First day you got your first Amiga

Can't you just tell I love nostalgia !

Just thinking of this brings a tear to my eye !


I remember all those years ago......

I had been starring through the local computer shop window at the Atari's & Amiga's counting the years it would take to save up for one.

I had outgrown my CPC464. I had reached limits on it and wanted to do more things. It was offering nothing new to me and was looking very old.

Luckily my parents came into some money that year and for my birthday we all went down the computer shop to choose my new Amiga.

I was the first out of my friends to get a Amiga and my dad was a bit reluctant at first as it was a bit more expensive than the Atari.

But when I heard the game music of the Atari compared to the game music of the Amiga I knew which one to choose, and I even think he did too.

So that was it - he paid the money and we put the Amiga with it's Batman The Movie pack into the car.

I got home and started unpacking the box.

Then I heard my father's vocice: "You're not touching that until you've done your paper round"

Oh no ! So I got on my BMX and sped down to the newsagents to collect the paper's.

My paper round used to take me 40 minutes. That day I did it all in 20 minutes - the fastest time ever.

By the time I got home I was very tired.....but then I saw my Amiga already unpacked and ready to play. I soon woke up...........

[Amiga1992]

Man, you almost brought a tear to my eye because of remembering the day I got my meega.It's even got a bit of extrasensorial experience in it :P I will tell...

My uncle invited my sister and me to travel to his house in Germany. I was so excited. Not only we were going to visit a great country, we had to travel on our own, and I always had loved travelling by plane, since I was little. So I enjoyed the14+ hours trip a damn lot! (not much the same can be said 'bout my sis, who kept on puking most of the trip ). We were also going to visti Eurodisney, and that was mucho excitemente again, for I have never visited a Disney until then. I was 12 years old.

I can SWEAR that while we were travelling, I had a dream about a computer. It was an Amiga and I never seen it before. It was so strange! Anyway...

We got to Stuttgart, a week before xmas or something. They had the "12 days of xmas" tradition that we had no clue about over here. Great, a little pressie every day .

We visited a computer shop. I was looking for cool Comodore stuff, and we stumbled upon the Amiga machines that were setup for demo purposes: the A1200 and teh A600.. HOLY FUCK, this (the A600) is the machine I had a dream with in the plane! It's so small, and powerful! WOW! hear that sound! Look at the game running, so cute! (Lemmings 2 demo). I fell in love with it instantly.

I tried to buy a C= accessory but my cousin told me "wait for us to come with my dad, he'll tell you if this is crap or not"... Ok, I put it down and we left.

Xmas arrived, happy happy joy joy etc. My cousin wanted a Sega Genesis. he saw a couple of big boxes, so he said "Look! methinks we got a Genesis each!". I was like "great!".

Time to open the pressies. My cousin got the expected Genesis 4 games pack (Genesis+Sonic+3-in-1 cart), and a Power Arcade Stick. My other cousin grabs one big pack. She says my name's on it. I take it, and start tearing the paper away. BTW this was all being taped on a camcorder... I manage to uncover a corner of the box... I read:

Commodore
A

I looked upon my uncle, who was holding the camera. This was the look on my face:

:eek :eek :eek :eek :eek

I stood like that for a couple of secods then took all the paper off it quickly, and unveiled a lovely A600. All for myself... I was the happiest kid in the world!

After all the presents were given, we went upstairs and set up the A600. I got Wing Commander, the Lemmings demo and a couple of mags (Amiga Computing and Amiga Format) with demos to try on it. And a Competition Pro Star Extra . I was gobsmacked by the quality of the machine! And I started fucking around with it from day two: I reformatted the hard drive to learn how it was done :P

My cousin and I had so much fun with the machine that before I left he HAD to buy an Amiga, so he got a very cheap complete A500 setup .

And that's how I got my meega It's such a jinx that I had a dream about this machine on the plane! I have never ever seen the new Amigas before. The dream went something like this: they were showing an ad for these new Amigas on the plane's telly. I remember well that the ad looked like many C128 adverts. Pretty damn strange huh?

if I still have that videotape I'll take a snap of that very moment. I do have photos of me with my Amiga, that night. I just have to find them...

Great story.

You did well to get it through customs at Eziza !

Was there any problems with the modulator ? You do use a type of PAL over there don't you? But I understand it's not the same as European PAL.

I ask because my father-in-law in Argentina wants a cheap DVD player (which I could get for him in England). But it'd be a bit stupid to buy one and find out it didn't work !

[Amiga1992]

Bwahaha, I forgot about that part

At the plane back, the stewardess gave me the customs declaration form.
At one part it says:
"Do you have anything to declare?"
I write "NO" . So young and such a smuggler already . If you are argentinian and have relatives abroad, you learn this "art" since you are a wee lad :P

Anyway, since we were very young kids, we skipped customs And I was loading a computer. No sweat

The PAL issue is a bastard, but worry ye not, for I already had a PAL-B (we use PAL-N here) 1084S monitor that my uncle smuggled into BA years before for my C128. That time he had to slip a 50 dollars bill into the passport . That shite doesn't work anymore. A DVD player wouldn';t go unnoticed and there's NO WAY you can bribe the customs officer, unless you don;'t mind spending some days in jail and/or paying a huge fine :P. Anyway, if he actually ends up buying one, he can buy a PAL transcoder for 50 bucks. That would let hium use a PAL-B device on any PAL-N TV.

When I got my first computer, the C128, it was german and I had no PAL-B display device. I had to use it on the TV in black and white and without audio (you dont get audio through RF if teh systems don't match) . Even worse, the C128 came faulty from factory . But after some months we were able to fix it in BA.

All my first computers were given as presents by the same uncle. He's a rich bastard, y'know

Sorry for going off topic with these PAL messages........

It's strange though because I took some comedy English videos (Only Fools And Horses) to Argentina once and they play fine.

I also send Teletubbies videos and stuff over there for my neice.

This video/formats stuff is too confusing - must find a video format geeks board !

[Amiga1992]

The videos work fine, the devices work different. PAL devices all save in a standard PAL format, but the way the VCRs and other devices communicate with display devices is different. They use a different bandwidth.
So PAL videos work fine on any PAL-capable VCR, but if the VCR is PAL-B, you will watch the videos in black and white and maybe without sound (depending on your connection), in a PAL-N TV. If it's a PAL-B <-> PAL-B setup, or PAL-N <-> PAL-N setup, all goes well.

There are mainly 3 types of PAL: PAL B,G and others, all compatible. Then you have PAL-M (Brazil, any others?) and PAL-N (Argentina, Uruguay, any others?). The "normal" PAL is teh euro one, B, G, H, etc. We had a shitty modified PAL (It's PAL with the bandwidth of NTSC)

[Shatterhand]

I remember when I got my Amiga, it was close to xmas.

I had asked my dad an Amiga as a xmas gift, and I KNEW he was going to give me one.

It was 22th december. I was at home with a friend of mine, and we were DYING of boredoom. I phoned my dad and asked him PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE to anteccipate the gift and give me that day.

He said he wouidn't do, because he didn't have the time to come at my house (My parents were already divorced), and I was rather sad because of that. But then he came by surprise, and brought the amiga and 30 floppy disks full of games :_

I zapped through the ladder with my friend, and I remeber the 1st game we played were R-Type 2. I also remember I spent the Xmas night playing with my miggy instead of being with my family

[Drake1009]

My first Amiga wasn't that long ago. I had always been stuck with our C128 until my mother got a PC for me to play with.

Then after some time I came into some money and tried to talk an old friend into selling me his A500 since he had said he never used it anymore. Unfortunately he had just sold his.

Then in the local newspaper some days later I saw in the ads for stuff people sells an Amiga 500... I made my decision in 4 minutes that I had to get that one.
20 minutes later I had found someone willing to give me a lift there since I don't have a car.
And about 1 hour later I was home with an A500 with a lousy optical mouse, joystics and about 100 disks and monitor.
Unfortunately for me 1 hour later I was at home with an A500 with a lousy optical mouse, joysticks and about 100 disks and a monitor which only made a very high pitched sound when you tried turning it on, no picture, no lights, no sounds I managed to play Jumpin' Jackson, Giana sisters and Hudson hawk before it went all quiet And no TV modulator either.

A couplel of weeks later though I got an A1200 with a harddisk (and additional 100 disks) because I knew I could hook that up to my TV. If my A500 monitor hadn't broken I would never have gotten an A1200 and I probably never would've been able to copy games from the internet to my Amiga.

[Mr Creosote]

Getting my Amiga 500.... that was an ordeal

I was going to get one as a christmas present from my parents and all my grandparents combined (because it was so expensive). I knew I'd get one, because my parents had told me (or rather asked me - because with such a 'big' present, they wanted to make sure it's the correct one). Only my grandparents lived in a moderately big city back then, so they were the ones who bought the Amiga. The plan was that they visit us over christmas and bring the Amiga with them.

On December, 24th (I was urgently waiting for them to arrive of course), they phoned and said they couldn't come - my grandfather had something like a 'mild heart attack' and the doctor had forbidden him to drive a car for the next few days.

I guess you can imagine it - that was a sad christmas for me! I got a few presents: three Amiga games (which my parents had bought). But no Amiga!

Two days later, my father couldn't stand my whining anymore, so he got into the car, drove the 300 km to my grandparents, grabbed the Amiga and drove back.

The rest is history

Well I was out dow the pub with me mam and me uncle (just back from the oil rigs) and I mentioned that I really wanted an Amiga 1200 for xmas. I was told to shut up and finish off me coke

Anyway I persisted in going on, and on, and on about this comp when my uncle asked me how much they were. I said they were about £300. He then asked me where abouts you could get them from , and I told him. Now there was my uncle asking all these questions and there was me not trying to get my hopes up.

Two hours later we left the pub and the shops were just about to close, so I dragged my uncle into the nearest Fona shop to show him what the miggy was all about. We had a bit of a demo on it and he said to me that it was nowt special. My face must have tripped or something, because on his next breath he asked the assistant to get me a machine pronto.

Hey I was overjoyed at hearing that.... unfortunately they didn't have any in stock So, what did my uncle go and do? He demanded that they get a taxi from the nearest shop to them and send a one over immediately. They did! Boy was I on cloud 9!

Anyway after waiting 20 mins, it arrived and I embraced my new A1200 Desktop Dynamite Pack and literally ran home with it... When I opened it I was shaking that much with excitement that I could barely plug the damn thing in Well I finally got it going and loaded up Megaball 4 to have a tourni with me dad and me best m8. Then I found that I had no sound was a dodgy built in modulator. I got a replacement the next day and I haven't looked back.

It is now towered up with lots of goodies inc. a nice big HD, PPC board etc....

All this happiness due to my very generous and RICH uncle. Pity I don't know where he is now

[Muzkat]

My first Amiga was a parental thing. It was when I was 8, and I knew nothing about computers, even though I loved computer and video games. Anyway, my cousins got an Atari console (not the computer, the console) complete with Pitfall, Enduro, Boxing and some Space Attack game. When I saw it, it was 'beg parents until they are insane' time.

They, however, had been thinking about my education, and how I probably needed a computer to type up assignments and so forth. Without me knowing, they went out, shopped around and bought an Amiga 500 with the full 1 meg of RAM and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Kick Off and F-18 Interceptor.

So I was expecting an ad-lib sounding, blocky graphic looking Atari console, but what I got was an Amiga! I admit I didn't know too much about them at the time (no one I knew back then had Miggy's), but when I saw the graphics and listened to the audio, I knew I had something 100x more powerful then my cousin's crappy Atari, and I promptly let them know about this too.

Soon, I met other Miggy users, and we began to copy games for each other and so on...and a wonderful part of my childhood began.

[CPC464]

My 1st Amiga was the 600, it came in a box with GP, Pushover Dpaint etc...Can't remember what the boxset was called

But it was GREAT I couldn't wait to open it plug it into my TV and get started, it was if I had discovered a whole new world

It was so cool and hmmmmmpphhhhh Oh my I have to stop now as I am getting very emotional

[Amiga1992]

Originally posted by Doozy
All this happiness due to my very generous and RICH uncle.

Another one with a rich and generous uncle

[dirkies]

it was June 1988, I was used to C64 and C128 since 1984, got really bored with the C64 scene (too much software, and already 6 months since I first saw an Amiga blowing me away)

...so me very determined to get the Amiga....

my dad was so smart to buy an A500 with monitor in the middle of my exams ! (I was 15 yrs) So he had to chase me away everytime he sneaked behind the machine to try it out (he was also intrigued by computers in general). Imagine after the last exam, I rushed home becoz then I was allowed to use it!

Whow! First thing I ever inserted besides the usual workbench and demo disks was Sublogic Jet, not the most exciting thing on earth but the BS1-TKT demo with stereo sound and rotating sprites made me already drool! Soon all C64 friend of a local computer club upgraded to Amiga and the number of 'new' game floppies a week went stellar!!

The rest is history too

[Antiriad]

Ah happy happy memories...

I grew up with an Amstrad CPC 464 as a child. It had been bought for my brother when he was in secondary school - it was either 1986 or 1987 - when the 8-bits were still in their prime.
I adored it. It brought me into the world of computing from which ive never looked back.

Unfortunately my brother spent a little too much time on it than his studies and it was sold by my parents against my bitter protests in late 88 early 89 by which time the age of 8bits was drawing to a close.

Suffice to say, i distinctively remember at the time buying a multi-platform magazine which showed the increasing number of Atari ST and Amiga games. I was gobsmacked at the time and actually was most frightened by what spelt the death of the age of 8bits. :hoo

I got into contact with Atari STs and sadly PCs for the next couple of years via my friends in my village. However i did finally encounter a A500 in the plastic in 1991 at a friends house from secondary school. He showed me Shadow Of The Beast II and Kid Gloves. I was most impressed!

Two years later and i was going to commit the cardinal sin of buying a cruddy 386 but thankfully my brothers then girlfriend informed me of "The New Amiga" which i found out was the majestic A1200.

So after some slightly successful 3rd year exams, as a reward in summer 1993, my dad took me down to my local Dixons from which i emerged with a trusty plain A1200 that now happily resides in that very same box!

Ahhhh, i still remember the pair of us tuning it in on the TV...the first time i saw the rainbow tick and the floppy drive animation...it came without games so i distinctively remember messing around with IconEdit for hours on my first day!

Never had nearly the same joy when my PC arrived two years ago...

[Bloodwych]

This is very similar to a thread I set up a while ago called Growing older with computers/consoles

You just can't beat appealing to people’s nostalgic memories - we all love it!

But I can resist. Yes I can. No problemo. I am strong!

Well, perhaps just a little snippet of my past............

Oh what the hell you've got me! Here we go....

My first Amiga experience goes back to my Atari ST owning days. Being one of the very first people to have an ST, I'd owned it for two dedicated years playing classic like Super Sprint, Star Wars, Barbarian, Beyond the Ice Palace, Black Lamp etc. Through jealousy, all my friends had nagged their parents into buying them ST's and everything was happy in gaming land.

But then came a beast. A beast of epic proportions. It had 4096 colours! It had sound that literally blew me away! It had SMOOOOTH scrolling! It was a parents knightmare - it destroyed the peace in ST gaming land and kids were on the Christmas offensive! It was the AMIGA!

I was aware of the Amiga at this time through mags but never really wanted one because it's initial release of games were simple ST ports.

Then came my first true Amiga experience. My friend killed all happiness in ST gaming land by grabbing an Amiga. He bragged all day long, inviting us round to his house and ripping the piss out of our ST's. The first game I ever saw was Blood Money and it blew me away. I decided from that day that I was having an Amiga. It became my one obsession in life. And several of my friends decided this was indeed a quest worth pursuing.

After months and months of nagging, we all received Batman packs that Christmas and the balance was restored in happy gaming land.

Now an Amiga gaming land. YEAH!

I love happy endings!

[Twistin'Ghost]

I wasn't expecting much, but this is a wonderful thread!

@Akira
You should make an mpeg of that Christmas morning experience. You never know when the tape will croak anyhow and at least this way, you'll have that magic moment digitally mastered! Let me know when you do so I can download it!

[Amiga1992]

My tape is already fucked, I think it got overwritten with anime :P But my uncle should have the CompactVHS originals, so I will ask him to send me a copy of the video.

I surely want to keep that mooment, i'll slaughter the one who deleted the tape (most probably me :P)

[Tim Janssen]

My experience with the first Amiga wasn't that good.
My parents weren't fond that I wanted to shelf out so much money for a machine. In the past I only had played games on computers. But since I promised them I would use the Amiga only for serious tasks like wordprocessing and drawing (I wanted to go to an arts-academy in that time, you know), they agreed with this huge investment.
After one year of hard work I finally bought my Amiga 500 for 450 Euro at a Dutch Warehouse in August 1991. The salesman advised me also to buy a mousepad because without it the Amiga mouse wouldn't function properly. Being a complete computer-dummy, I believed him and shelved out or 10 Euro(!) for the pad.

When I installed the machine at home, the first thing I started up were the Workbench discs. The first chapter of the Workbench-tutorial explained how to use this new device: the mouse. I was amazed how smoothly the arrow moved on screen when moving the rodent. Then I started to play with the Workbench SPEAK-program which spoke out the text I typed in. I was amazed...
However, I soon got bored and started to load a few demos of games on coverdiscs which came with CU Amiga: Flood, PP Hammer and Armalyte to name but a few. I was a games-addict again...

I could not enjoy long of my new Amiga because after only 10 days the Amiga discdrive refused to load any game. It came with a vague message "Use disc-doctor to repair it". Was it a virus? No, it seems my Amiga was broken! The Commodore repair-service repaired my machine and after two months(!) I got the machine back. However, the first disc I booted resulted once again in the notorious disc-doctor message. I really got anxious and went back with my dad to the warehouse. After much debate we returned with a brand-new Amiga home. For 11 years now this machine works perfect.

Originally posted by Tim Janssen
Then I started to play with the Workbench SPEAK-program which spoke out the text I typed in. I was amazed...

Oh yes - Speak !

I too was amazed by that.

Images of WarGames sprang to mind....I was Matthew Broderick....until my father denied me a modem :-(

On the same note there was a rather amusing program called NIALL (Non Intelligent Amos Language Learner) on a Amiga format coverdisk.

It had rather crappy AI, but you could talk to it (by typing obviously) and eventually it would end up putting funny sentances together. Feed it with plenty of friends names, locations and swear words and you could have hours of fun ! I must write a PC version ready for the next time I have a drinking session at my house !