Purchasing A Second-Hand Amiga 500

Today I visited the auto wreckers to see if I could find a second-hand front side light for my 1999 Toyota Camry Touring.

Behind the counter were two auto wrecker employees with headsets talking to various customers.  This is a sign of the times.

“Do you sell front lights for the Toyota Camry Touring made in nineteen ninety nine,” I asked.

“We’ve got brand new ones!”

I’m thinking, “Brand new?  But this is a Toyota Camry Touring from nineteen ninety nine. That is more than twenty years ago. How could they be brand new after twenty years?”  

I had to wait in reception for 20 minutes while one of the workers went upstairs. He rummaged around trying to find a second-hand light.  It took some time. But eventually I got the part.  

I had to pay $110 dollars in cash for that side light.  I was a bit upset because I have $500 dollars in the bank that I want to withdraw to buy a second-hand Amiga 500.  I had $650 dollars cash all up reserved for the purchase of a second-hand Amiga 500.  I already took $150 dollars out of my cash box money.

Drive To Meet Amiga 500 Reseller

By 3:40pm I made a quick dip back home to pick up two 3.5 inch floppy disks with the game Super Cars on there.  I had not loaded the contents of these floppy disks for 25 years.  I scooped up $600 dollars in cash.  Then I hopped back in the car for a drive towards Luddenham.

I was somewhat excited and nervous to drive to a petrol station in Luddenham to pick up a second-hand Amiga 500 today.  

The Amiga 500 reseller I assumed must have had the same kind of life and personality as me when we were both younger. I think to myself, he must have a lot of things in common with me because we both loved Amiga 500s when we were younger kids.  He’s kept his Amiga 500 for over 20 years, until today. He’s trying to sell it for $600 dollars now.

When the Amiga 500 reseller talks on Facebook Messenger he sounds like me.  He uses all kinds of weird old words.

I was slightly nervous thinking about that.

Consumer Trade Soars Since 1990s

I anticipated that when I catch up with this Amiga reseller guy, I wanted to test out the Amiga 500. I suspect the nostalgia of playing Super Cars in a coffee shop 25 years later will be an amazing trip back down memory lane.

Who would have thought in 1993 that there would be coffee shops all around Australia twenty years later? So many things have changed.

Consumerism really took off since the 1990s.  People are able to spend their money on so many different goods and services. There are markets for everything these days. Inventors and entrepreneurs can rarely find a gap in the market anymore.

Business has been very big in the last 20 years. People have gone out and done business that have filled gaps in markets everywhere.  That’s commerce. There’s money to be made everywhere in the free market.

Remaining In The Amiga & PC Scene

I could not wait to get the Amiga 500 back home.

Other than lingering nerves and nostalgic thoughts accompanying me on the drive to Luddenham, I also used Facebook Messenger on my mobile phone to chat to Imad.

Imad was my Amiga buddy back in the 1990s.  We both owned Amiga 500 computers between the years 1993 to 1996, until we both moved on to IBM computers.  

Imad is back from Canberra with his hoist of computer games.  He purchases X-Box, PlayStation and PC games, then sells them online with a marked up price for his troubles.

 “I am driving to meet up with the Amiga seller now.  Come over.  We can go back down memory lane with the Amiga 500,” I said.  

He said, “Alright. I’ll come over on Wednesday at two o’ clock.”

As I hung up the call on the mobile phone, I thought how amazing it is that there is more computing power in my Oppo phone than there is in one thousand Amiga 500s.

Meeting The Amiga 500 Reseller

I arrived next to Luddenham petrol station at 4:25pm.  The Amiga 500 seller that I only knew through Facebook had already parked. He had a very nice, large off-blueish Mitsubishi Triton.   

When the Amiga 500 seller saw me drive in, he waved to me.  

I saw him. He was a taller than average somewhat skinny bloke. He had a bald head, a smidgen of fat just under his cheeks sagging down slightly. He kind of did look a tiny bit familiar.  He reminded me of Jett.

I got out of my car and walked over to him

“Thank you for coming down. I appreciate it,” I said as I neared him.

He said, “That’s all right.”  

 “Do you want to come into the coffee shop?  I will buy coffees for us.”  

 “No, that’s alright. I just wanted to make sure that you can see the Amiga and see that it’s legitimate,” he said.

Coming Face To Face With An Amiga 500

The Amiga 500 reseller than told me his own backstory.  

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t invite you over. I have some issues where I invited someone over from Facebook last time, and they took something from the house.”  

 “No, that’s alright, man. I understand.”  

The guy proceeded to open up his car door.  Inside on the back seat was a huge box with the Amiga 500 in there. He opened the box to show me the contents inside.  

The Amiga 500 was in almost perfect mint condition.  The slots at the back of the Amiga 500 were in great condition.  Nothing was bent out of shape. The keyboard was in great shape.  All the keys were there. The Amiga 500 had the floppy disk drive present, as well as the modulator in the back of the Amiga 500 that connects to the audio and video channels. I had not seen these in over 20 years, but it was all coming back to me.

The Need To Test A Second-Hand Amiga 500

 “You will need an old style TV to hook this up,” he told me.

“Oh really?”  

I was in a bit of trouble because I don’t have an old TV.

“You should be alright. Have a look at this,” he reacted to my stumped facial expressions.

He picked the Amiga 500 up out of the box and showed me the back.

 “If you get an RGB connection, then you won’t need this. You can just connect the RGB. There are many different types of connections you can have for an RGB. You can connect it to a new TV or a computer monitor. That’s really up to you.” 

“That’s great. I’ll look into it,” I was learning.

The Good Old Days

Then we began talking about the good old days.

“I bought this Amiga 500 when I was a kid,” he shared.

 “What did you used to do on it?” 

 “I played games on it mostly.  I used to invite my friends over and we played computer games.” 

 “Yeah, that’s what my best friend and I used to do. I still have the same best friend from back in those days.”  

“I still keep in touch with my best friend from back then.  Actually, I just saw him a short while ago. I hadn’t seen him for two years. Then we bumped into each other and we had a chat.”  

Our lives mirror each other. It’s really funny.

The Evolution Of Computer Memory

We spent ten more minutes talking about the good old days.

I said “Isn’t it funny?  When I was driving up here to meet up with you, I was thinking that I’m driving down in the car to meet up with this guy at a coffee shop. There weren’t even coffee shops around twenty years ago!”  

He nodded his head and said, “Yeah, things have changed a lot.”  

 “How much memory was in an Amiga 500?  Half a megabyte, right?  My Oppo phone has twenty gigabytes of memory right now.”

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

The Reason To Purchase An Amiga 500

He also asked me, “What are you going to do with the Amiga 500?”  

I told him the truth.

I said, “I write a diary. I’ve been writing the diary every day since 1996 for the last twenty years. The diary started on the Amiga 500.  But before I started to write a diary, I didn’t have a history of what I did. So I want to go back into the Amiga 500 and check the date timestamps on all my save games and all the documents that I wrote, to try to piece together my life before I started to write a diary.”  

He nodded his head.  He didn’t say anything to that.   His eyes were wide open.  He was surprised with my need of the Amiga 500.

Buying The Second-Hand Amiga 500

We chatted away. The Amiga reseller looked like a great bloke, just like me. We have similar kinds of personality. We love to chat.

I told him, “We don’t need to go into the coffee shop.  I’m sold. I’ll give you the cash.”

He didn’t really want to go in anyway.  

I got out my wallet.  We’re still talking for about five minutes. Eventually I gave him the $600 dollars.  

 “Just count it to make sure it’s all there,” I insisted.

He could see that I’m an honest guy. He counted the money.

 “Sometimes I double count. So make sure you count it correctly,” I joked.

A Commodore 64 Computer For Sale

Once the transaction was made, the Amiga seller told me that he’s also trying to sell a Commodore 64.

I looked at him and gasped, “Are you serious?”

 “Yeah.  I’m trying to sell it for the same amount of money. It’s also in great condition. It’s got a lot of old cartridges. It’s got the external drive as well as the internal drive.”  

Then we started talking about the Commodore 64 days.  

I told him, “That’s great that you still have that!”  

 “Yeah, we’re trying to move house and there’s a lot of old stuff that I’m trying to get rid of before I move house.”  

“I have a friend that might want to buy it off you. That’s great!”  

He showed me a picture of the Commodore 64 computer on his Facebook Market listing.  I saw the modifications he had done to his Commodore 64 too.

The Evolution Of Computer Programming

We talked about programming.  

I told him, “It would be lovely to be able to program in the Commodore 64. I can’t remember which one had a checksum 20.  I think it was the Amiga 500. But imagine trying to hard-code a game into a Commodore 64 cartridge. We can be game makers twenty five years after the Commodore 64 came out.  That’d be awesome!”

I was very giddy while talking to this guy. He was also very happy back towards me. He’d found a legitimate buyer that honestly wanted an Amiga 500 for the right purposes.

Amiga 500 Floppy Disk Games Collection

Then he showed me his box of 3.5 inch floppy disk games.

He told me, “I have to be honest with you.  Only a quarter of the games in this box work because they’ve aged.”  

I said, “No, don’t worry. At home I’ve still got five of these boxes full of games. I’m pretty sure that I’m still going to get some good use out of it.”

He laughed when I said that.  

 “Almost all these games are pirated,” he smiled.  

 “That’s what we used to do when we were kids with an Amiga 500.  Almost all the games were pirated, you know.”

I finished up with this great man at 4:45pm.  Then I hopped back into the car and started on my drive back to Campbelltown.  

Amiga 500 Magazine Cover Disks Time Stamp Method

On the return drive, I began to think about the Amiga 500 project.  I remembered that actually, the only Amiga 500 games that I used to buy were computer games that came off of Amiga magazines.

That would be interesting. If I can look back through my stack of 3.5 inch floppy disks formatted for the Amiga 500, I’ll be able to see some of them with labels on the floppy disk surface that shows I had purchased the disks together with an Amiga magazine. Those computer magazines came with demos and games on a 3.5 inch floppy disk.

If I can go back through my stack of computer books from the 1990s (which are still under my bed, I hope), then I can piece together what month and year I purchased the Amiga magazine.  That is one way to date the purchase of my Amiga 500.  I’ll be able to at least get a good idea of when I had an Amiga 500.

I never thought about computer magazines as a forensic analysis tool.  Now that I have the second-hand Amiga 500 itself, it should not be a big deal for me to load up the individual floppy disks and try to find date time stamps in them. This is going to be a great project for me.