You and your Amiga story

[tokyoracer]

Hi,
I'm really interested to find out what stories people have to tell about how they got their Miggie and why you liked the machine so much. While I've started the topic I may as-well tell you how I got into Amiga. It all started in the year 1992 or 3 which was more-or-less the A1200 debut.
My farther received some money from a family member (can't quite remember which) and was about £500. He was discussing what to do with it and he and my mother agreed it would be good to get a computer. At the days when the only rivals were really Windows 3.1, Apple and there may have been a few Acorn's about. The 1200 was recommended for it's all round compatibility and it's ease of use, oh plus a couple of Zipsticks.
Once bought it was then sat on a black PC storage system (which we still have today!). MY uncle helped set it up and sort some games out while it was there. Also a 14" Sony Triniton TV was used as a Monitor and what a fine TV it was too. I guess I was only 3 or 4 at the time but I've liked Amiga ever since that year. That's basically my story and would love to hear anybody else has to say. :-)

[JimS]

Well, let's see.... it must have been back in 1983 or 4... I was an Atari 8-bit user. We kept hearing about this secret machine called Amiga or Loraine or something... which was capable so the rumor said of "Saturday morning cartoon quality animation". That sounded fantastic to people trying to do that sort of thing on Atari 800s. ;-) I remember trying to wheedle information out of the sysops on CI$, some of whom had seen the prototype.... sounds just like today, eh? ;-)

Anyway, once the machine was released, and after I worked up the guts to drop $1500, I bought a brand new Amiga 1000. I still have it, although a 2000 replaced it, and UAE has pretty much replaced the 2000.

[James]

1988. A friend of mine, ex-C64 kid, bought an Amiga 500, with the A501 and a second disk drive. The whole thing cost him a pretty penny back then. I think the computer was 1200$, the expansion 250$ and the drive 150$. I was just starting high school, the NES was still going strong and the MegaDrive was just around the corner. I bugged my parents day and night for one until I got home one day and my dad had bought one, with Altered Beast which came with the system at the time. I said a quick "kthxdad" and disappeared in my room for the next month. I got to talk with my friend, and he was all "my computer can do better videogames than your Genesis". I was shocked, insulted, and shocked again. So I brought my Genesis at his place and showed him Altered Beast in all its 32 colors glory. Then he showed me Shadow of the Beast.....

...

F*CK!


So I came home and bugged my parents for an Amiga We found a friend of a friend who had a friend of a friend whose son used to plow the snow from a cousin's friend of a friend who had a 1000 for sale. Expanded to 1mb, additional disk drive, 1200 bauds modem, color printer and about 200 disks.

We then set off to make videogames! We failed miserably...really miserably.

My friend wanted to sell his 500 at some point, he needed money for god knows what. So I sold my 1000 to my cousin, and bought the 500 with the money. I got it modified with a fatter agnus for PAL support and 1mb chip. I was finally able to see the HUD in Blood Money

Sold the 500 to a friend about 2 years later after discovering girls, alcohol and weed in high school.

Flash forward to 1995-6. A girlfriend introduced me to rave parties, piouu piouu piouuu 303 basslines and what not. I remember thinking "wtf!? I was doing that on the 500 in 91". So I phoned my friend, bought back my 500 and started making techno with the intention of getting rich and famous. I enjoyed a few years of semi-stardom in the local rave scene, too young and undisciplined to actually make it onto a real label and stuff.

Eventually got a 2500$ settlement in court for unlawful termination at a job. Bought a brand spankin' new state-o'-the-bleepin'-art Pentium 233 MMX and I was set to conquer the world. Sold my 500....again.

Then emulation became good enough so that I could play a couple of amiga games on my PC. That was in 2000 or 2001 I think. I knew I had to buy an mig again. Scanned the local ads for weeks until I found a 1200.

And ever since then I've been picking up old amigas here and there for the fun of it. Sometimes selling one cause I don't use it... but never again will I go Amiga-less! Right now I'm at 4, with 500, 600, 1000 and 1200.

There.. so now you know my whole life

[krize]

James: you still make techno ? Still have some of the old productions ?

My Amiga story would be: A relative, Tyrant/CDR, bought an A500, and every time I was there we played all the new games he had gotten and watched cool new demos...

It took some time before I got one myself, but in late 93 we bought an A1200 with 80mb harddrive

Had Amiga since, and now got: Amiga 4000/060, A1200/(soon 060/ppc) and a Pegasos 2. I use the Peg2 as my main system besides some laptops etc i got luying around.

[phill25]

Well, started when I was younger (about 18 years younger) when we had a Spectrum 128k.  We then went to a Commodore C64..  After a little while, we had an Amiga 600 :-)

Whilst loads of friends at the time had either Mega Drives or SNES or the odd A500 or A500+, I upgraded the Amiga 600 with another 1mb of chipram :-D  The Settlers (what I was mainly playing back then) took on a hole new level :-)

After I think we sold that (1 or 2 years later) my Mum and Dad bought a Amiga 1200 for christmas or birthday (one of the two!!) and I noticed it whilst I was down at my Dad's mum's flat..

So when it came out the box, I was gobsmacked and basically 'fell in love' straight away...  AGA games I was buying all over the place, Breathless, Banshee, Super Skidmarks etc  The list went on..

Met a guy at college who had an upgraded model, saw it, thought it was fantastic and I just had to have one myself! So upgraded it with a 040 40mhz, 32mbs ram, 4gb or 6gb (might have been less, I cant remember!) hard drive and I had a CD-rom with it to, all in a tower.. :-)  It was a beaut..  Ran games faster and I was real happy, until I saw the PPC and Bvision PPC cards..
So when I bought a new car, I had a bit of money, so I spend £1200 on Amiga hardware to get the fastest thing possible...  Oh my world was it awesome.. Wipeout 2097 and Quake ran fine :-)  Until one day, a year later....
It blew up.  I lost everything.. :-(

By then working whilst at college I had a few quid floating so I had a really old PC off of a friend..  I used them ever since..
But whilst using them, I was trying to get Eyetech to help me with getting another Amiga through my Mum's house insurance (power spike) and the results where very disappointing as it took over 6 months to get the bits and then it was nothing compared to my PPC and Bvision...
I sold it and stuck with PC's for ages after that..

I think a few years ago (must be 4 maybe 5) I bought the Amiga 1200 I have now, added a Blizzard 1230 @ 50Mhz, 16Mbs of ram and a small 2.5" hard drive.
I've had it ever since, wouldnt dream of getting rid of it (not a chance, The Settlers, Indyheat are just some of the classics, I really cant stop playing!!) and I'm now considering a Amiga 4000 and towering it.  After all, its the ultimate Amiga in my opinion :-)

Sorry, that took a little longer than I thought! :oops:  :crazy:  I am completely mad about Amiga's, so I'm gonna do my utmost, to track down a Amiga 4000 and try and get to the stage to use it as an every day machine.... :-)

[Ilwrath]

Well, I had gotten my C=64 back when I was in grade school (mid 80's, sometime) and been quite happy with it.  By Jr. High my friends and I all had one, and most had modems and we were pretty active in the local BBS scene.  (When our moms weren't interrupting our hours long downloads by picking up the phone....)  

Anyhow, one friend of mine whose family was richer than ours kept getting new machines every year or so.  They had a C=+4 which we teased him endlessly about... Then a year later, got a C=128, which was actually pretty cool, but we still teased him because for everything except typing a paper or dialing a PC board you had to use C=64 mode for, anyhow...  And, then, it must have been late 1988, he got an Amiga 1000.  

We started teasing him again about jumping ship again on the C=64...  Sure, Workbench was cool, and certainly a lot faster and more useful than GEOS, but where were the games?  A few repackaged titles with nice graphics, but nothing that REALLY set it apart.  (We were already getting a bit jealous, but not showing it, yet).  Sure, Defender of the Crown looked stunning, but the C64 version was quite playable and on a fraction of the budget.  

Then, the next year, he called us over and popped in a little game that just came out (Shadow of the Beast), this time we were forced to acknowledge he'd gotten the real upgrade.  I'd never look at my C=64 quite the same way again.  

A few months later I'd scraped together enough money to put together (along with selling all my C64 gear) to pick up an Amiga 500 and 501 card.  Great machine.  I never looked back.  Over time I added a sidecar HD and RAM expansion, digitizer, and a few other odds and ends.

A few years later I sold off all the A500 specific gear, and traded up to an A1200 with the GVP'030.  WICKED-FAST machine.  I loved it.  It started being plagued by the A1200 graphics corruption hardware bug thing, though...

So, of course, I sold it to get an A4000.  At first, I was actually disappointed in my A4000.  It wasn't much of an upgrade over the A1200.  (Going from a 40mhz '030 to a 25mhz '040 didn't make much difference, at all.)  So once again, I scraped and saved, and threw a Phase5 CyberStorm 060 in it.  THAT was the way the 4000 should have shipped from C=.  ROCKET SHIP fast.  :-)  A year or two after that, I added a new CV64/3d to it, as Commodore was going under.  I swore I'd never sell that system until something honestly better came out.  I still have it.

Of course, for work and junk, I was forced to go more and more toward PCs, and around 2000 or so, I bought my first Windows PC.  (And truth be told, I'd been using a work PC laptop more and more even before taking that plunge.)

Sometime a couple years ago, the CyberStorm '060 died on my old A4000.  It's sitting up in storage, awaiting me to get nostalgic enough to send it to Amiga Center France for a good overhaul.  In the meantime, I have my PCs as main computers, and an A1200 GVP'030 (a lot like my old rig that I sold) that I enjoy as my retro machine.  :-)

[tokyoracer]

Thanks for all your stories, please keep them coming!
My uncle has an A4000 right up untill about 2002/3 then the motherboard went aparently so it's eather someware stored away or doesnt exist no more. :-( It was often used as an afterthought, playing games like Scrabble and occasonally games like Genasia, Pinball Dreams and Neblus (I think?). Far from what it could really do but I got no idea what was inside it other then a manually operated fan that could be ajusted from the case on the front, a hard disk and a floppy drive. Nothing special.
Back to my 1200, me and my Dad would often play games like PGA Tour, Mansell's Championship, Dune 2, Banshee, Chaos Engine, Trolls and loads more. I personally think the A1200 was better then the 4000 in it's own little way.

[Amiduffer]

I blame my slightly older geek brother.

He was the one that went out and got game systems as they came out. Odyssey2, Sega, Vic 20, C=64, Amiga 500, and we had fun playing games together. After I came back home from the Navy, I had enough to buy a used A1000 which we would connect together for games like Stunt Racer. He ditched the A500 for PC shortly after, but I stuck with it. I guess my needs are modest enough where I don't really need a PC yet, and the ones at the office are good for email and posting here.

[tokyoracer]

Thanks for your stories, all is very interesting! Would be great to hear any others if they are willing to speek about their first Amiga experiance and/or purchise.

[jmbattle]

Christmas 1998, as a seven year old, I recall accompanying my parents around Comet, Dixons and the other large electronics chain stores in Norwich.  I was particularly mesmerised by the Spectrum 128k, with it's built-in cassette machine.

I awoke a few days later on Christmas morning, tearing the wrapping off of the presents in my pillow-case stocking while munching on a Terry's Chocolate Orange.  I reached the bottom of the pile, yet there was no Spectrum in sight.

As was usual back in those days, my elder sister I would jump into our parents bed, while my mum brought morning cups of tea and biscuits.  I was a little disappointed with my presents and was clearly struggling to contain my unhappiness.  My father gets out of bed, opens the wardrobe and pulls out an enormous box, gesturing to my sister and I to tear-off the wrapping paper.

Wow, it was a computer...it wasn't black, and it didn't say 'Spectrum', but with all those keys it certainly was a computer.  I recall being a little curious as to the lack ofbuilt-in cassette deck.  "It doesn't use tapes" my father announced, "this is an Amiga - a brand new computer that uses floppy disks!".

My father and I spent the entire morning setting up the A500 to no avail.  He spent half an hour speaking on the phone to one of his computer owning friends, yet still no progress was made.

My sister and I spent the day typing our own names on an unpowered Amiga!

I believe it was boxing day, or perhaps the day after.  My family and I ventured into Norwich city centre, clutching the A520 modulator - somehow my father had isolated the problem down to this component as the Amiga would only boot discs when the modulator was disconnected.

Strolling along 'Gentleman's Walk', we popped into OSB ('One Step Beyond') - the leading computer store in Norwich in those days - and explained the fault to the sales chap.

Returning that afternoon with a replacement modulator, we all gathered around the colour television in the living room and gasped as the Amiga booted, showing the famous 'insert disc' prompt.  I fumbled around and inserted 'The Very First English Version' into the slot.

'Get the best!' the text announced... on Christmas 1988 the Battle family had done just that!

Great memories.

Cheers,
James
x

ps.  I am curious about the original posted - clearly interested in Japan and living in Norwich what a terrific combination.

[skurk]

Long story short:

- 1983, got my first computer. Oric-1, 48K.
- 1985, West PC 800 (Apple][ clone)
- 1986, C64.
- 1988, Amiga 500.
- 1990, TI99/4A
- 1991, 40MB GVP disk for the A500
- 1994, switched to Linux/x86. Several PC's. Tons, actually.
- 2000, got an A1200 for free from a friend
- 2001, PowerMac
- 2003, A4000
- 2005, Mac Mini PPC
- 2006, Macbook Pro x86
- 2007, A600

No computers were ever sold or thrown away (except the PC's).

In summation, the Amiga is definitely the computer that had the biggest impact on me.

Oh, and if anyone out there have a time machine, let me know.  I want a one-way ticket back to 1988.

[tokyoracer]

WOW jmbattle!
I know the guy (or one of the main guys) from OSB (,Paul).
Although it doesn't exist no more he is now at the marketplace on Gents. Walk on rows F & G named "OSG" (One Step Gaming).
It's great to hear from someone who is from arround my area and im guessing you ment "1988" not "1998"? :-)

[jmbattle]

Yes, I meant 1988...whoops.

Wow, OSB has finally closed down?  The last time I was in Norwich a couple of years ago the shop was along the back of ...can't remember the name - a cobbled street, next to the old Dogfish/Catfish shop.

I bet the market is looking pretty good now, although I have fond memories of getting lost in the maze of bag shops and fish and chips stalls!

Cheers,
James (Narfol n'gud...)
x

[McVenco]

skurk wrote:

Oh, and if anyone out there have a time machine, let me know.  I want a one-way ticket back to 1988.

I'll go back to 1990 then please :-)

That was the year that I really got into the Amiga. A friend at school had one and I told myself I had to get myself one as well. Luckily (?) another classmate was funny enough to shoot a rose-hip in my eye with a rubberband (oh the joy of kids) which, in the end, resulted in me receiving a nice sum of money (1000 old dutch guilders - about $500 back then) from his insurance, so I could buy my first Amiga.

So you could say I almost lost an eye to buy an Amiga :lol:

After a few years, I had expanded it with 3.1 ROMs, an A590 harddisk with 720 meg onboard, plus a few MBs of FastRAM.
The came the expansion of my collection with an A2000 and an A3000. Until 2000 I used my miggies frequently, but I needed a windows box for college and I got rid of all Amiga stuff.

A year ago it started itching again and I began a new Amiga collection. Thusfar this has resulted in my current collection which you can see in my sig.

Amiga will never leave my home again now... Ever! :-D

[B00tDisk]

1984->VIC20
1985->C= 64
1988->C= 128
1989->A500
1992->A1200
1994->present ->PC, occasional Amiga emulation (mostly to play Quake, if you can believe that).