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Free PDF of The Amiga in Pixels, US Gold and Ocean

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3 x PDF books free covering the history of the Amiga, US Gold, and Ocean.

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Fusion Retro Books
Fusion Retro Books

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  • +15

    I sstill have my Amiga 2000

    • One day I'll replay this on the Amiga and actually get to Sturgis

    • +5

      I have a 500 and 2000. I still gasp at what they were doing on them in the late 80s.

      • Want to sell one?

        • +2

          you can still get some on ebay, I think the 1200 was the latest one where it was modded with a flash USB drive (4GB) that can store all Amiga games on it. I remember watching a youtube video and thinking this would make a great retro gaming machine for home.

        • @lancedefrance: Thanks. I didn't even know they could be modded like that.

        • +5

          @lancedefrance: Buy an ACA500 Plus from icomp.de for the A500.
          It has 8MB RAM and a CF card controller so then you can install WHDLoad games on the CF.
          Note 1: yes, it is bit of a mission to set it all up, but that's either the fun (or not). There are youtube videos to help - search "ACA 500 Plus whdload" or similar.
          Note 2: WHDLoad runs best with 1 meg chip ram. To get that you'll need a rev 6A motherboard, or you'll need to upgrate your rev 5 motherboard with an a new agnus. Again youtube can help.

          Another simpler cheaper alternative it just to get a gotek drive for your A500.
          You can either butcher your 500 and fit it internally (evil!) or plug it into the external floppy port and mod your amiga to treat DF1 as DF0.
          To do this tidily you can
          1) make DF0/DF1 switchable with something like https://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Boot-Selector-DF0-DF1-DF1-DF0-S…
          2) put the external gotek into a slimline external floppy housing to provide power and a nice case.
          This option is probably better if you've got 512K chip and don't want to upgrade your agnus.

          Both of the above have worked well for me.
          If you want a sweet setup at more cost and work go for ACA 500.
          If you want value and less work go for gotek.

    • Man JV is more and more being shown for the Legend she is.

      I presume you still have loaded on it numerous classic adventure games.

      • What version of Kickstart are you running?

        • I hate to say this but I don’t own an Amiga. It’s just they are even more hipster than running a classic Mac or pc.

        • @Jake Elwood: Real hipsters are running computers that you probably haven't heard of.

        • Dont you mean which KS are you loading from disk ?

        • +1

          @ninetyNineCents:

          Unless it's an A1000 then Kickstart is in ROM. Do you mean Workbench perhaps?

        • @jnewau:

          You are correct.

          It’s a 1000 I have.

          I didn’t get a 2000 as I had purchased A PC-XT at the time

        • @Diji1: I have of heard of quite a few, but you are probably right. Probably running some old mainframe with punch cards and if you are less hipster it might be the Xerox Alto.

        • I remember you could also buy any version of the Kickstart ROM chips back then, they were not soldered to the board.

          There was a tutorial going around on a floppy disk, on how to solder together spare ROM sockets from your local electronics store and put a switch on them to change Kickstart ROM versions, as some of the older software was not compatible with the newest ROM OS version.

        • @Stphen:

          I remember you could also buy any version of the Kickstart ROM chips back then, they were not soldered to the board.

          They were loaded from 3.5” floppies on the A1000

  • +2

    PDF - The Story of US Gold
    02 Story of US Gold Book.pdf (268 MB)

    PDF - The history of Ocean Software
    01 Ocean History Book.pdf (369 MB)

    PDF - The story of the Commodore Amiga in Pixels_
    Amiga Download.pdf (459 MB)

    Cheers, looks like high quality stuff.
    Looking forward to read Jon Woods (Ocean)'s rivalry with Elite Publishing

  • +1

    A head of its time

  • Thanks OP. Always wanted to grab these books.

  • Looks like the colour printer is getting a work out today

  • This brings the member berries back!

    • +1

      Member Lotus Challenge?

  • Amiga was awesome back in the days. Street Fighter II after school hours, man I loved growing up in the nineties.

  • +6

    Showing my age with this one,some classic games I spent many a childhood night playing… off the top of my head … Monkey Island , Full throttle, Ik+, beneath a steel sky, superfrog, rainbow island (trying to get those diamonds in order of colour) , chaos engine, sensible soccer, cannon fodder , speedball 2 , crusader no remorse, worms , flashback, klax , eye of the beholder , police quest, arkanoid, prince of persia, indiana jones , full contact…. jeez looking at it now There were some great games…. I did grab an amiga all in one emulator pack ages ago… need to get an arcade machine setup for the kids.

    • +2

      Sensible soccer is still the greatest soccer game ever.

      • I still have a soft spot for kick off 2 :)

        • +1

          Oh yeah that was top until sensi stole their crown… couldn't just just run in to the net with the ball in kick off… sensi you could run to the 6 yard box and kick it diagonal to score.

          Oh another … jumping jack flash.. !!

      • so good!

    • +3

      Legend of Kyrandia, King's Quest, Street Fighter II, Day of the Tentacle, Space Quest… Oh man, they don't make them like that anymore.

      I miss adventure games, they'd be great on the Nintendo Switch for example.

      • +1

        Missed Legends of Kyrandia whent that came out… Once the homebrew takes off then it is very much a possibility for all amiga and emulator goodness …I've purposefully held off updating my switch for that very purpose. My old Wii has all the roms on them for all the systems and also my wii u… but portability will be a big bonus with the switch… my train journey seems so much quicker playng mario odyssey than watching movies.

        • If you can play super mario oddysey then you've upgraded past 3.0.0 and have missed the boat for switch homebrew :(

        • @korda:

          Yeah I didn't get the option at all.. my switch came already on 3.0.1 so was no harm in updating to 3.0.2 for Mario but I will keep it as low as possible just in case there is an exploit in the versions before the current 4.1 , they already bypased the browser to get full web access using so a similar exploit to the online MP4 from the wiiu is possible.. well I like to hope so anyway…

        • @akoli:
          Fair enough. At least you get to play mario.

        • @korda:

          and surprised how much time I have played to be honest.. I was off sick for a week from work and setup zelda on Cemu put abut 75 hours in to that before I bought the game on the switch. then got hooked on mario…been a long time since I spent 40 minutes just farming coins.. the portability really helps once the family are asleep…

    • Seven cities of Gold

      • Hi again, Sadie jv.

  • Wow just recently I setup WinUAE with my old hard drive file from my old A4000 setup

  • Had one of the original ones. Such great graphics and so far ahead of its time. Ended up giving it to my little brother.

  • +3

    Guru Meditation FTW!

    • I still say this when something goes wrong and few people get the reference. I was a little upset when Chrome stopped using the message when a tab crashed.

  • +5

    My first computer was an Amiga 500, it was ahead of Windows back then, used it mainly as a gaming machine and taught myself how to program in Basic. I now work as a Computer Engineer.

  • Had an Amiga 500, 2000 & CD32.

    Good times :)

  • +2

    Gee what about the Commodore 64

    • +1

      Even though the Amiga is a more powerful machine, the c64 is still going strong.

      • +1

        Yeah loved my C64 and the tape drive. Memories….

  • +2

    Once upon a time I owned a second hand Amiga 1000. You had to load the operating system by floppy disk. It did amazing things when you think about how much memory it had installed - 256 KB. Used the expansion slot to get it up to 512 KB of RAM.

    We pulled the cover off the Amiga one day and saw all the signatures moulded into the inside of the plastic case. Even tried changing the 68000 cpu for a a 68010 cpu.

    Went from that to the A500 with hard drive and RAM expansion. Then got the A2000 as well with a video expansion card to overlay computer graphics and text to camera video real time.

    Showed off the Newtek demos to many a jealous IBM PC owner:

    Newtek demos:
    1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXqmTZMtAj8
    2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoxwPAZ-iG4
    3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DybXc-WEf6Y

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86ArHF1qi_0

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP1nLzT_t0o

  • Prices are now £1 GBP

  • So cool. Love my A500

    Remember the motherboard was code B52, so they printed Rock Lobster on it.
    http://oldcomputer.info/pictures/gal/Museum/8-bit/Amiga_500/…

    https://youtu.be/szhJzX0UgDM

  • +3

    Is this still free? Showing as £1 for me ;(

  • +3

    Not free anymore.
    They are now one pound each.
    Deal expired. 😕 Didn't get to down load them 🙁

    • The direct links below still work, in case you haven't spotted it.

  • +1

    Looks like I missed the free deal. Not sure when I would have had time to read them but they looked fascinating.

    • It's like GBP1 now, still a deal?

  • Thanks OP , i had an amiga and a speccy bought part 1 of the speccy while i was there

  • The Amiga ruled. Best computer ever!

  • Thanks OP, I was lucky enough to grab them whilst free. Just been reading the U.S. Gold story which is absolutely fascinating. I'm sure the others will be just as interesting.

  • +1

    Amiga 500 games I got blisters to:

    Speedball 2- Brutal Deluxe
    Defender of the Crown
    Pirates
    The Last Ninja series

    And a crapload more!

    And I still have my Amiga 500 and C64 packed away in the garage.

  • +2

    1 pound each now. Dang, the memories from that Ocean logo. Amiga was my high school years.

  • Picked up an Amiga 500 package a few days back for $50 (A500 1MB, commodore monitor, joysticks, mice, heap of games inc. original boxed Monkey Island, and Monkey Island 2).

    Now need to visit bunnings to buy the chemical to restore the plastic colour to its original shade! Funny enough the keyboard had retained it's original look and is perfect in condition, just the shell requires treatment.

  • -1

    Sorry the deal was only for New Year Day by the looks of it, and since the publisher is based in the UK I guess it is now the 2nd of January 2018 there now. I did order 600 quantity of each though :)

  • +1

    Anyone care to post links to the Amiga PDF?

  • +1

    Oh noes, how did I miss this???

  • +3

    Even for 1 pound ea they're good value. I kickstarted some of the books and they're a great read.
    I'm awaiting my Crash annual to arrive soon

    Any Zzap 64/Crash (I would say Amtix but who am I kidding) fans should check out the Oli Frey artbook as well, it's very nice

  • +1

    There's a website called The Digital Antiquarian where the author writes in-depth pieces about computing and gaming in the 1970s and 1980s. All the content is free and very well-written. Highly recommended!

  • +1

    how'd i miss this - love collecting books…
    thanks for the links :)

  • +1

    Oh I missed this. I guess I will have to get out my original Amiga with the side mounted HDD and extra RAM. The old monitor still works too. I have 100s of disks too. My wife keeps wanting me to sell it off, but I've had it from brand new. I even have a genlock for video editing special effects! Oh memories of morphing with Deluxe Paint.

    • love your avatar

      • A surprisingly large number of people think it's the flash or green lantern

        • hehe, maybe ya just have to be old ;P

    • +3

      DuckKnight has helpfully put the download links a few posts above

  • +2

    DuckKnight you legend! Just managed to download all 3 PDFs to my computer via the links posted above, despite deal being expired several hours ago :)

  • Have many fond memories of my Amiga 500 days. I loved that the games on there were far better graphically and audio wise compared to the pc versions (Test Drive 1 & 2 for example). Had many games, also played Leisure Suit Larry for the first time as an 8 year old…… got past the trivia questions in no time :D.

  • +2

    Here is a Link to an Amiga documentary, I found it very interesting, hopefuly someone else here will also: http://www.mediafire.com/file/hskqb1k1zb72ssg/VAD.ts

    Plays fine in VLC Media Player.

  • +2

    Nothing came close to this for it's time…

    https://youtu.be/HBkUxuUdnKI

    Spaceballs - State of the Art 1992 Demo

    Made PCs look like a joke for sound and video at the time.

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