ScuzzBlog: Diaries October 2019
Entry 6th October 2019: Post 01: Amiga 1200 - No worries.
Amiga 1200 - No worries.
I mentioned recently how back in the nineties I got the jitters over
the lack of new computers available following the collapse of the
Commodore company. I had already had a £50 deposit for a Commodore
monitor refunded cus the computer store could no longer source the
real deal. In the end I purchased a Microvitec which still works today.
I recall the day I sat looking at the A1200, particularly the monitor
and decided I needed to get a back up just in case. First thing I
did was buy another A1200 for £200 second hand. Then an Amiga 600
just to have the Philips monitor that came with it. I collected the
A600 from a guy in Ringwood down here and I told him that I had
purchased the 600 for the monitor only. To me the 600 computer
was a bit of a novelty and I used it for Sensi soccer and little else.
And so the journey into my Amiga collecting continued unabated .
Next I got an A500, then a PowerPC and the tower and another A1200
and on and on with my formal collecting ceasing April 2008.
It really is amazing that I acquired so much in that period. In truth
as I was very busy at work during the whole period up to 2015 I
had most of what I had in boxes and under dust covers. Only when I
afforded myself the time to take a sabbatical from work did I get
round to looking at it all.
And so were the concerns regarding the possible failure of my A1200
founded? Well, I have over thirty Amiga 1200s and of those have only
the three that I would call faulty. They are featured below. I guess
with a little effort I could get them working properly, but I tend
to have them sitting on the back burner giving me something to do
on a rainy day.
As for Chantel my beloved Amiga 1200 from November 1993 well she is
still working no problem. I guess I am one of those rare Amigans that
never actually gave up on the platform and so she has been running
nearly every day since 1993. I never question whether she will work.
The Microvitec also is still the monitor that I use. In that time
she has a had a GVP accelerator and then the Blizzard 1230IV. I then
added the SCSI Kit and the two external drives and the CD-ROM drive.
Almost the first things I bought for the computer were actually a
High Density floppy drive and 4MB PCMCIA RAM card.
In terms of storage she started life as a Desktop Dynamite package
with the 80MB drive which lasted under a year before I got the 350MB
drive. I did try a 1GB 3.5" but failed due to what I now know as
insufficient power from the lightweight original PSU. I did move up
to a 550MB hard drive in the winter of 1995 which she still has.
The last addition was the Ethernet card and the networking plus online
functionality.
Interestingly the first thing I ever bought off Ebay was a video VGA
adaptor in February 2003 which in truth was again a little bit of
insurance should the monitor fail. You see the worry for me about
the Amiga was not actually ever about the computer itself. It all
stems from that first failure to obtain a monitor after Commodore
went bust. I recall in early 1994 sitting on the base of my stairs
with a phone stuck to my ear trying to get hold of a new monitor.
In those days nothing was cheap trust me.
Anyway should I have worried? Obviously not. You will see from the
last photograph that the Amiga 1200 and monitor are still working
today. She has seriously never let me down. It never crosses my mind.
So was the collecting of all I have worth the time and trouble.
Probably not... Fun though.
Cuppa me thinks. Nothing like tea and toast and listening to the steady
click of the floppy drive of the Amiga. Heaven.
Amiga 1200 - No worries.
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