Greetings from an odd person in the USA

[Amiduffer]

$20 for a working A1k in good cosmetic condition is a hell of a find. Normally, they've transformed into a horrible puke yellow color.

All I can say, retro-computers are a much nicer hobby than the soul draining Facebook/Myspace/Twitter routes.

[desiv]

All I can say, retro-computers are a much nicer hobby than the soul draining Facebook/Myspace/Twitter routes.

YES!!!  I can't believe how popular those are....
Funny I'm finally happy about not being very social! :-)

@RepoOne, I'd make sure you get some floppies and make some backups.
I got several copies of kickstart (same version) with my A1000, but only one of them was still any good (disk errors).  So I copied it right away!!
If you have an Amiga with Workbench (and kickstart if it's an A1000), a null modem cable and a PC with a serial port, you can always get other disks to it.
But you need those (Workbench/Kickstart) and you can't "create" them with a PC floppy.
(OK, if you have a Catweasel, but that's cheating.. ;-)

desiv
p.s.  @Amiduffer, hey you live in my old neighborhood!!  L.A.!! Man, I miss Tommy's chiliburgers and  ..  er  .. um  .. uh...  
That's it really... :lol:

[murple]

I'm not sure this is THAT unusual. How old is Cammy? She looks like she must've been in diapers when Amiga was in it's heyday and she somehow became an Amiga nerd. I've met a few C=64 nerds who weren't even born when Commodore was selling them. I guess it's kinda like people born in the days of CDs and MP3s becoming record collectors.

[Karlos]

It's refreshing to see kids today show an interest in what really was the golden age of home computing.

I tend to think that today's generation of toddlers, growing up with everyday computing devices with power the likes of which we could barely imagine in our 8-bit youth are missing out, though I expect they'll see some revolutionary stuff in their lifetime too.

[runequester]

It's refreshing to see kids today show an interest in what really was the golden age of home computing.

I tend to think that today's generation of toddlers, growing up with everyday computing devices with power the likes of which we could barely imagine in our 8-bit youth are missing out, though I expect they'll see some revolutionary stuff in their lifetime too.

I think the mobile / portable computer thing is really their counterpart to what the 80's were to us.

[Plaz]

I think the mobile / portable computer thing is really their counterpart to what the 80's were to us.

No doubt, but it's not quite the same. When I got my first computer, the second thing I wanted to do was grab my soldering iron and start operating. I don't see my kids with the same kind of interest in their gadgets.

Hey, can I take a look at that for you?

 "No Dad, you're not taking my phone apart."

Drat.  

Plaz

[Belial6]

I think you might be looking at it through rosin colored glasses.   There are plenty of kids who want to take things apart, and put them back together again.  My son has far more interest in playing Populous on my MiniMig than he does on his computer.  Mostly because he watched me take a motherboard, and with the handy dandy soldering iron, I removed plugs, rewired them to different places, and made it fit into a case that it was never intended for.

This can be seen all the time.  The thing to remember is that just as that kind of curiosity is rare today, it was just as rare when the heyday of home computers was in full swing.  The reason it seems to be less now, is that everyone has computers.  So, while the percentage of computer owners that want really explore tech is less among tech owners, it is the same as it ever was among the population.



Basically, the pie got bigger.  Your piece didn't get smaller.
or more crassly...
Small potatoes makes the steak look bigger.

[JimS]

Welcome to the Wacky World of Amiga. ;-)  When I was 17, the idea of owning a computer was sci-fi. I was using a mainframe Burroughs b5500 via timesharing over a mod33 teletype and acoustic modem. A National Science Foundation grant got this for our High School.
 Fun stuff indeed. ;-)

[arttu80]

Welcome to Amigaland, man! I am too, happy to see young fellow become fascinated about this BEAUTIFUL machine, called Amiga. You'll see much of great stuff in this hobby and hopefully new evolution of Amiga hardware. I have used Amiga since 1992 (I was 12 at that time), but wasn't active user all this time. But my passion for it never died, so I returned, in some degree anyway. I have some nice collection of Amiga models, but for now only 2 of them are on the table, A1000 (signature case) and A1200 w/Indivision AGA & accelerator board. I love this setup. So have fun with yours man and be proud!

[RepoOne]

Welcome...

I hate you..

And I mean that in the nicest way.. :-)

I paid a "bit" more for my A1000 and you're looks cosmetically much nicer!!!

Congrats!!!

I remember 17... I think..  Good times..
When I'd sit around playing games and writing code and drinking too much soda and..
hmm..  er...

Not much has changed actually...  ;-)

If you have any questions, just ask..  Lots of great help around here...

desiv

Haha. You'll really hate this: I got a lot more than just the Amiga for $20.

I got the complete set, pretty much, and in the original Amiga box, too.

Loads of disks:



External floppy drive:


A 2400 baud modem:


I have no idea what this is:


And a dot-matrix printer:


Also, I already have Amiga Explorer set up and on a backup Workbench diskette, and there is a null-modem cable connecting my main PC to my Amiga.

[actung_bab]

welcome great to have young people to love amiga very cool
know just got get my 8 month son intrested he plays on Ee pc at the moment
when starts walking am sure he scoped out my amigas already

[Opus]

greetings, I too am odd and from IN.  At age 17 I had to get a job so I could buy my own C64, which I did, loved programming it!  had to buy my A1000 when it came out too, I musta been 19 or 20, dropped a LOT more than a $20, great find!

[user8086]

I'll chime in and say that I'm also from that era, but a few years before...I'm 24 now, born in 1986. My earliest computer experience was probably with an IBM PC 5150, which ran the 8088 microprocessor, and I'd have been exposed to it maybe 87 or 88. I grew up using and gaming on PCs...definitely no Macs, no gaming consoles, one computer running OS/2 as a novelty, and I've never even seen an Amiga. My father was into gaming, and he'd give me his old computers, even as a five year old, and we'd upgrade every year to two years, building the gaming PCs together. I had 286s, 386s, a Toshiba laptop, and then--towards 486s and beyond, my own computers. It may be nostalgia and childhood, but it felt like a magical time for computing.

There were computer games that literally invented genres, and hardware that no one had ever seen before. I fondly remember upgrades from CGA, EVA, VGA, and SVGA, and all the expensive hardware we had to buy to play the latest and greatest games.

These kinds of memories have led me to find an Amiga 500 online, which I recently bought and am expecting any day now.

Edit: From the US, too; grew up in NJ.

[Argo]

AN ODD PERSON IN THE USA !!!

I thought all of you lot across the pond were odd...

Says the Very Odd Scottsman!

[JimS]

Haha. You'll really hate this: I got a lot more than just the Amiga for $20.


I have no idea what this is:

It's a MIDI interface for musical instruments. It does the electrical conversion from the RS232 serial port voltage interface to the MIDI current loop interface.

[A1260]

welcome to the amiga! hopefully you get yourself an a1200 with a blizzard1230 with 16/32mb of ram and a ide2flashcard thingy then you will have alot of fun...