A very long winter brought me back to Amiga

[Vexar]

Hello,
I had an Amiga since 1986 or 1987, starting with the A1000, then moving onto an A2000 (which I still have and am using for floppy salvage operations), and an unfortunately short-lived A4000T (Escom) which suffered a SuperBuster failure due to connecting a power cable to a Matay USB board backwards. In 2000, I bought a PC, on which I ran WinUAE 2.2-2.4; I "updated" to a Mac Mini, which at the time didn't have a running emulator. In utter consternation of all my Mac friends who abandoned me in my hour of need, the Mac Mini died in 3 years and would have cost 60% of its purchase price to repair, so I scavenged it for the hard drive in defiance of the Apple "genius" who was so very sorry I felt I was done with this as a personal platform. I bought my current system, a Lenovo Thinkpad E530. I've had it for less than a year, and I like it. Very reliable hardware so far. Most importantly, it runs the FS-UAE emulator very well, and I've managed to retain many files going back to the A1000. Technically, I have a company-issued laptop at home, but it's unimportant. I nearly bought the ill-fated Commodore USA Amiga Mini, but I did some calculations and realized that the power supply was too weak and decided they didn't know how to make a computer from COTS parts. At some point, I put the Amiga emulator on my hacked Nintendo Wii. Don't really know what to do with it.
On my Amiga(s), I've played far too much, drawn a fair bit, and made a little money doing 3D graphics. I've coded now and again on them, and thanks to the English Amiga Board, I'll be coding a little while longer, too! In about the year 2000, I interviewed for Amiga, Inc. for VP of Quality Assurance (whatever. VP was not an appropriate title), but when they asked me what I was looking to make, I told them it would have to be more than I was making for difference in cost of living, and they balked at paying that current figure. I didn't understand their business model, and my spidey sense tingled during the interview, so I'm glad that they went another direction.
My personal reason for returning to the Amiga is that I've suffered a very long winter here in Minnesota. I truly was in tears at one point. I dusted off an old to-do of recovering artwork I made with a friend and was pleased that my A2000 still runs. It's outlived nearly everything in my life: pets, cars, homes, relationships... Turning it on again, hearing the old sounds, I felt so welcomed by it. I've found out that a few of my co-workers have Amiga computers (one has an A3000!), and it followed I should start back to using mine again. I don't think I will do entirely what I did, although I do miss the college years building out the Regenesis environment (the first graphical RPG, built on the LPMUD platform by Bram S. and hosted by the Lysator Computer Club in Sweden, my handle was Wolverine).
This community has been very helpful to me already. I'd love to give back to it somehow. My skills are ancient, my time is limited, but my old friend who did the artwork with me is insistent we finally build that video game. I don't know if I have what it takes, but rest assured, it won't be in AmigaBasic. I think the only reason I went there was because it was BASIC on the Commodore PET where I first programmed, then BASIC again on my VIC 20 I bought myself, and BASIC again on the C128 that I had for all of a week before getting the A1000.
A friend of mine whom I know through Parkour is developing a video game about cancer (he's an artist), and it may be that I write this game. I don't know. All I want to do is connect with that bit of my soul that makes me an Amiga user. I hope there are Amigas in heaven!

[Bastich]

Welcome
Interesting read

[prowler]

Hi Vexar,

It's good to hear that you've been bitten by the Amiga bug again. Welcome to EAB!

Originally Posted by Vexar

In about the year 2000, I interviewed for Amiga, Inc. for VP of Quality Assurance (whatever. VP was not an appropriate title), but when they asked me what I was looking to make, I told them it would have to be more than I was making for difference in cost of living, and they balked at paying that current figure. I didn't understand their business model, and my spidey sense tingled during the interview, so I'm glad that they went another direction.

Quality Manager is the appropriate title for that position here in the UK, but an incomprehensible business model is not a suitable basis for effective QA in any case, so it's a good thing you didn't get involved.

Anyhow, good luck with your videogame!

hey welcome, hope we can become good friends.

[turrican3]

Welcome,
happy to see more and more guys comeback to the amiga.

[Lord Aga]

That's a cool story Vexar Hope you will share more with us. Past and present experience alike.

[jbenam]

Lovely story! What happened to the poor A4000T?

I hope it was not... oh gosh... TRASHED?

[quahappy]

Very warm welcome to EAB, Vexar! Great intro.

[Vexar]

The A4000t was sold to someone who seemed to have a means of fixing it. I truly enjoyed having the "Turbo" button be a mute button. Will kids these days ever even know what a turbocharger is? My kids already know that a supercharger is where we plug in the car on road trips and I think the original automotive term is all but lost.