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Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: ScottJClifford on November 05, 2010, 04:12:41 AM
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I noticed more than a few members are from Aus. Did the Amiga sell well down there? Everytime I mention the Amiga here in the U.S people look at me like I'm nuts :crazy:
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I noticed more than a few members are from Aus. Did the Amiga sell well down there? Everytime I mention the Amiga here in the U.S people look at me like I'm nuts :crazy:
You are just hanging out with the wrong people I guess. :laughing:
Only extreme computer geeks and old TV and video production people remember the Amiga in the USA. From what I have read, it appears that the Amiga was very popular in Australia, but I don't know how many units actually sold there. Remember that there was several very good software and some good hardware Amiga projects that came from Australia. Video & Audio Co-Pilot, DOpus, GPFax and the OpalVision card are just a few that immediately spring into my memory, but there were many more Amiga products from Australia.
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I've got no idea on the actual figures, but the good 'ole A500 must've sold quite well here, as I recall many of my friends having them (most just for games) back in the day.
There was also this towered machine I fiddled with Lemmings on at a girlfriend's friend's house. Turns out it was an A4000T, which I'll bet they just binned :(
That being said, even my friends that had them look at me like I'm nuts for having Amigas in 2010! :D
PZ.
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In its heyday it shared almost the same amount of retail space as the PC for a while. I remember going to large chains and having two or three 6x6" shelves full of software. The PCs always had more hardware on offer as "Amiga" here in Aus meant almost exclusively the A500. There were smaller stores that sold other models but my experience is that seeing big box Amigas in retail chains was rare.
AGA didnt fare well here, the Amiga was already a deminishing platform when it appeared. I remember seeing A1200s in one large retailer but they were relegated to the dingy corner while PCs dominated the well lit areas. Later, I saw the A1200 demo model for sale for 1/4 of retail price and almost bought it. They sold off all the Amiga software over a couple of weeks and didnt restock.
The CD32 was all but non-existant, only one of the smaller retailers stocked it for a few months, before the PS1 pushed it off the shelf for good.
Most of the Amiga centric mags either folded or rebranded to other platforms within months of C= going under.
My memory is that the Amiga userbase in Aus was probably something like 90%+ A500s, used for games. When other things came along like the 386, Megadrive(Genesis) and Snes they absorbed this 90%. Leaving only the minority of big box Amiga users to continue.
I'd be surprised if the Amiga userbase got above 1/2 a million here? The C64 by comparison was everywhere probably in the millions, everyone I knew owned one.
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They were quite popular until the 486 came below $2000 then the hardcore gamers went PC. Anyone who was just using it as a games machine went Nintendo or Playstation. There were quite a few Amiga people who upgraded to an A1200 (from an A500). A small amount of A4000/A3000 users and just a few more A2000 users. A great deal of the hardware would have gone to the rubbish tip, back when you couldn't give away an Amiga.
Back then I thought computers would evolve, but in reality they just got more bloated, faster at some tasks inc higher resolution graphics. They got dumbed down too much I guess.
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The Amiga was very strong here in Australia but as mentioned when the 486 came onto the scene with soundblaster cards and games like Myst, Doom, Wing Commander and Consoles like 3D0, Sony Playstation, Nintendos the Amiga faded into insignificance.
The Amiga here in Victoria was very strong, a school I went to had a room full of Amiga 1200's and Amiga 4000's for Art students to use! It was heaven for an Amigan such as myself.
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Put it this way. I've been a passionate amigan since about 1988 and in all that time until today i have only ever seen 3 different models in real life. The A500, A600 and the CD32. I have never even seen a A2000, A3000 or A4000 or even a A1000. I only knew a handful of people who used amigas and they just used the A500 for games and stuff. Most people in my school used PCs or Nintendo or segas.
C64's on the otherhand were quite popular... :rolleyes:
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Sysinfo, the ubiquitous software, is from Australia, isn't it? :-)
So are the Blitz Basic and Skidmarks if i'm correct.
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Anyone else remember the two A500's they had on the TV set Neigbours? :)
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Put it this way. I've been a passionate amigan since about 1988 and in all that time until today i have only ever seen 3 different models in real life. The A500, A600 and the CD32. I have never even seen a A2000, A3000 or A4000 or even a A1000. I only knew a handful of people who used amigas and they just used the A500 for games and stuff. Most people in my school used PCs or Nintendo or segas.
C64's on the otherhand were quite popular... :rolleyes:
Well I have purchased here in Australia An Amiga 500, 1200, CD32..... I have used and seen in Australia as follows Amiga 1000, Amiga 500, Amiga 1200, Amiga 600, Amiga 2000, Amiga 1500, Amiga 3000, Amiga 4000D, Amiga 4000T (Genuine), Amiga CDTV, Amiga CD32, Amiga CD32 with both SX1 and Sx2 Expansion.
I have seen the following for sale in Australian stores for sale like Maxwells, Myer and small computer stores like MVB and Cplus. Amiga 1500 and Amiga 2000, Amiga 3000, Amiga 4000, Amiga 1200, Amiga 600 and the humble Amiga 500, The CD32 and CDTV.
I guess what I am trying to say and prove is that they existed here in Australia in a big way.
The Amiga flag is still flown here in Australia, I attend a monthly User group one of two groups in Victoria and there is a group in Sydney Australia also.
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Sysinfo, the ubiquitous software, is from Australia, isn't it? :-)
So are the Blitz Basic and Skidmarks if i'm correct.
I also believe Directory Opus was made by an Australian from Queensland if I am not mistaken.
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Anyone else remember the two A500's they had on the TV set Neigbours? :)
Yes I do remember :lol:
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Not to mention Cammy, that is using half the amiga computers left in Australia alone :)
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Not to mention Cammy, that is using half the amiga computers left in Australia alone :)
Remember there is a Tassie user down here with an Amiga 1200 in a rack and now a CD32!
I've got a Mac Mini G4 1.5 but I have yet to install Morphos on it, which I will do in due course!
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Well I have purchased here in Australia An Amiga 500, 1200, CD32..... I have used and seen in Australia as follows Amiga 1000, Amiga 500, Amiga 1200, Amiga 600, Amiga 2000, Amiga 1500, Amiga 3000, Amiga 4000D, Amiga 4000T (Genuine), Amiga CDTV, Amiga CD32, Amiga CD32 with both SX1 and Sx2 Expansion.
I have seen the following for sale in Australian stores for sale like Maxwells, Myer and small computer stores like MVB and Cplus. Amiga 1500 and Amiga 2000, Amiga 3000, Amiga 4000, Amiga 1200, Amiga 600 and the humble Amiga 500, The CD32 and CDTV.
I guess what I am trying to say and prove is that they existed here in Australia in a big way.
The Amiga flag is still flown here in Australia, I attend a monthly User group one of two groups in Victoria and there is a group in Sydney Australia also.
I was not aware of this and thankyou for clearing this up :)
But also realise i was only a tiny kid in the early 1990's so maybe that's why i didn't see many :rolleyes:
There are user groups in australia? In sydney and victoria? Why, i had no idea :hat:
What about newcastle?
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I was not aware of this and thankyou for clearing this up :)
But also realise i was only a tiny kid in the early 1990's so maybe that's why i didn't see many :rolleyes:
There are user groups in australia? In sydney and victoria? Why, i had no idea :hat:
What about newcastle?
Are you kidding? You are only an hour away from Sydney, check out a SAUG meeting in Epping (on the north side of Sydney).
http://members.optusnet.com.au/saug/ (http://members.optusnet.com.au/saug/)
Next meeting is on the 14th Nov.
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i particularly like the door under the staircase. It makes it look very secretive. Entrance to the batcave? Superheros secret layer? Mafia meet up place?
Nope it's just the amigans annual laminton drive! :roflmao:
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WOW didn't know they were still around... got to go! (but i cant this meeting).
I wonder what i should tell the wife......... hmmmmmmm.
I have owned a A500 and A1200. I have lots of friends and family that did own some sort of Amiga so they were very popular up till C= went belly up and we all jumped ship to PC's. about around 2002 i started to miss them and stated my collection and i must say i am glad i did. (just as long as the wife doesn't EVER find out exactly how much i have spent.... :D)
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Yep, at its peak the Amiga was very successful in Australia, with sales reaching 1 million units just as it started to decline. Unfortunately as mentioned already the a500 accounted for probably 95% of sales, and the Amiga was predominantely considered to basically be a console whos games you could copy easily. By the time AGA was released things were already done and dusted, and I remember seeing new a1200's and cd32's being cleared at big discounts more than a few times. There mustve been a small handful of australian amigans who stuck with it though, as while Ive not seen an Aussie amigan in real life for many years we do appears to turn up pretty regularly on the net.
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I've got a Mac Mini G4 1.5 but I have yet to install Morphos on it, which I will do in due course!
Question: Why in due course? Why not already?
Do it...do it now! :D
PZ.
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Yeah, the A500 was very popular.
My mates brother had one of the first A1000s too... Cost a small fortune back then.
I upgraded to an A1200 in 1992 - cost me $1100 for Myer at Chadstone...
Not longer after, 486's with SVGA became cheap.
Still, I held out until 1998 before I moved to a wintel box...
Mike.
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I'd noticed while gathering all those old Commodore TV ads for my site, that there were quite a few Australian ones. Seems since the days of the C64 Commodore really pushed sales down under. :)
(Reckon the 'Are you keeping up with the Commodore' Jingle would have begun to grind after a while though...) :lol:
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Yep, as a gaming platform it was very big. Many stores carried them. It was MYER where I saw the CDTV, and CD32 for the first time. Not at the same time obviously. Can't remember the store at which I first saw the A3000 but I do remember the amount of drool. The A500 was promoted heavily as a gaming computer. I remember even one of the Kmart TV promos covering all of their various departments included a quick shot of the A500 and some gameplay for 'Entertainment'. I think even the 5 A600's sold were all in Australia :)
The Amiga also did well as the system to apply to any use you can think of, as it was relatively inexpensive. Megatron in Victoria was the official distributor and repair centre and they had them working everywhere.
For the longest of time, through most of the 90's in fact, the screens on all of Melbourne's inner-city train stations displaying current and next train times was run by A500's. I've seen A500's used as automated watering systems in agriculture. People treated it as an embedded system.
Movielink, HQ in Toorak, the largest supplier of hotel in-room entertainment systems in Australia was using using 1200's for the interactive menu system. They had over 1000 in the field.
I remember when Petro came out he was very unhappy that the largest order of 1200's that year was Megatron outfitting Crown Casino's many electronic gaming systems, but no one will actually see the Amiga brand :(
So yeah, they did OK.
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I got my a4k030 (now upgraded to a CSPPC, sitting in the closet) from The Computer Man in Perth. He was a character..
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One of the most unforgettable sights ever was seeing the brand new Amiga CD32 displayed in its own section at Myer playing that demo disc.
The entire Keno (kind of like an in-club lottery system) network was run on Amigas, with Amigas displaying live results around the country on screens inside RSL clubs.
I think considering our small population, Amiga was very successful while it lasted. And as Fishy pointed out, I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that you could easily copy games that were around the same quality as those on the consoles at the time. Australia had quite a few cracker groups running, although I personally missed out on that era in Amiga computing since my first one was a CD32.
As for those Australian Amiga User Groups, I love how there is one in Sydney and two around Melbourne, and I'd like to visit them if I ever go on holiday in those cities, but I wish we had a user group around the Gold Coast or even Brisbane.
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@Cammy
Hah my brother used to jig school to play "Walker" on the demo A1200's at Myer/Grace brothers!
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@Cammy
I was about to say you meant Grace Brothers, but then I realised you probably shopped in QLD.... I still remember watching all the Grace Brothers red transformed into Myer black. It was a sad day....
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Nice thread. Had to reply when I stumbled across it.
I so loved the Amiga and Commodore era.
I myself worked for a CBM outlet approaching almost 10 years from memory.
Unfortunately I left in the last year before CBM fell so I missed out on all the wonderful AGA machines.
Here are my machines in order of when I bought them.
Vic-20
(Left High School)
C64
(Started working for CBM)
(Ran my first BBS on c64 [ The Transcendental Connection. (Punternet BBS)]
8250LP Dual 1MB drives. (Never returned from service sadly when CBM went down) :(
A1000 (Ran many different BBS packages on this, I was FIDO 3:640/281).
A2000 (Briefly. traded this on an A3000 a few weeks later. Barely remember it.)
A3000 (Ran Paragon / Cnet BBS on this machine).
(Left CBM, went to College studding Ass.Dip.Info.Tech)
(Collected the following since)
A600HD
A500
I still don't own an AGA machine sadly nor have I ever played an AGA game. :(
Life can be so cruel! ;)
Would like to add to my collection an A2000(B,Rev6.2) & A1200.
The Amiga had a killer following in Australia back in the day.
I spent all my CBM years on the sales floor and in that time I would sell about 99% Amiga's and the rest PC, Amstrad, Atari etc.
Amiga's were also very popular with the universities.
3/4 of the walls in the store were covered with Amiga software.
The Amiga BBS I ran run hot 24/7 I could only afford the one phone line back in the day.
Even after I turned it off the phone still rang hot with users still looking for the BBS.
This only stopped when I had to say goodbye to the land line phone 3+ years ago in favor of an Optus Cable connection and Billion 6404VGP VoIP router for my phone line.
I wish I could have hung on to the number some how. Maybe one day I can get it back but the cost of line rental just didn't make it affordable.
Probably the most sold Amiga would have been the A500.
Unfortunately though they were also probably the most dumped Amiga after the fad ended.
Mainly because not many were sold with hard drives.
A2000's, A3000's often fell victim in storage from the dreaded clock battery leaking. :(
I had the honor of meeting Nick Wilson who wrote sysinfo a few times as Toowoomba is only a few hours from here (Ipswich).
Glen McDiarmid author of Resource (Machine code disassembler) was a good friend for many many years. In fact he only lived two blocks away from me for a very long time. I also went to college with him when I left CBM. I still have a copy of his software here now!. :) http://amiga-dev.wikidot.com/tool:resource
These days I am part of a group called "The Retro Computing Cult". http://shazam.zapto.org
We collect and display old retro machines.
Other then CBM machines listed above I now also have.
BBC Micro, Tandy 100, System 80, Apple IIe Platinum (Faulty sadly), TI-99/4A, DSE Cat, MicroBee, Vectrex.
We also run a Retro Computing chat line that can be accessed free world wide via VoIP and from most major cities in the world via PSTN gateways for the cost of a local call.
Click on Igal on our website to see some pictures of the machines we have recovered.
Great seeing all you Aussie Amiga nuts online!.
Remember..
Only Amiga Makes it Possible!! ;)
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aussie cbm was big. lots of 500s and 2000's. I dont recall seeing mayn 4k or 1200's. We had a good well supported magazine Australian Commodore Amiga Review. Stores actually had amiga sections!
CBM Australia suffered the same deals as CBM usa, mainly fuck all or piss poor marketing, and being so far away, had little ability to get stock on shelves when it was needed (xmas time etc).
CBM Australia was really strong but got no support from USA HQ
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A bit late to this thread but thought I'd share how I saw it,
A500 was huge here, the typical shopping centre computer stores had pretty big shelf of software. Having said that not as big a the 64 but still very well known. The images of games in magazine and on the back of bees were absolute wow. When the A500 was at its peak it was mostly 286 pcs with EGA graphics, the A500 was less than half the price.
I bought my A500 for $749 AUD around late 1990.
A600 was seen as complete mess, offering nothing much new 4-5 years after the A500. Actually at that time it was seen as a inferior to the A500. Should never have been released even though it is not a bad machine for upgrading today. It was in stores but I don't think it sold well.
When the A1200 came out (would have been around Dec 1992) I decided it time to upgrade. Rang the dealer and they quoted me $1499 AUD for a 1200HD/40 (no monitor). I was pretty surprised at the price as the machine in the UK was priced not far off where the A500 used to be. These are supposed to be budget machines which Commodore Australia now wanted big money for.
After thinking about it for a while I started look at PC's and eventually bought a 486sx-25/80mb/4mb/SVGA with monitor for $1950. I think those numbers would have told the story for a lot of people. By 1992 the machine commodore released was was probably perceived as comparable to a 386sx but in a small case, at a 486sx price. Someone was definitely pocketing $300-$400 extra on Australian machines compared to other markets.
So I never actually saw a 1200 in Australia (until I bought one in 2013). I don't think the mainstream stores had too many mainly due to pricing.
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I remember going to Grace Brothers and Dick Smiths seeing A500s front and center of their computer departments. There was also a stack of smaller businesses producing hardware - for example, I purchased an Aussie designed and built eeprom programmer (which allowed duplication of Apple roms and Amiga roms). There was of course Opal Vision.
We also had stacks of small businesses selling hardware and software - both retail and mail order. We even had our own Amiga Mags and back in the day there were Amiga clubs almost everywhere.
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And Audio Engineer hardware and software, and the Phoenix A1000 MB replacement out of South Australia, and the ubiquitous Sysinfo out of Queensland, where would we be without that?
Amiga was quite popular in Australia in specialised computer shops and the Myer/Grace Bros chain and even had an Aussie magazine in "Australian Commodore and Amiga Review".
Sigh... long ago now.
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And Audio Engineer Hardware and Software, and the Phoenix A1000 MB replacement out of South Australia, and the ubiquitous Sysinfo out of Queensland where would we be without that.
Amiga was quite popular in Australia in specialised computer shops and the Myer/Grace Bros and even had an Aussie Magazine in "Australian Commodore and Amiga Review".
Sigh... long ago now.
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I remember seeing 500s in K Mart and drooling over 4000s in Myer a few years later.
I knew quite a few people that had Amigas but pretty much only 500s. Later I saw a couple of 1200s and 600s. I went to a meeting or two of a local Amiga user group a couple of years after C= went under but didn't feel like I fit in with the grumpy greybeards there! I don't think there's an active user group anywhere near me now.
My first Amiga was a 500 and I eventually bought a 1200, probably one of the last ones sold here in Perth! The 1200 was the first computer I bought with my own money and it's still going. Sadly, I sold the 030 accelerator I had in it for peanuts when I was broke in the late 90s. By then I had got my hands on a 4000 but didn't know about the dangers of the battery and it died a few years later.
Until I got interested in Amigas again a couple of years ago, I'd never even seen a 1000 or a 2000 but have since picked up two of each and a couple of them even work.
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I remember seeing 500s in K Mart and drooling over 4000s in Myer a few years later.
I knew quite a few people that had Amigas but pretty much only 500s. Later I saw a couple of 1200s and 600s. I went to a meeting or two of a local Amiga user group a couple of years after C= went under but didn't feel like I fit in with the grumpy greybeards there! I don't think there's an active user group anywhere near me now.
My first Amiga was a 500 and I eventually bought a 1200, probably one of the last ones sold here in Perth! The 1200 was the first computer I bought with my own money and it's still going. Sadly, I sold the 030 accelerator I had in it for peanuts when I was broke in the late 90s. By then I had got my hands on a 4000 but didn't know about the dangers of the battery and it died a few years later.
Until I got interested in Amigas again a couple of years ago, I'd never even seen a 1000 or a 2000 but have since picked up two of each and a couple of them even work.
K-Mart has a presence in AU , eh?
I'm fond of the A2000 myself.
Sturdy enough to be used as a weapon when you tire of using it as a computer. :laugh1:
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K-Mart has a presence in AU , eh?
I'm fond of the A2000 myself.
Sturdy enough to be used as a weapon when you tire of using it as a computer. :laugh1:
@Iggy K-Mart is a fantastic chain here, some are even open 24 hours! They sell pretty much everything
I loved A2000s. My father bought me my first A2000 from a garage sale for $80 in 1996 (I was using an A500 prior to that).
I only ever really used Wordworth, DPaint and Protracker on it from disk... Until I accidentally reboot it twice on years' eve, and it suddenly auto-boot into Workbench 2.0 (which I'd never seen before) - I was absolutely gobsmacked. I didn't realise it contained a hard disk, or how much ram (6MB) it had in it. The hard disk required two reboots as it was slow to spin up
...Christ, I was forced to attend new years celebrations that night. I just wanted to go home and play with the workbench preferences on the A2000, I couldn't believe I could set background patterns in Workbench 2.0... In 16 colors no less!
Good times. I'm now 32, and I haven't had anything excite me to that extent since.
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I like that story! I feel as though I know how that would have felt too. :)
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Ahhh good old Australia.
When I arrived in Australia (Perth) with my A500 there were several outlets for Amiga.
I got my 1084S from Kmart.
Amilight Software in Como / South Perth, PD Software (But not so PD if you asked the right questions).
ComputerMan in Mount Lawley (ComputerYid, due to his Jewish faith).
Headlam Computers in Leederville.
Then things happen, get married, have kids, Move to Melbourne.
Been to Maug a few times in Mooney Ponds (Melbourne Amiga User Group), THB (from EAB) goes to Maug.
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Anyone else remember the two A500's they had on the TV set Neigbours? :)
Yes. There were one or two in Paul Robinson's office in the Lassiters Hotel - it got a 'Virus' and Josh the computer whizz-kid fixed it.
Josh also had one when he lived with the Robinsons.
The Kennedy family were better off - they had a PC but the only game they played was Magic Carpet.
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Be ashamed, very ashamed!
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Headlam Computers in Leederville.
That's where I got my A1200. One of the 1000s I've got now had their phone number on a sticker on the keyboard.
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I worked for a company in Richmond, Melbourne, Victoria.
This company had over 400x A500's in motels running specialized software for VCR control and movie schedules.
Over 600x A1200 in major hotel chains like Crown Towers, Hilton and many others.
We used the A1200's for small animations of navigation pages for a master antennae subscription movie service.
Some of the A1200's were used for Scala multimedia displays running what ever the hotel wanted as a information and description pages for their customers and guests with sound and voice over.
I personally shoe horned into a one inch high, custom 19U rack mount, an A1200 motherboard, 8meg ram expansion, 3.5inch hard disk, 3.5inch internal Iomega IDE 100meg ZIP drive and a face mount reset switch. I wrote custom boot scripts and software to control the copy/paste of Scala updates into the internal drive via the 100meg Zip. Great fun to do!
Many hotels had 6x A1200's installed in a server rack with the VCR's, master modem, amplifiers and assorted other hardware for the movie delivery system.
I also had to do Scala programming, all the monthly updates for graphics and animations. Every month we had new movies to be shown so new pages had to be created.
The main graphics machine was an A4000Tower, nice machine :) Brilliance V2 was the most useful AGA paint package I used, lovely program.
Az
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I am in Melbourne, Australia and have a CD32 with SX1 expansion. I pulled it out of the cupboard and fired it up last week. It still works almost 30 years later ;D
Back in the day around 1987 we used to go to Dick Smith in Boronia Victoria after school each day to play Test Drive that they had setup on the demo Amiga 500 in the store. I saved up and purchased one!
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Our folks bought an A1000 in Hobart Tasmania - probably Myer in '86 and it was the best. We didn't buy any more stuff retail in Hobart but mail-order from magazines out of the USA. Titles like Defender of the Crown and the Mirror Hack Pack and GOMF came from there. Hardware extras like Digiview + NTSC camera, Timesaver and Perfect Sound also came via mail order.
My friend was a member of OmegaV - a subgroup of ACU and handed me most of the other software I played with.
Jeff from Unitech Electronics in the Sydney area told me back in the day he was an agent for the CD32 and met with the late Kerry Packer who ordered 100's of CD32 motherboards to run in the slot machines in his Melbourne Casino.
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A bit late but just wanted to add that the TAB (Betting shops) in Victoria used Amiga 2000s for their gambling machines, which was a system called Tabaret.
I walked into a pub and saw the screens, and immediately knew it was an Amiga running it.
A few years later, I bought an Amiga 3000 with a network card which still had Tabaret software on the hard drive!