thank you...

[ quote from the Big Book ]

The A1500 was a special model only ever released by 
Commodore in the UK, and should not be confused with 
the Checkmate A1500. It is actually nothing more than 
a rebadged A2000 which came with two (880K) internal 
floppy drives instead of just one and was not sold with 
a hard drive. Infact on many A1500's you can peel off the 
A1500 sticker to reveal "A2000" underneath. 

[ end quote ]

[ further information on the history of Amiga ]

The A1500 was a UK-specific machine derived from the 
A2000. Both machines use a socketed Motorola 68000 
7.14 MHz CPU and were shipped with an empty processor 
slot. The operating system also remained the same, 
shipping with Kickstart 1.3. The only difference is 
that the Amiga 1500 shipped with two floppy drives, 
1MB Chip RAM and a new nameplate.
 
The exact reason why Commodore chose to release such 
a limited machine has remained a mystery for years. 
Many suggest CBM UK released it to "kill" an A500 desktop 
conversion unit sold by Checkmate Digital that was also 
called the  A1500. Commodore always had a questionable 
business sense. By releasing a competitor to another 
company they were almost certainly attempting to drive 
potential Amiga suppliers out-of-business, as well as 
spending large amounts of money on a system that added 
little to the Amiga market. Alternatively, Commodore may 
have had a lot of internal floppy drives they wanted to use. 

[ end quote ]

NAME   AMIGA 1500 
MANUFACTURER   Commodore 
TYPE   Home Computer 
ORIGIN   Germany 
YEAR   1990 
BUILT IN LANGUAGE   None 
KEYBOARD   Full-stroke 102 keys with numeric keypad, 
function and arrow keys 
CPU   Motorola 68000 
SPEED   7.14 Mhz. 
CO-PROCESSOR   Fat Agnus (MMU), Paula (Sound & IO), 
Denise (video), Gary, OCS/ECS chipset 
RAM   1 MB on board 
ROM   256 KB 
TEXT MODES   60 or 80 columns x 32 lines 
GRAPHIC MODES   From 320 x 256 to 640 x 512 (Same as A2000) 
COLORS   From 32 to 4096 (Same as A2000) 
SOUND   4 voice 8 bit PCM 
I/O PORTS   Same as A2000 
BUILT IN MEDIA   2 x 3.5'' 880 KB Floppy Disk Drives 
OS   AMIGA WorKBench 1.3, Kickstart 2.04 
POWER SUPPLY   Built-in power supply 
PRICE   £999 

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

LEVEL 4
-------

Go right, watch for flame thrower on steps, go down the stairs, use
table and book shelf to get hammer in the brick at the top, shoot left
leg of table, push table as far right as it will go, go upstairs, 
shoot big ball twice ONLY then use hammer to get it swinging, when in
full motion, jump on and jump to the right on land then shoot ball 
with star as it swings towards the right (for a total of 3 shots), the
ball will break loose and roll down the stairs (if you timed it right)
and launch itself from the table ramp into another section.  Continue
right, ignore the puzzle (unless you have an hour to kill), go down
first ladder into crane control room, use crane to move the little 
fish in tank 1 into tank 3 (to grab a fish, emerge box into tank, and
as the fish passes through box, pull him up out of the water, to 
release fish, push button), then move round fish in tan 3 to tank 1,
then tank 1 fish into tank 3, then last tank 3 fish into tank 2.  The
remaining fish in tank 2 will not hurt you.  Now exit crane room.
Now safe to go through water.  DON'T JUMP, the spikes on top will 
instantly ill you, go down ladder, fall through pit, push the big
ball to the edge but NOT OVER, using hammer push the furnace to the
left edge, now push ball into furnace, go to top ledge and hit spikes
twice with star, then continue hitting the spikes with the hammer till
it has gathered enough momentum to the left you give it one last hit
with the star, the spikes should break off and fall into the hole at
the bottom.  You must time this perfectly.  Hit furnace switch and
wait.  When the block of ice has melted halfway, jump on it and jump
right, hitting the door switch, then jump back on ice and get the 
crystal, now go right and destroy the other block of ice with hammer
or star, make sure to be under crystal when breaking ice otherwise
the crystal will break from the impact.  Level 4 completed.  Now
you move on to fight Maletoth.  What a wimp, go right and watch him
rise out of the water and blast the son of a bitch.  THE END.

http://www.gamesover.com/walkthroughs/

and.... http://www.gamesover.com/

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

[ collecting and rebuilding retrospective ]

Hi

Finally got round to fitting the A3000 daughterboard
tonight, and strange that although it didn't work the
power unit only works without the power connected
to the motherboard. It worked before I fitted the DB.
I think I need to actually mount all the stuff properly
to get a positive result. I need also to check the 
power to all the components... 

[ reply ]

Also make sure you aren't trying to fit your A3000D 
with an A4000D daughter board.  They aren't compatible.

They A3000D & A4000D daughterboards use the same sockets.  
The A3000D has the video slot in the uppermost slot and 
the A4000D has it in the lower most.  The A3000D DB has 
only 2 ISA slots while the A4000D has 3 ISA slots.  In 
any case, unlike some cards, these DB should have 
printed identifications on them.

Also make sure that you have the plastic divider installed 
behind the daughterboard so that none of the protruding 
pins on the backside are being shorted.

[ end reply ]

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

Hi

................Decided to go all the way back to 1993
today. I cleared a desk and set up an A1200 from 
the box with a 1.5 GB hard drive. I grabbed my original
Workbench disks and Desktop Dynamite pack and
started by formatting the drive and setting up OS3.
First problem was, that although there appeared to be
a problem with the hard drive, I determined it better
to try another 1200, and I was right. That A1200 is now
back in the workshop. Anyway I formatted just fine and
installed OS3. Next up the GVP Turbo and then the
HD Drive... Giving me essential speed, RAM and 
the High Density disk facility. Then I loaded DPaint,
CED and DOpus and before long was installing all
my Data Types and various libraries. Not the first time
I have done this, but still educational and enjoyable
even after all these years. A few games later and a
selection of animation and music modules and the
Amiga 1200 is up to speed. Takes a good day to get
the computer to a respectable standard that I can use.
Just need to set up all my icons and define tool types
and then I can settle back and joy at what is for me
Amiga heaven...   

And why did I do this... Cus I played with the Amiga Emulator
on the PC, and it made me very very depressed. So I uninstalled
the Emulator, as I always do and purged my system with all
of the above... And now I feel much better. Just hope that I can
avoid being condemned to a life on an Amiga Emulator for
lack of kit...  :-)

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

Hi

I nearly drowned in a sea of disk boxes today. It really
has been a very good day here. What started as a tiny
project to install a few bits and pieces has turned out to
be a bit of an Amiga Marathon. From games to software,
to tools and applications, I just couldn't stop thinking of
more goodies to put on the machine. And what with icons
and folder organisation then through DOPus to Infonexus
and every other file manager and file manipulation bit of
software I could lay my hands on, I was flying with rocket 
fuel. There is no end to stuff you can muck about with on 
an Amiga. What is more, most of it installs to one folder
so with a simple ASSIGN you don`t even muck up your 
Workbench.. Try doing that on a Windows machine. Take
the game Valhalla.. Most clever ( and Very Excellent ) so
clever that each disk is represented by an icon that when
assembled in its own folder reads ' Valhalla and the Lord
of Infinity 1994 ' . Same with so many games and apps
that I decrunched and installed and simply dragged them
where ever I wanted. AND.... with a massive 300MB in
each of my partitions, I`m still only max 11% full. Do the
maths. 

Space Invaders... A classic game. Simple and yet addictive.
The concept of hiding behind objects that gradually are destroyed
as an enemy gets ever nearer and faster. The pace of the
approaching invaders speeding up like your own heartbeat
as you try to eliminate them all. And when you finally kill that
last invader, you pause to catch your breath, only for it to start
all over again... Classic... And guess what .. 22 320 Bytes....
That's 22 320 BYTES... The size of a text document. 

And having spent the day on a machine that boots in 11 seconds
without having to ' SHUT DOWN ' other than by switching off
I gotta say.. Computing use to be much simpler. Don`t be 
fooled by the crap of those that say we have moved forward...
We aint... We just got fat. 

........... AND COMPUTING SHOULD BE ENJOYABLE 
Sadly the grown ups and suits are turning us all into
zombies. We need to get back to our roots and start
kicking over some tables. I`m sorry, but you cannot
customise an XP operating system other than by 
uninstalling it, emptying the tin box and growing
flowers in it...... 

Going now.... :-)

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

Disk Heaven

[ Gaming retrospective ]

Hi

Desperately trying to find these disks for Star Crusader.
So far I have two... The game requests Disk 8. Dunno
how many there were.

[ Review ]

Enter Star Crusader, coincidentally released by Gametek, the very same
company responsible for Frontier. Star Crusader is a 3D space
simulation game, where the combat is all that the diehard Elite fans
amongst you might have hoped for in Frontier. You'll fly several craft of
different types, but all of them are capable of dogfighting, and for me
it's never been as good as this. Once you enter into a scrap with a
Warlord for example, (very similar to the Starfurys in Babylon 5) and
start blasting your way through its shields and demolishing its various
systems, as its pilot frantically tries to evade you, you'll realise
just what you've been missing. It's great!

http://www.angusm.demon.co.uk/AGDB/DBM1/StarCru2.html

[ end blurb ]

There are some great screen shots here. Sadly I can`t
read German... Never mind.

http://amigareviews.classicgaming.gamespy.com/starcrus.htm#starcrusaderaj

Featured in Amiga Format Issue No 77. That'll be
easier to find.. 

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

The Amiga 1500