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Rare Amiga Bought on eBay For $2,500 (eurogamer.net)
Long-time Slashdot reader Mike Bouma shared Eurogamer's report about a rare Amiga 3000 auctioned on eBay:
Mike Clarke, who worked at legendary UK game company Psygnosis from 1992 to 1999 doing audio work, rescued this particular Amiga 3000 from destruction after it had been placed down in a corridor, ready to be thrown out. Over 20 years later, Clarke is selling it on eBay... According to Clarke, this Amiga 3000 was first used by artist Jeff Bramfitt, who scratched his initials in the top of the case in pen "just in case someone took it off his desk".
Bramfitt used the machine to work on the title screens for Carthage, Infestation, Shadow of the Beast 2 and more classic Amiga games, but its headline claim to fame is it was used to create the original Amiga Lemmings intro and logo. Lemmings, which came out for the Amiga in 1991, was developed by DMA Design (now Rockstar North) and published by Psygnosis before the latter was bought by Sony. Later, it was used for Microcosm (3DO, Mega-CD), Scavenger IV (aka Novastorm, Mega-CD, FM Towns), and unreleased games such as No Escape, a tie-in with the Ray Liotta film, aka Penal Colony for Mega-CD.
Files for all of these games and more remain on this Amiga 3000's hard drive. "I think the above games were all in 1993, which was a very busy year because we got bought by Sony and alongside working on games by third-party developers, Sony pushed all of these film licenses onto us and gave us almost no time to make them," Clarke said. This Amiga 3000 is not without its problems, however. The floppy drive doesn't work anymore and the hard drive is "temperamental", which means you might have issues booting the thing up.
After 16 bids, the Amiga sold for £1,850 -- about $2,300 USD -- plus another £170 ($215 USD) for shipping.
"So much early gaming history has been lost mostly because, much like the BBC erasing Doctor Who tapes, nobody valued it when it was happening," Clarke tells Eurogamer. "I was the only person who saw the historical value in rescuing these machines and I also rescued over 800 development disks that were going to be binned at the time."
Bramfitt used the machine to work on the title screens for Carthage, Infestation, Shadow of the Beast 2 and more classic Amiga games, but its headline claim to fame is it was used to create the original Amiga Lemmings intro and logo. Lemmings, which came out for the Amiga in 1991, was developed by DMA Design (now Rockstar North) and published by Psygnosis before the latter was bought by Sony. Later, it was used for Microcosm (3DO, Mega-CD), Scavenger IV (aka Novastorm, Mega-CD, FM Towns), and unreleased games such as No Escape, a tie-in with the Ray Liotta film, aka Penal Colony for Mega-CD.
Files for all of these games and more remain on this Amiga 3000's hard drive. "I think the above games were all in 1993, which was a very busy year because we got bought by Sony and alongside working on games by third-party developers, Sony pushed all of these film licenses onto us and gave us almost no time to make them," Clarke said. This Amiga 3000 is not without its problems, however. The floppy drive doesn't work anymore and the hard drive is "temperamental", which means you might have issues booting the thing up.
After 16 bids, the Amiga sold for £1,850 -- about $2,300 USD -- plus another £170 ($215 USD) for shipping.
"So much early gaming history has been lost mostly because, much like the BBC erasing Doctor Who tapes, nobody valued it when it was happening," Clarke tells Eurogamer. "I was the only person who saw the historical value in rescuing these machines and I also rescued over 800 development disks that were going to be binned at the time."
The actual owner of the amiga is gonna be pretty annoyed when he finds out
People still use ebay?
I mean, come 'aaawn! You know it has to be done!
Peripherals too. I've still got a dot matrix printer and a wyse orange screen terminal. They're not worth much monetarily and they're not too rare (yet), but to me that have value due to their historical technical perspective.
EBay provides proof that people will try to sell anything...no matter how inherently useless it is.
Nothing stands out today as iconic like these platforms, where are today's classics ?
Raspberry Pi ? Arduino ? something else ?
Amusingly, $2300 is less than the MSRP of $4498 in 1991, even if you don't adjust for inflation. (Accounting for inflation, it works out to $8400 in 2018 dollars.)
I guess I always thought that Amiga was more of an 80s thing. By the 90s everyone had PCs.
On the other hand, everything about this story seems really UK based, so I assume that the Amiga was a lot more popular there.
The only game they mention that I've heard of was Lemmings, and that was a Mac game I thought.
You should have hung onto all your Hot Wheels and your Johnny Seven.
Apart from being able to cut glass and focus lasers, diamonds are pretty useless too.
#DeleteFacebook
Destined for the garbage bin, and actually in the garbage bin, are two entirely different things, legally speaking. Getting official permission to take obsolete assets from most companies is nearly impossible, but soft permission is usually granted when this kind of rescue occures. It is an interesting story, and I applaud our hero, and believe he deserves the auction proceeds, but even if the company no longer exists, I think technically saving that Amiga is larceny and then sale of stolen items, and I hope the story doesn't get our hero in trouble.
Doing music on one. And there's a vibrant homebrew game scene. A lot of little indies find it easier to write for old computers than to compete on Steam with the 900,000+ asset flips out there.
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meant art. Guess I got music on the brain. Google "SID Chip" if you wanna hear folks using old hardware for music. Or track down some OPL3 tracks.
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All of the proprietary Amiga ASICs and even the Motorolla 68k series processors used single-ended, open collector logic. As those circuit boards age the capacitence of signal traces will degrade to the point that timing will be changed, and Amigas are already running pretty close to the edge as far as timing goes. Another 10 - 20 years and original Amiga hardware that still boots will likely be as rare as rooster teeth.
What's the big deal? Hardly a tragedy. First what kind of dork is named "Who"? And basically it's a children's show, repetitive and boring. Erase all the tapes for all I care. Doesn't bother me.
an Amiga solved the traveling salesman problem?
Yep, I sold one of my dirty jizz socks on Ebay years ago for a few hundred bitcoin. At the time, that was enough to cover the postage. Wish I still had that bitcoin. And that sock.
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Who cares, an old computer sold for a couple grand... if it sold for 100k it may be news worthy but for fucks sake.
For historians this specific machine is important. And is why it sold for a lot. It could have sold for more if the auction was open for a few more months for others to be made aware of its existence. It has experienced so many important points in history. For example, as we all know Grand Theft Auto, the game, was developed by Rockstar North. And Rockstar North use to be known as DMA Design. And DMA Design was a game developer that started on the revolutionary Amiga computer (which was the most powerful system by far -- well ahead of Macs and PCs) who's critical hits included Lemmings and Walker. This Amiga 3000 was used to develop those two games. And it was those hits that saved Rockstar, allowing them to grow and to soon after begin work on the Grand Theft Auto series. And the rest is history. There are more fascinating historical events associated with this specific Amiga 3000 system, but that's just one.
Never knew, but apparently Amiga was eventually bought by HP, then subsequently sold to a company called Amino, who renamed themselves Amiga. Their plan was to then resurrect the core Amiga OS and release it as the Amiga DE (Digital Environment) on PowerPC, x86, Arm, SH4 and SH5 Procs. No idea what ever happened with that as I'm too lazy to look it up, but guessing not much since I've never heard of anything since regarding that attempt.
I thought the developer of GTA (on Playstation 1) was some other company and Rockstar acquired it. Later versions and even later disks of GTA1 are labeled Rockstar, the first releases are not.
It has experienced so many important points in history. For example, as we all know Grand Theft Auto, the game, was developed by Rockstar North. And Rockstar North use to be known as DMA Design. And DMA Design was a game developer that started on the revolutionary Amiga computer (which was the most powerful system by far -- well ahead of Macs and PCs) who's critical hits included Lemmings and Walker. This Amiga 3000 was used to develop those two games. And it was those hits that saved Rockstar, allowing them to grow and to soon after begin work on the Grand Theft Auto series. And the rest is history.
The development of Grand Theft Auto started on the amiga:
"The game was originally intended to be named Race'n'Chase and to be developed for the Commodore Amiga, starting in 1996.["
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Unopened box. Maybe its time to put it out on eBay? Nah, ill give it another ten years. Also have a Sinclair QL, an Atari Falcon and a Vic 20; all new in box. Use to work at a computer store fifteen years ago and got the job of cleaning out all old unsold stock... should have kept more stuff.