Hello from Manchester, UK

[sward]

Hi, I'm Simon and I've been around on and off over the years, just never joined until now.

My first Amiga was a 500 Plus, my family got the Cartoon Classics pack. I sadly no longer have it -- I suspect it got sold or thrown out after being relegated to the attic. The first Amiga I actually owned was an Amiga 1200, purchased second-hand out of some savings. Somehow I ended up with another Amiga 1200. One A1200 lives in an Eyetech DIY tower, which regretfully involved some mutilation of the original wedge case. I didn't get around to filling in all that space; still no accelerator or graphics card. I did put an x86 PC in the tower and had a KVM switch to switch between them, but that didn't last.

I unboxed my towered A1200 again about 5 years ago, and it was only occasionally powered on until around December/January when my interests were piqued with a bit of a nudge from another Amiga-owning friend. I heard about the Vampires, I found there had been some new developments with Amiga OS 3.1.4, and the Checkmate A1500 Plus looked just lovely for downsizing from the barely-used, full-size Eyetech tower -- when sales opened for another batch of Checkmate cases i got my order in (thanks Steve and co!).

I'm excited that development seems to be happening on classic Amiga OS again, and I'm interested in things like the Vampire and MiSTer.

Current specs:

1. Amiga 1200 (rev. 2B) with broken PCMCIA slot, 8MB RAM expension + FPU, buffered IDE interface, a 3.5" HDD with many more GB than I ever imagined putting in an Amiga, NEC 4x CD changer, a scandoubler+flicker fixer, Lyra 2 PS/2 keyboard adaptor (I broke the AT keyboard adaptor that came with the Eyetech case).
2. Amiga 1200 (rev. 1D.1), 70MB(?) 2.5" HDD but broken IDE header.

Projects and plans:

1. Send both Amigas off for re-capping, and repair of the PCMCIA and IDE headers.
2. Re-house the expanded A1200 in the Checkmate A1500 Plus - needs power supply.
3. Get a Gotek floppy emulator or two.
4. Amiga OS 3.1.4 or 3.2, hopefully with physical Kickstart ROMs
5. Image as many floppies as I can.
6. Compact flash (for the less-expanded A1200)
7. Add a Vampire A1200? (I put my name down for one in January)
8. USB HID adapter for mouse + optical USB mouse?
9. ...

[chip]

Hello Simon ..... welcome to the forum

[Nobby_UK]

Welcome

[simonhez]

welcome

[dreamkatcha]

Greetings. Manchester is a right dump. You have my sympathies.

[Flimbo]

Welcome to the board. You are throwing down some money on those projects, hope you get your vampire soon.

[sward]

Originally Posted by dreamkatcha

Greetings. Manchester is a right dump. You have my sympathies.

I get to avoid it even more at the moment. Positives.

[sward]

Originally Posted by Flimbo

Welcome to the board. You are throwing down some money on those projects, hope you get your vampire soon.

It feels a lot less than getting an accelerator 20+ years ago.