Sexy... or what ???
I travelled to Bracknell this week to pick up a very sexy Macintosh G4. Now... I am not a great MAC fan. But I am starting to have real problems with my Win98 Internet workhorse machine. The structure of online interaction since I went broadband has mad for a very difficult time. Added to the fact the hard drive has fallen over twice in the last month.. Not good. And given my absolute hate of XP I guess I have few options. Would be nice to have an all singing dancing Amiga on line, but my cherished machines are all to valuable to just burn out doing Internet menial stuff.. And so I considered the option of the MAC and this one came up for sale and I jumped at it. Surprisingly easy to use and very intuitive. Came a clean install of the latest software... ' Tiger ' ( cute ) and when I switched on just did what it said on the packet. Getting mail set up was fine, though networking is a bind. I discovered that you should not delete network links from the desktop. You will just never get them working again... The horror of the alias. No problem, as I can see the machine from the other end anyway. I also bought a Samsung widescreen flat screen monitor and a Belkin USB hub which are also quite sexy, though, not sure about the picture quality and colour rendering. One very annoying thing about the MAC which takes me back to my Netscape days is the ' View Source ' on webpages. I use Win98 IE5.5 and with source open in Notepad I can just edit it straight away. I am not going to use software to do this, and hence why I am using my Win98 machine this very minute. I can`t be going through another process just to write web pages... I just do toooooo much of it. Anyway.. The G4 MAC now forms part of the family and no doubt more to follow.... With that I guess, I have now extended the ' retro years ' to this century... Power Macintosh G4 (Digital Audio) CPU CPU: PowerPC 7450 CPU Speed: 466/533/667/733 FPU: integrated Bus Speed: 133 MHz Data Path: 64 bit ROM: 1 MB ROM + 3 MB toolbox ROM loaded into RAM RAM Type: PC133 Minimum RAM Speed: 133 MHz Onboard RAM: 0 MB RAM slots: 3 Maximum RAM: 1.5 GB Level 1 Cache: 32 kB data, 32 kB instruction Level 2 Cache: 1 MB backside, 1:2 Expansion Slots: 4 64-bit 33 MHz PCI, 1 4x AGP (filled) Video Video Card/Chipset: NVidia GeForce2 MX VRAM: 32 MB Max Resolution: all resolutions supported Video Out: VGA/DVI, ADC Storage Hard Drive: 30/40/60 GB ATA Bus: ATA-66 Zip Drive: optional 250 MB Optical Drive: 32x/8x/4x CD-RW Input/Output USB: 2 Firewire: 2 Audio Out: stereo 16 bit mini, Pro Speaker Speaker: mono Networking Modem: 56 kbps Ethernet: 10/100/1000Base-T Airport: optional Miscellaneous Codename: Clockwork Gestalt ID: 406 Power: 338 Watts Dimensions: 17" H x 8.9" W x 18.4" D Weight: 30 lbs. Minimum OS: 9.1 Maximum OS: 10.4.7 Introduced: January 2001
Check out the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease at which you open the box
AMIGA ACCELERATOR CARD MEMORY CSA MEGA MIDGET RACER for the A500, the 50Mhz version. I was tracking this all week and my heart was in my mouth today at the bid conclusion. It was gonna go one of two ways. Fortunately I won... The whole office sighed as I screamed with joy. You cannot believe how much this little beast means to me.So rare to get an accelerator for the A500. I only have two... And to the blurb. This is a CSA/MMR 38/50/4 (Computer System Associates/Mega Midget Racer) accelerator/memory board for for Amiga A500/+, A1500, A2000/HD series of machines. Not for A600 or A1200. This is one of fastest processor accelerator upgrade boards produced for Amiga. It has a 50 mhz 68030 (non EC type) CPU (clocked at 38.1 mhz as the fastest stable mhz for this board) and full 50 mhz 68882 maths FPU co-processor, 512 kb SDRAM for ROM shadowing, 4mb 70 ns Mega-Memory Daughterboard attached. It plugs into the 68000 cpu socket and the 68000 cpu (included) is relocated to the accelerator board. Once installed and configured, the board runs invisibly and can be switched between the 68030 and 68000 cpu via toggle switch for compatibility with games. It is in excellent working order and is boxed with manual, installation disk, 68000 socket riser/adapter for main board and chip clearance, extra 68EC030 CPU, spare clocking crystals of 33.333 and 50.00 mhz and some ready made configuration disks. So if you are tired of waiting for large programs to execute and are wanting the best accelerator solution for your Amiga, this is what you want! Processor: 030 50Mhz FPU: Optional 68881 or 68882 (PGA) at the same frequency as the processor or asynchronously if a crystal is used MMU: Yes Max Ram: 8MB (requires optional RAM expansion board) Ram Type: ZIP Chips This card sits in the CPU socket of the A500 and A2000. Additional RAM can be added, providing you have the optional RAM daughterboard. Two versions of this daughterboard were made, depending on whether the accelerator was to be used in an A500 or A2000. One version had 40pins, whilst the other had 50pins. The card also includes 512K of very fast SRAM which can be configured as system RAM, or be used to cache the Kickstart for increased ROM access. These are four chips located in the top left hand corner of the board.
Picture courtesy of the Big Book of Hardware
Picture from seller.. Better to follow
Sad to think that the Amstrad CPC664 only lasted the one year. I have been lucky to win one of these and no doubt will have the pictures on the website in time. Amstrad CPC 464 (CPC 6128) CPU Zilog Z80A / 4 MHz RAM 64 Kb (128 Kb) ROM 32 Kb Text mode 25*20, 25*40, 25*80 Graphic modes: 640*200 / 27 colors Sound: 3 channels,stereo Storage: Built-in tape drive (built-in 3 " disk drive) Connectors: Monitor,Centronics, user port, 1x joystick (2 possible with a special cord) Operating systems: Basic in ROM, (CP/M on disc) Size: 580 mm * 170 mm * 70 mm / 2 kg without monitor Target group: Homes, possible small companies. Misc: Basic system consists of the computer and a display. The display contains the power supply for the computer, thus it is very hard to use other displays. This unit was the same as the 464 but with the built in 3" disk drive. The 664 was delivered with the AMSDOS and CP/M 2.2 operating systems. The LOGO language was supplied with the CP/M disc. Around 10000 units were sold in its year of issue, due to the low price. It was very quickly replaced with the 6128. The drive is Hitachi the same as used on the Einstein. More to follow when I collect this week ( hopefully )
Picture courtesy of the Computer Museum
Just a thought... Why doesn`t someone seriously convince a manufacturer somewhere to build some new replacement Amiga kit... If just to get the dedicated few through the next few years. Cus otherwise there are gonna be some pretty frustrated folk out there waiting for this OS4 to arrive... Just a thought. [ quote ] IOSPIRIT GmbH ends its Amiga business on the 1st of April 2007. In the future, IOSPIRIT GmbH will be focusing solely on its MacŪ products. In order to better serve the needs of that market and to be able to process incoming orders faster and more efficiently, a reimplementation of the shop system is currently being worked on. The reasons for the decision to no longer operate in the Amiga market are as follows: we want to fully commit to developing MacŪ products in the future. The big additional overhead that would be necessary to integrate (permanent) support for download and package versions of Amiga software into the new concept and the drawbacks that would come with this for the majority of our customers - which today are MacŪ users. The decreasing demand for Amiga products and the the situation of the Amiga market in general. IOSPIRIT's own Amiga titles will no longer be available beyond April, 1st, 2007 - except of course for remaining stock at dealers. The future distribution as well as development and support of IBrowse will be handled directly by the IBrowse development team. You can find their website at http://www.ibrowse-dev.net/. Many thanks go to all of our customers and users for being loyal for so many years, which has made the development of our Amiga titles possible in the first place. All developer and scene buddies for the many interesting, reflective, funny, educational, helpful and amicable moments, anecdotes and experiences. All those, who have always been there to help with mental and moral support and an independant, second opinion. We wish all of you all the best for the future and would be happy to see you again over in the MacŪ market. If you are interested in what we are currently working on, you can find our MacŪ products at http://www.iospirit.com/. Sincerly, Felix Schwarz [end quote ]
If you can watch a streamed video on your machine then do watch the following from YouTube all about an early demo of the Amiga 1000 on BBC Micro Live Magic stuff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS-NYK-8KL0
or maybe even this advert
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Last updated 25th March 2007
Chandraise Kingdom