I was late to the Amiga scene! If you was, why whats your story?

[Daedalus]

@EugeneNine

It depends on your perspective. Most people already have a Windows computer lying around that's perfectly capable of running WinUAE without breaking a sweat. The effort of installing a second OS or putting together a second setup is far more than installing an application (that needs to be installed in either case anyway).

[EugeneNine]

I'm talking about all the extra overhead of dealing with windows, the reboots, the buggy drivers, having to be so careful about what web browesr you use and what you browse and keeping all kinds of malware software to prevent infection. Its just too much effort to run windows anymore.

[capehorn]

Originally Posted by Master484

I bought an Amiga Format mag with a demos of two Blitz Basic games in it: Defender and Zombie Apocalypse. And my dad thought that Zombie Apocalypse was too violent, and I was barely allowed to play it.

Haha, the same thing happened to me. The coverdisk had a '15' certificate logo on it and as a child my parents wouldn't allow me to play it... until five years later!

[EugeneNine]

would have been ironic if thr zombie demo was one (of the many IIRC) demo disks which had a virus.

[s2325]

This is great idea - releasing game about zombie virus with virus on disk

[EugeneNine]

I got my first virus early on. It was one that specifically looked for whatever was the popular virus checker then (which was the one I was using at the time) and patched it to make it randomly claim other files had a virus. Pretty well thought out.
I spent a lot of my minimum wage job buying packs of floppy disks to make backups of my backups.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by EugeneNine

I'm talking about all the extra overhead of dealing with windows, the reboots, the buggy drivers, having to be so careful about what web browesr you use and what you browse and keeping all kinds of malware software to prevent infection. Its just too much effort to run windows anymore.

I guess, though I don't find that an issue. That could be to do with still using Windows 7 however. Updates install when and only when I decide, and it's a long, long time since I've had an issue with a driver. No, it's not perfect, but no platform is, and it's still less hassle if you're already a Windows user to keep with it. WinUAE is usually the front of the curve features-wise anyway, with FS-UAE catching up a short time later.

For the record, I run more Linux machines than Windows machines at home...

[EugeneNine]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

I guess, though I don't find that an issue. That could be to do with still using Windows 7 however. Updates install when and only when I decide, and it's a long, long time since I've had an issue with a driver. No, it's not perfect, but no platform is, and it's still less hassle if you're already a Windows user to keep with it. WinUAE is usually the front of the curve features-wise anyway, with FS-UAE catching up a short time later.

For the record, I run more Linux machines than Windows machines at home...

I ended up working in various IT roles since the 90's and have seen the best and worst of windows. I supported developers at one contract job and moved their dev servers to vmware and would then take snapshots of each and could copy the snapshot to each dev workstation and run it under vmware player.
One day we decided to start upgrading to windows XP (from 2000) and all of a sudden all the workstations started hiting swap constantly. I determined that the swappiness reg key wasn't having any effect and placed a call to MS who confirmed they droped support of it in XP. I could run 3-4 guest Windows OS's under my windows 2000 workstation and XP couldn't do one. I had bought myself a new laptop st the time and it came with XP. A simple typo in the address bar (Netscape had just been AOL'ed so there wasn't really any alternate browser yet) got me infected with some crap that was easier to reformat from than clean. XP also had the occasional hang from resume (that my work provided laptop today still has). Xp would stop recognizing USB devices after a lot of swaps. I have opened more than one case with Microsoft only to have a won't fix response. I've always made a good living fixing windows but after years of seeing bad design and design choices made by politics rather than the best technical solution it gets old.
True no OS is perfect but at least in the open source world is no where near as bad as the closed and you actually have a chance as fixing any issues.

Anyway to get back on topic. I was never a big gamer, not being born with good eye hand coordination I always messed with programming languages, emulators, simulators, etc. In college we had courses in Pascal and C. I found compilers for both on first my C64 and later my Amiga and could compile and run the code from class and the labs faster than the PC's at school. Rather than seeing how many colors or sprites I cold get on a screen I looked at how many languages I could program, how many processors I could cross compile for. We did the intel 8085 and later x86 assembly as well 68000 assembly. I knew 6502 from my C64and learned the 6809 and 68hc11 and started on PIC. I could run cross-assemblers for all of these on my Amiga where the school had a different PC for each. The Amiga was perfect for that because it has cross assemblers, compilers, simulators, emulators, etc for just about anything. I couldn't afford the 2000/3000 so my project at the time was building a board to plug A2000 boards into my 500 (the exapnsion slot was close enough with just a few power pins less so a different power supply was in the plan). Figuring I could someday pickup a bridgeboard to run PC stuff on hardware.
So thats some of my history. Now I run my Amiga under FS-UAE and C64 under Vice as well as ICAROS-hosted. Picked up an Amiga 2000 a while back and am trying to get it going again.

[Robbie]

Originally Posted by capehorn

Haha, the same thing happened to me. The coverdisk had a '15' certificate logo on it and as a child my parents wouldn't allow me to play it... until five years later!

My mum was horrified once when she saw me playing a demo of 'Total Carnage'. A slight overreaction I thought at the time.

I had an Amiga since I was about 5, and my dad brought home this 'talking computer'. It was amazing, and it continued to amaze me throughout growing up and I refused to get a PC for a long time.

Highlights include the endless hours I played F1GP and Lotus 2 with my brother, along with the excitement when my dad bought a 8mb GVP card, and the first time I got it online with a 14.4k modem

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Robbie

My mum was horrified once when she saw me playing a demo of 'Total Carnage'. A slight overreaction I thought at the time.

I should have thought the horror or just playing Total Carnage was enough

[Wayne123]

i wanted an Amiga when they first came out but it was a little out of my budget at the time. I had a Commodore 128 when the Amiga was first released but with much of my money being spent on cars, motorcycles, women and rent I settled for an Atari ST. It wasn't until the mid 90's when I finally got my first Amiga. I hang on to my Amiga today for nostalgia and am thrilled that there is such a large following that refuses to let it fade away.

[TroyWilkins]

I didn't even really know of the Amiga until 1991 or so, and didn't get my own until I think it was late 1993, or it may have been 1994, I'm not entirely sure. I do remember that one arm of Commodore had just been reported as going bankrupt, but other arms were still in business.

I regularly had a look in a local second hand store (Cash Converters for my fellow Australians) on my walk home from high school, and always used to look to see what computers they had available to purchase, seeing lots of machines that now would be considered collectors items - Commodore 64s, Commodore 128 Desktops, Sega SC-3000s, Atari 600s, and all sort of other machines.

And then, once day, they had just setup an Amiga 1200HD/40, complete with an almost new 1084S-D2 (which was probably purchased along with the A1200), PSU, mouse, and a box of 3.5" disks, including the Workbench 3.0 disks and a few game disks. I decided in a matter of seconds after using it that I wanted it, and put it on lay-by that same day, so that nobody else could get it and I could pay it off as I got money. I was 14 or 15, so I didn't have a whole lot of money coming in, the only income I had was delivering advertising material, which paid roughly $0.015 per pamphlet, and I had a delivery of about 360 houses, so I was earning roughly $5.40 per delivery round, although more if more than one catalog was delivered at a time - the leadup to Christmas often meant relatively decent pay for an hour or so work.

I don't remember how much I paid for this A1200, but I do remember it was a large amount less than what a brand new one with 1084S monitor would have cost me. But it was mine, all mine, I didn't have to share it with my brother, who had the whole Amstrad 286 machine we had previously shared to himself now.

[BrooksterMax]

Originally Posted by mrbob2

i had the cartoon classics pack and the 1st game i tried was bart vs space mutants.

Same here, my journey began Christmas 1991 with the A500+ Cartoon Classics and Bart was the first game I loaded. What a quantum leap from the ZX Spectrum. I was fascinated by floppy disks, and how quickly games loaded.

Also I remember being impressed with the case and form factor - what a beautiful machine - so big and sturdy taking the whole desk space! I also used to keep my feet warm in winter by resting them on the power supply.

Another surprise was having a A500+, we expected the earlier A500 model that my cousin had with the same Cartoon Classics edition.

Suddenly we had to navigate incompatible games at the shops, I remember buying Italia 90 from a petrol station! Getting home and loading it to find it didn't work!

Got wise to the incompatibility issue over time - new software would have A500+ on the box, but all pre-1991 did not. Always a gamble!

Peak Amiga for me was 1993, I feel I joined the Amiga late in 1991 but got to experience some of the absolute highs.

[-Acid-]

I'm bored and I read people like to read other people's stories....so here is mine i'm just going to type and type until I get bored lol

I had only just got a NES in early 1992 when a neighbour who also had one said to me one day out of nowhere that I should get an Amiga... an Amiga?! I replied. I was 15 at the time and he was 26.

Few days later I went in his house (he lived next door) and he showed me his A500 and quite a few times we played 4 player Dynablaster with his brother and young son amongst other games. That was as far as it went and that Christmas I got a Super NES.

A few months into 1993 and he mentioned he had got an A1200... again I went round for a look, it had an Overdrive hard drive and extra disk drives and some fast ram. He was into making his own cartoon animations in DPaint by now and he was also a market trader and used to sell the Assassins PD disks on his stall (used to sell generic computer consumables etc).

I was a lot more impressed with the A1200 and by now he had a couple of Amiga's. He offered to let me borrow his A600 in return for duplicating the Assassins disks for his stall as it took ages and he didn't have the time (he used to print nice picture labels for them on his A1200 as well).

So of course I agreed and got the A600, living next door to each other was sometimes an advantage. We ran a massive cable from his living room window to my upstairs bedroom windows and linked up to play Knight of the Sky a lot (a game I was not very fond of) and some other games I can barely remember now, Stunt Car Racer might've figured. I was more interested in the Premier Manager series

This went on for about 6 weeks until I got bored of copying the disks, at which point he offered to sell me the A600. I was poor still just out of school with no job here but I had to have an Amiga. Two other friends who had been using this A600 with me were also interested in getting a machine of their own. One was working, the other wasn't. He was asking £120 for it and somehow we came up with the mad idea of going thirds for it!

So we each stumped up £40 and decided the best way to make sure everyone got fair time with it was that everyone kept the A600 for 1 week at a time and then someone else had it. Myself and Ian being out of work we used to spend most of the day round my house playing Champ Manager and Premier Manager or around his house playing Premier Manager with his brother and another mate called Chris used to come for 4 player games (awesome memories playing that). Then no matter whose turn it was we would take the A600 around to Barry's house and we all sat and played it again all night. Even on Barry's week, we used to take it back to mine for the day sessions then back to his on the evenings lol

This worked well for about 6 months until to my horror it broke and we couldn't find anyone to fix it! I'm not sure what happened to it from there (probably ended up in the bin... so naive). Myself and Ian were screwed with no money coming in, but Barry decided he had seen enough and bought a brand new A1200. So we all lived round his house from then on.

Christmas 1994 I finally had enough money for my own A1200 (used). My friend next door Les (who first showed me the Amiga) gave me a lift about 40 mile to Durham Prison where we bought it from a prison guard who lived just around the corner to the prison. I paid him £185 for the computer all boxed. I was like a dog with two dicks at this point lol I still have this Amiga although it has changed a bit since then, Bas (TheCorfiot) recapped it for me a couple of months ago.

Christmas 1995 I got my first hard drive, a 60mb whopper for £60 which revolutionised the Amiga for me. A cheap 33mhz Apollo 030 with 8mb came next later in the year, this transformed demo watching and got me into the scene a little, and around now I joined a small group called Area 51 (actually it was still called PowerTek but merged with another group I cannot remember the name of and became Area 51). Next on the hardware front was adding a cd drive so I could use the cover cd's which had become common. Instead of buying a pcmcia solution I got brave and bought a PC tower and my mate Barry drilled a hole in the side of it, I then ran a long ide cable from the side of the A1200 into it. I added a 1.2gb hard drive now as well (£90 ffs) with a freebie cd drive from an old pc from somewhere and an ide splitter.

Christmas 1996 I used every penny I had got together to buy a Power Tower and everything nicely went in there, I still have it and that board in it 23 years later... out of all my computer related items i've owned this longer than anything else. I sold almost everything I had but couldn't bare to part with my Amiga in 1999/2000 when my head was finally turned when I saw Unreal Tournament on the PC. For a time the Amiga and PC shared my desk but as time went on the Amiga saw less and less use and eventually all the consoles were sold but my trusty A1200... NEVER!

I always thought i'll get it out every now and then so put it in my wardrobe, it lived in darkness for almost 11 years until late 2010. I had been getting bored and feeling nostalgic for GoldenEye so bought an N64 and played it and decided to get some console stuff back (snes, nes etc).

I decided to get my A1200 back out, it all worked first time when powered up almost like it been turned off the day before. By now I was sick of fps games and decided gaming on the pc for me was done with for now. Since then i've only been playing old games from my teenage years with the odd PS3/Wii-U game getting a look in. I bought a 360 well late too, the same week I bought the Wii-U in fact about 2 years ago.... I opened the Wii-U and played with it for a few months, the 360 is still brand new sealed in the box in a cupboard lol

Now I've got every Amiga and upgrade I always wanted but could never afford... A1200 030, A1200T 060 Mediator with Radeon, A500 with A570 and base board ram expansion, A600, CD32 and my main machine these days my A4000/060 in a Power Tower with CV64/3D etc. Some machines don't get much use but I don't see the worth in selling them only to pay twice as much to get them back in a couple of years time which will be inevitable as that is always the case (you always want what you don't have).

Okay i've typed enough now.... well done if you read all of that rambling!

PS that 1.2Gb drive I paid £90 for 20 year ago still works fine! it's just quite small for today's use so it has a backup workbench install on it for emergency use. The 60mb one died about 5 years ago, it refused to spin up when powered after years of doing nothing

[mr.spiv]

I got my A500 (with b&w telly) for Xmas -88 (I consider end of -88 late.. I wish I had been there early -86). I had to rely on my friends to see stuff I did in color. Took a while to save for cm8833, and then for 512K extra RAM etc. Heck, even floppies were over my budget that time, though those expensive floppies still work today Used Amigas as my main & only computers till 2003 until wife placed a statement we need something more "modern".

Anyway, I was very very close to become an Atari ST owner Having been a diehard Speccy advocate anything Commodore was just no-go. I was saved by seeing this demo collection and specifically the Hypnotic Circles demo. I was sold at that moment and was dying to program all those copper thingies myself! Can't thank Lord Performer more

[Amigajay]

So my story of getting one started with my mate owning a A500 while i had Master System in 1987, come 1989 he started bring his A500 around my house every weekend, but my dad still said they were expensive, even though he just laid down £500 on a PCW!

So i asked for a Megadrive for Xmas 1989, where i just rented games out from a boot of a car that drove round the streets lol she was quite good had the latest imports...but anyway over time i was tiring of shelling out every weekend to play a game and my mate had hundreds of copied games with his A500 that he brought round mine, one day i cant remember why we both agreed to swap machines, this was in early 1991 if i remember because i was looking forward to Lemmings coming out, so yeah we swapped my Megadrive and Altered Beast and 2 controllers for his A500, 4 sticks, hundreds of games, disk boxes etc lol
He still came around to play on it with me, but this baby was now mine! i got his 'contacts' at school i.e look out for the kid with the Gola bag full of disks

Then in 1993 i wanted the CD32 when it came out, but was a year away from starting my first job so had little money, a friend just got one and we went round to play Pinball Fantasies, but after a month he realised he wanted a A1200 for the stuff he wanted to do, he wanted a quick sale and offered to sell it to either of us for £200, we both couldn't afford it, but we both managed to get a loan from a parents till after Xmas to share it and pay £100 each!
The CD32 was kept at mine because my mate came around most days anyway, then in early 1994 my mate was short and desperate for money one week and offered to sell his half of the CD32 to me for £50, so in the end i got to own the whole console for £150! Bought a SX-1, disk drive, keyboard and FMV unit when i started work in June 1994, years later i sold it all in a house move around 1999 like you do thinking its old tech you wont use it anymore...

[amiga_Forever]

I guess u could call it late, but i made up for it by playing all the old games missed

I was still in school, 1992 i think, and had the Amiga 500+ with 1MB RAM on Layby at out local shopping center. $399 GBP

I think it was something like $600 or something back then, and it took us weeks to pay it off...

I always wanted a CD32 console when it came out in 1994, but by then i was basically continued using my Amiga till around 1998-99 (plus i was also getting hardware of my class mates at school. (Action replay III cartridge, and A570 CD Rom),, Fom there in 2000 i went straight to Windows.

Switched to Mac after, and now running FS-UAE and VICE. on OS X with many more Amiga stuff i could have only dreamed of back them..

I still think now constantly of that bit of 'physical-history' hardware.

[seb132]

I entered in engineering school in France in 1991. At home we only had an Amstrrad CPC6128 and at school computers were really ugly...
One of the older students who entered the year before had an A500 with GVP accelerator and side harddrive. He was the president of an Amiga club. He showed me the games (Lotus2, etc) but also the DTP software he was using (ProPage).
I immediately fell in love with the machine. Bought an A500 second hand but didn't have much time to enjoy it as the A1200 and 1942 multysinc monitors were coming out. Save a lot of money during summer holidays and bought the 2 in 1992...
Having my friend nearby helped me a lot to understand the workbench, etc.
I still have my original A1200 (in a tower since 1993).
I never regretted to have discovered the Amiga a bit late. All the good stuff was out there...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[amiga_Forever]

1993 was the time i got my Amiga 500+ at lay-bay... There isn't a story there,,,, because i never bothered to see if such a machine even existed..

After that time when i was still in school, all hell broke lose at the local newsagent. Suddenly, i was their 'best' customer (can't imagine why that would be)

Amiga mags were piling up in my bedroom like hotcakes. Then i started delving into buying large size boxes of mix original + coped Amiga/cracked games.

Right around the same time i was going to my local Amiga commuter club every Thursday night with my gandparents we traded games etc..

[vext01]

I got my first Amiga in 2012. I was always a Sinclair kid. Now I have a 500, 600 and CD32