ScuzzBlog: Diaries February 2020 Entry 12th February 2020: Post 01: My Amiga World - Why I collect. My Amiga World - Why I collect. So what started this mad collecting habit I have for computers and particularly the Amiga? There is little doubt that I have always had a fascination for computers and when I finally caved and bought an Amiga was there going to be any surprise that I fell in love with the thing. At first my interest revolved around the one Amiga, my Amiga 1200. I bought everything and anything for this machine and I turned this room into my Amiga shrine or sanctuary as I called it. The joy for me after a very hard and long day at work was coming home and switching on the Amiga. In truth the magic never ended as I have been one of those odd balls that never gave up on the platform and have used the A1200 almost every day since I bought her back in November 1993. I was so in love with the platform that in a very short time I had an A500 games machine in the lounge and another A1200 set up in the workshop. For me the Amiga had become part of the furniture. And then disaster ... My Microvitec monitor broke. I had struggled to find a suitable alternative for the 1942 monitor that I couldn't obtain once CBM went to the wall. I did have a long standing £50 deposit for a Commodore 1942 which was refunded when they failed to get me a monitor and so I purchased the Microvitec. So when she broke I realised just how vulnerable I had become given that I could not be without my beloved Amiga. I discovered this local repair shop that was in a large shed the back of this guys garden. Man was he skilled. There were often queues of people waiting to hand over broken kit for him to mend. What is more is that he specialised in Commodore, Atari, Amstrad etc. Sadly he closed up a few years later and when that happened I knew I had to do something. I then chose to purchase second hand stuff from the local rag Diamond Free Adds. I recall buying an Amiga 600 just to get the Philips monitor. I was so keen not to let my beloved 1200 suffer and so I needed back-ups of all she needed. A year or so later I purchased another 1200 for the monitor and a 1200 in a tower for all the extras it came with. By the year 2000 I had a workshop full of spares and was enjoying mucking around on the replacement kit. Next up I started to view the adverts on Amibench and began to acquire a reasonable amount of Amiga kit with the climax being the A4000T. I was so keen now to get CD-ROM drives, sidecars like the M-Tec and Squirrel PCMCIA for the ZIP drive. In 2003 I purchased a brand new Amiga 1200 from Analogic together with a monitor. I equipped it with a Blizzard 1230IV and SCSI KIT and I set up a third Amiga workstation. By now I was heavily into Yahoo Groups with The Crypt, Amiga_SA, Just-Amiga, AMOS, Samba and my own group Commodore Amiga Retro. In February 2003 I discovered Ebay and then went crazy bonkers buying all kinds of kit. The adventure lasted just five years and in that time I acquired most of what you see today. Thing is I never intended this to happen. In those days my life away from home was hectic involving long long hours on the road. So I would peruse Ebay the night before and place half a dozen bids in for kit I was interested in. I had a £25 threshold and often bid only £10. So when I got in late in the evening I was always amazed at how much I had won. If you look at this payment slip from an Ebay auction [ see below ] you will see that I won an Amiga 1200 plus mouse, PSU, external drive and manuals for just £9. My bid would have been £10. I was winning Amiga 1200s for £11. See the links below on one such auction win for a 1200. Ebay was very different in those days cus it was filled with hundreds of ordinary folk just clearing their attics and not that troubled by making loads of cash. There were no BUY NOW auctions and you really didn't know what you were going to get. The amount of stuff was staggering. There wasn't a computer that I was interested in that didn't have any number of auctions and they were all auctions so you could bid on them. And so I would bid on 4 Acorn computers, come home and find that I had won them all. And for next to no money at all. Amazing to think that in 1993 I was buying an Amiga for £550 that in 2003 I could pick up for £9 and now in 2020 find them selling for anything up to £350. I do have 31 Amiga 1200s and am not selling any. That was never the reason I bought them. Thought I would share that with you given that I found my slip of paper today with that auction for the A1200 for £9 plus the repair for the Microvitec in 1998 for £15. And she is still alive. My Amiga World - Why I collect. Repair bill for Microvitec monitor Specialist in Commodore, Amstrad, Sinclair and Acorn Microvitec still working today. Just before Commodore went bust and never got this monitor. The original cost of my Amiga 1200. Buying second hand in 2004 for £9

So you`ve bought an A1200

Wanna know what to do with it ?

Here`s what I did with an £11 Amiga A1200 from Ebay

Days 1 to 3 ~ She`s alive !

Day 4 ~ A case of the DDs
Fitting a replacement floppy drive

Day 5 ~ The Blizzard Cometh
Fitting an accelerator

Day 6 ~ Feed the Squirrel
Fitting a CDRom drive

Day 7 ~ Hard drivin` the A1200
Fitting an external and internal hard drive

Day 8 ~ ZIP-it` the A1200
Fitting an Iomega ZIP drive

Day 9 ~ A brighter Outlook ` the modem and the A1200
Modem at the Ready A step by step guide to getting on-line

Day 10 ~ Back to the Future ` ... in need of a new heart
Not just a new OS But new ROMS also

` A new day ~ Whots up ` ... lights on but nobody in
Mouse port failure and no floppy... whoo er !

~o~ ~o~

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Last updated 12th February 2020

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