Well, you have an interesting point. And one I more or less subscribed to in recent years. But I've sort of come around.
I first read of the Amiga in an early 1985 issue of Personal Computing magazine. It blew me away. I was in the process of attempting to sell
my Apple //c to get an original Macintosh (128K). I was already a computer freak at the time (I was 12 years old), and switched gears - I was now selling it in prep for the Amiga's release. I looked thru that magazine every day for months.
But the months rolled past. (Time passes rather slowly at such an age, I've come to realize, here at the ripe old age of 37.) So, I got that Mac in late September. I loved it.
For two days.
For, just two days after getting it I went into a local dealership and saw an Amiga on display. It was the unit that we would come to call the Amiga 1000, but it was just "Amiga," back then, really.
The next day, I returned the Mac and got on the order list for Amiga. At the end of October, it arrived. I got the first one sold by the store. They were the first Amiga dealers in Virginia (USA). I got
the first Amiga sold in the state of Virginia, late October 1985.
I love it. It blew me away. It was like sex, or something better. But there were no apps. For months. Finally, amazingly, I sold it for
an Apple IIe. One of the biggest mistakes of my life. I talk more about it
here.
In '89 I came back to the Amiga, with
an Amiga 2000. I had amazing fun with it. Then, a few years later, I left it for
the Mac. But was back soon
with an Amiga 1200 when it first debuted. Then it was
off to PC land for me (though, to my credit, my first PC was fabricated to run NEXTSTEP for Intel).
In recent years I put together a few
Amiga 1200 towers with '060 accelerators -- to run demos mainly. I wanted to like AmigaOS 3.9, but it was just too sluggish and un-modern on the stock hardware, despite the '060. I planned to get a new gfx card, but then I needed a busboard to do that, and yadda yadda -- it was just too much. So, I've been using my 1200 '060 as a machine for demos and a few games. I still have
an Amiga 2000 around that I use more for games.
(In case you haven't grasped it, I've owned
a few machines in my time...)
In the last month, I saw
a near-mint Amiga 1000 on eBay. Long wanting one, I grabbed it. It's in wonderful condition. I've got
a 2MB / SCSI expansion module on it and a 1GB HD hooked up - and just got the format / driver disk this afternoon - will get the HD working tonight. I've loved playing with it.
It got me back in the Amiga state of mind.
So I saw a few refs to these SAM boards on this site, and I took another look at the state of AmigaOS. 4.1. YouTube videos, sshots, etc. Looks nice. These SAM boards will run AmigaOS 4.1 quite well. I read more and more and then finally I saw
J Reimer's writeup of AmigaOS 4.1 on Ars. Last paragraph reads like this:
Whatever the ultimate fate of AmigaOS, it has been a privilege and a joy to use it. I still use my AmigaOne on a daily basis, and consider it my "fun computer." Whenever Windows or OS X annoys me, it's right there, fast and friendly and accessible. It feels like a personal computer in ways that computers haven't felt like in over a decade.
That just captures it, really. I run OS X and love it and love my Macs. They are and will be my "main" machines. But I want to feel a little of that spirit from the old days. It seems "the new Amiga" will give me this. Chasing that feeling is what
my computer room is all about. It's just great fun.
I can't wait to spend time with my new Amiga. As well as more time with my old. And I'll certainly be showing it to my daughter when she gets old enough, and telling her what the Amiga has meant to me, over the years.
So, it seems I've just come back as you're leaving for good. However it works out, I hope you enjoy things where you're headed.
blakespot
