Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Unit21 on November 05, 2006, 08:11:09 PM
-
Hey y'all.
I haven't been logged on here for some time, but I drop by amiga.org every day to catch up or whatever...
I have recently gotten my hands on several Amigas and I am in the process of selling them to other faithful Amigans over here in Norway.
Most of these buyers have more or less retro-needs or the fullfilment of some childhood dream as the reason for buying these machines... And I have to admit that I myself got a few flashbacks from simpler days when I dusted the Amigas and fired them up to see if they were working.
Workbench 3.0. Scala with the dongle. Dpaint. OctaMED.
All good fun, and all 15 years old...
So my question to you guys and gals is this.
Why are we stuck on the Amiga still??
Are we just being stubborn, old-fashioned or simply crazy to still dabble with the Amiga??
Why do we keep coming back to this ageing system?
Tell me what you use your Miggys for.
And more importantly, try to explain WHY you use them...
(It's ok to get emotional...)
;-)
-
Now you've opened a can of arguments ;-)
Recently the Amiga silently sneeked back into our living' after being absent for too many years.
While using the old Apple (OS9) to browse the internet I see my wife playing online-games on her not so old Mac (OSX). Most of them are simple 2D games. I said: There's no use having a high-power consuming Mac for those games, the Amiga had exactly the same games with the difference of them being about 1 Meg in size, not 40. The difference being they need only 7 MHz to run, not 700. The difference being that they do NOT hick-up every now and then. Then she made a mistake... she dared me to show that those old machines could do the trick ;-).
Now, that was a dare I'd loved to take up. So... an A2000 at 68020/14 walked in... and I took back home my A4000T (that last one hasn't been connected yet as I've got no monitor capable of using the Amiga's output neither do I have a RGB->SCART cable.
Now she's seen the machine in action and asked the question I've been asking myself as well: Why oh why did the Amiga die.
-
Heh, we all know why the Amiga died, I'm going to touch that with a ten foot pole.
As to the original question, I still have an Amiga (A4000T) and use it to push the limits. I guess you could call me a techno-thrill seaker. I always start a priject with the same question.
"What can I do with this that I shouldn't be able to..."
The Amiga has been the only piece of hardware that never seems to run out of things I can do to it.
second place is my X-box... but I do that more to piss off Bill Gates and his gustapo regime (spelling?).
J-Golden
-
Why do I keep using my Amiga:
1) Bars & Pipes: nothing on any other system matches it - and it's free.
2) I've spent a lot getting my Amiga going where it is. I understand how to fix most hardware and software problems. I can do it myself. I've opened the hood many times and know what is going on under there. If something goes wrong with my windows box it's much harder to fix.
3) ImageFX, PageStream, Bars & Pipes. These are all tools that still do what I need, and compete with modern tools for what they can produce. I am familiar with these software programs and can work with them well to turn out a good product. Does a carpenter throw away a nice old chisel just because there are newer ones with plastic handles? Once I get used to a tool (software or otherwise) and have become used to using it, why switch to something else that I will have to re-learn all over again?
-
I like messing with it cause its fun... i usually buy them and hold on to them..then sell 'em on ebay for max money. pays for my real hobby. :)
-
At the moment I use my A500 for basic retro gaming (Lemmings, Marble Madness, Zany Golf, that sort of thing) while I wait patiently for projects like Clone-A and OS4 to come into full commercial production :-).
As for my reason for sticking with Amiga, well, I can't really say for sure. There's just always been something about an Amiga that I can't seem to find in any other system :-)
(Edit: excluding MorphOS of course since I haven't actually tried it yet and as such can't really say how "Amiga" like it is)
-
"Are we just being stubborn, old-fashioned or simply crazy to still dabble with the Amiga?? "
:crazy: I am :crazy:
Why do we keep coming back to this ageing system?
:-D Because it still works great :-D
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee :lol: :lol:
-
I had a lot of fun with my Amiga back in the days. And I don't mean just games, it did a log of real work for me too. It's part of my life, my childhood. I can't just leave it behind and forget it. It's such a pleasure to come back to it once in a while, all those memories come back... ahh, great thing :-).
The short answer would be:
Because "AMIGA RULES!" :-D
-
cause the world sucks and we need to fallback to a safer mode from time to time. amiga gives us the feeling "oh I'm 15 again !" and we escape from reality for a brief moment. I guess that's the main drive.
-
Countless times I have sold my complete collection, thinking I'm never going back (and I sold sooo many good things, like a Blizzard PPC card with a Grex, a couple of 4000s, a Picasso IV card..... :madashell: ). Then I read the forums again and wish I never sold them.
Now I'm back with a new project - shoehorning a 1200 into a 1000 case (I did it years ago with a 1200 into a 2000 case). That's what I love about it. Its like the hotrodding movement in computing :-) And for fun, I'm going to do the project as a video podcast!
And this time, the case and 1081 display are getting a paint job!
-
Honestly, as I sit here in the middle of towerizing my A4000D in a very nice Antec case with an overclocked A3640 and a Mediator 4000D... I often wonder the same thing. I think of the large amount of money, time, blood, sweat and tears I've crammed into this thing... And wonder why the hell I didn't just stick to emulation.
Then, I think back to the days gone by... Sitting at home with my 8088 playing on the bulletin boards... Downloading MODs to use on videos I'd make at the local access TV station (which used A2000s). I remember how much fun those days were and how much I got sucked in by the machines.
I just don't get that joy from my current PC. Hell, I get more fun tinkering with the 4 SGI Indy's I just aquired.
Someone please get me a bleepin time machine!
-
Mostly just classic gaming through whdload these days..
-
I have a room full of amiga hardware and software. IF I can find the time, which seems to get less and less each month, to rebuild them to a functional state and maybe restore some of my lost art, I can say that I have no regrets going pc...
AMD 64 Athlon x2 with 1 gig ram and Windows XP.
Say no more.
...the linked pictures below are from when the units were working a year ago.
The A3000D suffered some checksum errors and resutled in a HD failure. Lost years of photo scans, texture generations and 3D models.
The A3000T/VT one day just didn't power up. No matter what I reset or checked. This time in the middle of a paying project.
Just got fed up with it all...
:-D
-
@T3000,
Sorry about your lost data, really! But you should have backed up everything on a regular basis. That is just good computer sense no matter what platform you use. I hope you can retrieve the work and data on those hard drives.
(Premature response to the last message in this thread without reading the rest, I'll go read the rest now)
-
Oh why? As others have mentioned, the software of our beloved miggys
still do what we need it to, there is considerable flexiblility
in all of it....do something in DPaint, load it in ImageFX,
maybe overlay something scanned from ScanQuix, (in my case)
do something in DCTVPaint, save as 24-bit, use in same project..
All these years, and I still don't think I have used my Amiga's
graphics software to the limits, and I haven't even touched
audio, or learned AREXX, or....
I still remember the day I bought my first Amiga. I was 18,
and I took my first tax refund check, and basically gave it
to the clerk at Software, etc. (Now GameStop) I was awed by what
was in that big white box....
-
Retro gaming and a bit of graphic work is about all I use my miggy's for, but everytime I fire one up I just can't believe that they're still operational after all of these years. Wonder if a current PC/MAC will last for at least 20 years, wasn't the 500 & 2000 released in '87?
Regarding why we keep using them...dunno about the whole makes you remember your youth thing...I think it's because at the time the AMIGA kicked butt being so far ahead of the others and even now they are a pleasure to use. Pity the current computer scene is so flat, whats happened to all of the innovation, surely we haven't thought of everything yet.
-
My Windoze machines will not do what the Amigas will with DPaint, or PPaint, ImageFX, and Bars & Pipes Pro. I still prefer Pagestream on the Amiga for DTP work too.
As old as they are, they still preform tasks that "new" computers either can't, or the software costs WAY too much.
-
I'm with Motrucker. The only thing a newer windoze machine has on a nice Amiga system is better graphics acceleration (which is only really useful for playing games and watching smut), and more software to choose from. The Amiga is still, in spite of its age, my computer of choice for productivity. Windows really isn't even close. Working on the Amiga; the system itself has a "transparent", almost invisible feel to it. If thats the right word? The system is unobtrusive, and it lets me focus 100% on my work. Its silent, obedient, and light as a feather. I know I will not have my concentration broken and rudely (and immediately) diverted to some other "essential" task such responding to a yes/no question about whether I would like to "clean up my mailbox now[/b]". And then more lengthy messages (narratives, morelike) about whether I know the consequences of selecting "yes" or "no". And then, "Are you sure you do (or do not) want to do this? YES! Are you really, really sure[/i]?? "Yes!!!" And on and on...
Honestly, I can get work done on my miggy power tower at around twice the rate it takes me on a Windoze box: whether it be C code, thermal barcode printing, desktop publishing for my wife, a writing project, or designing a new loft with AmiCAD. I just like it because the system is so well behaved. Why are OS designers these days incapable of learning this lesson? Sometimes less really is more.
-
Because all began for me with an Amiga... and nothing will be as good, even Linux.
-
T3000, btw, I should mention the cool image at the bottom of your post has now been added to the collection of 'miggy pics I have cluttering up my hard drive. :D Anyway, I have an Amiga 1200 68060/050 (http://www2.powercom.net/~watertonian/1200brag/index.html) and I like several aspects of it. From modifying it to do stuff that an Amiga "can't" do, to classic games (Frontier Elite II :D), to annoying windows buffs by running win95 (pc-task) and macOS (shapeshifter) while doing something useful on the Amiga. (I was doing this while working on my resume with Amigawriter a few days ago). I used to drag it to my hometown's computer club meetings every month to show up the nice new windows boxes the other people brought in. (Remember running a gloom head to head game with my buddies a1200 when he still had one at such a meeting), also like to compile proggies for it. (Useless shell apps right now, but trying to figure MUI and MIAMI API's). I also think Amiga addictionn is genetic. My daughter, at the age of 3 weeks, will sit in my lap and stare at my 1942 monitor while I'm checking my e-mail, or playing video games. She especially likes Aladdin, Megaball AGA, and Xtreme racing. Also, the atmospheric mod collection I play with delitracker puts her right to sleep. Very useful with a fussy baby, not too useful when I'm trying to stay awake myself. :)) When I'm working on my laptop (Windows XP), or my Girlfriends desktop (Also, windows XP) she ignores the monitor completely, and usually wants her bottle. I'm going to have to pull the old Pentium II I installed AROS on and see what she thinks of that next. I think she's going to be an Amiga junkie... going to have to dust off the A600, plug it into the TV, and get some of my old educational games out for her. (Only U.S. ones though... TV doesn't like PAL signals too much) Sorry about lengthy post, had to throw my 2 cents in, turned out to be 2 bucks.. lol
-
kvasir wrote:
T3000, btw, I should mention the cool image at the bottom of your post has now been added to the collection of 'miggy pics I have cluttering up my hard drive. :D
Thanks kvasir. That "cool" image was some of the last images I did on the Amiga before it decided to malfunction. Lightwave generated for a personal website featuring my Amigas and Amiga based art.
I haven't left the machines for dead. Will eventually get them going again, and again. Some of the pervious statements in regards to Amigas are spot on. -when they are functioning any way- and I owe a lot of my computing experience and hardware/software know-how to the Amiga platform.
Statements concerning how "overboard" windows and pc platforms are, IMHO are outta line. If I screw something up in XP, I can recover to an earlier date, problem solved. If my Amigas somehow get corrupted, (checksum errors)it takes me days to restore back to a funtioning state, not to mention the lost time in having to recreate lost work.
Yeah I miss some features the Amiga provides, and had to buy a new heardware/software for the pc to replace the ailing Amiga components, but the switch to PC and all it's overhead is totally worth the effort.
Laterz
-
If my Amigas somehow get corrupted, (checksum errors)it takes me days to restore back to a funtioning state, not to mention the lost time in having to recreate lost work.
Not if you backup your data regularly. As you should, regardless of platform. Not in a million years would I put so much trust in XP's "autorecovery". I don't believe in faith based backups.
-
For me, it was a total case of I missed the boat. I came to Amiga long after Commodore went under because I wanted to play older games (specifically SpaceQuest, Kings Quest, Lemmings, etc) and was trying to decide whether to seek out the MS DOS versions of the games and build up a Pentium (I) box with DOS 6.22 on it or to finally realize my dream of owning an Amiga.
Now, 3 years after deciding to obtain an Amiga, I am hooked! I remember very well wanting one in 1991 but seeing them go out before I could afford one. Now my A4000 is being built and I do have a full working A2000, if it had AGA, it would be the computer of choice, but I have mainly decided to build the 4000 and sell the 2000 as soon as I get the 4000 built.
This one decision actually has lead me to start collecting Retro Computers... for the same reasons, to play the old games that I have not seen new commercially developed counterparts developed -- and even if they did develop a brand new spin on the old series, I don't think the games are even close today. It's more about how pretty they look than how challenging they are (my humble opinion and yes I know there are exceptions).
So it will end out that I will have a Commodore 64, An Amiga 4000, An Apple //e and Apple //gs and hopefully an Atari Falcon and a CoCo 3.
Each of these computer platforms could be said to be "crazy" to mess with in this day and age and of course we have our Modern MacOS X machines and Windows or Linux desktops for our day to day work (or for compatibility to the corporate world).
Yes, we could emulate all these machines and save space on my desktop or in my house, but the reason I use the original hardware is for me there is just no equal no matter how close the emulation comes to working with the actual hardware.
Of note, since I have always been big into music, the only application that keeps me from moving to Linux in iTunes. I love my iPod and have actually thought of keeping a machine just for music for my iPod/iTunes and running Linux for day to day operations. The only real problem is, that I want to limit the number of machines and feel it would be a waste of my Macintosh G4 Mini to relegate it to just doing iTunes/iPod, but maybe a G3 iMac would be okay.
If only I had left my music as MP3s ;-)
Anyhow, I use my retro machines for the games they run best and still feel that of all the machines, The Amiga is definitely one that *could* do what I need done (apart from the iPod/iTunes) and really though it is over 15 years old, still is relevant as a computer. I know guys that are using Apple // series computers today still and again some that even use a C= 64 or 128 for their day to day needs.
This post is getting lengthy, so let me close out by saying something I have always felt: "If your computer does what you need it to do and you are comfortable with using it, then continue to use it!" Why fix it if it ain't broken?
-
AmigaOS is still my favourite OS: fast, very easy to "administrate", intuitive, no viruses. I like coding on it / doing ports, and there's still so much interesting and useful open source software around which isn't yet ported, I think I'll never reach the moment where I'll not have anything left to do on my machine. And I would like to start again doing music (I'm thinking of Milkytracker, Goattracker for SID tunes and the forthcoming Hively Tracker), only that I don't have much free time left.
Varthall
-
*sigh* wish I wasn't such a dunce at programming.
A few days ago, I succesfully downloaded the free version of Ports of Call, unzipped it, and ran ADF (from shell), and spent most of the night happily trying my hand at running a shipping company. It was a failure of course, with both ships winding up on the bottom of the ocean. :-P
But, hey, if I can have a good time with OOOOOlllllddd software, thats a good reason to keep the equipment running.
As long as I can produce decent pictures with Imagine3D, ImageFX, PPaint, and DPaint, why bother with the other platform?
As long as I can watch YouTube stuff in the office, I don't really need to waste $$ on getting the newest waste of money called WinXP.
-
stopthegop wrote:
Not if you backup your data regularly. As you should, regardless of platform.
Had backed-up data regularly on a C= tape drive using QuarterBack Tools. Either I did something wrong or the back-up log got corrupted and can't retrieve the data. Then I got a 100mg ZIP Drive to do back ups with. Kept getting checksum errors on HD. After reinstalling the OS a number of times, the ZIP disks became unreadable. Once again, don't know if I did something wrong. Every time I tried to use DiskSalv, I'd endup trashing the recovery and would have to start over. Got to the point that I was spending more time backing up in fear of data loss and reinstalling programs from random checksum errors than actually using the computer for creativity.
stopthegop wrote:
Not in a million years would I put so much trust in XP's "autorecovery". I don't believe in faith based backups.
Faith based? :lol:
Faith based would be hoping the old Amiga system would switch on and work properly until it was time to shut down. "Hope and Pray" nothing goes wrong until then...
XP's System Restore function works fine.
Suppose to be bad weather this weekend, might go into the cold room and tinker with the Amiga.
...and hope and pray it works.
-
Moust likely.
PWhat ever you have to sale you are forcet sell to me cheaply beacause norway people was not so nice finnish people who was native norweigian earlir in lapland.
OK ;)
PS. Late night movie tonight is revenge og the ninja
-
I throwed away my a1230 last year, month after buying PC, together with 15y old VCR. Why? Because i knew i will never use them again. And it is pointless to give someone a thing like that. I mean, who will know how to deal with non-standard computer?
I have amikit package installed and from time to time i like to feel and see the look of amiga. Heck, uae is damn faster then my miggy was!
Emulator saved me a couple of times, doing some stuff i couldn't do in win progs. Last example was 7 days ago:
i dl'ed some stormpay's installation manual but for some reason the page was incomplete. Mozzila was waiting and waiting for some gif that never appeared. Never mind, i said, i only need text. BUT, when i tried it to load into browser from disk, nothing appearred!?!? But IBROWSE didn't have a problem, it showed ENTIRE page except for missing .gif.
And there was other times i felt good, friendly behaviour that only amiga can provide.
Next year, i will buy another pc and run either amithlon or aros on it, whatever is better at that moment, network with my current pc and enjoy.
And i am NOT to give a single dime for fancy ppc h/w. I love amiga's os, not h/w. I am not a guy playing games, not new not retro. I want updated amigaos, wheather it is os4, aros, mos... on x86. But that is another topic...
ps: i find myself going into uae just for listening mp3's and doing NOTHING! Nothing at all! Just watching...
Damn me!