Our tale starts in my Discord chat room.
I've recently added a new room called "Itemes" where members can discuss items of significance
from eBay and the like.
A brief discussion empowered me to visit this auction, where I found "An Amiga Games Console,
Together with CD and Floppy Disc Format Games", but with one completely incorrect image.
Therefore I knew some of the software included, but had no idea what this mysterious Amiga
Games Console could be.
It's clear that it must be CD-ROM and floppy based, and indeed there are some further clues
in the box of software itself.
But we've got older, floppy disk OCS games from both the 80s and 90s, mixed with some
more recent CDs.
There's some mid 90s Amiga Format cover disks for example.
I decided that the only way to find out was to bid, and so I did.
The lot was secured for £110, plus other fees, bringing the total to just under £150.
I had my own ideas, but I then put the question of what this mystery console may be to my
Patrons, who came up with answers ranging from an Amiga 500 with A570 CD Drive, to a
CD-TV or even a CD32.
Of course, time would tell, as I began the journey to Bourne Auction rooms in Lincolnshire
to obtain the mystery lot....
*laughs*
So, me and Octav1us are en-route to the Bourne House Auction Rooms to collect this mysterious
Amiga, and see what it is.
It's exciting isn't it?
It is very exciting... hello!
This is Octav1us.
Stop, stop driving so erratically!
I can't help it!
It's bumpy round here.
Jesus Christ.
So bouncy.
So, SO BOUNCY.
Anyway, we'll do some more recording when we get to the auction, shall we?
Yup, OK.
We've arrived at the Bourne Auction Rooms... over there you can see, there we go, there
they are, so we're gonna go in and see what this box is.
Ready?
Yeah.
GO.
GO!
*door opening*
*birds tweeting*
*wind blowing*
*whispering*
So what do you think it's gonna be?
Uhm, well, I'm kinda a very pessimistic person, so I think it might just be a crappy A500
with some sort of disc drive.
So, here's the first box.
Not sure what's in yet other than what we can see on the top.
There's a lot of discs in here!
Yeah, so here's the second box.
It's quite obvious from the top what the console is, but there's some other stuff inside so
we'll get them back to the house and then check.
What.
Exactly we have here.
So the items are in the back, clearly we've got an Amiga 1200, lots of games, but it looks
like there might be an accelerator board in that 1200 as well, so looking quite good!
NO they're not yours!
STOP.
STOP touching them!
No, it doesn't work like that!
*engine sounds*
OK, so here we are, the items have been retrieved, we've got them back, they're not Octav1us',
they're all mine, just to clarify.
So we know we've got an Amiga 1200, which is a pretty good score, isn't it?
-It's a bit grubby though.
It is quite grubby.
It's probably the most obvious machine to expect from this lot of software, but it's
not what I was expecting, so that's pretty good if it works, or partially works.
But then there's also this, now this is an A1230 Turbo+ expansion board FOR the 1200.
It's an Amiga 1200 accelerator, which is a pretty good score IF it's in this expansion
slot.
YESS, look at that!
It's got the accelerator expansion.
With a 68030 processor.
-Wooow.
That is pretty good.
This is a good auction lot, just for that really.
-Right, games, Rise of the Robots, one of your favourites!
My favourite game of all time.
-A Train.
A Train is one of my favourite games of all time.
-Right, Whales - oh - Whales voyage.
Anyway, rather than bore you going through each game, suffice to say there's a lot of
software here.
Some titles are outstanding gems like Rise of the Robots, *cough*, and others are more
obscure.
But a good selection never the less.
-It's the entire control panel for your rocket ship!!
Woah, is that in the Shuttle game?
-Yeahhh!
Wow that is mental -Look at that!
-Imagine how this is going to be to learn how to play!?
That's gonna take a lifetime!
-MY GOD!
No wonder this guy didn't have a job!
-*laughs* -Massive instruction book.
He was a proper bloody Shuttle pilot!
-It's got schematics and everything!
My reference to this guy not having a job was also because his P45 was in the box.
Clearly this has been in the loft for a long time.
Possibly as far back as 1998 by the look of it!
...for the previous owner.
Date left previous employment: 1998!
-Oohh
That maybe when he stashed his Amiga away.
There's also a number of CD-Drives and external floppy units that I'll need to test, especially
given some of the inexplicable damage which some seem to have endured.
The other box is like a sea of cover disks and public domain software.
The previous owner was clearly a POWER USER, and there's a mix of his own saved files and
commercial titles.
OH!
He's written over an Atari game with an Amiga...game!
He's put the Fred Fish Catalogue disk on the Atari Power Pack!
Double Dragon as well! -*laughing*
There's also some really interesting things like this letter.
*unfolding sound*
-"Thanks for your order, Dawn II and extras attached.
Black Dawn 7 wasn't coded by me, it was done by a guy called Shaun Watters, and sells through
-something- see Legions of Dawn demo for address.
I've heard the graphics are good, but the game sucks.
Not sure to advise getting it, cheers, Andy?"
-Andy J Campbell?
-Developer of Dawn 2, apparently.
Oh ok, so he developed Dawn 2?
This is an original letter from the developer of Dawn 2?
Wowww
-and apparently Dawn 7 is crap.
Anyway, I think we should get this kit back to the office and see what's what.
Check what condition that 1200 is really in, and see how that expansion card really checks
out.
*music* *exertion sounds*
*box thudding table*
So everything is safely back in the office, and more importantly, it's safe from Octav1us
trying to steal it!
So, I'm gonna go through all this and see what else I can discover, and also talk to
you about that letter, because there's something quite interesting I have discovered since
reading it.
OK, let's get started.
*music*
So this Amiga; it IS very grubby.
It's gonna need some cleaning up with my stain removing wipes, which I used to clean my last
Amiga, but rather than switching this on, I think I'm going to take this apart and re-cap
it and make a separate video about that.
On initial inspection - you can't see very much there - but, the expansion card looks
pretty good.
It looks in quite nice condition, but I'm gonna take it apart properly to have a proper
look at that and see what we're dealing with.
Now here' the expansion.
The A1230 Turbo+ Series II, err, these come in different flavours, if you will.
We've got up to 32MB.
OK, so it looks like this is a 4MB board.
So could be better, but you know, still quite happy with that.
So, this CD drive.
No idea what happened to this.
On first inspection it might look like water damage or something, but it looks like it's
been filed away.
Dunno if he's tried to file the rust off?
Potentially.
But, that's not in the greatest condition, but we've got a SCSI CD-ROM which we'll need,
we'll need to look at in a bit more detail.
We've got the floppy disc drives as well to look at.
So, as I was saying.
This letter, pretty interesting.
Now this was for a game called, Black Dawn 2, which was programmed by Andy Campbell.
*ominous game sounds*
So here's the Black Dawn II disk.
Dunno what's happened to it.
It's the registered version, but he's put some masking tape round the side, and kinda
blacked that out.
So I don't know if this has got something else on it, or whether he was just trying
to make it "look" like Black Dawn.
I don't know.
*disk clickky sound*
But that is the disk question.
So he's talking about Black Dawn 7, which wasn't coded by him, it was coded by Shaun
Watters.
Now, I'm not sure if Black Dawn 7 was released as PD back in the 90s, but interestingly,
when I was researching this, I discovered it's being released this year in a big box
format.
Shaun Watters is doing some coding on it and it's coming out!
Soon!
So *laughs* y'know, I don't want to be the breaker of bad news, it says here that he's
heard the graphics are good, but the game sucks.
I imagine, or I would hope, the game has been improved since the 90s, or it's in the process
of improvement.
But timing wise, that's fascinating.
This is a piece of history which is relevant today.
I might frame it and put it on the wall.
*folding paper sounds*
Anyway, that's the mystery Amiga console.
It was an Amiga 1200.
Nice accelerator board.
Loads of software, loads of stuff to look at.
We've even got Michel's School of Motoring, who Mr. Dodge, the previous owner, had some
lessons booked with.
I imagine he'd just turned 17 or 18.
I mean, there's loads of pirated disks and disks with Mr. Dodge's own images and stuff
on there.
Loads to look through, so, we'll come back to this.
I know I keep saying that.
We WILL come back to this in future videos.
So, thanks for watching.
Thanks to Octav1us for helping me on my mission and I will see you soon.
Have a great evening.
It's like peering into someone's past isn't it?
It is like a window into their life.
Because a lot of our lives were contained on these machines.
Y'know, what we did.
Things we wrote.
Art we created.
Things we peered at.
All on these disks.
Feels like I'm kinda spying into his life.
Feels a bit wrong.
Especially as I don't know what happened to the chap.
Maybe he just got bored of his Amiga.
Maybe he passed his driving test and he was like; I don't need my Amiga anymore.
I'm gonna go out, drive my car, go to pubs, FIND SOME WOMEN.
Because he'd have to say it in that accent.