Amiga confessions...

[Amiga Lifestyle]

Originally Posted by StevenJGore

Now THAT is a confession.

Gotta bring out the big guns

[Megalomaniac]

Not sure what it is about Populous, but for some reason the idea and concept has never appealed (despite my username correctly implying that I do like strategy games, including at least one 'God-sim'), and I've barely played either of them

As far as not getting anywhere in a game, I'm fairly sure I never completed the first level of Jurassic Park, though it was pretty awful so I'm not too worried about it. I've never won a match in either Kick Off at anything other than the easiest skill level either, though I'm not atrocious at Goal!.

[Amiga Lifestyle]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Not sure what it is about Populous, but for some reason the idea and concept has never appealed (despite my username correctly implying that I do like strategy games, including at least one 'God-sim'), and I've barely played either of them

As far as not getting anywhere in a game, I'm fairly sure I never completed the first level of Jurassic Park, though it was pretty awful so I'm not too worried about it. I've never won a match in either Kick Off at anything other than the easiest skill level either, though I'm not atrocious at Goal!.

I played a lot of Populous 2 but I'll admit I never really understood how the game actually works. I just kind of wait until I have a bunch of dudes and then call armageddon and then let them punch it out.

[stx2199]

Originally Posted by Muzkat

6. I still think Gods is the best platformer ever made.

[Locutus]

Originally Posted by mr.spiv

My Amigas booted straight into 2-color CLI (or some better shell). I never bothered to learn or play with WB.

That sounds familiar, i actually have my Amiga setup for the CLI to be rendered as the backing of the default pubscreen, effectively making it the wallpaper on the workbench.

[reassembler]

1/ I couldn't afford an Amiga back in the day. In fact, a ZX Spectrum was my main computer until late 1992.

My Dad declared the Amiga wasn't a sensible purchase and finally bought the family a 386 PC. Which cost thousands more to do the same thing, minus a sound card - bleep bleep bloop. It needed to be upgraded more times than a Ryanair Flight and was fully replaced AGAIN within 2 years by another PC.

I ended up with an A500, A600 and A1200. They all came from scavenging car boot sales early on Sunday morning. The A1200 is still up and running today. I imagine that 386 ended up in a landfill many years ago...

2/ The most popular disks circulating at school on the Amiga weren't games: 'Jack The Nipper Stripper', 'Jolly Rogers Cookbook' and LSD's Total Kaos demo as we all loved hardcore rave music... and erm setting fire to stuff... and nipples.

[HomeLate]

1. I bought my first Amiga 5 or 6 years ago. My first was a 500, soon after I bought a 1200. Next I bought a 600 and ended up with a 4000D.
I started with a ZX Spectrum when it was released back in '82. I had to share it with my four older brothers. We couldn't afford anything else and I used the Speccy up until the mid/late eighties. My brothers already left the house and I got my first IBM clone, a 286.
Some friends had a Commodore 64 or an Atari. I remember a friend having an Atari ST with monochrome monitor. I was so jealous... But I did had fun with my Speccy and a big seventies B&W TV which sometimes needed a big smack on the side to get it working :-)

[koobo]

• My A500 was different from anyone else's around where I lived in Finland. It had no scandinavian keys and it came with kickstart 1.2. It was a bargain find by my parents. I still have it, and it works.
• I thought it would be a good idea to "mod" it and attempted to cut a trace with a knife at around where it said "filter" on the motherboard. I think the idea was to disable the audio filter. Nothing whatsoever happened as a result, lucky me.
• I poured a glass of apple juice on top of the same A500. I don't remember what exactly happened next but it dried and continued working. Later I found out that the side expansion port probably broke somehow. Action Replay 3 worked but the A590 hard drive didn't. Kickstart 1.2 would not have booted from it anyway. In hindsight I'm not sure about this anymore, maybe the port did work and I just didn't know how to mount the harddrive from Workbench, in kickstart 1.2 compatible manner. So I had to get another A500 to use the A590. Maybe just a kickstart switch would have fixed my issue?
• I stole some DD floppies from school and used them on my A500. I still feel bad about it. I wasn't alone though, everyone else with an Amiga or PC did the same.
• Later, after new A1200s were no longer on sale, I managed to get a 2nd hand A1200. Now, a few years ago it was recapped and turns out the previous owner had poured a glass of cola on top of it. There was no sign of cola on the mb, but I remember the case was dirty in places when I got it. There was dried up cola on top of the bottom metal shielding. This also always worked and still works.

[alexh]

• In 1991 I got my Dad to drive me 1.5hrs, 67 miles, from Preston in Lancashire to Power Computing in Leeds to buy a GVP HD8+ Impact Series II. But I was too stupid to phone to check they had stock, when we got there they were sold out and we just got back in the car and came back. (I think I had to wash up for a month)
  
• In late 1992, I pre-ordered Amberstar by Thalion from catalogue retailer "Special Reserve", after several weeks it hadn't come so I called them and they said it must have gone missing in the post and sent me another copy. It arrived next day which I thought was very good. And then a week later another copy arrived. But I didn't send it back, instead I gave it to my friend. A few weeks later the same thing happened, I had pre-ordered Shadow of the Beast III with "Special Reserve". Never arrived, I called them, they sent another copy, one arrived a few days later and then the 2nd one a week later. This time I sold the spare to a trader down the market for 80% RRP. About 6 months later, 1993, I pre-ordered Lionheart with Special Reserve and the same thing happened... it never arrived, I called them and they sent another and this time both came on the same day. I kept both, which is why I have two copies of Lionheart. A short time later I read they had gone out of business (So sorry if anyone who worked at Special Reserve is reading!)
  
• In 1993 my Amiga demo disk & magazine cover disk collection (almost 1000 discs) were repurposed by having a hole drilled in them to use them has HD disks with a SNES Super Wildcard. About a month later I bought a parallel cable to load games from the Amiga HDD to the Super Wildcard and so I needlessly overwrote a demo disk collection that took years to build up.
  
• I've got one of almost every Amiga (A500, A500+, A600, A1200, A4000, CD32) and owned even more (A1500, A2000, A3000) but I use WinUAE way more than I ever did any of my physical Amiga's.
  

[TEG]

Originally Posted by koobo

• My A500 was different from anyone else's around where I lived in Finland. It had no scandinavian keys and it came with kickstart 1.2. It was a bargain find by my parents. I still have it, and it works.
• I thought it would be a good idea to "mod" it and attempted to cut a trace with a knife at around where it said "filter" on the motherboard. I think the idea was to disable the audio filter. Nothing whatsoever happened as a result, lucky me.
• I poured a glass of apple juice on top of the same A500. I don't remember what exactly happened next but it dried and continued working. Later I found out that the side expansion port probably broke somehow. Action Replay 3 worked but the A590 hard drive didn't. Kickstart 1.2 would not have booted from it anyway. In hindsight I'm not sure about this anymore, maybe the port did work and I just didn't know how to mount the harddrive from Workbench, in kickstart 1.2 compatible manner. So I had to get another A500 to use the A590. Maybe just a kickstart switch would have fixed my issue?
• I stole some DD floppies from school and used them on my A500. I still feel bad about it. I wasn't alone though, everyone else with an Amiga or PC did the same.
• Later, after new A1200s were no longer on sale, I managed to get a 2nd hand A1200. Now, a few years ago it was recapped and turns out the previous owner had poured a glass of cola on top of it. There was no sign of cola on the mb, but I remember the case was dirty in places when I got it. There was dried up cola on top of the bottom metal shielding. This also always worked and still works.

Someone wrote an article in the same vein: The Amiga as "a computer built to last 50 years"

https://www.datagubbe.se/30yearcomp/

[Megalomaniac]

If it makes you feel any better alex, Special Reserve will still around as late as 1996, so I don't think you can be blamed. I just hope koobo's old school is still going, and wasn't bankrupted by the disk theft...

Always great to see people who didn't own Amigas in the classic era too. I've got accounts on sites for a couple of systems I didn't own as well.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

If it makes you feel any better alex, Special Reserve will still around as late as 1996, so I don't think you can be blamed.

After I read this I did a bit of digging and turns out they carried on until 2005 so either I was mistaken or just felt very guilty.

https://web.archive.org/web/20061112...hp?id=607&ss=3

Never knew they were run by Tony Rainbird who originally founded Rainbird who published hits such as Starglider

[phx]

Originally Posted by jurassicman

1. I never bought an original Amiga game until the early 2010s

Same here, I have to confess. And I still never bought any Amiga game. My brother got a few in the past, and I cracked them so we could play them both. It was simply too easy to swap with friends.

Makes me feel bad, and I hope that I could give the Amiga a little bit back by writing a lot of free software over the last decades.

Originally Posted by E-Penguin

Confession 2 - I never (and still do not) see the point of directory opus or any of the other file managers

Neither do I. I always use the shell only.
I'm certainly not guilty to spend a lot of time configuring the Workbench. It mostly stayed in its blue or grey 4-colour installation state.

[arcanist]

• I own full price boxed copies of Rise of the Robots AGA and OCS. I have about an hour's combined playtime between them.
• If you offered me my childhood dream Amiga, a fully decked out A4000T with all the bells and whistles, for free, I'd tell you to keep it and go back to my WinUAE machine.
• To this day I have recurring dreams in which I see final issues of Amiga magazines in newsagents, which have sat on the shelf for months.

[demoniac]

The first Amiga program I bought was Marauder II (excluding Workbench, etc. that came with the A500). The second and possibly the last Amiga program I bought was a used copy of Dragon's Lair.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

If it makes you feel any better alex, Special Reserve will still around as late as 1996, so I don't think you can be blamed. I just hope koobo's old school is still going, and wasn't bankrupted by the disk theft...

Always great to see people who didn't own Amigas in the classic era too. I've got accounts on sites for a couple of systems I didn't own as well.

They actually went on until 2005. (Edit just seen its been noted now) I joined in 1990 when it was the NRG club and still doing the book club adventure game things.

Plus wow, i know piracy was bad, but i don’t know which was worse, that or Alex continuously lying about not receiving games!

[Hedeon]

I like to fiddle with PowerPC. I started even in assembly. Shame on me.