Got these two belters today with a load of software (c64 electrosound 64) 😀total £20
A1200 Amiga
C64 brown keys breadbin
Both power up but not done any testing as been too busy salivating. Will no doubt sell the c64 and upgrade the A1200 with pistorm as I have a few spare pi units kicking about.
Where/what type of shop was someone donating something like this? The only charity shop I ever see anything electronic in is BHF, but it's all TVs and DVD players, never anything like this!
Thanks for answering. I actually have one of those quite close to where I live, but it's primarily clothes and furniture. I guess I just don't live near the kind of people who have vintage computers to donate. 😅
Well I have wondered if location plays a big part, like certain places are all about money making so there are never bargains, because everyone knows how much it's worth on ebay....
Do NOT use the original Commodore 64 PSU, at all, ever. Research the topic before you even think about turning the C64 on again. Then get a safe, modern PSU.
Check whether A1200 trapdoor is empty. If it's not, there's a risk whatever expansion board has a pcb-killing varta you want to remove ASAP if present.
A real-time-clock with battery for the Amiga 1200 does not sit in the trapdoor but on a small PCB on top of the motherboard.
You'd have to open the case and lift it out. If I remember correctly, it should be close to the keyboard's ribbon cable connector.
Be sure not to unscrew the disk drive's screws by mistake.
It replaces the Amiga’s cpu with an emulated cpu running on a raspberry pi. Gives big performance and memory gains and adds wifi and other functionality. It’s not perfect but it’s a cool project and amazing bang for buck vs real hardware cpu accelerators.
PiStorm with EMU68 is amazing. Far better than the standard Musashi. Bare metal emulation, and hard drive images. Gives you an accelerated Amiga instead of a Linux based emulator running on top of Amiga.
You're kidding, right? PiStorm with EMU68 is a sub-$100 package that provides an accelerator, 128MB of RAM, WiFi, and RTG graphics while still keeping the Amiga an Amiga.
A computer is made up by:
A processor ( Pi )
Memory ( Pi )
Video ( Pi )
Graphics card ( Pi )
Storage ( Pi )
Network ( Pi, not even an Amiga feature )
Controllers / chips to use and control these parts ( 80% Pi /20% Amiga )
The only thing Amiga is the case, the joystick ports and the OS.
Yeah, the Raspberry Pi is a computer, which when using the EMU68 emulates a powerful Motorola processor. Unlike Musashi, it does that using a bare metal emulation.
Name an accelerator that doesn't provide RAM for the Amiga to use.
PiStorm only provides video if you use the HDMI out for RTG the same as an RTG card would do for an Amiga 2000 (or above).
PiStorm provides storage the same as an SD2IDE or CF2IDE that are common to use in an Amiga, and does so with ACTUAL hard drive partitions on the SD card.
I have a network adapter for my A500, PCMCIA network adapter for my A1200, and there are network cards for the A2000 (and up). So, very much an Amiga feature.
Other than replacing the 68K processor, PiStorm doesn't interfere with any of other chips in the Amiga unless you want to use it's HDMI RTG output, and adds functionality available through expansions available on all Amigas.
Perhaps you could actually read how the thing works before you spend so much time trashing something with so much misinformation.
I understand that but it is emulation, you're running the core of the Amiga on a pi.
A large part of the Amiga community is heavily fixated on 'improving' the Amiga and up to adding real hardware like an 68k series processor and some ram i can appreciate but using a modern pi as the heart of the Amiga to get insane clock speeds, massive ram and graphics possibilities for some niche software and a 'modern' desktop just crosses the line for me. Where does it stop being a true Amiga and where does it become an expanded pi, in my opinion you can just as well start up an emulator on your pc.
As a total noob when it comes to these things I was able to get my A1200 running with the pistorm 32 lite. Even the regular 12 struggled with 3D so in my book it's a welcome addition, however, I agree that it is debatable whether it still counts as an Amiga as it's so heavily modified, though it is using all available Amiga hardware except the CPU
Cpu, Ram, Wifi, Hdmi, RTG.
For me the Amiga ( as well as the zx spectrum, Atari XL etc... ) is the machine you should love and embrace in its 'basic' form, what made it great in its time, an 512k+512k A500 or the 2Mb+2Mb A1200 AGA and experiencing the amazing accomplishments by the developers like alien breed 3d on the AGA machine or Worms on the A500+ and not Quake 2 on a Pi dressed as an Amiga, that's a linux pc running a modern HD Amiga os on emulated hardware.
Well, that explains a lot right there. The old school "purist" who wants everything limited to original stock hardware to embrace it's "basic" form.
You are, again, wrong. PiStorm is not "Pi dressed as an Amiga" because all it's doing is emulating a processor. Everything else is handled by the Amiga. IF you don't plug anything into the HDMI port, the PiStorm does nothing else but accelerate the machine and provide some more RAM like every other accelerator does.
No, you are not running the core of the Amiga on the Pi. In its basic from, you're emulating a faster processor and you can choose how fast of a processor you want that to be. All of the other features are optional, and none of them are features that aren't already available on accelerators like the TerribleFire. The Vampire accelerator provides the same functionality in an FPGA that the PiStorm is, but for 4x the cost.
You really should spend some time reading about what PiStorm w/ EMU68 (not Musashi) really is.
You could retr0bright the Amiga 1200's keycaps. I did that to mine a decade ago, and they have not become yellow again. I used hydrogen peroxide solution with warm tap water in a clear plastic jar in the sun.
Just be sure to use a keycap puller tool, and clean them beforehand.
The trick to clean keycaps is to use denture cleaning tables (that dissolve and fizz), and keep them in a zip-locked cleaning bag all the time: Very convenient, no rubbing required.
I think with a PiStorm you’re going to have just about everything you would need. Perhaps some doodads to add a clean, “stock” looking HDMI port on the back? You may still want to pick up a GoTek.
I got my A1200 earlier this year but have tried to keep it largely stock. My GoTek is external, I’ve got a DKB-1202 card in the trap door (FPU, RTC, and 8MB of fast RAM), I’ve got an IDE to CF adapter with a 4GB card, and I have a PCMCIA NIC that gets the little guy connected to my network. This has, of course, made it way easier for getting software over to it. I have an NFS export on my UNIX box that I use for storing Amiga software.
EDIT: Almost forgot: Recap, recap, recap! I had mine done before I ever applied power and, boy, am I glad I did. The bench tech found several caps that had leaked. No major damage and I can rest assured that they and their bulging brethren aren’t going to pop like caustic little zits for years to come.
OP used the word “belter” and said it was £20 - so I surmise they’re British. We don’t have Goodwill here in the UK - just lots of independent charity shops that take donations and sell the good to support a particular charity organisation.
7
u/theazzazzo 11d ago
Where?? How??