If our 11-part sequence on the historical past of the Amiga and our (in-progress) seven-part sequence on the historical past of the Apollo program do not give it away, we occur to be unabashed followers of a sure computing platform and a sure area program across the Ars Orbital HQ. So this week, a small submit at HotHardware inevitably caught our eye: an previous NASA-used Amiga evidently ended up on the market on eBay.

Vendor vrus at the moment lists an Amiga 2500 utilized by NASA’s Telemetry Lab on the market. How can anybody make sure this 1980s workhorse got here from the US authorities? Effectively, the machine is emblazoned with NASA property seals that appear to match tags discovered on different decommissioned NASA hardware. vrus additionally consists of screenshots of packages on the pc that look like registered to a Dave Brown (HotHardware notes Brown was a principal programmer at Cape Canaveral’s telemetry lab within the 1990s as per a 1999 Q&A with NASA retiree Hal Greenlee and feedback from Greenlee within the “Amigas at NASA” video beneath).

Ars despatched a observe to NASA asking about normal Amiga utilization and the decommissioning course of for hardware, and we’ll replace this piece if we obtain extra particulars within the coming days.

NASA beloved Amigas, too.

For now, vrus despatched Ars a little bit of further background on the acquisition. The consumer has been a fan of Commodore and Amiga since 1982, proudly beginning with the C64 and fondly remembering time with the Amiga 100 afterward. vrus now collects and trades Amiga/Commodore tools, so the consumer got here throughout this specific machine by luck when buying a number of containers of Amiga hardware and software program in bulk.

“It had been in storage for a number of years so it was in all probability acquired when NASA decommissioned most of their Amigas in 2006,” vrus wrote. “Usually I might hold one thing like this for my very own assortment as a result of it’s so distinctive and attention-grabbing, however I assumed it could be higher if it ended up someplace that different individuals may see it / use it / and so on… I’m glad I used to be ready to put it aside; I believe all of the tools would’ve ended up in a recycling plant.”

The Amiga 2500 was an iteration of the Amiga 2000 that merely got here bundled with a Motorola 68020 or 68030-based accelerator card in line with the archivists at Previous-Computer systems.com. (The unique Amiga 2000 debuted as a high-end machine for Commodore again in 1985, and it is maybe most fondly remembered for enabling the famed Video Toaster app.) vrus particulars programming information courting again to 1988 on the marketed Amiga 2500, so that may coincide effectively with the machine’s heyday (Previous-Computer systems.com lists the A2500 as a 1989 product).

Costs for an Amiga 2500 on the time appeared excessive—the Canadian PC Museum lists it as promoting for $three,800+ CAD ($three,000+) within the late 1980s. Contemplating that, perhaps this in-progress eBay public sale’s surge previous $5,000 is not so absurd (each put on and tear and probably distinctive historical past however).

Itemizing picture by eBay vendor vrus