What has been your computer journey ?

[Noob-tech-ninja]

Hi there guys.

So what has been your computer journey ?

1. What systems/OS's did you start with ?

2. What brought you, to your Amiga ?

3. What did you use after Commodore went bust, and the Amiga became harder
to use as a daily driver ?

4. What do you use now ?

5. Are there any OS's that you dont use ? Why ?

6. How do you use an Amiga now ?
Is it - Real hardware / software emulation / Raspberry Pi / FGPA / etc, etc,

N.B. I don't want to start any bloody flame wars, I'm just interested in what
people use, and why.


OK, I'll start.


1. What systems/OS's did you start with ?
I'm Gen X, I started with a ZX Spectrum (48K rubber keys)


2. What brought you, to your Amiga ?
I Got an Amiga, as I saw my mate using his A500+ and was totally blown away by it.

I spent hours around his house, playing games, and watching him use utils.
So my younger brother and I got an A600 to share, and fell in love with the Amiga.

After a few years, I got fed up sharing the A600 with my younger brother,
So I saved up, and bought a A500 from my mate at college
Had to spend another £40 to get a 512KB RAM expansion upgrade to be able to
do anything useful with it

I eventually upgraded, and got myself an A1200, and continued to use my beloved Amiga
for all of my college work, as well as playing loads of games, and at this point
spending a lot of time with utils, creating art (badly) in D-Paint, and making
music in Octamed, and a small amount of coding in Amos & Blitz Basic.

I was using 386's & 486's at college with Windows 3.1, and using CrossDos to be
able to read my PC coursework, and continue to work on it at home, on my Amiga.


3. What did you use after Commodore went bust, and the Amiga became harder
to use as a daily driver ?

I used my Amiga long after Commodore went bust, and when my A1200 was unable
to run the more powerful "modern" programmes, I (very reluctantly) started using
a Pentuim based PC with Windows XP.

I've used various versions of Windows over the years, and I will begrudgingly
admit, that XP then Windows 7 were the pinacle of the Windows OS.
(I've never been happy with Windows and how it "works" though)

During this time, I got interested in Linux, I got my mate (who originaly showed
me his Amiga), to talk me through partitioning my HDD, (over the phone !)
to get me up and running with Linux.

I dual booted Linux alongside Windows for a number of years. Eventually
spending more and more time in Linux, and much less time in Windows. To the
point where 90-95% of my time was spent using Linux.


4. What do you use now ?
For the last 5-8 years or more, I've been using Linux exclusivley.
I don't dual boot at all.
The original HDD for my laptop (Win 7) is sitting in a drawer somewhere,
gathering dust.

When I use Windows, I really find it a chore, something to be endured.

I use Linux for a number of different reasons,
and I could write out a long and detailed list, about various technical
and pragmatic reasons that (I beleive) that Linux is better than Windows.

But something I come back to again and again, is that when I use Linux,
it's the closest feeling I get, to when I used my Amgia as a kid.

It's fun ! It's interesting, I'm always learning more about my PC and how Linux works.
It's exciting !
All the same emotions I felt when using my Amiga. Back in the day.

I realise that, that's not objective, but I still strongly beleive that using a computer
(whatever the OS) should be fun, and interesting.


5. Are there any OS's that you dont use ? Why ?
Given the choice, I wouldnt use Windows at all.
I dont use Mac - It's silly money, and I find it too restrictive.

But I'm pragmatic, and I would always say - use whatever you want, and whatever
tool does the job best for yourself.


6. How do you use an Amiga now ?
Is it - Real hardware / software emulation / Raspberry Pi / FGPA / etc, etc,

I still have an A-1200 that works (kinda - the floopy disk drive is only half functional).
So I mainly use -

6.1. Software emulation (via FS-UAE on Linux)
6.2. PiMiga (1.5 MF edition) on a Raspberry Pi


What says you ?

[DDNI]

To the best of my memory.

Pong tv unit 1980
Missile Invader handheld games 1981
Atari 2600 1982ish
Commodore plus4 1985
Atari ST 1987
Amiga 500 1987
Amiga 1200 1991?
PC Athlon 800mhz 1999
PC core2duo it’s a blur from here.
PC core2quad 6600
PS1
PS2
Returned to Amigas, A1200, 600, CD32 2006
AmigaOne X1000 2012
Commodore 64 2013
PC Ryzen 5 2600 2017/18
PiStorm A500 2021

[Coagulus]

1. What systems/OS's did you start with ?

Not including an old Grandstand pong type thing, my first computer was a borrowed Atari 600XL which got me hooked. I eventually got my own Sinclair Spectrum+ 48K and later the 128K version. After that I got an Amstrad CPC6128 and Sega Master System and saved up all my paper round money and tips and got my first Amiga A500+

I then borrowed an Atari ST and and Acorn Archimedes for a bit and swapped my CPC (it had a green screen for goodness' sake) for a Sam Coupe. I finally got a C64. And an old BBC micro a school threw out!

I then got an Atari 800XL and then a 130XE. After that I managed to get an A1200, another A500, an A600 and a CD32.

After that it was PCs and consoles. Game Gear, Gameboy, Sega Saturn, PSX, Dreamcast, XBOX 360, PS2 (yes. after the 360!). Now I mostly emulate everything.

2. What brought you to your Amiga ?
Totally the graphics and sound. Saw Turrican and Ooops Up at a mates house and that was that, I wanted one!

3. What did you use after Commodore went bust, and the Amiga became harder
to use as a daily driver ?
PCs I'm afraid. But got my revenge as I now run fast Amigas on them!

4. What do you use now ?
Small laptop with WinUAE and a bigger laptop for harder emulation and semi-modern gaming. Oculus (Meta) Quest 2 and also Samsung Galaxy S20 with many emulators.
Raspberry Pi 3 network file server with all of my roms/files/hds etc and a RPI400 for full modern retroness!

5. Are there any OS's that you dont use ? Why ?
No I'll give them all a try. Never really got on with CP/M but didn't have much for it on my CPC6128

[luncheon]

First experience with something resembling a computer was the chance to play with an Atari 2600 in the late 80s.

We got a bit late to the CBM game here, but since dad was interested in computers, and money was a tight for us back in the late '80s, the C64 was a no-brainer.

We got a C64c back at home in '89. Then a C128 shortly afterwards, then the A500 in early '93 (don't really remember).

Back at school, we used to have TI99-4As where we used mostly LOGO. Then, Win 3.1-386 PC clones IIRC? At the time, everything else felt backwards except for the Amiga.

The turning point for me was perhaps '94? First time I saw Doom at a friend's place, and F1GP running with 256 colours.

Back at home, the A500 was considerably upgraded to be semi-usable for productivity (1mb chip, 8mb fast, KS3.1, 400mb IDE hdd). We were briefly lent an A1200 while the A500 was being upgraded/fixed, didn't feel like much of an upgrade (SC2000 was cool though!).

The A500 was used daily at home till around '98 (gaming, word processing, spreadsheets, etc.). It was then replaced by a P166 PC, and went from there. (P2, P3, Athlon XP, whatever I don't even remember even a part of all commodity hardware I used/owned).

Right now I use mostly PC, in mixed Linux-Windows 10 environments. I don't use macOS/iOS too much due to not having Apple hardware, or the need to run it?

Most of the retrogaming is done on my main Linux PC with Retroarch (not the best, but the most flexible), but I like to use the real hardware from time to time.

Luckily my family never got rid of the old machines so I was able to slowly get them all back in running order, plus some extra stuff I was able to acquire/source along the years (the collection now includes C64c, C128, A500, A500+, A1000, XEGS). I'd like to own a nice A3000 though...

[fxgogo]

1. What systems/OS's did you start with ?
My first touch of a computer was as an 8 year old in 1979 where my dad took me to his work on a weekend and sat me in front of some terminal to play games while he worked.

That led to an Apple II being brought home in the holidays for my brother and I to play.

Which led to our first owned computer, a Vic-20

2. What brought you to your Amiga ?
We had a Commodore 64, Atari ST and an Unisys AT after the Vic-20, but it was only after I discovered computer graphics that I bought my first computer, the Amiga 500.

3. What did you use after Commodore went bust, and the Amiga became harder to use as a daily driver ?
I am sad to say I did not even wait for Commodore to go bust. I jumped ship to a 486 DX4-100mhz in 93-94. I needed the render speed. I hated everything else about it though.

4. What do you use now ?
A mixture of Windows, Mac and Linux machines. And of course a variety of Amiga machines and emulated Amigas.

5. Are there any OS's that you dont use ? Why ?
No, I love exploring all these wonderful devices and systems. It is a constant source of wonder for me.

6. How do you use an Amiga now ?
I do mostly WinUAE emulation on my Windows laptop, even though I have an A500 and A1200 that I have recently restored and upgraded. It is much quicker and more flexible to fire it up there than to take the machines out of the cupboard and set up. Once I have space, that might change. I also run Dietpi with Amiberry or PiOS with FSUAE on my Raspberry Pi 400.

I do know that FPGA is in my future.

[Bruce Abbott]

In 1980 I built my first computer which was called a HUG1802. this was a locally made a kit using the RCA CDP1802 and CHIP8 operating system, similar to the COSMAC ELF. The kit came with the essential chips, a hex keypad, and a single sided board with about a hundred jumpers that had be soldered on. I made a wooden case for it and added a tape drive mechanism with solenoids for 'one button' program loading. I taught myself how to program in machine code, then used this machine as a testbed for trying out stuff like the AY-3-8912 PSG and SC-01 speech synthesizer chip.

I designed and built an EPROM programmer for the HUG1802 which I used to burn the firmware for my second computer - a completely scratch-built machine with an MC6802 CPU, MC6847 video display controller, 6KB of battery backed CMOS RAM and a full sized ASCII keyboard (built from individual keyswitches). This used my own OS which was similar to MikBug. Today you would call this a 'cleanroom' operation because I had zero code to crib from apart from the examples in the Scelbi 6800 Cookbook.

I bought a ZX81 when the price dropped to NZ$99. This was soon upgraded with a 16k RAMpack. I made a passive backplane for plugging that and other self-made cards into, then put the whole lot inside an amber screen monitor and hooked up the keyboard from my 6802 computer.

Next purchase was a second hand 16k ZX Spectrum, which I upgraded to 80k and added a DISCiPLE and 3.5" floppy drive.

Around this time I also acquired a Sega SC3000 and an Apple II clone, and got to play with a number of other machines such as the Dick Smith VZ200 while doing computer support for a local hobby electronics store.

I bought an Amstrad CPC664 when it came out in 1985 (same year that I read about the Amiga in Byte magazine, and wished I could have one but they weren't available in New Zealand). I upgraded it to 256k internally and ported an assembler/debugger package from the Spectrum to it, using it for cross-development on other Z80 based machines.

I finally got my hands on an A1000 in 1987. Soon after that I purchased an IBM JX which they were getting rid of for a 'mere' NZ$1000. I bought it specifically to learn about PC architecture - not because I 'wanted' one, but because I was getting into PC support and needed to understand them better. Over the years I built a number of 'testbed' PCs, but my main computer was always an Amiga - until the early 2000's when I left the computing scene and just used the PC as an appliance (though until I moved house in 2016 I did keep an A1200 on my coffee table, networked to the PC for Internet access etc.).

I got back into the Amiga in 2018 when I dragged my A1200 out of the cupboard to see if I could still get on the net with it, because I was accused of being a 'criminal' for using my 'insecure' PC with Window Xp. Then I discovered that the Amiga was having a revival and so now I am too! (spending at least half my daily computing time on it).

Are there any OS's that you dont use ? Why ?

I will never use a Microsoft OS later than Xp, which IMO was the best they produced (Windows 10 is total crap and I refuse to spend any money 'upgrading' to it). Unfortunately Xp is becoming a problem now due to not being able to run the latest web browsers. This came to a head this week when Stack Exchange stopped working. So I set up the sole 64 bit PC I have (given to me in a 'box of old electronics junk' by a workmate) with Linux Lite and Firefox. That is what I am typing this reply on now.

I am currently attempting to move my PC stuff over to Linux and find equivalents for the apps I used in Xp. Had some surprising issues, like the mouse pointer moving way too fast and sound not working on my stereo system, but in general it's progressing well. Goodbye Microsoft!

[Asmodean]

1. What systems/OS's did you start with ?
My family got me a C64 in 1988 when I was 7 years old. This was my daily until 1991 when I got a Sega Mega Drive. In 1994 I got my first PC, a 486 SX2-50mhz and was incredibly proud about this.

2. What brought you to your Amiga ?
Growing up, a lot of friends had Atari STs and Amiga 500s. I remember visiting my cousin and spending a lot of time on his A500 in 1993 and 1995. This left a huge impression on me.

3. What did you use after Commodore went bust, and the Amiga became harder to use as a daily driver ?
At Christmas 1996 I bought my first Amiga magazines and got completely hooked trying to read everything about Amiga. I bought my first Amiga, an A1200 in 1997 and became a very fanatical Amiga user. I added a Blizzard 1230 and external Harddrives and CD-Rom to it.

When I think back to that time now, it feels like it was very much a teenage rebellion thing trying to convert all my friends that the now dying platform was much better than PC for all use-cases I used my A1200 up until 1999/2000 when I gave up, a bit disillusioned by the whole Gateway-affair and built myself a new PC instead.

4. What do you use now ?
I have 4 A1200s, all with different acceleration, 1 A500 and 1 CD32. I used to have a MicroA1 running OS 4.1 aswell but I sold it after a few years usage.

5. Are there any OS's that you dont use ? Why ?
Linux! For some reason I never enjoyed it at all

[gimbal]

1. What systems/OS's did you start with ?

Magnavox Odyssey was my first interaction with a "computer", Atari 2600 was the first console I ever owned myself, Amiga 500 was the first computer.

2. What brought you to your Amiga ?

My dad got one second hand. I got up one morning and bam, there it stood in the living room. It was almost like a glow came off of it.

3. What did you use after Commodore went bust, and the Amiga became harder to use as a daily driver ?

PC. I had already been poisoned with PC games at a friend's so I had wanted one myself for a long time already. Then we got a shiny 486 DX33 with cdrom, 8mb of ram and more harddrive space than I have ever needed for that machine.

4. What do you use now ?

PC. Mac for work (for now).

5. Are there any OS's that you dont use ? Why ?

Yeah Windows 11 for now, it's a little too messed up currently. But other than that I just use what's relevant and available.

[amifan]

1. What systems/OS's did you start with ?
I started with a ZX81 and then ZX Spectrum, from there I seem to have jumped to an A500 that was the family computer, until my brother went to uni and I got the 1.3 A500 as a hand me down, from there it was an A600, A1200, A3000 with a Picasso II, then a fully towerised A1200 with 040/PPC and CyberVison.

2. What brought you to your Amiga ?
We had moved back to the States and needed a new computer, for some lucky reason my father bought an Amiga 500 from the local Commodore store. I still remember it sitting in the living room with the bright blue screen and being in total awe of it.

3. What did you use after Commodore went bust, and the Amiga became harder to use as a daily driver ?
I used my towered A1200 as a daily driver up until 2000, but by that time I was in my 3rd year of uni and they required us to use something else. Luckily due to my dyslexia I got a free PowerMac.

4. What do you use now ?
Just a 2015 MacBook Pro, it does not get that much use really, I find myself more using the Amiga now for doing stuff, since I do not not use social media or rarely look at YouTube. I am not in the tech industry so I can enjoy using the Amiga more.

5. Are there any OS's that you dont use ? Why ?
Hmm, I guess Windows, I never really got used to that, I found the Mac seemed a bit closer to the Amiga experience so I stuck with the Mac after university.

[Jope]

1. C64, because insane majority marketshare in .fi + my godfather was working at the importer so no doubt my parents got some kind of discount
2. insane majority marketshare, so it was the logical next step. it didn't hurt that it was also a very capable machine
3. I stuck with the A500 until the end of 1995. I was too young to have any money of my own, so I was dependent on my parents' wallets and motivation to support my hobby. They were not receptive to the idea of an A3000 or A4000 when they came out, so I just stuck with what I had. By 1995 it was pretty obvious that the next upgrade would have to be a PC and my father was receptive to that, because the PC was not a toy like the Amiga.
4. PC/Mac/Amiga, Linux/Windows/MacOS/AmigaOS
5. Of course there are if you consider the insane amount of OSes that have ever existed. But out of the contemporary mainstream ones, I don't currently use Apple's iOS, since it doesn't perform any workload I have that I can't already accomplish with less friction by using Android.

[deimos]

1. What systems/OS's did you start with ?
Commodore 64.

2. What brought you to your Amiga ?
I fell for the hype in the magazines, then I found the Amiga was just more fun than other machines.

3. What did you use after Commodore went bust, and the Amiga became harder to use as a daily driver ?
I'd left the Amiga long before Commodore went bust, mostly because I had no choice for the applications I was required to use, and the Amiga was just impractical for real (i.e. boring, not creative) work.

4. What do you use now ?
A mix of Windows and Linux, whatever is most suited to what I'm doing.

5. Are there any OS's that you dont use ? Why ?
Don't or won't? There are many that I don't use (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_operating_systems) there are none that I won't.

[Axxy]

Same as most people..

8bit - Speccy 48k+ --> +3

16bit - Amiga 500 --> Amiga 600

PC - Various systems over the years. Win3.1, Win95, Win98, XP, Win7, Win10

Being a gamer, I have just moved with the technology as and when I needed to upgrade. It goes back to the speccy and the amiga, just moved with the times I suppose and those previous systems being outdated.

The Internet and the online gaming (+ work) just meant windoze based PC's since the early/mid 90s until today. My current system is fine for now, ssd, tb hd and gfx cards with over 1gb ram and still gaming (just not so much nowadays).

Looking back, the Amiga is still the best system I have used, although I only use emulation nowadays.

I still like keeping an eye on the latest demoscene, both amiga and pc, and of course for those that know me online, I still collect and archive tracker music modules, basically since I used an Amiga. Currently the collection is sitting at 151,000+ tracker modules at nearly 90gb

One thing I have never bothered with, Consoles Still see them as toys for kids and not proper gaming equipment.

[chip]

The classic Commodore trilogy : VIC 20, C128, Amiga 500

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Axxy

One thing I have never bothered with, Consoles Still see them as toys for kids and not proper gaming equipment.

Don't know why, especially modern consoles are just standardised PC's.

[aeberbach]

ADVENTUR on a CP/M system (and the Creative Computing's BASIC games)
TV game unit
Atari 400
Amiga 1000 then 2500
PCs with 286 onwards right up to the dual Athlon XP system
Mac (the PC crashed one time too many)
PC again (work)
these days Mac 70% and PC 30% roughly - Solidworks, FPGA tools and games keep me on PC.

[aeberbach]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Don't know why, especially modern consoles are just standardised PC's.

It's true - they are standardised with limited control systems, lack of upgradeability and poor performance for the price!

[Locutus]

1. What systems/OS's did you start with ?

Amiga 1200

2. What brought you to your Amiga ?

Dad had one, so there wasn't a choice.

3. What did you use after Commodore went bust, and the Amiga became harder to use as a daily driver ?

Kept using Amiga till parents got a PC (a AMD K6-350), then managed to get Amiga 3000 and DEC Alpha workstation and used those in combination for quite some years (The 3k had RTG, the Alpha was headless).

Installed Debian GNU/Linux on that Alpha, never looked back.

4. What do you use now ?

Debian GNU/Linux, for some 20 odd years now. I still don't see any reason why i should use anything else. The hardware it runs on isn't really so important anymore.

5. Are there any OS's that you don't use ? Why ?

No explicit No's, there's always a niche reason why you have to use something (Can't get around OSX if you need to deliver iOS builds...)

But other then reasons that involve being paid to do so, it's all just a hobby curiosity.

[Axxy]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Don't know why, especially modern consoles are just standardised PC's.

Maybe because back in the day it was mainly keyboard to control your character in games, then the amiga it became keyboard+mouse and the occasional joystick for some games.

I never liked using a joystick, so I'm probably old school and prefer mouse+keyboard.

[gimbal]

That is a contradictory statement given that joysticks existed before mice You only have to see one interview with Al Lowe to be reminded of the actual old school days.

[Anubis]

Originally Posted by aeberbach

It's true - they are standardised with limited control systems, lack of upgradeability and poor performance for the price!

This actually is not true... Consoles usually offer much more for the same amount of money. You need to spend much more than console price to get bit better performance, and still not guaranteed that with your setup all games will work as fast or on as high settings...

This wasn't the case back in 80 and 90s when for a price of computer you could get 3-4 consoles, and it is not the case today... Proper gaming computer still will cost you multiple consoles.


1. What systems/OS's did you start with ?
Consoles - Atari 2600 (at first I was borrowing it to play)
Apple IIe in school
C64
Amiga 500 with KS1.2
Amiga 500+ with whooping 20MB HD
Amiga 1200
IBM DX-2 66MHz with Win 3.11 and DOS 6.22
Pentium 200MMx with Win 95
and many computers since then...


2. What brought you to your Amiga ?
My cousin who lived in Germany at the time got one, and I was mesmerized by machine...


3. What did you use after Commodore went bust, and the Amiga became harder to use as a daily driver ?
At the time when Commodore went bust I moved to USA, and did not get Amiga right away. I moved to PCs.



4. What do you use now ?
Depending for what... PCs, laptops, retro computers, multiple RPis, MisterFPGA.... I emulate on anything that can emulate, including Amazon TV stick, NVidia Shield. I have all consoles from previous generations. (PS, PS2, PS3, PS4, xBox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii, Wii U , Switch, N64, Dreamcast, Saturn, Genesis...)


5. Are there any OS's that you dont use ? Why ?
No, I use them all. I have laptops that have Ubunutu, Windows, I emulate Mac OSes (up to OS9). I also emulate earlier windows machines and still have couple of Win98 computers, but have not used those in many years.


I remember reading about computers in news paper that was distributed in schools beginning of 1982 about Sinclair Clive and ZX81 and future of computing. Soon after that we had first magazines available, and even first kit computer built from parts available in my country of origin. (Computer was called Galaksija) Sadly, I was learning soldering, but never enough good that I would be able to make one, and in time it became more easy to purchase computers. In earlier years I did come in contact with ZX Spectrum (couple of friends), but never owned one. Funny is that, as most of kids from time I wrote first basic programs much before even touching computer (Apple IIe).