geoffm3
Veteran Member
Didn't pretty much everyone in Germany own an ST at one point?
Seriously though, I thought that was where they were most popular.
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Scored an SX-64 on eBay, yesterday... Noticed sudden craze on remaining ones...
- Thread starter EddieDX4
- Start date
Didn't pretty much everyone in Germany own an ST at one point?
Seriously though, I thought that was where they were most popular.EddieDX4
Veteran Member
So..........
How about them SX-64s..., eh?
;-)
Well, to get back on topic, about the 2 that were battling it out on eBay, 1 sold for $107 I believe, the other's not done yet but already up to $152.50! It looks decent and it is being sold by the original owner, but apparently the handle bar's missing some hardware so it's not hooked up, so not perfect. That makes that $152.50 the more surprising.
....I really hope mine doesn't end up being a dud.
How about them SX-64s..., eh?
;-)
Well, to get back on topic, about the 2 that were battling it out on eBay, 1 sold for $107 I believe, the other's not done yet but already up to $152.50! It looks decent and it is being sold by the original owner, but apparently the handle bar's missing some hardware so it's not hooked up, so not perfect. That makes that $152.50 the more surprising.
....I really hope mine doesn't end up being a dud.
tezza
Veteran Member
Yes, availability varies hugely according to country.
Here in New Zealand Amiga 500's are as common as mud. You can get them for a very cheap price. Sinclair ZX-Spectrums are not rare either. At any given time on our local auction site you would find at least a couple of Amiga 500s and often a Spectrum for sale. Strangely several SX-64s have appeared in the last year or so they appear not that rare here also.
What IS rare are TRS-80 machines. These are never seen. In all my time of watching (4 years) I've ever only seen one, and that was a beat-up Model I console that some junk dealer found (he called it a Commodore 64!). Apple IIe machines are not that common either, but they do appear from time to time. IBM PCs and IBM ATs. Very rare also. The clone makers got into NZ very early and given they were half the price of IBM, I don't think NZ was a big market (per head of population) for Big Blue.
Tez
Here in New Zealand Amiga 500's are as common as mud. You can get them for a very cheap price. Sinclair ZX-Spectrums are not rare either. At any given time on our local auction site you would find at least a couple of Amiga 500s and often a Spectrum for sale. Strangely several SX-64s have appeared in the last year or so they appear not that rare here also.
What IS rare are TRS-80 machines. These are never seen. In all my time of watching (4 years) I've ever only seen one, and that was a beat-up Model I console that some junk dealer found (he called it a Commodore 64!). Apple IIe machines are not that common either, but they do appear from time to time. IBM PCs and IBM ATs. Very rare also. The clone makers got into NZ very early and given they were half the price of IBM, I don't think NZ was a big market (per head of population) for Big Blue.
Tez
mark66j
Experienced Member
Interesting. I would really love to have an Amiga, but in the US they seem to go for a lot of money usually. (Two Amiga 500s are on eBay now for $200 each). Commodore marketing in the US was mostly very bad, and I think the C-64 is the only machine they ever made that really did well here.
tezza
Veteran Member
Gee! Here an Amiga 500 console would typically go for $40-$50 NZ dollars ($28 US or so). Sometimes even less.
Texas Instrument home computers are also unknown here in NZ.
Tez
EddieDX4
Veteran Member
Amiga 500's listed for $200 is not an indication of their true market value. Amiga 500's generally sell for far less than that, even when paired up with a proper Commodore monitor.
geoffm3
Veteran Member
lol... they are really good machines. I especially liked the keyboard on them.
carlsson
Veteran Member
Now, if anyone finds a Commodore SX-500 for sale... yes, an Amiga 500 in a SX-64 case !!
At least one prototype machine is known to exist and even works. Check the Secret Weapons of Commodore for picture proof.
At least one prototype machine is known to exist and even works. Check the Secret Weapons of Commodore for picture proof.
EddieDX4
Veteran Member
Maybe the so-called "ex-developer" that has it will haul it to a bar someday, get drunk, and leave it behind... a'la iPhone 4.
carlsson
Veteran Member
I think you have to become unconscious to forget such a huge and heavy piece in the bar.
Dave Farquhar
Experienced Member
Wow, somehow that was the first I'd heard of the SX-500. The Secret Weapons page says Hedley Davis built three (he was one of the A3000 developers) and it was Dale Luck who tipped him off to the remaining one at a VC festival. I'm not as familiar with Hedley Davis, but Dale Luck is well-known in the Amiga community.
That may be part of the mystique with the Amiga--the guys like Dale Luck and Dave Haynie who designed and built them are out and around, and very talkative. Jay Miner even ran a BBS.
Neat-looking machine, but it's hard to imagine using an Amiga on such a tiny monitor.
That may be part of the mystique with the Amiga--the guys like Dale Luck and Dave Haynie who designed and built them are out and around, and very talkative. Jay Miner even ran a BBS.
Neat-looking machine, but it's hard to imagine using an Amiga on such a tiny monitor.
EddieDX4
Veteran Member
The one SX-64 that was up to $152 completed with 31 bids at $250! This thing is being shipped from Ontario, so unless the high bidder's Canadian, I can only imagine the outrageous shipping on that thing.
Man, am I glad I saw that newly listed BIN when I did...
There's another one at $99 with 4 bids so far... Has some time left.
Man, am I glad I saw that newly listed BIN when I did...
There's another one at $99 with 4 bids so far... Has some time left.
Wow, they've gone up a lot since I got mine a couple months ago. I got mine free off Craigslist, but when I checked eBay after the fact, I saw one that had ended around $75 and one that was ongoing at $115.
EddieDX4
Veteran Member
Even just a few weeks ago they weren't going for that much, that I could tell...
AngryWhiteGuy
New Member
Hi y'all. I came across this site while looking for disk drive help. I was one of them who snagged an SX a couple weeks ago. Pristine condition, for $145. Seemed like an okay price to me. Maybe a little steep, but the seller had an embedded u-tube video showing it in action.
Since I'm looking for drive help, all is not well anymore. I accidently dropped the front of it on the counter and think I either knocked the head out of wack, or damaged the guts while plugging in a cart (spews garbage characters to the screen while LOAD "$",8 is in progress.) Now I'm not too happy.... Sure was hoping to relive some memories from 23+ years ago.... Don't want to risk another $140 by plugging in my IDE64 card before getting this fixed. :-(
By the way, I knew Jay Miner ("the Padre") personally from my first professional job out of college; he taught me a great deal in the couple of years I knew him.
Since I'm looking for drive help, all is not well anymore. I accidently dropped the front of it on the counter and think I either knocked the head out of wack, or damaged the guts while plugging in a cart (spews garbage characters to the screen while LOAD "$",8 is in progress.) Now I'm not too happy.... Sure was hoping to relive some memories from 23+ years ago.... Don't want to risk another $140 by plugging in my IDE64 card before getting this fixed. :-(
By the way, I knew Jay Miner ("the Padre") personally from my first professional job out of college; he taught me a great deal in the couple of years I knew him.
EddieDX4
Veteran Member
Wow!
P.S. Sorry about the drive on your SX-64...
I'm just getting into the C64/SX-64 "scene" so don't have much in the way of advice... I have seen a couple of SX-64's that are non-functional or in rought shape go for fairly cheap, which may have working drives...Are the characters random or the same each time? Does it spit out characters even if there is no disk or on a different disk? Could be an alignment issue, do you have a cartridge to see if it's RAM, etc? One quick thing of course it to take the unit apart and reseat any socketed chips. Any type of jolt can sometimes loosen the connection of a chip that already has corrosion enough that it may not make proper contact anymore. That also applies to cold solder joints as well. ... unless it's an Apple /// then it's a known bug fix ;-)
saundby
Experienced Member
He was a great guy. He tried to talk me away from a job to join him once, but I was flush with DoD bucks at the time and I didn't really get what he was up to at the time. It sounded like things would be close to the bone for a while. Later I met Dale Luck, and he made what they were doing (at least, what he wanted to do) clear enough--make a new low-cost workstation for the general market, as I interpreted it. But by then they didn't especially need me.
At any rate, I always enjoyed being around Jay. Long lunches, especially. Great stories, always. First met him at Atari when I did some contract work for them in about 76 or 77.
AngryWhiteGuy
New Member
SX woes and J. Miner
SX woes and J. Miner
Wow saundby, you go back a long ways! I knew him in 1990-1992 time frame, just before he died. His health was slipping and my boss and I told him he needed to stop working and enjoy life. I assume Dale Luck was one of the other ex-Atari, Amiga founders? I saw a picture of the other four in an IEEE rag several years ago and it cracked me up, they all looked like Jay! (beards and Hawaiian shirts) Jay had shown me his BBS and a little more about the Amiga. I'd heard all the stories first-hand about his dogs. He and his wife never had kids and so the dogs were like children to them. Maybe I will have to scan in the picture of us taken around '92.
I'm thinking they are not random as the disk has the file separators "-----------" (Can't remember the Compute program that allowed you to do that, but remember that it could be done) but I can see these file separators interspersed when it spits out the charachters to the screen. After it "loads" the directory, I cannot LIST it anymore, once these chars are dumped to the screen. Was hoping someone had some peeks/pokes handy to see if the PLA chip could be prodded to determine if it went bad since many people say that's one of the first chips to go. You've asked a couple of good questions though. No other cart other Fastload available to try out.
I'd seen another post somewhere on this site with the commands to reverse knock the heads back into alignment and the other command to re-initialize the drive. I haven't tried either, as I got a little bummed out and put the machine away for a day or two.
SX woes and J. Miner
Wow saundby, you go back a long ways! I knew him in 1990-1992 time frame, just before he died. His health was slipping and my boss and I told him he needed to stop working and enjoy life. I assume Dale Luck was one of the other ex-Atari, Amiga founders? I saw a picture of the other four in an IEEE rag several years ago and it cracked me up, they all looked like Jay! (beards and Hawaiian shirts) Jay had shown me his BBS and a little more about the Amiga. I'd heard all the stories first-hand about his dogs. He and his wife never had kids and so the dogs were like children to them. Maybe I will have to scan in the picture of us taken around '92.
I'm thinking they are not random as the disk has the file separators "-----------" (Can't remember the Compute program that allowed you to do that, but remember that it could be done) but I can see these file separators interspersed when it spits out the charachters to the screen. After it "loads" the directory, I cannot LIST it anymore, once these chars are dumped to the screen. Was hoping someone had some peeks/pokes handy to see if the PLA chip could be prodded to determine if it went bad since many people say that's one of the first chips to go. You've asked a couple of good questions though. No other cart other Fastload available to try out.
I'd seen another post somewhere on this site with the commands to reverse knock the heads back into alignment and the other command to re-initialize the drive. I haven't tried either, as I got a little bummed out and put the machine away for a day or two.