What was your most memorable experience with Amiga?

[diablothe2nd]

I actually have three

1) a family friend had an Amiga 500+ and whenever we were there, we'd play lemmings

2) leading up to my birthday i wasn't allowed in the 3rd bedroom for a couple of weeks. The door was locked and do not enter signs put up. Couldn't get in, despite sneakily trying to see what was going on (i was a curious kid). on my birthday i woke up to find ribbons and a card stuck on the door, lock removed.

I opened it, and found my brand spanking new A600, with 1mb ram expansion, external floppy drive and 4 DOUBLE disk boxes full of games and demos. Some were pirated (i assume by said family friend) for me and a few others were original.

I can still remember the smell of the fresh new plastic, and the excitement of hunting through HUNDREDS of disk for Lemmings which was the first game I booted.

3) I've already mentioned this in another thread, getting Real 3D on the cover of Amiga Format


so, what's your most memorable Amiga moment?

[lifeschool]

This is a hard question, given all the magic the Amiga still continues to provide and produce - day after day after day. I guess I can list a few:

. I was 13 (1989) and my best mate had just bought an A500. I had a C64. I used to walk miles to his place on a Sunday morning and play Lotus 1 - and he always used to watch for me trying to pass him and crash me off the road. Yes, I remember being blown away by the graphics in those days, and also loving Lotus - and I've always wanted an Esprit since that very day. He also had Lemmings, and Apprentice - which is not a good game but it looked a lot better than my Bounty Bob Strikes Back.

. The day I bought a Bodega Bay to upgrade my A500 into an A2000. I also bought an IDE CDROM for it, and CU Amiga had just started to put cover CDs onto their mags. I installed the thing and it worked. The very same day I discovered I could play CDs in the drive - and I went out and bought my very first CD for it (I only had access to cassettes and LPs until then). I felt like I'd opened the door to the future, and was living the dream.

. The day I installed a Derringer 4MB 25Mhz 030 card into my A500/A2000; virtually upgrading it to A3000 specs; was also a top moment. Suddenly my ex-7Mhz machine took on wings and flew! Now I could actually use Workbench! - and with it, DPaint - with animations!, and all the other applications I'd never been able to use before, like 'Vista 3.0' the landscape generator. I'd only ever played games before this, now (along with an 80MB HDD) I could play with octamed and make sound samples - and just DO ANYTHING I wanted!. At this time there were only the 486 SX/DX PCs on the market, so I felt like I was very much 'one-up' on my PC friends. I put F/A Interceptor on - wow!

. One last one. I always wanted to play the game 'Supremacy'. One day I managed to get hold of a copy (i.e. a crack) of the game from a guy I didn't really know. It had a virus on the disk which was, ahem, interesting.. ...but that's not it. The real story is that I had just gotten ahold of X-copy pro. I followed the instructions to the letter - put in disk 1 - swap - insert disk 2 etc. But when I went to play my new copy I found the disk didn't boot. It was still blank.... and the original copy was now also blank. Damn it! - I'd copied a blank disk over the crack!! Now I had to give this guy his disk back - of his FAVOURITE GAME NO LESS! and say "sorry mate - it's blank". Red face.

[diablothe2nd]

I LOL'ed at the last one... I've nearly done it so many times! but i always made sure the "source disk" was write-protected. it's saved me from many a blunder!

Great story!

[cosmicfrog]

oh yes been there done that, wot a wast of 2mins copying a blank disk but its a mistake you only make the once

Bodega Bay \o/ always wanted one of them for my A500

[Solid Snake]

Picking up a brand new Amiga Technologies A1200 exactly like the one shown here http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...roducts_id=668 back in 2000 for the princely sum of 50 UKP! (These were around the 399UKP mark a few years earlier)

It was my first A1200 and I was ever so excited having previously owned an A500. The package came with some cool games: Whizz AGA, and Pinball Mania. The huge Amiga Magic box also contained some useful programs: Wordworth V4SE, Organiser, Datastore, Turbocalc and Photogenics.

These allowed me to use the computer for many things besides playing games. WP, college assignments, music, graphics, emulation and general tinkering.

I installed a 350MB HD followed by an Apollo 1240/16MB fastram accelerator. Later, I managed to find an Amiga Q-Drive which allowed me to access Amiga/PC cdroms.

This setup allowed me to emulate a Mac, play Doom and play the Amiga version of Quake (wow!) even though it was a *itch to configure. My friends were amazed at the power of my humble A1200.

Then I upgraded to Amiga OS 3.5, installed PFS3 and went online with AWeb & iBrowse after picking up a cheap 56k V99 modem at a computer fair. Surfing the web using an Amiga always impressed my friends.

I bought a netbook in 2007, which I now use more than the Amiga. But, the netbook comes in very handy for transferring files to/from the Amiga using CF cards.

[mombasajoe]

I´ve had a C64 at that time and a friend got his A500 with Populous (´88?). That game was a really impressive experience those days. Like technology from outer space

[Dunny]

Seeing an Amiga for the first time - I had a sinclair spectrum +2, which was my pride and joy but ended up being somewhat resented after I'd seen a 17bit MOD demo running along with games like Dungeon Master and Rocket Ranger...

That year I ran three paper rounds and bought myself a lovely little A1000 with 256KB RAM expansion and a shedload of copied disks. First game I popped in was Super Hang-On, and the sound that game made through my HiFi unit was stunning. After that it was PacMania and a wonderful few weeks hunting through the disks finding various gems (and some not-so sparkling turkeys which surprisingly I still love despite them being dire games).

I also discovered Amiga BASIC, and swiftly went back to the Speccy for my coding fix.

I eventually upgraded to the A1200 with a 50MHz Blizzard 1230-IV but it wasn't the same - the magic was gone by that point and I quickly dumped it in favour of a PC.

D.

[zipper]

Playing hardware accelerated Descent on my A500T.

[Dastardly]

The day I got my A500 Batman Pack.

[fuzzylogic]

The day my uncle told me that he is buying me an Amiga 500 for my birthday. I could not wait to get it since some of my friends already had an Amiga

[alexh]

1993 ish, finally getting Chaos in that flux cage and casting the fuse spell.

1995 at the World of Amiga show in London meeting the Team 17 guys on their stand and getting signed copies of their two studio music CD's. Sounds Digital by Alistair Brimble and Hobbits and Spaceships by Dr. Awesome (Bjorn Lynne)

2006, meeting almost all the Thalion team in Guttersloh in Germany for a reunion. Talking all about Amiga programming which was done almost exclusively by their musician Jochen Hippel.

[pubzombie]

This takes me back - I spose it was dropping out of school to stay home and play Wings and North and South. Then also flunking out of college to sit for hours eating crap and smoking fuse wire thin role-Ups to play Frontier, Paradroid and flightsims with a mate. We used to have to get out the house before my dad came home or he'd realize we had done sod all all day. So we would pack up the miggies and go to my mates house, then meet back at mine next morning when the house was free. Then rinse and repeat day after day for about 3 years. We would then have sensi soccer tournaments and Uridium competitions with more work focused mates at weekends. Happy carefree days, I miss em. Did it wreck my career plans? Probably, all I am fit for these days is teaching games design and production. :-S

[Leffmann]

been there done that!

I didn't get much done through 7th and 9th grade. It was just one big orgy in skipping school, eating junk food, sitting up all night playing Amiga and PC games and amassing big phone bills with the modem.

Me and my brother's partner in crime from back then commented on an old photo from where we used to live "I remember this place. Many school days were lost behind those doors". Good times!

[zipper]

Launching my towerized A500 first time with Apollo 520 - snap/poof; so it was wrong way around the expansion connector....Ok, back to Supra 28 and then phoning to my dealer to get the Bliz 2060.

[chocolate_boy]

Christmas day 1991, opening my Cartoon Classics pack with the A500+ in when I was expecting a C64. I remember trying to get used to a GUI, having come from a Commodore 16 before, and wondering where you access BASIC, trying to figure out AREXX and spending a lot of time having fun with the Say app on Workbench.

The games were amazing too, spent all xmas night on Lemmings, Captain Planet and Bart VS Space Mutants. Deluxe Paint III seemed so high-tech too. Loved my Amigas, still do, although my 500+ is long dead, I have a nice 1200 taking pride of place in my office now.

[rockape]

Hi,

I`m a late comer to the Amiga.

I had a Spectrum +3 to start with, I did a lot of gaming as well as DTP using Tasword and a 9 pin dot matrix printer.

Then in 1993 I saw a beige "box with a small green screen next to it in my office, no mouse just FKey driven menues

So I bought an A1200 with a 120 meg Hard Drive for my chistmas present in December 1993.

Doing work at home on an MSDOS formatted disk made life so much easier.

Also the Printer which I had for the Spectrum worked fine with the A1200.

Now I`m retired I have a collection of Amigas and I`m posting this on my uA1 Amiga which I won at BB3.

I also have an Elbox Towered A4K/Mediator/Cyberstorm/060 MKII/SCSI/NIC/Voodoo system On-Line. The motherboard came out of a desktop system the local school gave me.

There is something special about an Amiga computer, a friend of mine said one day "The Amiga is easy to learn but hard to master" and I agree, I`m still learning after all these years and it keeps me busy.


Regards, Michael

aka rockape


Founder member of http://lincsamiga.org.uk/ aka LAG.

[Oscar Castillo]

The first time I ran ImagineFP on 030 hardware.

I have some memories. My first memory about amiga, was when it arrived home. This happened around 1987, so I was 5 years old. First thing I remember, is my father unpacking his (was still his by then xD, now its mine) brand new Amiga 1000, placing keyboard and cpu over the bed (still in their plastic covers), and then getting a desk ready to assemble it working.

I also have some good memories, playing bubble bobble with my mom (she liked bubble bobble cause she said it was not violent...). Or some years later than that coding an space invaders like game (helped by my dad, of course) using amiga basic.

I can also remember, my dad showing the computer to his friends. Loading Test Drive, just to show them the digitalised sound saying "Accolade Presents", and the sound of the green 911...

Amazing memories...

[Cherno]

Usind Deluxe Paint IV to first create simple images, then later an animation. I tried to re-create a scene from the Space Hulk intro, and to me, it looked fairly well. I spent a whole day on it IIRC. The urge to tinker with things and create or customize content still is there after 20 years

[modrobert]

All those social xcopy sessions, discussing games, filling gaps in the disk box, and eating snacks. Still, I think the C64 was more fun in that aspect, and the floppies smelled better, opening a new SKC pack...ahh...