Not my words, the words of Commodore UK MD David Pleasance
My true Amiga machine was an Amiga 500. Probably cost upwards of £400 in the late 80`s or early 90`s. This little fella was released as an improvement to the A500 Plus and cost even more. To make things worse it had a lifespan of 6 months as the A1200 with advanced Graphic Architecture (AGA) was ready for release. Codenamed June Bug after yet another B52`s tune, why the hell would anyone want it?
Lets take a look at it first before joining millions of Amiga fans in slating it. It had a Hard drive,
a massive 20MB or 40MB if you were feeling flush. Hard drives at this time cost almost the same as an Amiga computer, the A500 expansion drive was a wallet destroyer so a solution built in was forward thinking I suppose. Everyone with an A500 had to buy a 512k expansion to take their Amiga to the dizzy heights of 1MB of Ram, not so here, supplied with 1MB and expandable to 2MB, an improvement. A PCMCIA slot on the left side for fast transfer between pc via CF card adaptor or further Fast Memory expansion by a RAM card, maybe a bit before its time but again forward thinking.
EPIC Bundle with built in hard drive- £399-£499
A500 fans were quick to point out this machine was flawed. No numeric keypad rendering most Flight Sims or any game really that used the keypad, UNPLAYABLE. The Hard Drive itself on boot used resources so a Boot Options menu had to be implemented to allow for selections to deselect it.
Obviously the price was similar to that of the A500 Plus at a time when Nintendo and Sega were flooding the market with games on their consoles, marketing suicide surely. The Kickstart 2.0 wasn`t happy running some older games that ran flawlessly on kickstart 1.3. There wasn`t enough here for me to want one, I`d say I liked the small form factor but never felt I needed to upgrade my trusted 500. Commodore really had dropped a bollock so swiftly removed the Hard drives to try and tempt us with a sweeter deal.
THE WILD, THE WEIRD & THE WICKED Bundle - £199 - £299
With the release of the A1200 a mere 6 months away from launch of the A600 it was the tail end of the Amiga gang who bought this pup. I`d say people who looked on at friends owning 500`s but never had the cash, maybe owned consoles or dare I say an Atari ST, latecomers to the party for sure!
I myself am around 18 years late in owning the Black sheep that is June Bug. As an Amiga fan it was probably going to be on my shopping list at some point. I was hooked by what I thought I could do with this desk friendly little urchin, time has treated it well, options are plentiful and the community vibrant. English Amiga Board, Lemon Amiga, forums full of suggestions. Sellers like Individual Computing, Amiga Kit UK, Vesalia, the time was right!
UPGRADES:
A604N - 1MB trapdoor expansion to take Chip Ram to 2MB
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AMIGA KICKSTART 3.1 - Greater support for newer Operating Systems and larger HD`s
GOTEK FLOPPY DRIVE EMULATOR - At last a USB device to remove the need for Double Density Floppy Disks, the spawn of satan media. No more disk swapping with a stack of floppies, anyone remember Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis ( 11 bastards).
IDE ADAPTOR WITH CF CARD - I installed an angled IDE adaptor to avoid conflict with my Memory upgrade, 4GB is plenty for my games collection. Sandisk and Transcend seemed to work for me.
A6095 MEMORY UPGRADE - This card presses on the top of the MC68000 CPU and gives 8MB fastram and 1.5MB slow ram. This enhancement meant WHD Load (Hard Drive) games could run without slowdown or load stuttering. this upgrade is a low cost solution for gamers like me who dont really need a processor boost.
I fitted the above slow time as funds became available. I wanted at least one of my Amiga computers to be a quick gaming solution, all games running from the CF card, no memory issues that WHD LOAD likes to throw up and an option to load ADF games which still have Cracktros and trainers incorporated. For now this is my best Amiga gaming solution. A Recap is required down the road and maybe a retrobrite. Here`s a pic of the inside with all installed and shielding removed. The Gotek is mounted on a 3D printed bracket so its sits flush with casing.
I now feel proud of the June Bug, upgrades have enhanced it beyond my A500 or A1200, the ugly ducklings a swan now in my book. Here`s a few games I`ve been enjoying again
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| SuperFrog - Best Arcade Platform in my book |
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| Silent Service 2 - Still satisfying |
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| Flashback - Character animation still impressive |
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| PP-Hammer - classic platform puzzle |
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| Walker |
With the added RAM upgrade Walker has full speech throughout.
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=65574
Here is an older video of my 600 prior to the A6095 Memory upgrade. These games are running from the CF Card with a custom Start Sequence that loads the WHDLOAD version of the game via its numerical number. I don`t like Workbench with its cluttered Icons so a fast menu prompt was favoured. In time I will install Tiny Launcher by Michael Gibbs, a great fast loader that also looks neat and professional.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX-zSYc1j8M
Old video of Gotek Drive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcGYxnzikGU&t=433s
Old video of Gotek Drive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcGYxnzikGU&t=433s
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