My Crash Course with the Amiga 2000

In this video, we're covering the Amiga 2000, a delightful machine that offers as much challenging fun as its selection of games does! Please like, subscribe, and stay tuned for fresh content and all the latest information about the Vintage Geek museum.

Hosted and produced by Aaron Ishmael.
Technical work by Joseph William Lewis.

[MichaelAStanhope]

In 1990 when I was in Jr. High we had a TV studio in the school. Instead of the principal doing morning announcements over the PA system, we would have students read out the announcements on the TV in a "news" style show in the morning. The "pre-show" was the days lunch menu and upcoming events shown on the screen, computer generated. We initially used a TI 99/4a to do the screens, but in 1990 we upgraded to the Amiga 2000 with a genloc in it. Man, that made things so much easier, and nicer, and we could even use the Amiga to overlay the "newscasters" names on the screen while they were talking, which we couldn't do with the TI. It was an amazing machine for its time. Glad they still are so loved to this day!

[giuseppe]

Lots of people had an Amiga at home (mostly Amiga 500) back in the days, at last here in Italy and I think in parts of Europe too like Germany and Britain, I remember i laughed alot at the b/w PC 286s my school had for the Informatics classes, we programmed there in turbopascal 3 and had pascal excercises to do at home. Now believe me or not, i used a total software emulator of a pc (slow but usable) called "transformer" on my humble Amiga 500 and I prepared my Pascal home exercises there on the Amiga. The professor at school couldnt believe I used an emulator on an Amiga to make the excercises. Also we used to exchange games disks at school among friends, and there always was the pirate guy who used to sell them for around 5000 liras if i well remember, equals to about today 2, 5 euros (edit: I used sometimes to buy some games from the pirate guy but i had also a lot of original boxed games, some of my favorites: Turrican I and II, Dragon Breed, and Lotus I, the first one, i didnt like the second). Very good times.

PS: I remember on the magazines Commodore was very often called: "mamma Commodore" (mother Commodore) so much Commodore was a thing back in the days, at last here.

[danyoutube]

The 'cover disks' were stuck to the front of magazines that you would buy in the shop ('cover' being the front cover of the magazine) - in the case of the one you show @8:17, the magazine was Amiga Format, probably the most popular Amiga magazine in the 1990s. I always looked forward to getting the next month's magazine, I rarely if ever failed to buy one each month, whether from Amiga Format, CU Amiga, The One or Amiga Action. My principal interest, as a child with no knack for creating music or artwork, was demos of computer games, but I also enjoyed the snippets of various types of 'serious' software that came on these coverdisks. I never knew about the Amiga until Dad surprised us with an A500+ for Xmas 1991, and I read in the magazines about the older big box Amigas such as the A2000 with curiosity.

[TeeDohJackson]

When I was younger, we almost bought an Amiga 2000 and had a family friend with a 500. I remember being in the computer store and playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the salesman getting angry with me because every time you enter or exit the sewers, you needed to change the disk and wait for it to load. Well, anyone who's ever played that game knows that you're constantly going in and out of sewers, especially on that first map.
But I'll never forget seeing and playing Shadow of the Beast and Agony also and how amazing those games were. When I lived in Japan, I was able to revisit Shadow of the Beast on the PC Engine and held the speed run record for both the PC Engine and TurboGrafx-16.
Lately, I've been playing loads of games on the Amiga 500 Mini. Even though it's not real Amiga hardware, it's still a blast and makes me think of what could have been if we bought one when I was a kid. We ended up getting a 486 years later.

[yodabolt]

I went from the Color Computer 2 to an Amiga 1000. It was such a great time to be a nerd.

[lawrencemanning]

I loved my Amigas. We got a 500 in Xmas ‘89 (Batman pack) and mostly it was just games, but I loved exploring workbench and figuring out how to make a bare bones OS with RAD:. But I really got sucked in with a A1200. Learned the skills that started my programming career: C and Perl on that machine and I still have it. I still love the OS and had so much fun exploring it, as a user and programmer.
Really looking forward to hearing you explore this machine fully. I dreamed of owning a A3000 but a 2000 would have been fab too!

[ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

Nice Amiga, could you hear me screaming at the screen? prob not

[cobaltblue]

@3:43 I laughed so hard at that edit. Went right to: "Its been about a

[antipode]

Even though this is an older video, I had to comment. Just like you, as a kid I went from a CoCo2 to IBM PCs, and just like you, I've never even seen an Amiga until I got my first one a few months ago. And yes, just like you it took a significant amount of effort to get it working. I would have been very surprised if your system worked on first power-on.

Amiga Format is a thick magazine for the Amiga that came with disks. Used to buy some of them back in the day when i had a Amiga 500. That 2000 motherboard is not destroyed it just need some work.

[JamieOrlando]

Lovely machine. The barrel batteries in these act like a self destruct mechanism these days. Best to remove them and neutralize the alkaline stuff with an acid like vinegar. The traces can be repaired, sockets replaced, etc. Definitely worth looking into someone who can repair. Chris Edwards Restoration is a good channel to see what can be done with these corroded boards.

[giuseppelavecchia]

Hai un'ottimo AMIGA.l'A2000 e' uno dei migliori della leggendaria stirpe AMIGA, computer mitico!

[EddieSheffield]

My journey is much like yours - I started with a Coco as well. Had a bit of Apple ][ at school and dad had a //c I did some work one. He was a physics teacher and before he got the //c we worked together to write a couple of physics programs on the Coco to use in class. But since he had Apple ][s at the high school I would get the code working on the Coco, copy it from the screen using a typewriter (no printer yet!), while attempting to translate the differences in the BASIC dialects along the way. Dad would take the modified hardcopy, type it in on the Apple at school, and bring back any errors he hit that he couldn't figure out himself along with a printed listing of his version. Later, rinse, repeat. Did it for a couple of programs - one for doing force vector calculations and one for projectile motion. But mostly I jumped from the Coco to the IBM when I started college in '85

I also really wanted an Amiga later, around '90 or so when I learned of the Video Toaster. Tho I had a neighbor in the dorm in '86 at with an Amiga 1000 I never really got to know him or use it. Still want to get my hands on one!

[naviamiga]

Such envy whenever I see a big box Amiga. Would love to own one (and have the space for) one of these days.

[nevilovermann]

I just want to let you know that these Amiga floppy drives are usually farily easy to service, and if there is no bringing them back they can be replaced with modified PC-drives (or digital media drive emulation solutions). There are several online Amiga stores in the US, and I'm sure a few of them also offer good repair services. I live in Norway and send all my damaged components to a guy in finland. No matter how broken they are they always come perfectly working and looking fantastic. I'm sure someone could take care of your motherboards and expansion boards.
The Amiga is still very much alive and the A2000 is a great machine to get into the platform. There are lots of new and interesting Zorro- and accelerator-cards being released for the A2000. You're in for a treat!
Also, check out LemonAmiga for a quick intrroduction to the games available. ;)

[fattomandeibu]

On the games not working thing; this may actually be because of your OS ROM. The Amiga OS is stored in ROM, the Workbench disk simply holds the UI and some tools. A lot of older games will access the OS ROM directly, and if you aren't using OS 1.2 or 1.3, then these will fail to load. A considerable number of other titles will also refuse to run if not in the internal drive.

You can solve the first part by using a boot disk(I forget the name) that will write a ROM image into RAM and use that as the OS until powered off by the power switch, but survive a control+double Amiga key reset. For the latter issue, you'll unfortunately have to find a working internal floppy drive.

[sideburn]

Your disks may not be bad. I’ve had a hell of a time getting many games to work on a 2000 and most that do work, I have to boot off the internal fd:0. They won’t work off the external df:2.

[ArctosArcanum]

The reason you got flickering is that it is a non-standard mode for NTSC. The interlaced mode flickers on the monitor, but on a standard NTSC display it would be the standard mode. The interlaced video mode was the reason the Amiga was so beloved in TV, because it was compatible with standard NTSC out of the box.

[drphilxr]

FYI- Do you know about "Dr Chris"? Chris Edwards restoration channel here on YTube- great guy, super amiga resource (he was a tech for CBM back in the day), great channel, great help for saving people's Amigas!

[Channel-Zx]

Great video, if you are looking for some classic all time Amiga games, the Lotus I, II, III series car racing games and for pinball, Pinball Illusions, Pinball Fantasies and of course all time classics Lemmings, Turrican 2, Rainbow Islands, Bubble Bobble for starters there are a ton of classic side scrollers Putty, Flibo's Quest big list.