The Day The Music Died

One man`s struggle to get a working Amiga

Many of you will be familiar with Don McLean`s epic song. It has very little to do with Amigas, however.

In the previous installment of this epic(!) drama, I broke my Budgie, found out I had a duff motherboard, found out I had an ATAPI noncompliant CD ROM drive, and sent it to Wizard Developments for repair. I then found out I didn't have a duff motherboard, and the accelerator seemed to be working.

Well, the turning off of caches seemed to do the trick, and here I am, with my accelerator running nicely. A few crashes here and there for no specific reason, which no Amiga user would normally accept, but I'm desperate.

16/11/97

As I saunter into the house, I find my sister is playing PacMan on the Amiga (who says retro gaming doesn't appeal to the younger generation?). So, as much as I would like to fiddle around the 1200, I leave her to it.

I wander through, talk to my father, and then shout at my sister to close the curtains. She doesn't hear me, and so walks backs from the computer to hear. Of course, she's still holding the joystick. The 1200 (with no screws in it, I might add) falls to the ground. The amazing thing is that it continues to work, even with the keyboard and connector ripped out and the little ridges that hold the floppy drive on snapped clean off.

I resist the temptation to strangle my sister: indeed, given the circumstances, I was remarkably calm.

So, the case is open, and the keyboard and fd are lying next to it. I carefully plonk the keyboard elsewhere, and reseat the floppy drive in its alcove, shoving the ridges back underneath.

I then take the keyboard, which now has that stupid green k/b ribbon connected to thin air. I take the keyboard connector's top half which secures the ribbon to the connector, and slide it on the ribbon.

I turn on. The Amiga doesn't want to boot. Doh!

I reboot, it boots! Wahay!

One minor eensy weeensy tiny winy problemo though. The Return, Backspace, F10 and Delete keys don't work. After blithely prodding screwdrivers everywhere, it works. The black magic is on my side this time.

18/11/97

I try and set up a 16* CD ROM I have been given. After using the scan feature on Idefix 97 and ATAPI PnP with no effect, I phone Eyetech. They say that instead of using scan, I should select atapi.device manually (the scan came up with tandem_atapi.device or some such nonsense), and select the correct unit. I do so. It hangs because the nagware requester comes up and after I have selected the window, input freezes. Oh well. I'm here with my 1230 and 4 megs. I might get a CD Rom working one day.

The day Apple call Microsoft allies. Damn, that's been done, hasn't it?

The Lair! realises that Chris Hanretty criticises his Amiga a lot, and don't worry, it'll get him back one day

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