If you're new here then the whole playlist for this series is here: kzfaq.info/sun/PLTE7MGINg5URuY9qc7bNeUAORafPkkaeR And you may also like to press subscribe if you enjoy the videos! Thanks for watching Neil - RMC

I like this format of cleaning and history. A winning nerd combo.

I'll always regret giving away my Amiga 1000 back in 1992, at a time when I was disillusioned with the world of game development. I was originally given the A1000 as part of my deal with DigiTek Software for writing "Dino Wars" and porting "Bill 'n' Ted's Excellent Adventure" to the system. It was a great computer, and I did so much cool stuff with it: programming games, making art with DeluxePaint, and composing music with various Pro Tracker apps. I occasionally feel the temptation to pick up an old Amiga from eBay, but if I manage to find the time to dive back into retro coding, I can do everything in emulation. Still… there is nothing to compare to having the real metal in your hands.

I’ve absolutely loved this method of T2T! The reading of articles as you may back then, giving us a history and a persons thoughts on to buy. Plus of course the actual restoration. Great stuff! H.A.M. APPROVED!!! ;)

Gizmo is the best

24:15: To answer your "what if" question, I think people wouldn't have understood or believed that those sounds and moving images were being produced by that computer. They would have thought they were looking at a VHS tape recording. I think the Warhol demo was actually among the best things they could have done, though if Deluxe Paint II had been available sooner, and if that King Tut image had been featured as "here's one we made earlier", that would have been even better.

Top job as always Neil, another gem saved from certain doom.

I will never forget my Amiga. I still use it once in a while. I used my Amiga to learn programming. Using both amiga basic and others. I now work in AAA studios because of my amiga and learning to write code for the custom ships. I even designed custom PCB back in the day. improving the hardware. I always kept making my amiga more like a PC until I switched.

A little sidebar here. I, for one, appreciate your Philips monitor. It is the model my mate had for his Amiga, and we played hundreds and hundreds of hours on it over the course of several years. Meticulously making our way though the labyrinths of Eye of the Beholder, ripping each other's heads off in Mortal Kombat, racing towards the horizon in Lotus Turbo Challenge II. It all happened on that thing, so in my heart, that is the real Amiga monitor, and I get a little jolt of joy every time I see it.

Never owned an Amiga so loving the vicarious experience from this series - history using mags of the day is fantastic

I'd love to stop by the cave one day just to pet Gizmo, she looks lovely.

I didn’t notice any ‘tortitude from Gizmo 💙 beautiful kitty 💙

Amazing restoration! Very much job done there Neil, smashing job! Thank you also for sharing your Amiga origin story. I very much lived in the UK and was a part of the C64 scene in the mid 1980's, when we moved back to the USA my PAL C64 had issues with NTSC displays so I got myself an Atari 800XL, fell in love with it really. Overall though it seemed micros were not the popular thing for games and consoles were in the USA at this point. So I went the Sega Master System / NES route and onward. It wasn't until 1988/89 when I joined Westwood Studios that I put my hands on the Amiga. I was QA on Eye of the Beholder and since I was the "new guy" they tossed me onto an Amiga 500. It was beautiful. I remember falling in love with the machine itself, and wanting to get one to continue development at home. I did some pixel art as well so it was a handy tool to want for the home... so a fellow Westwood employee sold me his OG A1000 for a nice amount I could afford and off I went. At this point thought the Amiga had flowndered here in the USA a few years after and PC's seemed to take over. I ended up selling my Amiga 1000 to purchase a Neo Geo AES. It wasn't until the Raspberry Pi / MiSTer FPGA that I got back into Amiga and right back into Amiga games development! I love the Amiga, but I probably have the weirdest history you've heard with it! I only ever owned 2 other retail games other than Eye of the Beholder 1 and 2 I helped make on the thing, and they were Shadow of the Beast and The Killing Game Show. So there is my origin story, cheers mate!

Restored to all it's original glory, and love the history along with it. I selected the Amiga due to it's capabilities, but there was no way I could afford a 1000. When the 500 came out I scraped together my funds and got one. It subsequently broke down in days, both the mouse button and the floppy drive, so many other people having the same problem meant there were no spare parts, and waiting months to get a working machine I made the difficult decision to get a refund and then bought my first Atari ST instead. It really hurt at the time as I had made a reasonable investment in dev tools, and then had to do the same for the ST. A good friend many years later stopped by and dropped off his Amiga 1000 as he knew I always wanted one, and I got back into a bit of dev and still have it (along with quite a few other models) in my collection today along with all the dev books and tools.

The Juggler demo - raytraced blew my mind on display in a small computer shop. Me and my mate (Atari 800xl, C64) looked at each other and said we need to get a job.

Great conclusion to the series, Neal. I soaked up every bit of info I could on the Amiga in 86 and 87, but there was no way my family was going to drop $1200+ on a computer. So I saved my pennies from work and bought an Amiga 500 in early 1988 as soon as I could afford one. I always thought the A1000 was somehow "more powerful" than the A500... But that was just in my head.

Congratulations with the arcade partner addition to the RMC premises. Love the cat addition, they are precious animals.

The Amiga in all it's incarnations is still an amazing piece of kit.

Blimey!! Looks like Gizmo's been fed quite a few times after midnight ! big cat sir 😋 awesome video as always.. The Amiga was always my go to graphics machine in the late 80's and was even using them in 2d animation production for line tests till 97, even though we had NeXT machines with Animo for our main production. It started me on quite the career path at University using Animate 4D, Dpaint and Lightwave. It will always have a place in my life. Thanks Commodore for giving my bro one for free for game development when I was a kid. Sent me on quite the journey. 🖖

I've truly loved this video series on the restoration of the Amiga 1000. I believe that ProPaint was actually released by Commodore as GraphiCraft, but I suppose that this has already been pointed out somewhere in the comments. I didn't use this "pixel graphics" program until the mid-to-late 1990s and it was a poor substitute for Deluxe Paint, but it would have been amazing to use it in 1985. I bought two Amiga joysticks on clearance in 1984 at a toy store at the mall called KayBee Toys. These were about $5 each. These became my favorite joysticks to use with my Commodore 64 (I didn't get my first Amiga, a 1200, until around 1994). Much later, when I used them again-- perhaps in the early 2000s-- the Amiga joystick was especially painful to use. I couldn't fathom how I liked it so much fifteen years earlier. I didn't see the Spaceballs demo until around 1997, which was a few years after it was first released. It blew my mind then for what it was doing and I can't imagine what I would have thought if I had seen it in 1985. The Amiga 1000 was so far ahead of its competitors that no one even understood what true multitasking was when the system came out. I don't believe that we could go back in time with modern software that would run on a base Amiga 1000 with 512K and show anyone who lived in 1985 the software who could appreciate it. I think even Byte magazine writers might shrug their shoulders and peek under the desk to see what $10,000 computer was hidden away that was really running the show. Really, come on, can you blame them? Amiga, forever, baby!

I got one in 1986. Was never in doubt that this was what I wanted to write games on once the 8-bit machines would fade.

I had an A500, at least in 1988. I remember making a friend through a BBS who was around the corner from me. When I saw his A1000, I felt like I seriously missed out on something special. It looked awesome! It had such a polished aesthetic. When I saw the keyboard storage under the CPU, the pen holder slot.. Yeah, I wanted one of THOSE! He also introduced me to XCOPY.

What a wonderful restoration. I did make that decision and did not buy an Amiga 1000 back in the day. It was really an easy decision since I did not have $1000+ to spend on one. That being said, it was also an easy decision to drop $550 on an Amiga 500 in 1987 and that decision changed my life.

A friend of mine got one more or less as soon as it was released. And oh my how much I wanted one when I saw it and played around with it. It was just to expensive for me though. I was still in high school and I had to settle for my C64 a few more years. Then the 500 appeared but since I did my military service I couldn't afford that one either. So when that was done in the autumn of 1988 and I got my first real job, the first thing I did was go and buy the A500, 1084, 1010 and F/A-18 Interceptor. I never went outside my apartment that first weekend. Would still love to have an A1000, it would look awesome next to my A500 and A4000. They are to darn expensive though, again. Over the years I've used some incredible software on my Amigas. Pagestream and ImageFX are two shining examples that I actually used professionally. Bars & Pipes is another. Had software like those been avaliable when the Amiga was released things might have become completely different. Just one of the many bad decisions by Commodore to not have the software ready.

Trash to treasure never disappoints. Cheers!

Thank you Neil, I enjoyed this series and how you combined the restore with the story of the computer.

I did spend the money in 1985, and later the 2meg expansion box. Still have it, still runs

If they would see that demo back in 85, their heads would explode!

My old man bought me the Batman pack from The Computer Shop on Ashley Road not far away in Parkstone. What an amazing day that was and I’ll never forget that my dad bought me this on credit. RIP Dad

My brother saved tirelessly for an Amiga 1000 only to have it be discontinued. Settling for the A500 in August 1987 for the sum of £487. 512K RAM, Workbench 1.2, Deluxe Paint I & Deluxe Video. You didn't get a lot in the bundle back then for such a price....but you did get an Amiga....that's all that mattered.

The Trash to Treasure features have always been my favorite part of the channel, most enjoyable :) ETA: Don't know about gloves, I'd have chosen a hazmat suit...

Can’t believe that Amiga launch is nearly forty years ago now, where did the time go! That $500 fee per product was probably why nearly every game launched on the Amiga just bypassed Workbench all together and had custom disk loaders.

Seeing and hearing "9 Fingers" ALWAYS gives me goosebumps. Amiga rules :)

I think we need to see more of Gizmo...especially when Marks not available. I think she makes a good stand-in.

I am watching this wearing my amiga tick t-shirt. :)

3:52 I agree, a cat is the best method for cleaning filthy gloves. Now I see where all her black mottling came from.

I worked at Lansdowne Computer Centre in Bournemouth,owned by Hugh Symons Group. This was after working for Diamond Computer Systems Ltd in Ashley Road, Poole. Some good memories 😆

My tortie, Kiki likes to watch while I clean my Amiga keyboard too. :)

I really enjoyed taking this journey with you.

A fantastic series, one of my favourites so far as a result of looking at everything in context. This is the kind of content that I tune in for! Regarding how best to demonstrate the system, I think the BBC Micro Live episode from 1985 did a great job of showing what the Amiga was capable of, although I accept Fred probably isn't quite so glamorous as the official launch lineup!

Looks Great! Thank you so much for sharing!

What would maybe make an interesting display in the cave might be the 1000 alongside the pc of the time, the mac, the atari st and a selection of unix workstations from sgi, sun etc showing what you would have had the option to choose in 1985 and then asking people to guess the prices and what they'd choose for a given task at the time. Could get some interesting responses.

Most excellent! Can't wait to finish my 1000 one of these days. All the best to Gizmo!!!!!

I LOVE THIS COMPUTER!

Absolutely loved this series!

This is a beautifully put together series, great work!

Like many people, I had a vic202 and c64 in the early 80ss, bought commodore magazines. Once the A1000 came out, thats all the magazines talked about, but prices way out of my range. Once the A500 came out, I could afford that. Such an amazing machine

That is one of the most impressive retro brites I’ve seen yet. That keyboard was a mess. Nice job! I’ll sleep a little easier tonight knowing another Amiga part lives to fight on another day.

Lovely combo of cleaning, restoration, upgrades and history. And so soothing too!

Great result! Well done mate.

What a transformation! And I love how the history is threaded through the restoration

Really enjoying this format, fantastic video.

Really like this - the mix of history, 1980s trade news, and restoration. Good job.

Brilliant series, loved this so much, all the best to you

I just remembered that once at age 14 or something I found a cardboard box with various SpectraVideo stuff, and in that box was the original box (with manual and floppies) of Deluxe Paint II for the Amiga. The feeling I got when I held that box in my hand was weird, because that iconic Tutankhamon sarcophagus image had been burnt into my mind for a few years before that. And all I wanted was an Amiga to run it. Never happened though, never owned one. And now, even though I can get one, I don't want to - the tools today are so much better. But I'll always have the memberberries :)

Another great video! I believe your channel is the best retrocomputing channel to watch on KZfaq

Enjoyed the history and restoration interwoven format!

Once again - gr8 format!

That A1000 certainly is looking good once more. Sometimes I miss my A1000. I always like how you could slide the keyboard under the main unit. :) I had upgraded its memory using the front memory expansion. A later upgrade back in the day was to install an internal 68020 CPU board with additional on-board RAM.

Oh no, for shame! You touched Gizmo with the murder gloves on 🙀😝

Another great video!

Great, thanks for sharing !!!

Excellent series and a brilliant idea to combine both the restoration of a unit and it's history ancored down with extracts from Byte magazine. I really enjoyed this one, thanks ;)

Awesome work Sir thank you

In 1985, I think I would've bought the Atari 1040 ST. In 1987, it would have been the Amiga 500. And if that 1993 demo had been out in 1985? Hard to say but surely it would have raised a lot more eyebrows.

Well done Gizmo! Neil too, I guess.

Just watched all 3 T2T and you relived the history as I did with the ZX Spectrum. Very difficult to keep a logical approach, when these comps were the ignition to the love I have for them now. I bought a CBM Amiga 500 in 1990, from Rumbelows, priced £399 (Screen Gems pack) and was blown away; my love was more for gaming, so games like FOFT, Super Cars 2 and Shadow of the Beast were my mainstay. But that RF Modulator though...

Superb Neil. Entertaining and scratching my nostalgia itch at the same time. The case looked lovely once treated, but for some reason it was bothering me. I then realised that the only one I actually remember was owned by a chain smoking, leather jacket wearing, bearded man with a bald head (I know!) and his one was as yellow as Ringo's submarine. Great video!

Great series, thanks!

Great conclusion video. I like the mixture of history and restoration. 👍🏼

Fab series Neil! Great restoration and as always the history lesson is fascinating.

What an outro with the 9 finger demo

i loved this series

Well done!

Superb work on the restoration, Neil. Your steady and methodical approach with tried and tested techniques yielded top results. The infusion of history during the restoration works very well.

My first Amiga. It was just too expensive to get upgrades in the UK. So I sold it and bought an Amiga 2000 off a mate who bought an A3000.

If that music from 1993 played in 1985, everybody would be in shock like in back to the future

The Amiga 1000 was ahead of it’s time.

It's interesting to see the key text was blue/red to match the Commodore logo originally. Great work. In terms of 1986, it was definitely the cost-reduced C64C that helped prop the company up - and they repeated the trick with the Amiga 500...

Amazing video series, and that ending was really really great :D

we need more Gizmo on the channel

8:00 I bet Jack Tramiel was laughing his head off when he read that quote

Simon's retrobrighting technique really does wonders. Great to see this machine restored to a lovely state!

I just came across your channel, and watched this Amiga series. This was really well done, and I liked your approach to it. Now I'm a subscriber :-)

The 9 Fingers section gave me goosebumps

Seeing Gizmo is the first time my wife has taken an interest in your channel. 😅

Lovely tortoiseshell!

Though an ST fan for sure, the Amiga was a nice machine... after all.. in heart and soul, it is a true Atari machine designed by the man...Jay Miner. Probably the biggest mistake Atari ever made was not keeping Jay around at all cost.Commodore really did drop the ball with the Amiga though. Sad. It was really a nice machine.

I also bought my Amiga 500 from Lansdowne Computer Center. I went to the College in Lansdowne in 1988.

Came for the computers, stayed for the cat. 😍

Solid! Top KEK!

A friend's older brother had one and another friend had an Amiga 500 (with expansion). The 1000 looked like a proper computer but I just remember all the things it couldn't run.

What a machine, I am in love

Nice restoration job Neil

I spent a lot of time at a computer shop in the late 1980s and I got kinda okay at a quick demoing making pizzas from scratch on DP on the Amiga.

That's an impressive result! That keyboard really scrubbed up well!

One problem that seems to grace a lot of American companies is, they always want to take the development cost of a machine back right away. The Amiga 1000 probably had a production cost of a couple of hundred dollars, so they could have easily matched the ST cost (until Jack starts another price war) and still made apple kind of profit, but instead they wanted to squeeze every last dollar out of the machine possible. This drastically hurt initial sales. Also, the should have done the Atari approach and released a home version (A500) and then a desktop version.

To me. The biggest thing that was missed. Amiga should have had an arcade division. It would been awesome hardware for an arcade game. And seeing at the arcade in the 1980's "Powered By Amiga" on the screen of your favorite arcade game would have been awesome marketing.

Neil , more gizmo please 👍👍👍👍 fantastic episode as usual

Interesting series, I got my Amiga 1000 probably in 1994 (Win '95 was not out yet, but Commodore already bankrupt), it was my first Amiga experience and I was completely fascinated by what it could do. Mine was actually in pristine condition, but I had to give the keyboard a really good clean once, only after that I realised that the text on the Return-key had a different colour... Many people were laughing about why I got an Amiga after Commodore died already, but I just wanted a secondhand (=affordable) computer. Soon I figured out that it was in my opinion much better than my dad's 486 and my dad managed to source a second one (in terrible condition) with a hard drive and memory expansion for me. A couple of years later I upgraded to an Amiga 1200 with some more expansion. In retrospect: yes, I wish I still had the A1000, it got stowed away a couple of years, then we decided to sell off all my retro computing stuff (which was almost worthless at the time) to some enthousiast, I hope he still takes good care of it. And for my experience: the first time I was as happy about a computer again as with the Amiga, was with the (then also already a couple of years old) B/W Powermac G3 I bought in 2003 with Mac OS X...