Thanks for watching! You can find part 1 of this series here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rZihiM9ymJyppqc.html Did you buy an Amiga 1000 back in the day? I'd love to hear your memories of how you came to the decisiion to buy it instead of the competition, leave a comment! Neil - RMC

I bought my Amiga 1000 (still have it) in 1985 with 256k expansion and a Sony monitor. I knew I had to have it after seeing the Boing and Robo-city demos. It was a replacement for my Atari 800 (still have it). Took out my first ever loan to pay half of the cost.

This video format of half documentary / half restoration is actually brilliant.

That's the reason why I think early adopters like me chose the ST. Given my limited funds it was the clear upgrade path from my Speccy.

3:44: Neil, Neil - I can already see the headline in the news: "RMC demands all computer owners take up smoking as to preserve the original coloring of their computers' cases for future retro computing enthusiasts"

The balance between restoration and research is perfect in this series. Great stuff.

It really was the Amiga 500 that made it popular.

I got an Amiga 500 later into it's life (second hand) but still fondly remember all it's games and making animations and attempting to make music, not sure me or my friends even knew about the Amiga 1000...

The A1000 was so far ahead of its time, its just so sad that Commodore imploded with management stupidity and greed wiping out this amazing machine in the process. I read about the development of the proposed later chipsets and they sounded fantastic. Sigh.

Love seeing these machines brought back to life!

I was deep into the Commodore ecosystem thanks to the C64, and to me, the Amiga was the logical upgrade path after seeing it heavily advertised in the Commodore-centric magazines I bought back then. I instantly wanted one, and wasn't about to switch to some other company even if their machines were cheaper. I suspect that with millions of C64s sold, there had to have been quite a few people like me, which helped keep the Amiga from sliding into oblivion. My first Amiga wasn't the 1000 though, I got the A500 Bonus Pack for Christmas somewhere around 1992-93 and it was glorious.

Great video as always 👍🏻 😀 Sorry to hear you’ve been down with a cold, especially if you were trying to have a week off, but thanks for rising from your sick bed to make us a cracking video. Not sure you should have done that, but thank you anyway 😊.

You could sell that leftover washing water to a vape shop 😄

I went the ST 520 route and was more than happy with it. i only sold the ST and moved to the Amiga when the A1200 came out. i still have it with the Blizzard a1220 I bought for it.

The first time I saw 8-bit guy do it I was hooked. Never thought I'd relax by watching old computers being cleaned. I don't really understand why, but dang if it isn't satisfying to watch...

Hi, nice to see polish retro computer magazines on bookshelf. It is MikroKlan i think no.1 from 1986 year. And IKS (Informatyka Komputery Systemy). Greetings from Poland!

Interestingly, you can run a clone of "TOS & GEM" natively on an Amiga now, even as a Kickstart ROM replacement in the form of EmuTOS. It fields so weird to see an Amiga boot like an ST and natively run Atari ST software - of course the software has to be OS friendly and not hit the hardware directly.

Love this series, thanks for putting it together!

Given the Amiga's AMAZING graphical powers, that letter seems suspect. Calling it lacking on graphics is a dead giveaway.

These have been absolutely amazing videos :) So clever to take the perspective of a potential buyer from back then. Looking forward to the next one!

Another wonderful episode, love the way you are going through the Byte articles and advertisements as they came out, it is working really well.

Best series on KZfaq! Another A-1000 brought back to life, thank you very much! Why an Amiga, you ask? I saw the A-1000 in the shop and I knew I need it, whatever it takes. It was from another time or world, it was that good in 1986! Still have it and my 4000/040.

Neil very nice idea the naration through the magazines! It describes exactly the vibe of the industry and the feelings of the potential buyers! Great series! Pt3 please!!!!

Neil, I have to ask, were you sick when you recorded this video, or did you change your mic? Your voice sounds different in this video. If you were sick, here's to a speedy recovery!

Absolutely love the point in time historical analysis/debate. Please keep this approach for future videos! :)

I was a Commodore user from 1982 to 1995 starting with a VIC, then a C64, an A2000 and finally an A3000. My main focuses were programming and gaming. I didn't do any business stuff. The VIC and the C64 were easy decisions once the price had come down to be affordable. I remember at the time it came out thinking that the Amiga would be a great machine, but way out of my price range, which is ironic since when I did get an Amiga finally in 1988 it was an A2000. College wasn't nearly as expensive back then (at least mine wasn't and I had scholarships) and I convinced my mom that I could do my comp-sci homework better by having an Amiga 2000 with an IBM Bridgeboard, so we used some of the money saved for college to buy it. Then I did my programming homework on the Bridgeboard side, and played games on the Amiga side. Otherwise I probably would have ended up with an A500 eventually. If I remember right I had gotten a 3 1/2" disk drive and a video card to work with the Bridgeboard, but it still only had 512k, which kind of sucked. After college I traded in my 2000 on a 3000 and used that until Commodore had gone under and Doom became the killer PC app, at which point I bought a PC with a Pentium. I got the retro bug a while back so I now have a small collection of Commodores, Apples and Ataris. I really enjoy your videos, thanks!

I'm loving this hybrid style of video with the refurbishment and opinion/history piece spliced in. More please.

This is pure perfection Neil! This restoration series is perfectly balanced with info as well! And: Amiga ;) One of my favourites out of everything you have made so far this series.

Great fun to see this legendary machine, and follow your commentary. And great music, LOL

oh man I am a complete sucker for the trash to treasure series 💕 hands down my favourite on YT

Thoroughly enjoyed this.

really enjoyed that! so interesting to see the amiga in the context of its time :) i love old magazines for that sort of insight

Wow, really enjoying this series of videos. Looking back myself, coming from the ZX Spectrum i saw some of what the hardware could do and really wanted that large colour palette (4096 with HAM mode aside, 32 on screen) but i eventually opted for the 520STFM. Cheaper, on the CPU side marginally faster, single sided 360K floppy and 512K RAM. A seriously good comprise, i was not disappointed. The Amiga A500 however changed all that, and when a game title developed specifically for the Amiga came along. Psygnoiss' "Shadow Of The Beast", a landmark title if ever i saw one. The rest is history.

Thanks again for mentioning the solder temps !

I just watched the previous part, nice to have this one right afterwards. The new studio is looking great, you even had some MikroBittis there, it was *the* computer magazine back then in Finland.

An Interesting video, I'm am amazed how you repair these machines.

This series is great.

The Amiga 1000 used really amazing quality capacitors. It was over-engineered in every aspect. But we're looking at over 35 years now.

Back in the day my parents went, $1k for the kids computer is ok. It was a weird time in California USA. It was either a well old PC with nearly nothing, or an Atari ST. Two years later we saw the Amiga, it was really late in the states, and didn't have MIDI. At that point most Atarians I knew either upgraded to a mega st or high spec PC.

Enjoying the series, I recently picked up my own A1000 and going through my own restoration. It was machine I would have loved to upgrade to from the C64 back in the day but with the PC Clone onslaught in North America at that time it had a small window before a "cheap" clone with VGA and a sound card was a no brainer.

Just starting the video and love the three Sony BVM just sat peacefully in the background

A friend bought an A1000 new, back in the day. He invested quite a bit of cash into it at the time. Bought some external RAM and SCSI expansions for it for example. Then he bought a Phoenix replacement motherboard for it which I installed for him. Later he bought an A3000. Good times! Good man too!

Fantastic research and restoration A computer I know little about this was a education.

Thanks for the shout out and glad to see the process helped towards the restoration :)

4:19 "Tarry Jank" was the name of my band in college. 😉

I was an Archimedes guy myself but always preferred the Amiga over the ST! The Arc always went for brute force but this series is a great watch fair play! Cannot wait for part 3!

Great vid! Recovering from a cold Neil? Couldn't help notice 😊

Whoa! Casual stack of PVMs in the background!

I missed out on the Commodore 128, Atari ST, and the Amiga. I got a 64 from Christmas in 1985 when I was ten, and I had to make do with that until I bought a well-used IBM PC in 1991. When you look at those prices they don't seem so high, but taking inflation into account, computers back then were a luxury for wealthy people. I was very lucky to have the 64 and a 1541 disk drive, and I made the most of it. Got my first program published in Run Magazine in 1987. I switched to programming DOS in 1991, and Linux in 1994.

We cant ignore power of persuasion and I bought my a1000 in the first 3 months of launch in the uk. I went to the nova tel hotel in london and saw it running and spoke to commodore direct along with guests like jeff minter. I was 17 years old and £1299.00 was and is a lot of cash to a young man in a YTS role but it happened and that was the start of my amiga journey. Ohhhhh and my first game was Mindwalker. Look that one up for a shock of a game good or bad from someone who knew the vic20 and c64 for 6 years previous. Excelsior sir

It’s a dream machine for me. I have wanted o e for so many years

Great video as always. I have sourced some aquarium bits (UV, Heat controllers etc.) that I hope to try with retrobriting

Looks great. After this it's time to liberate that FM Towns from it's glass cabinet and get it up and running. Really enjoyed last weekends visit to the cave, will be along again very soon. That was one of the most severe cases of yellowing I have seen, did well to get it looking as good as it did!

Great video, did a double-take at 22:08: Two wild misspelling cover-ups appear from the shadows.

Seen lots of restoration vids over the years but that has gotta be the yellowist plastic I've ever seen! Great vid Neil, looking forward to part 3

I loved the Amiga had the a500 and later a1200, I then jumped ship to a pc in 1992. I still have fond memories of it especially around 1987/88 playing gunship and cinemaware games

i used to have that small joystick for my atari 2600 and loved it. i currently have an atari 2600 and just might get another pair of those controllers.

There are some restoration channels here on YT, that restored some consoles shells with UV lights, and the results are great.

This is almost the same retrobrite method I used 2017. Now I'm even more concerned about plastic and only using sunlight. I did it with a cheesy looking doll for couple of weeks and it resulted with an almost perfect result.

The real mystery to me is why it took off in Europe and never really did in the US. In 1986 my college had an Amiga in the art department, I remember my photography teacher demonstrating how you could digitize a color photo using a b&w video camera and red, green and blue filters, but then you didn't really hear about it again until Video Toaster was popular. Atari went away and there just wasn't anything competing at a lower price point than PC-compatibles ever again. Business folks had PCs, people who could afford them had Macs and generally kids didn't have computers at all until the web came along.

I moved from a Commodore 64, purchased the day after its massive price drop to the Amiga 1000. Subsequently I owned the 2000, 3000, 4000 and basically every desktop. When Amiga died and Atari was basically dead I had a choice to made between Mac or Windows. I moved to Mac and never left the Apple ecosystem.

I had both an Atari 1040ST and an Amiga 500. I loved them both. Both were a joy to own and use. The ST was a fantastic machine, with its dual monitors, dual floppies, a Hard Drive and modem, and despite its limitations compared to the A500, If I really had to choose between the two, and only pick one of them, I'd go with the Atari 1040ST. That's just me. I've always had a soft spot for Atari computers. Prior to the ST, I had an Atari 800XL, and man was that one beast of an 8Bit computer! Now, I wish I had all three! I have in my possession (and in working condition) a TRS-80 Model 4, an Apple Macintosh Plus, a Tandy CoCo Model 1, and an IBM AT 5170 with an original Model M keyboard! Those, along with my modern PC's, make for one decent collection!

Really enjoying this series Neil! Love the approach you’ve taken, putting everything in the context of the time. Hope this can be used for later series! I got an A500+ in the early 90’s, and whilst I’d no interest in petty playground squabbles I did feel the Amiga was the superior machine. However, it now feels unfair to compare the ST to the wedge shaped Amiga offerings, given how much sooner it was on the market. In the context of the time I’d have been saving hard for a ST. However, if the first Amiga to hit the market had of been the A500 it would have been an entirely different story.

Plenty of SUN over there at the moment.... uh, Keep up the good work

Many folk with deep pockets in the market for a high end machine in 1986 would have waited until June 1987 and gone for an Acorn Archimedes. I saw my first Archimedes in the sixth form, which would have been late '87 or maybe early '88.

Feel better, Neil! 😷

If you do a serious amount of retro-brighting you should consider making a black light box. Those mainly ultra-violet LEDs are very efficient. The box to prevent your contact with UV, which ages skin, can damage eyes, etc. Perhaps with a safety cut out when box opened. A turn table to even exposure, and possibly mirrors to direct more of the UV onto the item.

It’s good to dry the boards faster then just natural evaporation. An oven set to 60C or just sunlight is best. Corrosion can form really fast.

WHY do I find Neil cleaning stuff so soothing?

I so completely agree. I wanted a Mac II in those days, but couldn't come close to affording it. It's cheaper, but similar, competitors were the Atari ST and the Amiga 1000 at the time. All three used the 68000 processor. I finally bought the Amiga 1000 (a refurbished one) as it had, by far, the best built-in sound hardware and the ability to generate NTSC video out of the box. It was SOO much more powerful than the Mac II and even than the Atari when it was released (or it was way cheaper for the same abilities, either way), with a multitasking GUI and I loved it.

22:02

Hi Neil. As usual a very interesting video. I must admit that back in the day I would have liked one of the higher spec Amigas as they looked amazing. However, I was far too practical to consider buying it. Having started computing on the command line and learning to program in text mode I really didn't feel comfortable in a GUI for some time. A friend of mine from London had suggested that I buy an A500 with an XT card. However, in my mind, the desktop appeared cluttered and far from intuitive and the card would have added a layer of complexity I didn't need. In fact, in 1991 I bought a used IBM XT with a Hercules monitor and in 1992 I ended up buying a 386sx notebook with 4MB ram and MS Dos 4, which I actually still have. Shortly afterwards my then future brother-in-law asked me to help him computerise his business. He sat me down in front of an A600 and I didn't know where to start. Up to that point I had only ever used an A500 to play games and that was pretty much all the Amiga was known for in my circles. On the other hand, I was writing my own programs in Basic and Turbo Pascal under Dos and had already ported a proprietary MSX Dos database to MS Dos for a local business. Anyway, I showed him a simple spreadsheet and flat-file database that I had written for myself, the software available for IBM compatibles and their reputation as business machines. Within a week he exchanged his Amiga for an XT. In hindsight, a lot of the reputation associated with the Amiga as not being a serious machine was down to very poor marketing and the price.

I've been facing 45 C when i was living in Athens,Greece . I can imagine what it looks like to have high and unusual temperatures

I actually had an Atari joystick that was designed by Amiga (Amiga written all over the PCB). I guess this was at a time just before Atari wanted to purchase Amiga before Commodore stepped in at the 11th hour. It was the Atari Pro-line CX24 joystick.

Amiga 1000 has very attractive case.

Neil be careful with the heat wave that is hitting england

I hope you made good use of the heatwave!

That ultrasonic cleaner looks familiar! ;)

"We just need to wait for the sun to come out." Careful what you wish for!

I think a lot of people don`t know that there was an upgrade on the graphics with the AGA Chip in later versions. With 262,144 colors in HAM8 Mode it was quiet good for its time (1992) But there was always the chance to upgrade the system with a 24bit graphics board like the Retina at least for the Amiga 2000/3000/4000.

Heard somewhere recently that going over it with a heat gun sorts out the marbling after retrobrighting, think it was on one of Mr Lurch's videos.

I started off on a TRS-80 Coco during high school, and a couple years later an Apple //c as well. Started college in fall of '85 at Virginia Tech going into Computer Eng. and the eng dept was already requiring incoming freshmen to buy IBM PCs. They had a deal with IBM and while you COULD get a clone (I really wanted a Tandy 1000) they made it sound like you'd have problems with incompatibilities and since we knew nothing of the PC world, I got stuck with an IBM PC Portable. Always regretted not getting the Tandy - way more machine for the money. Anyway getting into the IBM world at that time meant I regretfully didn't pay any attention to the Atari / Amiga offerings. The only blip it made at that point was there was on guy on my hall in the dorm in CS who was using an Amiga 1000 for his classes. The CS dept required Macs at the time (Mac XLs running AUX, later Mac IIs) so not sure how he got away with that since you had to turn in floppies with your assignments. Though early 90's when I heard about the Video Toaster I was blown away and really wanted an Amiga after that. Sadly I never got one, but hope to pick one up sometime! Loving this series! Great format and the perspective from the time is really interesting. Thanks for this!

I had an Amiga 1000 on my desk at work for assessment in 1985. I thought it was a great machine and thought about buying one personally. As it ended up I recommended that we stick to IBM PCs at work and I kept my Apple IIe at home due to available software and add on cards for so many optional tasks. I now wish I had bought an Amiga then.

I like the history and restoration but the references to byte magazine have set the series apart. I would like to see more and maybe references to UK magazines too such a Personal Computer world and the way each Sinclair cover had a chimp. keep up the good work.

It's interesting that Byte was correct in their prediction in their summary that the Amiga would last 5-10 years if it manages to survive its first years.

For me it was an easy choise. I had the C64 and when the Amiga arrived I just didn't have the money. Though, I had one classmate and one other friend that got one. They both showed what the Amiga could do so when I eventually had the cash I got myself the A500 and I've never even had a thought of regretting that. I had a few other friends that were Atari fans that got the 1040. I was not impressed by them. I still have that same A500, as well as an A4000 that I got used in the mid 90's.

"just need to wait for the sun".......sometimes you do get what you wish for.....hope it didnt melt😂😂

Hmm, I never heard of Microshop in Tustin, and I was pretty in tune with the local computer stores. I remember looking at an Amiga 1000 in my city (Orange), but they didn't last long. I would go over to a store in neighboring Anaheim, but would've loved to visit an Amiga dealer in Tustin, since that address would've been a bit closer.

After the C64 the Amiga 1000 was my next computer and my first Amiga. I sold the A1000 at one point and took out a bank loan and purchased the Amiga 2000HD

5:10 So until that happens... - as bright sunlight floods through the windows 😄

Since I could afford neither an Amiga nor an ST when they came out and was into machine code programming and graphics I lusted after the machine which had the more impressive graphics I lusted over the one that had better graphics hardware, the Amiga. I had a friend who had some connection to Melbourne House and used to give me machine code programming tips and rumours of games that were still the works. He was the first one who started talking about the Amiga and making it sound amazing. Then a friend's older brother bought an A1000 with compensation money from a motobike accident and after being allowed to use it a few times I was utterly convinced. Looking at STs in shops didn't give me the same thrill. I scoured the classified ads until the first secondhand one appeared for sale. Somehow I had saved enough money. I think I paid $1000 Australian and it included a rare 1081 monitor with the Sony Trinitron picture tube. I sold off a huge collection of 48K Speccy games and hardware. I've always the Amiga generally was the spiritual successor to the Speccy and C64 as well since it was the bedroom coder's dream machine, especially when the A500 appeared later. Sadly, I never figured out how to program it in assembly. That had to wait until I got my A2000 with 030 years later.

It's a shame we didn't have much sun in the UK this week. lol

I bought an A1000 a few years ago and it looks just as stunning as it did in 1985 when my local computer shop had one on display. BUT! The only "problem" is that is is much smaller than it appears in photos, so I really really wish (are you listening Steve Jones?) someone would take the design and scale it up until a regular keyboard would fit under it and it would be tall enough for expansion cards to fit.

When retrobrighting I simply use 12% cream, the oven at 50C/120F and don't need to care about the sun. Five hours and averything looks like new. :)

Crazy in the context of the time really. That 256k alone is a sticking point.

Been waiting for this! The Amiga has a special place in my ( retro nerd ) heart. In terms of 'why would I buy this', I suspect the looping Shadow Of The Beast demo on rotate in Dixons shop windows might have helped

In my case my Cousin DID actually take the Atari ST. But he was always complaining about how almost every magazine review wound up giving the Amiga version of games just a couple of points more, so when time came for me to get one years later, that had an effect on me and I got an A600. Of course the truth is that you had to be in the 16bit market to even make that choice and it was long time before I was in any position to upgrade really.

My fanboi Amiga was the A4000 🤩 Would love to have one

Whenever I see all those mags behind Neil I get very depressed. When I think of all the copies of Amiga Format, C&VG, PCW Magazine, BBC Micro mags, and just whatever random mags I liked the look of that I ended up being made to throw away… it’s just very sad. All that history and nostalgia gone. I can’t even remember all the mags I used to buy. I wonder if anyone will ever manage to build a complete archive of old 8 and 16 bit computer mags… that’d be something to look through!

If I didn't already dislike smoking, my time in computer refurbishment solidified my disdain for such a passtime. The amount of time I spent trying to scrub away the tar and get rid of that smell. There is nothing to put you off from doing something than experiencing first had exactly what it's doing to your insides.