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Nick

Posted Thu Jul 30, 2020 6:24 am

Hello all,

I am Nick and live in beautiful Belgium (yes, the home of the French fries, chocolate and beer and yes, normally I totally forget the first two). 43 with an undying love for video games ever since I laid eyes on my best friend’s father Commodore64.

I remember it like yesterday, even after decades: my friends father had this small office And there it stood on the desk, generating some music that was playing during winter games.

Inloop and I was sold, love at first sight. My parents had to come and get me that night as I stayed away 2 hours then allowed :)

It worked out well, because my parents bought me my own Commodore 64, just to keep me in the house, because I was ending up playing at my friends house for hours daily.

And From that moment on, I was the coolest kid in my village: all my friends from the street and school would skate, bike, step to my house to game. Absolutely amazing memories for me.

Then I upgraded to an Amiga 500, because the games got better and I found a new love: English, as games like leisure sweet Larry, defender of the crown and all the rest were in English. When I was old enough to follow English at school, I got nothing but A’s (10/10) for years, because of the Amiga. It really learned me another language.

I do not remember anymore what caused me to stop gaming on the Amiga, I think it was girls or beer (prob beer) and then the pc came up and played video games on that ever since.

But I could never bring me to sell my love, my Amiga 500, The very reason of my popularity. I took it when I moved, and again the second time I moved and again now, when I moved the 3rd time. And this time I vowed to myself that I would unpack it again and see if the games are still working.

And behold, it came to live from the first try, just like you accidentally run into that hot ex-girlfriend from years ago and you hit it off right like when you were together ( Belgians use beer to ‘promote’ this feeling).

So now I got 2 boxes of games and looking all over the internet for Amiga retro enthusiasts and behold, I found this site.

I got so many questions as my technical knowledge is about the same level as a goldfish. But I would like to learn, so I will take any advice you guys give me :)

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m4d

Posted Thu Jul 30, 2020 7:01 am

Welcome Nick! Reading stories like yours always gives me that nice warm fuzzy feeling of nostalgia. The homecomputer age was a magical time to be a kid :)

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Jul 30, 2020 9:15 am

Welcome Nick!

Thanks so much for joining and sharing your history. I can't wait to see photos of your old girl and some of your collection. Ask any questions you may have - there's no such thing as a dumb question. Folks here are extremely nice and knowledgeable and will do their best to get you back on your feet.

Looking forward to seeing you relive some of your past!

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McTrinsic

Posted Thu Jul 30, 2020 12:46 pm

Great story, glad to have you here!

One first warning. If your old love 😉 was equipped with an A501 memory expansion (the one made by Commodore) then get it out immediately. It got a battery inside that is famous for leaking and destroying computers with the spilled acid. Really!!

Other than that - feel free to ask. These are golden times for people coming back to the Amiga. The OS is still being worked on with nice additions and bug fixes to the last CBM release that was 3.1. Multiple accelerators for different purposes and tastes are around. New expansions. Just think about what you’d like to do with the machine.

Oh and don’t forget the Amigas secret weapon: WHDLoad.

Most of all: have fun!!

User avatar
Nick

Posted Fri Jul 31, 2020 5:27 am

Thanks for the warm welcome all!

A few questions still :)

So how do I know if my Amiga 500 has the 501 mem expansion?

And what is a whdload :)

I got some games, but I understood they need to be the original games before one can upload here? Cause mine are all copied

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Fri Jul 31, 2020 10:03 am

how do I know if my Amiga 500 has the 501 mem expansion?
Just flip your machine over and pop open that trap door you see there. Once open, if you see a card there you want to remove that thing a.s.a.p. and cross those fingers it hasn't leaked (and when we say leaked, imagine a very fine dust that drifts about to nearby silicon and eats it like alien blood).
And what is a whdload
WHDLoad is a package mainly used for gaming that most importantly provides a ton of packages to be run off hard drives that might have originally been floppy-only back in the day. It also will sometimes have bug fixes, etc.

However, not every game works as advertised (just watch Amiga streamers on Twitch try to launch things and you'll see things just break from time to time). But most of the time it's pretty flawless.

However it requires at minimum 4MB of RAM and most will say if you want the best results, you should have 8MB. It would be good to also have a mild accelerator for some games under WHDLoad, because it comes with a mild performance tax. It also requires at least Kickstart 2.0. So there's a lot of stuff there your A500 probably is lacking, at least today. (But could all be provided with the help of an ACA500+, for example, which I mentioned before - the perfect addition to an A500 to get WHDLoad set up and running at some point.)

For a pure nostalgia trip, though, it's not necessary really if your machine is still working (as well as your floppy/games). But it's a very nice package still being supported in 2020.

Good luck with that trap door! If it isn't containing a memory card, you might want to get one then as they are very affordable and totally worth it. I'd get the RTC option, too. =)





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