My Amiga and Atari ST Collection

Being a cold, wet, and dark weekend I decided it was high time that I dug out my remaining Commodore Amiga and Atari ST machines from the back of the garage.

It was very wet and cold, so when I brought them into the warm they immediately got covered with condensation. I will definitely have to let them acclimate before powering them on.

Yes, looking at them now, I probably do have too many. I blame the pandemic! Some people took up baking sour dough, I collected computers I didn’t have back in the day or that I did have and I miss owning.

Back in the day we (and by ‘we’ I mean my big brother) bought the Atari ST because it was £100 cheaper than the Amiga, plus everyone we knew who had upgraded to a 16 bit machine did the same thing.

Well, apart from one wealthier family who had both.

I always wanted am Amiga, though, so that is probably why I’ve so many now.

That said, I’ve been very lucky at picking up “parts or repairs” computers on eBay. Some of them only needed a little TLC and my small but obviously enough electronics abilities to breathe life back into them.

All of them at minimum required a good and thorough cleaning.

It’s understandable that the people who sold them after unearthing machines from Grandpa’s shed don’t necessarily have technical knowledge or motivation.

Mostly I had to use a cloth, screwdriver, and isopropyl alcohol.

But not all of them were a bargain – indeed, a couple I did over-pay for via Facebook marketplace.

Some I upgraded with modern convenience features, RAM, storage, and so on, plus one has an FPGA inside.

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