From: worc0223@sable.ox.ac.uk (Ben Hutchings)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware,comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Amiga Joyboard
Date: 19 Oct 1997 01:11:41 GMT
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There has been some discussion on alt.folklore.computers of error
messages.  I wrote a little about the Amiga "Guru Meditation" messages,
which elicited an interesting response from Erich Fischer
<eric@fudge.uchicago.edu>:

> To raise a little extra money and to distract "spies" from their real
> project, some of the Amiga hardware people had made unusual input
> devices, including a "joy-board" which I think was something like a
> surf-board.

Actually, it wasn't surf-board shaped at all, but was square.
I have an ad for it from October, 1983, which goes

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                             LOOK MA!  NO HANDS!

Play on your feet, not on your seat.  You tilt, you bend, you turn.

Now you can play video games          You ski the most treacherous slopes.
with your hands behind your back.     You shoot the curl.  You battle the enemy
With the Joyboard Power               aliens, the enemy ghosts the enemy
Body Control.                         snakes, the enemy pickles.
There is nothing like it.             And you get the new Mogul Maniac (TM)
                                      Ski Game!  A new kind of thrill,
                                      a new kind of skill for you to master.

                         What has the rest of you
                         been doing while your hand
                         has been playing Atari?

                         Or ColecoVision, or Sears Video
                         Arcade or VIC 20?

                       Then beg, borrow, or save up for

                            T H E   J O Y B O A R D
                         
                                POWER BODY CONTROL
                         With Mogul Maniac (TM) Ski Game.

                                                        DON'T WAIT.  IT WON'T.
                                               THE
                                              POWER     A M I G A
                                             SYSTEM
(C) AMIGA Corporation, 1983                              dedicated to the
                                                            science of fun!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The following page has an ad for a more conventional, but very small,
joystick, available in standard, double (TI-99/4A), and keypad (Coleco, 
Intellivision) versions.  I can scan in images of the ads if anyone
wants to see what they look like.

eric



-- 
Ben Hutchings, compsci&mathmo | ICOAmiga http://www.lapcopaintball.com/icoa/
email/finger m95bwh@ecs.ox.ac.uk | homepage http://users.ox.ac.uk/~worc0223/
The program is absolutely right; therefore, the computer must be wrong.