The date is Christmas 1995 and I was working in Fareham Hampshire
at an architects practice. It was the first time I had been with a
practice that generally used computers. We were on Windows 3.1 and
Windows for Workgroups, kinda, together with XTREE-Gold and AutoCAD,
probably 11 or 12. The guys in the office were PC nutters and they
thought me odd for using an Amiga.
That Christmas I had come home in the joy of knowing that I had just
bought 1GB 3.5" hard-drive plus kit to fit to my beloved A1200. I
was struggling with a cold and a bad tooth and also recall I had
the video of the latest Star Trek movie, the one where Picard kills
Captain Kirk.
I could not get the hard drive to work on the Amiga 1200. It would
find the drive and then lose it. I now realise it was a power issue.
Anyway I exchanged the drive with Gordon Harwood for a 550MB 2.5".
Feeling kinda sad and miserable at my failure I was thumbing through
the local Diamond Free-Adds, a local rag over that Christmas and
came across an advert in Bovington for an Amiga 1200 for £200.
I rang the guy and drove out on this filthy wet night to the tank
camp in Bovington and met up with this soldier. The roads to the
camp are extra wide for tanks and I recall driving up in the
pouring rain to the guardhouse at the entry.
At the house the guy had kids and the Amiga was sitting on the
floor. He said the only issue was the floppy which he extracted
using a knife and fork. I bought the Amiga and set it up as my
games machine.
And so enter TANK my second Amiga 1200 from 1995.
During my spring clean of last year I was most distressed to find
that the hard drive that I had fitted to the machine all those
years ago had fallen over. 2.5" drives to tend to stick if not
used that often. And so in an effort to redress the situation I
have obtained a replacement hard drive and this now begins my
wonderful adventure with TANK to get her back up and motoring.
T A N K
New hard drive, ribbon together with the
RAM card, disk utilities and the WB.
T A N K has been used a good deal and
mostly for games in the day.
My quickly scribbled note which I
will now update.
I did buy a new floppy drive to replace
the original. For a while I had had to
use a pair of grips to extract the floppy.
The Power Computing 8MB RAM card.
I am starting to buy up all the
2.5" drives in the world.. it seems.
And we are on the way... Makes me so happy.
And more from TANK tomorrow
