Retro: The Amiga 500 (part 1)

It was but a dreary Sunday afternoon, browsing my youtube subscriptions list, of which a good part is 'retro' related content. I came across a video talking about the history of Commodore,. This got me in such a nostalgic mood that I binged on a whole bunch of Amiga related content.

I discovered that there is a very active community surrounding this decades old platform. Even that there are still companies whom are releasing new hardware for the Amiga.

Have a look at the video below, it's incredible what they can do!

So. It was decided. I was convinced! I had to have some of that old hardware. In my current geographic location (NZ) it seems like the sale of old hardware like that is very limited. Thankfully I managed to purchase an Amiga A500.

It turns on, but I don't have the correct cables to hook up to my Commodore 1084S monitor, so I went back to the web, trawling it for an outlet of Amiga-related peripherals. This led me to the AmigaStore where I purchased the following:

• The 3.1 Kickstart ROM (for that nice new feel);
• An RGB cable that will neatly hook into my CRT;
• An original Amiga mouse; and
• An upgrade for the mouse to make it a more modern laser-mouse.
• A replacement for the built-in floppy drive which will allow it to read from USB.

And that's as far as I've gotten. Still waiting for dat sweet sweet merch.

My goals over the coming months are as follows:

• get my hands on the merch
• open up the machine, clean it and install the new hardware bits and pieces
• have some fun with it from a gaming perspective
• setup a development cycle that is Amiga-centric (no cross-compiling).

I'd love to get back into C and Assembler programming. I know the AT&T syntax is going to bother me, but I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually.

I'm so excited! :D