English Amiga Board - View Single Post - What was your most memorable experience with Amiga?

ubermick · 19 June 2012, 00:30

The quantity of flashbacks I'm having now, you'd think I'd had a few pints of LSD.

Getting my A500 Batman Pack. My class were supposed to be going on a school tour to London, and my mum and dad thought it was a waste of money to send me. Stayed home, got the hump, sulked in my room non stop, and swore I'd never forgive my dad. I'd been saving up all year for an Amiga after seeing my friend's one, and my dad decided to make it up to me by taking me into town, putting my savings (just over £100) as a down payment, and getting me my A500 on HP. Turned out that it changed my life, since I got addicted to DPaint, started doing logos for our wee scene group, and almost 23 years on, I do that for a living now, as a creative director.

When I first got the Amiga, I was at the mercy of my friend and his brother, who charged me an absolute arm and a leg for games. Back then, disks were £2 each (!!) and any time I wanted to get something that came that he had, he charged me 6 blanks for the first disk, and then two blanks per extra disk if it had more than one. (So yep, Monkey Island was 16 disks total - four to get the game copied onto, and twelve more as "payment", so would have cost more than buying it new!) After a while I made some contacts, started trading via the post, and it was a VERY satisfying day when said friend and brother were coming to me for games, and I could tell them what to do with themselves.

It's not one memory in particular, but swapping was amazing back then. These days we have an "I want it now" mentality to everything, if there's something we want, it's as simple as jumping online and downloading it. Not back then. I'd almost be shaking with excitement by the time the postman came down the front path, and feel the utter despair when there was nothing, or the utter thrill when I heard the satisfying "thump" of a jiffy bag full of floppies hitting the floor. Leg it to my room, and rip the envelope open, to see what goodies were in there, along with a letter (remember those?!?!) from friends I'd made all over Europe.

These days, when I think back to the Amiga, I'm amazed at what I had, and what I have now. I remember snagging the 512kb expansion and an external floppy, and thinking I had a "state of the art" setup. I type this on a hackintosh with a 4.5ghz quad core i7, just a little bit faster than the 7mhz 68000. This thing's got 24gb of memory, over 24 THOUSAND times the memory of that upgraded Amiga. Don't even get me started on my hard disk space, which is the equivalent of something like 3 MILLION floppies.

And yes, I do indeed remember when all this was just fields!

19 June 2012, 00:30	#37
ubermick Registered User Join Date: Jun 2012 Location: San Francisco-ish, via Ireland Posts: 114	The quantity of flashbacks I'm having now, you'd think I'd had a few pints of LSD. Getting my A500 Batman Pack. My class were supposed to be going on a school tour to London, and my mum and dad thought it was a waste of money to send me. Stayed home, got the hump, sulked in my room non stop, and swore I'd never forgive my dad. I'd been saving up all year for an Amiga after seeing my friend's one, and my dad decided to make it up to me by taking me into town, putting my savings (just over £100) as a down payment, and getting me my A500 on HP. Turned out that it changed my life, since I got addicted to DPaint, started doing logos for our wee scene group, and almost 23 years on, I do that for a living now, as a creative director. When I first got the Amiga, I was at the mercy of my friend and his brother, who charged me an absolute arm and a leg for games. Back then, disks were £2 each (!!) and any time I wanted to get something that came that he had, he charged me 6 blanks for the first disk, and then two blanks per extra disk if it had more than one. (So yep, Monkey Island was 16 disks total - four to get the game copied onto, and twelve more as "payment", so would have cost more than buying it new!) After a while I made some contacts, started trading via the post, and it was a VERY satisfying day when said friend and brother were coming to me for games, and I could tell them what to do with themselves. It's not one memory in particular, but swapping was amazing back then. These days we have an "I want it now" mentality to everything, if there's something we want, it's as simple as jumping online and downloading it. Not back then. I'd almost be shaking with excitement by the time the postman came down the front path, and feel the utter despair when there was nothing, or the utter thrill when I heard the satisfying "thump" of a jiffy bag full of floppies hitting the floor. Leg it to my room, and rip the envelope open, to see what goodies were in there, along with a letter (remember those?!?!) from friends I'd made all over Europe. These days, when I think back to the Amiga, I'm amazed at what I had, and what I have now. I remember snagging the 512kb expansion and an external floppy, and thinking I had a "state of the art" setup. I type this on a hackintosh with a 4.5ghz quad core i7, just a little bit faster than the 7mhz 68000. This thing's got 24gb of memory, over 24 THOUSAND times the memory of that upgraded Amiga. Don't even get me started on my hard disk space, which is the equivalent of something like 3 MILLION floppies. And yes, I do indeed remember when all this was just fields!