As it was in Leningrad - 2001. Commodore 64

2001. Commodore 64

Once at the institute, at the very beginning of the lecture, one of my
the teacher raised some kind of keyboard above his head and asked
audience question - who knows what this is? Everyone was silent, and I
took a closer look and blurted out that it was a Commodore 64. Then he added that
This is such an ancient home computer from the early eighties.
The teacher explained that for some reason one of the students brought
I left THIS for him on the table and now he doesn’t know what’s wrong with it
do. And after the lecture, I approached the teacher and asked
give IT to me, since I know exactly what to do with it. But
the teacher said that he should lie down for now and put him on
the closet where I saw him every time I came to class.

Several months have passed. I moved on to the next course, and classes
in this auditorium we've run out. I already forgot about Commodore.
But one day during a break that teacher came up to me and
asked to come see him. I went in and he gave me this one
Commodore 64. At that time, all I knew about the Commodore was that it had
it has a very cool sound. And mine didn't even have a power supply. I
started looking for at least some information on it - what voltages
and where to submit it. At some conference in Fido (more likely
total, ZX.SPECTRUM) described the situation that there is a naked computer,
it is unknown whether he is a worker, and asked to share information about
SbChG models.First Muchkaev Maxim responded and said that my
The model is incredibly cool and rare, since G = Golden. But then
corrected himself and wrote that G means just a German assembly.
Then someone else advised me to contact the locals
Commodores - Vovka Larkov or Oleg Sazonov. I'm first
knew in absentia, since I often downloaded various things from him from BBS
Spectrum (and not only) software. I only knew about the second one
from hearsay - he was involved in adapting games for General Sound, but
lived very far from me. Therefore, I decided to negotiate with
Larkov. I knew his phone number and I called. We immediately
We agreed to meet at his house.

On the appointed day I came to Vovka. He met me with
phone to his ear and hung there almost the entire time,
while we were checking out my Commodore. First we just connected the block
power supply and connected to the TV. The computer turned on, but did not
The power indicator was on. Later it turned out that he was
switched on with reverse polarity. Then Vovka tucked it into the commodore
some kind of board and turned on the computer again, but the board did not
earned. He moved it inside, then cleaned the contacts, but
The board never worked. Vovka waved his hand and said that
The connector is faulty. In his commodore the board worked. It was
homemade Final III. Then he connected the drive and loaded
some kind of toy on my computer. I think it was Last Ninja 2.
I remember that music is for meI really liked it. I tugged a little
joystick, and that’s where our tests ended.

There were two or three more people who responded to my request
help with documentation. One of them even sent (without
warnings) to my address via e-mail some archive
unmeasured size. I found out about this when once again
called to pick up mail from my uplink in SPbZXNet Alexandra
Maoirova. He was very happy to download the hidden archive for me, oh
what he told me in his letter. He also told me that I
now 2 weeks in Real-only and what if he sees me in the logs
even one byte received will immediately throw me off the network. Also
he informed me of the new work order for me. I can now
call him no more than twice an hour, with a break of at least
30 minutes between sessions, and the duration of the session should not be
exceed 10 minutes. Besides, until I deflate this
unfortunate archive, I won’t be able to get any other
mail traffic. After sitting at the race for three evenings and estimating that
At this rate I will continue to download approximately indefinitely, and
The disk size in iS-DOS is significantly smaller than the file size and accept
I can't do it anyway, I decided to make a hack so that Dickei
Mailer considered that I had already almost completely downloaded the file. And
the next day the mailer downloaded several tens of kilobytes
file, got to work on the rest of the mail. Naturally, I am an archive
I couldn't look. Awhen two weeks of read-only passed, I
wrote two letters. I sent one to MAS, indicating in it that he was
I was wrong to punish me and not the sender. And I wrote the second letter
to the sender of the file, where he indicated that he is an asshole and does such things
don’t do it without asking permission from the recipient. MAS by then
had already cooled down and agreed that his decision was rash. A
the sender wrote that he had already realized and that he was also punished, according to
at the request of my uplinks.

Alexander Karpov also responded to my message in the echo,
comoderator ZX.SPECTRUM. Said he had a whole
A CD dedicated entirely to Commodore computers. And he
could he send me a copy of the disc if I find him and send him a couple
games for Playstation 1 in your city. Then I honestly searched
but couldn't find it. Karpov sent me to a man from
St. Petersburg, to which he sent a copy of his disk. Im
turned out to be Anton Popov. I quickly found Anton among the points of the network and
wrote a letter asking for help in checking the computer and
asked me to make a copy of the disk. Anton immediately responded and
told me to come to him on weekends with a computer and
a blank disc for recording. On the next day off I rushed
to Juno for a clean disk and immediately after that I came to Anton.
It was like I was in gaming heaven. That's what it seemed to me at first. U
Anton had all sorts of different computers and game consoles at home. I
I don’t remember everything now, but there were definitely Amiga1200, Atari
1040 STe, Atari b5XE (or 128XE or even both), Commodore 64
(like two different models), Commodore 128D, Nintendo 64, Sega
Saturn. This is not a complete list. I looked at it and drooled
parquet floor. Most of all I lost money on the Atari 1040 STe and
Amiga 1200.

Anton connected my commodore to the monitor and tested it in operation with
disk drive, tape recorder and cartridges. He concluded
that the computer is fully functional and it’s unclear what’s wrong
worked for Larkov. Then Anton recorded a copy of the disc for me
Karpov, and I returned home full of impressions. goodbye
Anton told me to come and play with him. Since then I
I still go to him to play.

For a long time the Commodore stood on my shelf under glass, and I
I couldn’t decide to make a power supply for it. The power supply is there
was not easy and produced, in addition to 5 V DC, also 9 V
AC. In 2008 I got tired of looking at the C64 and...
I decided that I would either make a power supply or sell the computer. Here
I came across a compact pulse open-frame unit
power supply, which was left on the stairs in my entrance by the installers
from cable television. I turned it on, checked that there was 5 V on
there is a way out and at first glance the power supply was the most suitable
for Commodore, i.e. was producing 5V and 2.5A. So I started
act. First, I disassembled the power supply from the external modem
and pulled it out of theretransformer 9 V 1 A. Bought on ebay
various connectors, for the power supply, for connecting to
TV and serial ports. Transformer with
I assembled the pulse unit in the case from the power supply
Spectrum-128. The power supply lay faulty for a long time after
how I accidentally cut him short on the way out. Transformer with
impulse unit fit perfectly inside, but the commodore did not
turned on. I checked the output voltages under load and
I discovered that the 5 V voltage had dropped unacceptably. I took
switching power supply to work and tried it by connecting to
output is a powerful resistor with variable resistance. It turned out
that the power supply does not support the load even at a current of about 1 A
the tension begins to decrease. I went to the store
Megaelectronics and bought a similar one, but a little larger,
switching power supply Mean Well. And although he was with a double
power reserve, the voltage still sagged. I had to
When the commodore is turned on, adjust the output voltage. B
finally the computer worked and now i need a floppy drive
or at least a tape recorder.

I soon bought a tape recorder on ebay. Very inexpensive and in excellent condition
in good condition, in original box with instructions. With
music center and PC recorded one cassette with games. On one
on one side were all the parts of the Dizzy games, and on the other was Last Ninja 2,
which plays music while loading. I really like myself
music and gamebyaka.

Soon I come across an advertisement for the sale of a disk drive.
for Commodore 64, but without power supply. I'm going to buy it.
The owner says the drive is in an unknown condition. But for
I still buy it for 100 rubles and test it at home.
I don't have formatted floppy disks, but at least I have a floppy drive
responds to commands and spins the floppy disk from the Spectrum. Then I
I buy an adapter on ebay to connect the drive to the LPT port
PC. There is software that can burn discs through such
adapter After some time I received a parcel with
adapter and connected the drive to the PC. Native disk drive
I don’t have a power supply, so I connected an external one. This and
was my mistake.

At first the drive worked, the floppy disks were formatted, and even
I manage to rewrite some toys using Star
Commander, and then I hot-plugged the drive, without
turn off the PC and the drive died. I just stopped responding
teams. I made an attempt to repair it. I got the diagram
oscilloscope and poked around the inputs and outputs of small microcircuits
logic. From the point of view of this smallest logic, everything worked, but
the disk drive didn't work. I sold it to Stas Korovin. And I bought it in
Netherlands floppy drive emulator 1541 Ultimate, which I
Anton Popov advised. It cost a huge amount of money, but it
it was worth it. When the emulator was delivered, I spent several evenings
sat with the Commodore, running differentgames familiar to me
Spectrum. But gradually I started to lose interest in it
computer, and in February 2011 I decided to sell it.

My ad on ZX-PK.RU
http://zx-pk.ru/threads/15015-prodazha-commodore-cbЧg.html
Commodore SbChG computer for sale in St. Petersburg.
The kit includes:
1. Computer of the classic model Commodore SbChG, Made in
Germany, PAL. Spoken language is English. Computer is in good condition
in working order, although a little dirty.
2. Power supply. Homemade power supply in a good case with
on/off switch At 5 V there is a power reserve and there is
output voltage adjustment with short circuit protection.
3. Tape recorder 1530 DATASSETTE UNIT Model C2N in excellent condition
in box with documentation. On a transparent cover
minor abrasions
4. 1541 Ultimate drive emulator + 2 GB memory card.
5. Competition Pro joystick, modern Speedlink
in excellent condition, in original box with documentation.
6. Video cables s-video and composite.
7. SCART video cable with S-Video/Composite switch.
8. Serial cable for connecting a disk drive (or emulator)
9. Cassette with games (useful for testing the tape recorder).

The computer was bought by a person unknown to me who arrived
myself and took the entire set. And in 2012 I discovered
this set (with the exception of the tape recorder) onexhibition
computers as part of the Chaos Constructions 2012 festival.
Here he is
https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/278949_456809764339215_1
187202592_o.jpg?oh=dSeb8abЧcc71648бcdafdбf9ЗedЧЗ622&oe=591BCB1E
https://www.facebook.com/chaos.constructions/photos/a.4568061743
39574.101476.163065660380295/456934340993424/?type=3&theater
https://youtu.be/_QmhQByaxCY?t=33m21s

Correction - Anton Popov did not yet have Sega in 2001
Saturn, Atari 1040 STe and Commodore 128D. At least he does
claims now.

                    2002. My first PC

At the end of the winter of 2002, one of my relatives purchased
thrift store for a new computer for work, and an old one
Kompan offered to pick it up for me. Of course I didn't
refuse and took him home on the next day off.

The company ended up in a very nice and neat horizontal
super thin black body. Height to body
only two 3.5" drives could fit and there was no room at all for
large disk drives. Inside there was an 8038bdx processor at 33 MHz and
mathematical coprocessor.Memory 4 MB with 1 MB SIMs,
a simple VGA video card, a floppy drive and a 150 MB hard drive.
The motherboard was highly integrated, and all sorts of
controllers and ports were installed directly on it. Together with
The system unit I took was a lousy quality VGA video monitor 14
inches, the same black color, as well as a BTC keyboard with a twisted
wire. The keyboard was cool, so heavy and without the hated
Windows logo buttons.

Windows 3.11 and Office 6 were installed on the disk. What else
does a student need to be happy? Do you need a sound card to
play video games with sound.

During that time I was doing lab work, course projects and
other things related to my studies from my friend and classmate
Andrey Arsentiev, nicknamed BigHead. In the middle of the school week,
when the rest were working in the military department at the institute, we
it was a day off with Andryukha, since the military department was
optional and we did not visit it. But that semester we also
studied in the evening, and Andryukha got a part-time job
working day in order to somehow compensate for tuition fees and
to buy a new hard drive for a bunch of games. And I,
Accordingly, I was left without a computer. I didn’t count the 386th as
computer, since it was hardly suitable for more or less serious
work. But soon I will have a diploma design project with
working in Matlab and Simulink. In general, I could no longer go to
Andrey and meI needed my own computer for studying. Poked in
buttons in Word for about another week and at the beginning of March I went to
Juno at another computer.

When I was going to the market, I already knew in advance that I would
buy a system unit on an older 486 processor or
Pentium-1, if I can find a cheap one. Walking around the market and looking at the prices
for ready-made system units, I realized that I won’t be able to afford the first stump
for the money and you still need to take the 486th, but the fastest of
available. This is what the assembled unit on an AMD processor turned out to be
48bDXCh-120. I don’t remember the starting price for it, but when I
asked to remove the hard drive, CD drive and floppy drive, and
also remove the mouse and keyboard, then they counted me only 528
rubles This was no longer money even for a student. I have
The scholarship at that time was 600 rubles. And I decided that it was necessary
take.

They checked the computer in my presence, running Windows 95, and
then they just pulled out of it what I didn’t need and what I
I planned to take it from an old computer or buy it from another
place. At a nearby stall I bought a Seagate Medalist hard drive
on 1 GB half thickness and returned home. I took it apart at home
case and looked at what was inside. Inside there was a power supply for 150
W, compact Zida Tomato motherboard with PCI bus,
AMD processor, two RAM sticks of 8 MB each and a Cirrus video card
Logic with the beginnings of acceleration on the PCI bus. I installed the purchased one
hard drive and moved the drive. For completeno happiness
The operating system and sound card were enough. But for installation
Windows 95 would also be nice to find a CD-ROM drive. And I found him in
the same evening with his friend Denis Shkurichev, nicknamed Lenin.
He sold me an old Matshita drive for 100 rubles. At the same time he
I'm absolutely sure that this drive is 4 speed, but in fact
It turned out that it was 2. But that doesn’t matter to me. I'm going first
I came across a stall with pirated discs and I don’t find Windows there
95. I go to another one and there is no such disk either. I'm already in despair - how
So, is it really necessary to go to Juno for such banality?
I got ready, walked to the metro and found that in the foyer of the metro station
CDs are also sold and Windows 95 is on the collection there
operating systems, but expensive. I'll take it anyway so I don't have to go
to the other end of the city.

The computer's BIOS, naturally, is so ancient that it does not support
booting from CD, but I don’t have a driver for DOS. operating room
The system cannot be installed from disk. Shut up again. I'm going to Denis, please
write me a boot floppy disk with a driver for the CD-ROM. U
Denis has Windows 98 installed, but the drivers are from the boot disk
they recognize my ancient drive perfectly, and Windows 95 started without
questions. I bought the ESS 1868 sound card from Anton Popov for 100
rubles Along with the card, there was a driver disk with
some programs and a bunch of crazy games, including
there were both parts of Doom, Commander Keen, the first parts of DukeNukem
(which are still flat). In my configuration it starts and cheerfully
runs Quake 1. The frame rate does not exceed 20 per second, but
it's quite playable. I didn't have any other games. You can also
listen to MP3 at any bitrate, but only in mono mode. At the same time
You can still work freely in Word and nothing slows you down.
This computer, of course, was useful to me in my studies, but first
Turns out, I adapted it for FIDO. I got an address in Fido and
configured the necessary software. I have only one modem - internal
Sportster 14400, and two computers. So in the evening I pull out
modem from the PC and move it to Scorpio, receive and read mail from
ZXNet, and in the morning before work I move the modem back to the PC and
I'm picking up my fidish mail.

This system unit existed almost unchanged
until 2016. During this time I only changed the ESS sound card
on Sound Blaster AWE 32 with an additional 4 MB memory bank.
From time to time I turned it on and played old games under DOS or
Warcraft II, which over the years I have never been able to complete
end. The game also runs on modern computers, but
it's almost impossible to play because of the hurricane speed
screen scrolling. And in 2016 I system block it through
forum of the Polygon of Ghosts for 1000 rubles.

Summer 2002. Only a few months have passed since
purchase of the 486th system unit. From a long business trip
mine is coming backschool friend Dmitry Tokarevsky. From
business trips, he brings a brand new motherboard, on which
he is upgrading his home computer and using his old board
he is going to give it to me along with the body. All I can do is
buy some little things and I’ll have a cool computer.

In July we meet with Dimka and go to buy the missing ones
components for my new system unit. Disk
was generous and bought it for me along with the case and motherboard
128 MB memory module, brand new 20 GB Samsung hard drive and
CD-ROM drive Mitsumi. So all I have to do is buy more
processor and video card. My scholarship of 600 rubles, of course,
didn't call me to buy something more.

First, I leafed through the Computer Price magazine and looked at
what I could buy with my small savings. I had a choice
- take a video card RivaTNT2 or VooDoo 2. But which one?
cooler, I didn't know. So I went to the computer store closest to my house.
basement and consulted with the sellers, what should I
choose. The seller said that VooDoo 2 is, of course, cool and
fast, but not very suitable for modern games running DirectX and
it’s better to take RivaTNT2, or even better to add a little and take
Geforce 2, at least MXХО0. Of course he expects me
will buy from them, but I just thank him for the answers and
I'm leaving.

Having looked through the magazine again, I found the cheapest offer in it.
by processors and video cards.I made a route and we
Dimka and I are going shopping. First we buy at Ligovsky
avenue, in a store with a consignment department, processor
Pentium-III 733 MHz for $85 and a brand new Titan cooler. Seller
takes us for suckers and instead of the chosen full-fledged P-III
brings Celeron to the same frequency. I'm looking at the processor and
I point out this important detail to him. The seller apologizes and
the correct processor already takes out. After that we went to
Popular store in St. Petersburg, RiK on Liteiny Prospekt.
They have some of the lowest prices for components, but that’s all I need
still not enough. I borrow from Dimka and we buy
noname GeForce 2 mx 400 32 Mb video card for $32. After that
we go to Dimka’s house and install the purchased components on
fee. We are very concerned about the exposed processor die, which
It doesn't cost anything to damage the cooler when installing it. But that's it
works out, and the newborn computer greets us joyfully
squeak. I pick up the system unit and go home to install it
operating system.

In the fall of 2002, Dimka returned from another business trip
- and again with gifts for me. He brings a new girl
Sportster 57600 motherboard and external modem, but without block
nutrition. The new motherboard is qualitatively superior to mine
technical parameters, and so I decide to install it in my
computer. Unfortunately, when I moved the processor tonew
board and started installing the cooler, the screwdriver came off the eyelet
rocker arm that presses the cooler against the processor, cooler
It sprung back, jumped and crashed onto the processor. There was a crunch.
I didn't attach any importance to this and simply installed the cooler in place.
I turned on the computer, but saw only a black screen. I took off again
cooler, wiped off the thermal paste from the processor and carefully examined
open crystal. There was a small piece of crystal on the edge
chipped off and the processor stops functioning. There's nothing to do
you need to buy a new processor. I'm studying Computer Price again and
I read the description of the motherboard. Finding out what the maximum
The processor frequency is supported by the board and I choose from the price list
Celeron 1200 processor. It's even newer and faster
significantly cheaper than a used, slower Pentium-III. New
the processor costs $63, and this is the cheapest offer from
found by me. But I don’t even have that kind of money now, and I need
wait for the scholarship. Instead, I go to Dimka and take from him
debt Then I go to the Polyus Computers store and buy a processor
there. Processor in OEM supply. The great advantage of this
processor was that it had a
protective cover and I can install a cooler on it without fear.
The processor started working right away, and I got my money back in full from the second
scholarships. For the modem I bought a power supply on Juno, and more
I didn’t have to transfer the modem from Scorpio to the PC andback,
which was incredibly convenient.

The system unit is under my desk right now.
(2017). During this time, several upgrades were made and one
downgrade. So I added memory twice and now it’s installed
512 MB.

In 2003, I bought a large 17-inch handheld video monitor, and
six months later he dies. I buy a small one
I have a 12-inch black and white monitor and have been reading Fido for many months from it.

In the spring of 2004 I bought a Plextor CD-RW drive. I had a hard time finding it
in our city. And when I came to the store and asked the seller
sell me this particular drive (it is the most expensive in the store),
At first the seller doesn’t even believe in such luck and asks again,
Do I really want Plextor?

In the fall of 2004, I buy a new Samsung 17-inch LCD monitor, and
I still have it in working order and in use.
About two weeks after purchasing the video monitor, I buy
Sappire Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB video card for video games.
The video card is incredibly cool, but it gets very hot and noisy
fan.

In 2004 I buy an internal TV tuner to record
transfer to disk. But the recording works unevenly, and some frames
fall out. I read articles on the Internet on how to improve the situation and
I see recommendations for switching to Windows 2000, in which
The disk buffer works better and frames supposedly don't drop out. Lies.
They fall out even at half the video capture resolution. NoseI'm not going back to Windows 2000 on 98 anymore, because here you can
output multiple sounds at the same time and you can play and listen
music at the same time. And 2000 does not drop once a week.
In the fall of 2006, a 20 GB Samsung hard drive died, taking away
a large archive of Fido, personal correspondence and a collection of music,
which I have been collecting for several years. I'm so upset that I'm more
I haven’t touched a PC at all for six months and haven’t bought a new one.
hard drive.

In the spring of 2007, I bought a new one, almost the cheapest one,
MSI motherboard on LGA775, the fastest processor P4-3400
MHz (there was simply no faster one in the store) and two memory sticks
512 MB. As it turned out, it was the wrong type, and then I had to go
go to the store a second time and buy the right type. Collected new ones
components in the same housing. The hard drive was taken from a Playstation
2, where I installed Linux on the disk. The assembled computer freezes
at the stage of loading the operating system. I'm buying a new one, more
powerful power supply, and loading glitches stop. But
Glitches with the video card begin. It freezes after a few
seconds after starting any modern game. I'm giving the video card to
Testing for Denis, and I’m installing his video card for myself. We've been here for a week
we run games, and my video card works great for him, and
its working for me. Clearly a conflict between the motherboard and
specific video card. I still couldn't find a solution to this
problems, andThe video card is permanently put away in the box. And instead
with it I again install the old Geforce 2 mx 400. Which later
upgrade to a full GeForce 2 Pro. Dimon gives it to me.

Later I added another 80 GB drive and a 300 GB drive, which
did not fit my Playstation 2 in terms of design parameters.
In the fall of 2007, I bought a Pioneer DVD-RW drive and a DVD-RW box
Verbatim disks. I have never used some of the disks at all. A
Now these discs are not even recorded anymore. Those. after recording
remain empty. Although those discs that were already recorded, this
The recording has not been lost, but is difficult to read. I'm planning on disks
make backups of data from your hard drive.

In 2009 I bought a Radeon HDЗ850 video card with 512 MB of memory.
This is one of the latest video cards for the AGP bus and the fastest
of them. I expect to play modern games, but even with
This card slows everything down for me. Moreover, the size of the brake
Doesn't depend on video settings at all. This means a video card with
large margin, and not enough processor performance. I
I'm upset and have given up playing games on PC for several years. Video card
I put it in the box and go back to GeForce 2 Pro. For games
I later bought an XBOX 360, where nothing slowed down.

In 2010, I bought a new Pioneer DVD-RW drive, since the old one
starts to work poorly even though less than 50 DVD-R discs have been recorded, and
I actually write CDs only on Plextor. During this time henot
began to write or read worse. Great drive.
Then I buy an ESI Juli@ sound card. Nice card with
excellent characteristics.

In 2012, having played enough on XBOX 360, I buy at Yulmart
modern high-performance gaming computer for 41
one thousand rubles. Quad-core Core I7 2600K processor, 8 GB RAM
and MSI GeForce GTX 570 1.2 GB video card. All this allows me to
comfortably run any video games. Performance of this
computer is so high that I even lower and block
processor frequency at 1600 MHz and disable hyperthreading.
Despite my efforts, the games still launch and
continue to make me happy. I register on Steam and gradually
I'm starting to fill my library with a license. At the moment we have
I have 206 games in my library and another 290 that were shared with me
Denis. But I haven’t bought new games for several years now, and
the library is expanding only due to purchases by Denis and his
libraries.

At the beginning of 2013 I buy in parts and assemble a small
home file server on the MiniITX platform. I bought a board
ASUS with integrated AMD C60 processor and passive cooling,
2 TB hard drive and tiny horizontal Foxconn case
with a 250 W power supply. This is more than enough for my
new computer. Memory first I buy one 4 GB stick,
since I’m not sure that it will work on this board or fit
for power supplyin the building, but when I’m convinced that everything is
If it works, then I buy another memory stick of the same kind. New computer
costs me about 7 thousand rubles.

I did not buy or install any external video card. me
We are completely satisfied with the built-in capabilities of the video processor.
Dual-core processor with a frequency of 1000 MHz and automatic
overclocking to 1333 MHz under heavy load. At the same time, however,
the second core is completely turned off. But I and the remaining core are trying
slow down, but the BIOS strongly resists this and does not
allows you to reduce the frequency below 900 MHz. So I leave everything
as is.

I chose Lubuntu as the operating system and installed it.
She did not resist, identified all my devices and
took them to work.

The processor performance, of course, is not enough for games, but I
After all, that’s not why I built my computer. But FullHD video
is played by hardware, and the processor load does not exceed
12-15%, of which 3-4% is spent by the process manager himself on
displaying a graph of processor load. A little later I added to
the server has one more disk for 2 TB and one for 1 TB. At the last one I even
installed Windows 7 using the license code of your game
PC. At the same time, Windows was successfully activated via the Internet.
I wonder how this happened?

Windows 7 never took root on this computer. I just felt
I would be interested to know if it will slow down? No, I didn't slow down. At all.
On thisa torrent client, samba, was running on the computer around the clock
for home network and external FTP server. At the same time, consumption
the entire system unit was only 40 watts. True, external
The FTP server still lived in a virtual machine so that I wouldn’t
hacked through possible server vulnerabilities and could not
penetrate beyond the virtual disk. But in 2015 I closed
FTP server and stopped using the file server in
around the clock. And after the closure of large game trackers
Underground-Gamer, Bit-Gamer and Blackcats-Games need work
The torrent client is also no longer available. So now I'm using this one
computer just to read email, sit
leisurely surf the Internet and listen in the background
Internet radio.

In the fall of 2013, I bought a processor on ebay for pennies
Pentium-IIIS 1266 and downgrading. I'm putting my old one on
motherboard for P-III, but it doesn't work. After examining the board
I find a swollen electrolytic capacitor. I him
I replace it, and the board is operational again. I still can't get it
The fastest Pentium-III processor. And this system unit
I still use Plextore to burn Audio CDs,
to listen to your music collection on a good sound
map, as well as for transferring software from/to Scorpio, since here you have
I have a large floppy drive installed on which I write floppy disks
for Scorpio.

In 2016, I sold most of my accumulatedsystemic
blocks, computer boards, processors, memory modules and
sound cards that I have brought over many years from work or from
garbage dumps.

>What did you find in the trash? We have the most luxurious thing I've ever seen - 
"Iskra" is gutted. 

I found a working Playstation 1 of an old “fat” one in a trash heap
models. I don’t remember everything from the PC, but the last two were completely
complete Celeron 333A in a midiTower case (not mini) with
video card RivaTNT2, as well as something from the third party
configurations. I brought more hardware from work, but there
it was quite old, starting with boards with a 386 processor and
ending with Pentium 1 boards. I also brought in a bunch of processors and
different video cards - from VooDoo2 to Radeon 9600 Pro. Hard drives
I carried all sorts of small ones that had been written off. But then I took them apart into magnets.

Here is the current list of hardware that I made in 2016. There
not all of what I had. Something has been sold before. I
there he partially noted that he brought it from the trash heap.
<...>

>What a collection! I have never seen anything like this. And where 
does it all fit? Now I only have a desk with a computer, 
several boxes and a shoe shelf in the closet. 

Everything is laid out in shoe boxes of different sizes:
- all small disk drives
- all hard drives
- all other storage media
- large disk drives (not listed) along with CD/DVD
drives
-remaining memory modules and remaining processors
- all video cards
- all modems with wires and power supplies
- motherboards together with other (non-video) boards

There are 8 boxes in total. Three in the nightstand in the back room.
The rest are on the bottom shelves of the bookcase in my room.

Previously, I had a bunch of assembled system units, and they stood
under my tables, on the top shelves of racks and behind the closet in
back room. Now I only have 5 blocks left, two of
there are three of them on the table and three under the table. It became freer.

And this is how it is at my friend Stas Korovin’s house:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfiahvNmcOE&feature=youtu.be

In August 2006 I was invited to the Chaos festival
Constructions as one of the organizers. In the spring of that
year Peter Sobolev (Frog) called out to Fido to buy
video monitors with a composite input for connecting
retro technology as part of an exhibition at the CC festival. I responded and
offered Frog his video monitor, but not for sale, but for
rental For this I asked for an entrance ticket to the festival itself. Frog
agreed. The day before the festival started, I brought my monitor to
Eurasia (the festival site), and Frog asked me
stay and help prepare the hall, if I, of course, do it myself
I want. And I stayed.

The next day I meet Alexey Zhabin (KoE),
developer of the Pentagon 102ХSL v2 board,which he brought to
exhibition. Nobody needed my monitor, so I offered
his Lyokhe. He waved a soldering iron in the dark and tried to connect
board to the monitor, but something didn’t work out for him, and the monitor
returned it to me. And instead of a monitor, he was given a large TV,
which was provided by Vlad Sotnikov (Vega).

The monitor went to Konstantin Zaitsev (Budder), who brought
bring your own portable Scorpio to the exhibition. I was pushing around
new Pentagon board and tried to look at it in more detail.

I continued to communicate with Alexey after the festival, already through
email. I was waiting for the assembled and
customized boards. And in February 2007 Lyokha wrote to me,
which collects the last payment. I sent him money, and on March 15
he sent a parcel with a payment to my address.

Having received the package, I began installing it into the case. Just
the good horizontal case that I brought with me came in handy
work. I drilled holes at the bottom of the case and screwed them to
racks and placed the board on the racks. Added disk drives to the case.
I didn't have a second keyboard, and I had to periodically
transfer the keyboard from Scorpio to the Pentagon and back.
Later I bought an IDE controller from Chunin Roman and added it to the case
hard drive (10 GB) and CD-ROM drive. Then I bought it from CHRV
TurboSound sound card, but it made a lot of noise, and I later
I exchanged it for an early version of TurboSoundFM.

10 GB diskit seemed to me too much, and I replaced the hard one
4.3 GB disk.

At the Pentagon I mostly just watched demos and
experimented with DNA OS, and used Scorpio for work.

I took this computer to Chaos Constructions festivals. In 2007
year it stood in the Realtime Compo zone, and they drew on it,
coded and wrote music for competitions. In subsequent years he stood
at exhibitions, and you could play on it. Always lay nearby
a box of floppy disks containing my favorite games. He even
made the news in 2012
https://youtu.be/SqbN_MkzMFo?t=58s
In the story, Maxim Muchkaev plays it in Ms. Pac-man and
talks about the popularity of this game. And in Max’s place
it should have been me. Max came up to me and asked me to sit at
computer and play something popular and famous. Said
that TV crews would film me for a news release. I
sat down, loaded Ms. Pac-man and started playing. At this time to me
the operator came up and began to attach a small microphone to me. I
immediately objected and handed the microphone to Max. That's why Max got tired of it
instead of me.

As the years passed, I gradually stopped using the computer somehow
other than dragging it to festivals. I realized what has come
time to part with him, and in August 2015 put him up for
sale.http://market.zx-pk.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3499The buyer turned out to be a man from Moscow, who did not bargain
I bought everything assembled, with the exception of the TurboSoundFM board, under
which I planned to write music and therefore kept for myself.

 2008. Dreams come true

Since my acquaintance with Anton Popov, he has managed to expand
your home collection of game consoles and computers. And through
for several years he already had, among other things, an Atari 104 STe and even
rare bird Atari Falcon 030. I came to play and see
demos on Atari STe. Anton brought computers to exhibitions in
within Chaos Constructions since 2004. I walked around
and I really wanted the 1040 STe. Even more than any Amiga.

I had already heard a lot about Amiga. Since the days of paper
magazines ZX Review, where in 1996 they presented a new
Russian-language magazine Amiga Guide and printed some clippings
articles from the new magazine. Then I bought the Amiga magazine itself
Guide. In addition, the electronic press on the ZX SPECTRUM also began
drip on your brain with articles telling you why the Amiga is better
PC. Even Mikhail Akimov from Logros once brilliantly
eyes told how convenient it is to work on the Amiga. Having read and
After listening to these fairy tales, I even wrote an essay on why
PC has no future and why I choose Amiga. Moreover, the abstract was
on the subject of philosophy! (Orsociology? There was only one teacher and
the same.) The teacher just wanted to see how we could
think. Therefore, there was a free topic. In general, any Amiga I
I also wanted it, but a little less than the Atari STe.

A little later, a certain Azaty from Izhevsk (Azat Sadykov) became
come to festivals with my Atari, and somehow I approached
him and asked to sell me the 1040 STe if he had one. He
He said that they are currently out of stock, but he sees them from time to time.
there at home in Izhevsk. We agreed that in a year, when he
comes to the festival again, then I will buy an Atari 1040 STe from him. But
a year later, Azaty brought the STFM model instead of STe, and this is not at all
then. He tried to push it to me because he didn’t want to take it
back, but I didn't take it.

I had completely lost hope of buying STe and was ready to pay for
her 10 thousand rubles. But one day, in the last week of summer 2008
years ago, returning home from work, I saw an ad on zx.pk.ru
about the sale of Atari STe and Atari B5XL (as the seller wrote) for only
3000 rubles. The seller indicated his contacts as contacts.
ICQ number. Unfortunately, Timur Tashpulatov was already ahead of me
(TNT23), who expressed his desire to purchase this kit for
the specified amount. So I decided to take a desperate step and wrote
to the seller that I would buy STe for 4000 rubles and added that Timur
There is already a Mega 1040 STFM and there is much more to it. The seller, of course,
got greedy and grabbed my offer. Evenvolunteered
bring everything to my home yourself, in the evening after work.
It’s good that he didn’t write on the forum about selling it for a big price.
price to another person. It was not enough for Timur to enter with
me to trade.

That same evening, only after 11 p.m., the seller arrived at
car, and I helped him carry the box into his apartment. Boxes
turned out to be heavy, because in addition to two computers there were a bunch of
magazines. We connected the STe to the TV via the antenna input, and
I poked at the buttons. Then for some reason we launched Qubase from a floppy disk. I
I noticed that there was no sound. The seller assured me that
he had no problems with sound, but this may have something to do with
TV settings. That's how it actually turned out, just
I had to tinker with the standards settings. Second computer
turned out to be not a B5XL, as stated in the ad, but an Atari XE GS
(Game System), which is actually b5XE, but made in the form
game console with detachable keyboard. I didn't even bother
check him - he didn’t interest me at all. Also included
there was a mouse for STe, a couple of disks with games, a tape recorder
console for XE GS, a couple of cassettes with games for XE GS and a pack
ST Format color magazines in English. Having looked through it first
a magazine came to hand, I turned off the STe and collapsed on the sofa
with a magazine in hand. I liked the magazines so much that
the first few days I didn’t even go near the computer andreturning home from work, I immediately picked up magazines and read,
read, read.

Meanwhile, the last week of summer was coming to an end, which meant
Another Chaos Constructions is coming.
I am again on the festival organizing team. This time I bring
Playstation 2 game console with LCD TV, which I like
This is exactly why I bought it in the spring of this year. comes to the festival
Evgeny Davydov (EasyJohn) exhibits his Amiga at the exhibition
4000. Amiga, of course, is cool, but very expensive. But on the wall, above
Amiga, EasyJohn on the first day of the festival posted an announcement about
selling the Amiga 600 computer right here and right now. I
at first I just looked closely at the ad, then I caught it
Oleg Sazonov’s hall and began asking him about Amigas. Oleg
there was a famous Amizhnik and he told me everything in detail about different
models. From his words I concluded that for games it is better to take
Amiga 500 model, since it is the most compatible and most
games are written for it. On the Amiga 600 there may be problems with
launching very old games or games whose developers,
work with hardware bypassing the system, which leads to
incompatibility. There was also another Amizhnik at the festival - Vadim
Akimov (LVD) from Moscow. And I also approached him to
seek advice on whether to take the Amiga or not. He told me about
connecting a hard drive and launching games via WHDLoad. Also
mentioned that he developed and sells an extensionmemory for Amiga
600, which will be very useful to me if I decide to launch
games via WHDLoad. Well, in general, the Amiga 500 is nothing to me
offers, and the Amiga 600 can be bought right here and right now.
Anyway, I went looking for EasyJohn.

When I caught him and asked how much he wanted for the Amiga, EasyJohn
he said he wanted 2,500 rubles, but he’s ready right now
part for 2000 rubles, and I agreed. He and I left
hall to the street where the EasyJohn car was parked. He opened the trunk and
I took out the original box with the Amiga from there. I took the Amiga out of the box and
for some reason he looked into the slot of the disk drive, muttering something
under your breath. We returned to the hall with the box and placed it on the table,
where the Amiga 4000 stood. EasyJohn connected a video monitor, a mouse,
gamepad from Sega Megadrive and turned on the computer. I inserted some
floppy disk with the game and gave it to me to play. At first glance everything was in
order, and I took the box to the guarded warehouse where they kept
personal belongings of the organizers. Then he periodically came to the warehouse
and checked to see if it was missing or trampled. But everything was in
ok. And at the end of the second day of the festival I picked up a box with
Amiga home.

That's how in one week I became the owner of two computers at once
of your dreams.

Almost immediately after the festival I contacted LVD and bought from
him a memory expansion for his Amiga 600. LVD sends me
expansion out of turn. And his line is long - severaldozens of people, all foreigners.

The STe included several floppy disks with games. And to Amiga
EasyJohn gave me a couple of dozen floppy disks with games and Workbench. Yes
that for the first time I had something to play. True, for STe
There weren’t any interesting games included in the set, but I’m in any
moment could burn other discs, because the encoding was there
the most common MFM, and therefore such disks can be easily written on
PC. It's a different matter with the Amiga, which uses its own
disc format, and there is no way to burn them to a PC.
I started looking for ways to solve this problem.

I found an interesting option for transferring disk images on the Internet.
via COM port using the Amiga Explorer program. On Amiga
The server part starts, and the client part starts on the PC. All
disks (RAM, FDD and others) become visible in Explorer on the PC.
You can drive both entire disk images and individual ones back and forth
files. But cable soldering is required. I'm going to buy what I need
connectors and cable for the required number of wires. Then several
I spend hours soldering and checking. When it comes to the program
parts, then no problems arise here. I do the server part
I transfer from the PC via a soldered cable using standard OS tools to
Amiga. First, I receive a small bootloader via the COM port,
which, after launch, downloads the server part itself from the PC
software Everything works, but the transfer speed is very low, and
for transmissionthe whole disc takes about seven minutes. I wrote it down
several discs with your favorite games known from the Spectrum. On
as far back as I can remember I recorded Rick Dangerous, Rick Dangerous 2, everything
Dizzy parts, Switch Blade. I used the floppy disks that I gave to
EasyJohn kit, since I had very few of my own.

In principle, this option was suitable for the first time, but always
I want more. I want to write discs at maximum speed.
I consulted with LVD and asked how to distill floppy disks? He
advised to look for a network card (1bbit) on PCMCIA, which
is standard in my Amiga, or through an adapter
CompactFlash-PCMCIA. Find a sixteen-bit one on sale
I couldn’t get a network card, so I went with the second option. But
Finding an adapter is also not easy. I found it in Transelectro and
went there. There I also bought two boxes of Verbatim floppy disks (200 pieces)
and a 1 GB Transcend CF card. I recorded several on the memory card
disk images with games and a program for burning these images to
floppy disks. Then I made a copy of the system boot disk with
Workbench and removed some things from the copy so that there was room for
CompactFlash drivers. Booted from this floppy disk and inserted
adapter with memory card for Amiga. Nothing has changed. New
the device did not appear. I tried this and that and
I reinstalled the driver and reformatted the memory card, but
the new disk did not appear. I went into the kitchen upset, and whenAfter some time I returned, I discovered that at work
A new disk has appeared on the table and the files on it are visible. In general,
It turned out that the disk does not appear immediately, but after a while
time (a little over a minute). Why this was so is unclear, but here it is
yes.

I wrote disk images from the memory card onto floppy disks. Write speed
very low. My disk drive even has time to stop
between reading a new portion of data from the memory card. Thinking that
Transcend card is not very suitable for Amiga, I went to the store
Kay and bought another card, this time a Kingston 1 GB. But this one too
The card behaves the same way. There are suspicions of malfunction
Amiga hardware.

At the end of September I contacted EasyJohn and asked if he had checked
PCMCIA in my Amiga before selling? He said that he usually
checks using a network card, but this time I was too lazy, so
there was no driver disk. I described the low situation to him
speed and asked if he could check my adapter,
my memory card and Amiga? He agreed to help, and in the near future
On the day off I went to EasyJohn's house.

We checked everything, and it turned out that my Amiga is working, but
the problems are in the memory card - on the EasyJohn computer they
They braked just the same. After that I went on a quest to find
correct memory card." I bought different cards, different
manufacturers, different small volumes and different speeds. B
mainly at the Sunrise store orUlmart. I bought about 15
memory cards and checked them all. Earned normally
there is only one - Sony Alpha 2 GB. She's the only one
appeared on the desktop immediately after installation on the Amiga, and
the reading speed from it was sufficient for discs to be written without
hesitation. I unpacked the box of floppies and started recording.
toys.

One box was spent on games for STe, and the second for A600. Except
Moreover, I had to travel around the city to buy leftovers
boxes for storing floppy disks. I was only able to find remains in two
Kay stores and bought the last 5 boxes in two different
stores Some floppy disks already had inherent errors. Out of a hundred
Five or six floppies had to be thrown away. However, floppy disks
quickly ran out, and I went to Transelectro and bought another one
box (100 pieces). True, I never had a chance to open it, and
I still have it sealed. Reason for non-opening
was that I saw on the forum of the Amiga.org.ru website an announcement about
sale of Amiga 1200 with accelerator in its original box. Price 10
thousand rubles suited me, and I quickly agreed with the seller about
delivery to my city and sent him a postal order. He
He harassed me for quite a long time, did not send me in any way, citing
what solders the adapter, then sets up the operating room
system, then the post office didn’t accept such a large box
and he sews a bag, then he sews it, but it’s not like that. In short, in the end
he sentand a few days later I was already carrying a bag of
post office home.

Inside was the original box of Amiga Magic, Amiga 1200 produced
Escom, adapter with 4 GB CompactFlash memory card
installed operating system and a bunch of games and demos in the form
disk images, a pair of mice, a power supply, and some other wires.
First of all, I reinstall Wokbench, since it's foreign
The assembly seemed rather strange and inconvenient to me. But this
little things, the main thing is that I can now launch toys directly from
CompactFlash card that works like a hard drive for me
no more fiddling with floppy disks. For a while
The Amiga 600 slides onto the shelf and takes its place on the table
Amiga 1200.

A little later I buy a cooler accelerator from EasyJohn for
Amiga 1200 with 64 MB of RAM. I'm selling the old accelerator.

I play on the Amiga, but I plan to watch all the demos in the future.
But in fact, until the sale itself, I didn’t do anything from the demos
launched. I'm just playing on STe at first. STe is like this
a kind of Spectrum, with the same sound and the same games,
but there is no problem with displaying colors. All games are beautiful, and this one
I really like it.

In 2011 I'm starting to get tired of STe. I turn it on less and less and
less often. Then I stop turning it on altogether. Therefore at the end of January
2011 I put the entire set up for sale along with the magazines
http://zx-pk.ru/threads/14954-prodazha-atari-1040-ste.html.
Here is the text of that ad:

Sale of ATARI 1040 STe computer in St. Petersburg.
The kit includes:
1. The computer itself is in good condition, working. What I could
checked. The COM port and additional ports were not checked
joysticks, MIDI ports and the one located next to them (not
signed). The body has turned yellow with age. Original floppy drive
EPSON SMD-380 Made in Japan. Reads and writes well. Memory 4
SIMM 256 kilobytes.
Interface language is English. TOS version '89.

2. Original mouse, in working condition.
There is a small crack on the top of the case. The crack is not through, the body
does not break.
The lid on the bottom that holds the ball does not hold well and therefore
secured with tape. Does not interfere with work.

3. Power cord with UK plug. B
I will include an adapter for our sockets.

4. SCART RGB video cable with audio.

Cost 4000 rubles.

Everything else comes as a free bonus and when lying down you can
refuse.

Now I will describe the bonuses that are given free of charge with a computer.

1. Three boxes of FAMILY CURRICULUM with licensed software with
paper descriptions. The following programs: Micro Mathematics,
French Mistress, Geography Quiz, Hyperpaint II, Music Maker II,
FirST BASIC, ST Word - Processor, ST Data - Database, ST Calc -
Spreadsheet.

2. QuickShot II Turbo joystick in box. Joystick mechanically
OK, but no wire forconnections.

3. Homemade adapter for outputting video from a computer to my RGB
video monitor. Probably only interesting because of the rare DIN-13 plug.
You can solder your cable.

4. A certain amount of software and music on floppy disks. If desired
I can give you several discs with games, but in principle there are each
can write it down for himself.

Nobody bought the set, and after a few days I took it off
advertisement for sale.

Around the same time, I put the Atari XE GS up for sale in full
complete. I turned on this computer only a few times.
I loaded games from the supplied cassette. But the games are loading
for a monstrously long time (tens of minutes) and with great difficulty. I
I tried to record games on cassettes, “voicing” them on a PC, but
Nothing downloaded for me after that. Therefore, having set
once XE GS at the Chaos Constructions 2010 exhibition, where
launched the built-in Missile Command game, I ended up
I decided to part with the XE GS for almost pennies.
http://zx-pk.ru/threads/14852-prodazha-atari-xe-gs-komplekt.html

In March 2011, I buy a floppy drive emulator on ebay for 60
pounds sterling. Instead of the Amiga 1200, it appears on the table again
Amiga 600, since the latter is much more compact, and has more space
I'm not enough. Games for the Amiga take up much more space than for
STe. This is due to digital sound in games. Therefore, floppy disks are needed
much more.Some games take up more than 10 discs, which is
uncomfortable. Therefore, I connect the floppy drive emulator to the A600, outputting
from the Amiga a long flat cable through the drive slot. At the end
The cable dangles an emulator in the form of a board with buttons and an LCD screen.
The HxC Floppy Emulator is powered by SD cards, and one
The card fits all games and demos, both for the Amiga,
and for STe. But I never touched the Amiga demos, but
I watched all the Atari demos. And now I can say that
The demo scene on the Atari ST(STe) is poor. The vast majority of demos
are scrolls crawling in every conceivable direction
directions to stolen digital music. Apparently, the Atarists
it was such an inferiority complex - on the Amiga digital
the music is rushing, and they have some kind of YM. So they pushed numbers everywhere.
No, there were, of course, good demos, but there were very few of them. I
I wrote down the names of the demos I liked on a piece of paper, and that was enough for me
for this little piece of paper that only had 8 titles on it.

In March 2013, I bought a second floppy drive emulator. This time
in the case. I paid 100 euros for it, including delivery. First
I installed the (unframed) emulator instead of the floppy drive in STe.
Directly inside the case. To do this I made a cut at the top
STe case and inserted the LCD screen of the emulator into the cut, and
the emulator was screwed to the racks on which it had previously stood
disk drive I pulled out three buttons from the emulatorcontrol and brought them out
into the drive slot on the side of the case. In this form, STe manages
visit Chaos Constructions 2013.
I connected the second emulator to the Atari 600 from the outside of the case. True,
When I go to exhibitions, I still connect a real disk drive and bring it with
a floppy disk with games. But at home I use an emulator instead
floppy disks

In the summer of 2014, I finally decided to sell the STe and
I’m selling the entire set to Stas Korovin, along with magazines and all
discs that I managed to record for her. And in another month
I’m also selling him an Amiga 1200 with an accelerator. I left the Amiga for myself
600 with external drive emulator. But he also sold it to Mikhail
Rudenkov (Mihhru) in early August 2015, together with
floppy drive emulator and memory expander.

In March 2016, Oleg Sazonov sent me a link to an advertisement on
Avito, about the sale of the Amiga 500 computer, without specifying the price. Usually
this means that the price is so high that the seller simply
too lazy to type zeros. But since the seller was a woman, there was
chances are she just doesn't know how much an Amiga costs.
So, just in case, I wrote a message to the seller and
offered 1000 rubles. Within a few minutes I received from her
answer. She agreed to the price I specified, but on condition
pickup. Then I dialed her phone and we agreed
meet at her house the next day. I asked to delete it
announcement so that she doesn’t get bored with calls, since I’m definitelyI'll pick it up. But after some time I again received from her
message. She wrote to me that she was offered 5000 for the computer
rubles Luckily for me, the proposer turned out to be Stas Korovin.
He himself told me about this. Moreover, he claimed that the aunt herself
told him this amount. But when Stas found out that I had already
agreed with her earlier, then Stas gave in to me, and I wrote
to the seller that I know who offered it to her and he allegedly mixed up the model
and will not take it.

The next day the seller herself called me and said that she had already
at home and waiting for me. I wrote down the address and went to pick it up. It was
not far - just a few stops from my house. Aunt
I took an Amiga 500 with a German keyboard out into the corridor. Included
there was a power supply, a modulator, two mice, one of which had
buttons broken inside the case and disassembled, some
wires. My aunt started telling me that they were calling her from
everywhere, they offer a lot of money and ask to send it by mail. But
she doesn’t want to deal with the post office, but then I pick it up. B
In general, she promoted me for more money than we did
agreed. I was ready for this. I offered another 500 on top
rubles, but at the same time took several dozen floppy disks, a joystick and
very old (late eighties) JVC VCR with remote control
Remote control with built-in LCD screen and user manual. Nothing
It was not possible to verify on site any of the above. Amiga turned on
illuminated with LEDs andlike spinning floppy disks. Aunt assured
me that the computer is fully working, but is already lying idle
ten years. I stuffed my purchases into backpacks and bags and dragged
home, really hoping that it will all work. But everything turned out
not at all like that.

First of all, I checked the VCR. He turned on and even
sucked the videotape into himself, but at the same time he groaned and rattled
and refused to shake it. And he also refused to give it back. I took it apart
and took the videotape by force. The VCR was not working,
but rare. Only this helped me later sell it on
Avito. There was a collector who took even a non-working one
tape recorder. True, that same evening he called me and said,
that he fixed the tape recorder. There was something wrong with the mechanics.

The floppy disks turned out to contain toys, and some were even loading. I
I launched some game and connected the purchased joystick. Not
moving to the right works. But overall everything is fine. I took it apart
computer, carefully vacuumed the dust inside, washed the parts
housing from plaque and dirt and treated the buttons with chlorhexidine.
I noticed that the board has additional
memory chips, i.e. instead of 512 kb, 1024 kb was installed.
Then I collected everything, turned it on again and checked the game loading. Everything
it worked. It just got cleaner.

A few days later I decided to write some games on floppy disks for
Amigas. But the Amiga 500 does not have a built-in PCMCIA port, and write
disks are only possible throughAmiga Explorer. I had
boot floppy disk with the server part of the program to boot
refused, citing the old Kickstart, since it was on a floppy disk
There was Workbench 2 from Amiga 600, you need Workbench 1.3 for Amiga 500.
To burn such a disc, I first need to get to
COM port and the already known way to transfer the bootloader through it
Explorera backend. To get to the console I started
press Ctrl-D while loading Workbench. Having reached
console, I suddenly found out that some of the buttons on the keyboard were not
worked. I got upset, took the Amiga apart, took out the keyboard,
I took it apart and began to ring the membrane from input to output.
The signal was lost somewhere in the area where the contacts exited the film.
Visually I did not see any cliffs, but they were completely
exactly. A new membrane on ebay costs about 2000 rubles, not
including shipping cost. I cannot take such a step.
There was little hope that someone would respond to my
advertisement for the purchase of a membrane, but no one responded. I started
thinking about selling the Amiga.

Meanwhile, I learned how to burn floppy disks on a PC. The most common
the drive is connected to the LPT port using a homemade cable
PC (in my case, my first laptop), and under Windows XP
Disk images are written using special software. But written like this
Thus, the disks are read with a large number of errors. In the program
There are some settings for recording, but nothingrecommendations for
The parameters are not specified in the description. So I spent a few
days to select numbers in the settings and in the end achieved,
so that floppy disks can be read almost entirely without errors. Freshly recorded
I checked the floppy disks using the X-Copy copier on the Amiga in
record checks. Then I thought that maybe it wasn't
settings, but that the drives are a little incompatible and
Head adjustment is required. I took the Amiga apart again and took it out
drive on a long wire. Launched X-Copy and, weakening
the mount of the motor moving the head along the disk gave the command
reading and turned the engine a little. Achieved perfect reading
no errors. I assembled the Amiga and checked again that everything was working.
Then I put the Amiga away until tomorrow. And for tomorrow there’s no disk drive
refused to read anything. Absolutely. I had to redo it
regular PC floppy drive up to compatibility with Amiga and
install it into the body, having first removed the muzzle from it and
redesigning the eject button. In general, it installed well and
works great. But again there are problems with reading disks,
recorded on PC. Even if I write discs on an Amiga drive
(remade), and then I check it on it - it’s still rare, but
errors appear. Still, you need to write discs on the Amiga itself. A
Before that it would be good to have the keyboard repaired.

In the second half of March, I wrote to Oleg Sazonov about the problems that arose
I'm having problems with the Amiga I bought - several don't workbuttons
and a disk drive. I was already planning to sell the Amiga on Avito, in parts
or in its entirety, but without verification. But Oleg wrote to me telling me not to
I did nonsense and took the Amiga to him - he will fix everything. On
the next day I went to Oleg’s house, but on the way I stopped at
work for Mikhail Rudenkov (Mihhru) to take on a temporary basis
using the Gotek drive emulator. Micah said he bought it
emulator, but never turned it on. For this emulator
there is firmware that makes it possible to read and write images
ADF drives via USB on Amiga. The emulator is similar in size to
standard floppy drive and can easily be installed directly into
Amiga body. Instead of a disk slot, the emulator has
LED digital display and several tact buttons, and
There is also a socket for connecting a USB stick or card reader.
A day later Oleg told me that he had repaired the keyboard,
having seen several broken wires through a microscope. A
His disk drive never worked. I took the Amiga home and
connected the drive emulator to it, placing it outside on
long wire. The emulator (or its firmware) turned out to be
capricious. Of the five USB sticks that I had available,
Only one worked, the oldest at 256 MB. But through
card reader worked all my SD and SDHD cards, so I downloaded and
unpacked GAMEBASE with Amiga games and recorded all the games on
microSDHD memory card. Unlike the previous emulator, this one
notrequired preliminary conversion of disk images to your
specific format. It was much more convenient. I tested
work, started the games and calmed down for a while.
Since I only had the emulator temporarily, and I bought it for myself
China can't, then I went back to real disk drives.
I rebuilt about 8 disk drives and tested them all in operation with
Amigoy. I wanted to find that perfect match that would allow
should I write discs on a PC via a parallel port, and then without
errors can be read on the Amiga, without subsequent recovery. For
I also spent several days selecting parameters
pre-compensation for the recording program, but never found it.
Back to real floppy disks and transferring files over the network.
But this time through the parallel port on the Amiga. Program
APPCOMM, like Amiga Explorer, consisted of two parts -
server and client. Only this time PC running
Linux was the server and the Amiga was the client. Baud rate
files via a parallel connection was significantly higher, and
floppy disks were already being written at almost full speed. That's why I
settled on this recording method.

After playing your favorite games for a couple of days (Super Frog, Alien Breed, Rick
Dangerous), I put the Amiga on the shelf and didn’t get to it for a long time
touched. And in the fall I again took the Amiga off the shelf and turned it on,
to play. Found that the keyboard is not working again,
and partly the samebuttons that didn't work last time.
This time I didn’t contact Oleg, but decided to fix everything
on your own. I found a diagram of such a keyboard on the Internet and it became
It's clear that I need to check. I took apart the Amiga, took it apart
keyboard and began to call the necessary signal, but the circuit was broken
in the area where the conductors exit the membrane. I bought a conductive one
Kontaktol glue on silver and coated suspicious areas with glue.
When the glue dried, I checked the integrity of the circuits and assembled the Amiga.
The keyboard works again. But for how long?