For many years I have had a fascination with older computing hardware.

From the late eighties my machine of choice was the trusty old Atari STe 520. A nice machine in it's day, but sadly it seems that the machine aged badly with time and now gives the bombs error on boot.  In 2000 I bartered my friend's Amiga 1200.

In September 2003 I acquired a Taifun 1230 accelerator card for my A1200, which overrides the old 7mhz Motorola MC68EC020 with a 40Mhz Motorola MC68030 and Motorola MC68882 FPU at 40mhz.

The first thing I did with the installed accelerator, was to give it a performance test. I heared that Doom had been ported to the Amiga. Unfortunately the game ran a little slower than I expected for comparable PC hardware. Maybe it's just my memory of my old PC running Doom faster than I thought :), maybe it's due to a bottleneck in the Amiga system bus.

Here's a complete vanity shot of me running Doom on my expanded Amiga 1200.

The next thing I attempted was to run Linux on the hardware.  I Installed a version of Debian in 2005, which ran quite well in 16MB of RAM, although X11 was a challenge.  Other additions to my A1200 were adding VGA capability and a Solid State Drive.

My attention since then has moved towards the Open Source AROS Operating System, which is described as "a lightweight, efficient and flexible desktop operating system, designed to help you make the most of your computer. It's an independent, portable and free project, aiming at being compatible with AmigaOS at the API level.".

Other interesting hardware

Atari FALCON 030

Atari STACY