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[irishmike]

Greetings All:

I have been away for about 2 years (it would be in October according to when I last visited the forums). I have not been active in the forums here, but considerably active in my vintage computing hobby in general.

Since I have a "beer budget", my Amiga buying has been on hold (and mostly still is). I sold my A4000 that I built up over time and it brought a little prosperity to my household. I have decided to buy another Amiga, however I am going lower end this time.

What sparked my wanting a new "miggie" is that I ended up making a purchase on eBay for GFA BASIC 3.5 (for my Atari ST) -- turns out that I had my "duh cap" on that day and failed to notice that quite prominently, the version is for Amiga. Ok, I now have a new, never used copy of GFA BASIC for Amiga and it is not in any way the seller's fault that I was dunce enough not to notice the listing said "Amiga" (so I did not even mention the foulup to the seller over in England nor do I harbor any ill will towards him, the transaction went very well). This alone didn't spark my wanting a new machine.

I have been steadily acquiring software and parts for an Atari 1040ST that I bought from eBay and wanted to get "Shadow of the Beast" for it. A friend here in the Kansas City Metro Area suggested that the Amiga version looked much better. Just last night (August 2, 2009), I purchased a copy off of eBay and it should be here later this week. Hence the fire is lit under my butt to get a new Amiga machine.

COMPLETE ASIDE: IF anyone has a copy of the Shadow of the Beast manual they would scan and make a PDF, I could use it!!!!

So I am now looking for an Amiga 2000, I think I can find the base machine here in Kansas City -- but I will need to find a flicker fixer/scan doubler for it and I understand that the one that software hut used to manufacture is no longer in production currently as they had a parts supplier dry up. (That was the Toastscan). So I am needing either a Picasso II (I believe that that is a VGA card -- please correct me if I am wrong) or to find one of those type flicker fixers. Help is welcome for me to acquire that as well. Otherwise I think I know where to find OS 3.9, ROM 3.1 versions and such for the unit. Normally Amigakit in case anyone wondered!

I am also looking for the compiler for GFA BASIC 3.5 since I bought the interpreter.

Anyhow, I am not sure how well I will like the A2000 because I loved the A4000 and my A1200 before it. I would definitely buy another A1200, but the price is way out of my budget for right now. I have to build the whole Amiga system for under $200 USD... that is going to be hard. That, of course, is not including OS 3.9 and the 3.1 ROMs. After those the price will be closer to $300 USD I think.

Yes, doing retro computing is sometimes a challenge!

Anyhow, hope some of you can help with some of the things I mentioned above. By all means -- suggest, advise, and comment. Look forward to being involved in the community again.