Well, as I write this it's only the beginning of July and
it feels like summer's lasted for years already. Don't
worry, I haven't become deluded. I don't think that 5 days
of beautiful sunshine followed by several weeks of utter
p*sh constitutes a long summer. It's just that the last
couple of months seems to have lasted for ever. The reason
? I've had to struggle on Amiga-less since the beginning of
May. Now, ther have been times in the past (admittedly few & far
between) when I have gone for months on end without
touching the Amiga. But on those occasions it was through
choice. Either I was too buzy or, for one reason or another,
I'd lost interest. This was different. It was the first
time since that fateful day in 1993 when my girlfriend and
I came running excitedly home from Dixons (bleurgh!) with
the Desktop Dynamite pack, that I'd been forced to go
without. I sincerely hope I never have to again. It all began to go pear shaped around 6 months ago, when my
trusty Commodore 1084s monitor's health began to fail. the
colour went on it and it was given a decent retiral.
In it's place went my old portable TV, while I began to
look for a cheap second-hand Microvitec Multiscan. I didn't
have much luck. Despite checking AmiBench every day and
asking around, I couldn't lay my hands on one that was in
good nick and wasn't so far away that it cost as much to
post it as it did to buy it! However things weren't that
bad. The telly was only slightly worse than the 1084s,
eyestrain-wise, although gradually it's colour began to fade
too. Around the end of April disaster struck. I came in one
evening with Mark (the guy I write with). I switched
everything on, ready to put the finishing touches to a
track we'd been working on...... Everything worked except the display. It was completely
dead. (& is now keeping the 1084s company under the stairs)
Obviously I had to redouble my efforts to find a decent
display. A couple of weeks past then I thought I'd found it. A guy
on Amibench would send me a "mint-condition" Microvitec
m1438 for £70 including postage. I e-mailed him one more
time to make sure he was sending it complete with cables. A
few days passed & he didn't get back to me. Then an old
work-mate offered me a brand new compaq 14" SVGA for £50.
by this time I was getting desperate and snapped it up.
Next day the guy from Amibench e-mailed me to see if I
still wanted the Microvitec! D'oh!. This was now the end of
May. The Compaq was duly delivered to my house a few days
later but I couldn't use it without a scandoubler! Cue
daily 'phone calls to Eyetech, Power and Analogic. Not a
scandoubler to be had from any of them. This situation
continued for almost three weeks, until Eyetech eventually
reported they had them in stock. But that wasn't the end of
the story - they had to test them before sending them out!
So about a week later I picked up ~£100 worth of internal
scandoubler/flickerfixer from the post office. The clouds were beginning to part. Now, having read what
I've already written, you'll probably understand my
eagerness to get the thing home and installed. In fact I
was so keen that I took straight into the room, removed the
A1200 from the tower and stripped off the shielding and
disconnected all the cables immediately. I fitted the new
goods in place before realising I didn't have the
instructions to put it back together! Yup, I know what
you're thinking, and you're right -1complete tosser!
Anyway another call to Eyetech & a few days later I had
some new instructions. Click-snap-ouch- get-on there-ya-
bugger and I was ready to go.
What now ? The display was pink. Cue yet more calls to an
increasingly puzzled Eyetech before three days later, I
figured it out. One of the components from the Scandoubler
(the one that clips over the Alice chip) wasn't pushed down
firmly enough! That was last week. Now I have a display which is sharper
than it has ever been and for the first time ever I'm
browsing the 'net with this beast. I'm even typing this on
it and sending it via e-mail. My Amiga's never been so
good! Anyway, if there's a moral to this story, I'm
bolloxed if I know what it is!