Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: CodePoet on March 11, 2010, 11:33:38 AM
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I need to tell someone about this. I've held it in for fourteen freakin' years.
I remember falling in-love with Aminet after I discovered how to use crossdos with my brothers Win95 PC (circa ~1997)
I'd browse Aminet for hours on-end, most of the time I went after modules and applications for sound editing/playback; it was absolute HEAVEN for me. Now it seems kind of silly, but I really did love the Amiga platform and everything that came with it, I defended it with a passion.
...Then I came across this file, "PC JOKE" I believe it was called, I can't find it on aminet anymore. I ran it on the PC and it created an un-deletable icon on the windows desktop with some sort of anti-pc text attached to it. I thought it was funny at first, but then I realised it was my BROTHERS PC, and he'd probably kill me!
So I frantically opened my shiny new yahoo mail account, found and mailed the author, and pretty much begged for his help. Well, he didn't help me. His exact response was:
Amiga?! AMIGA! The world laughs behind your back.
I felt absolutely gutted that a fellow Amigan would do that to me. I didn't eat for days! (mind you I had just entered highschool at that time) - In the end an old friend of the family bailed me out by editing the registry, I'm fairly sure I even cried over it heh.
Hopefully I'm not the only one to go through something like this, probably should've posted from a throw-away account or something! Have you guys had any similar experiences?
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Lol
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Lol
Well I used to have an A2500 that I pieced together. I used Emplant to run MacOS and did all my school graphics assignments as the Macs at school were always occupied.
When I told my instructor what I was using to create my assignments he acted like I was a spawn of Satan. I was like dude relax, it gets the Job done and I run Lightwave3D.
Mac folks back then thought Strata Studio3D or Electric Image was the only 3d App worth a damn.
Just a lot of stupid bias.
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When I told my instructor what I was using to create my assignments he acted like I was a spawn of Satan
Ha! ROFL! That brings back some memories... I had a teacher once back in early 80s not want to accept a paper I typed because I used a "must be cheating or something" Coleco Adam SmartWriter word processor to type the paper. She couldn't type without mistakes, so how could I? Of course I had a word processor long before they did!
And, you should of seen the reaction to my video book report I did with my Amiga 500 making text credits and graphics to summarize the story - along with Amiga made music for the background! Deluxe Video Ruled and they where clueless with their green screen PCs!
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I zapped myself good (110V) by touching the live heatsink inside an A3000T power supply while it was plugged in. Live heatsink indeed.
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Back around 1987 a friend's 3-yr old son managed to shove a diskette backwards completely into the internal drive of my A1000. I think I ended up having to disassemble the drive housing to get it out...I was pissed!
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@CodePoet
That is one creepy story! I wonder why the author created such a thing? Don't think I have had any horrific stories. I remember doing quite an intricate piece of technology coursework, some display stand as I remember it, and all the graphics were done on my A1200 and Panasonic KX-P2123 printer (a colour dot matrix), man that printer was good, if anyone has one still in ace condition I will buy it!
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I spilled an entire 64oz diet Coke into the open front of my A2000 back in 1994...The screen stated turning different colors before I yanked the power cord out. I put a fan on it and dried it out for a few days...It actually booted right back up a week later. I was really suprised!. Hey! an 030 A2000 was still pretty expensive back then!
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I had an external HD on my A1200. For some reason I've always had trouble with it disconnecting and I once made the mistake of connecting it backwards (it was a special connector that had power and IDE lines in one). Long story short, I killed the main harddrive. A friend of mine who had stored some art he was creating on Deluxe Paint on my system was pissed. :P
Oh, and for some reason everytime I had to open my A3000, it drew blood.
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No real scary things with an Amiga, other than the usual, things not sitting right in the 4000 mobo etc, and paniciking that I had killed it. Always got me for a few seconds sometimes.
Did manage to kill a 68000 on a 500 with the GVP drive when it was powered on.
Best things that I will be scarred for life are PC ones unfortunately.
* Was cold so I put the Gas heater on at work and pulled it close behind my chair, at home time I dismantled my pc to take it home, turned push the chair out the way with my knee and fell over the heater, send my pc in into a triple somersault and crashing to the floor, one dead drive and a "doing the splits" case
* Same again but trip over in car park and nearly broke my foot trying to stop the case hitting the floor. My foot managed to get underneath but it still killed the drive and a bruised my foot.
* Probably my best PC Murder/Death/Kill was during a full works upgrade with brand new case, mobo, processor, memory, gfx and hard disk in that I had tested working using the existing case PSU but decide to upgrade with a bigger rating one I had knocking about to allow me to put raid drives in, unfortunately this PSU went pop and killed everything bar the hard disk. Expensive day.
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I'm pretty sure I've cut myself on casework before, but I'm not sure it was ever bad enough to leave a scar.
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The instructor tired to convince me that emulation was illegal and that Commodore could not run Mac or do graphcis aside from games... Rreally? that's news to me. I borught in copies of Video Toaster User and Amiga World to show him what was possible but he just dismissed it...FAmous quote "No one is ever going to make use of 3d computer graphics.. it's too trendy"
What a douche...
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My most scary Amiga experience was about two weeks ago. I had dismantled all my amiga gear as i was expecting a new tower to arrive. Everything was carefully stored in a closet. For me, that i live really far away from any Amiga usergroup, shop, etc every Amiga device i have is like a small treasure, non replaceable, you have to consider that it is very difficult and expensive to buy things and have them shipped to Chile.
Then on the 27th february, an earthquake of 8.8 Richter scale, shook the entire country.
My house and my family were okay, so the next thing i did, was to look for my Amiga stuff. It was all violently scattered in the floor. I said myself, goodbye to my two A1200, accelerators, mediator board, etc.
I was extremely pissed.
Four days later, we got electricity back and the first thing i did, was test every single bit of Amiga gear, and fortunately everything was working, nothing harmed at all!
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Glad to hear your family survived the disaster unharmed, Gulliver.
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I had an external HD on my A1200. For some reason I've always had trouble with it disconnecting and I once made the mistake of connecting it backwards (it was a special connector that had power and IDE lines in one). Long story short, I killed the main harddrive.
had exactly the same experience. it was dark, late, and I had the power cable wrong. It was an internal drive, mind. I was lucky to receive a new drive under warranty but lost a lot of work in the process.
My other scarring moments were all about phone bills and my first modem..
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my wife said "me or them" about my two a1000s.
ok it wasn't that dramatic but she was upset.
my favorite computers ever, i still miss them. i did get a 1200 a while later and then after selling that a 3000.
and yes i am still with my wife
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@koshman
Thank you for your kind words :)
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I am sure I am not the only A1200 owner who, in haste, plugged the IDE cable from the hard drive in one pin off, and let out all the blue smoke!! I caught it so quickly that it only burned the cable - but that made me slow down, and triple check that cable when I plugged it back in.
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Around about 1998 I had an A600 that had every hack I could find on aminet applied to it, it was a mess, and it eventually caught fire right in front of me.
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I attached my 2.5" hard drive to my FastATA in my 1200 but with only one row of pins connected....oops. I turned it on...."black screen. But why?"
Rebooted...same black screen. Hmmm, time to double check connections....yep, I must have been tired or blind. Luckily no damage was done.
Another time, I picked up my 1200 with apollo1260 in trapdoor, no trapdoor cover either - so it was sort of hanging down for a few seconds....I was really worried about that, but again, seemingly no damage done! I feel lucky not to have damaged anything in both incidents.
I also mistakenly shorted the 5v to somewhere when playing around with something in my 1200 case...screen went black. I had all goodies attached, prelude, fastata, apollo1260, squirrellscsi.....I was preparing for the worst - again, no damage done. :lol:
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my wife said "me or them" about my two a1000s.
ok it wasn't that dramatic but she was upset.
my favorite computers ever, i still miss them. i did get a 1200 a while later and then after selling that a 3000.
and yes i am still with my wife
Your wife makes no sense. Really, if I was living with somebody who said "you can't own your own property any more, or else", I'd just pack my bags and leave without bothering to let her know. Then again my one rule for life is "stay single, it's cheaper and you can own a motorbike without anyone complaining about the engine on the kitchen table". Living for other people must suck.
On topic, I put disk 1 (of 3) of jungle strike in my amiga and turned it on. an hour later? Still loading disk 1, so I gave up. I wish I was joking. I've got monkey island 2, and that's 11 floppies. I'm terrified all i'll be able to play is pacman.
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Heh... yep I hada girl that gave me the
"it's the me or them" rant...
I got the hell outta dodge... I would never say that sort of thing to a woman...
It's me or the dog...
It's me or the sewing Hobby
IT's me of the shopping habbit...
But women are wired different.
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I had just recently got my first computer that I'd waited for a long time with my first paycheques from my first job - an A500. I couldn't afford a monitor yet, so I had some old heavy 20" TV as my monitor. The TV was sitting on the top tier of some cheap Ikea MDF desk. I had picked up TV sports football I think, and just left the demo loop running so I could sit back on my bed and admire it all.
Well the TV was too big for the top tier, and I had somehow left it balancing precariously. The TV slipped off the top tier on to the amiga, and the desk imploded and the whole thing ended up on the floor. I was totally freaked out. Luckily it all seemed to keep working, but the desk needed some work to make it stay together again.
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I've gotten some burns from a soldering iron, and some skin scrapped off dissasembling my A3000, but nothing that would leave scars.
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The trick is making sure the 'It's me or them' confrontation is at the very beginning of the relationship so that when you explain that 'you can get a new girlfriend if you keep the computer, but not a new computer if you keep the girlfrind', you are not already emotionally vested.
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Ya one time my Amiga told me I had a purrdy mouth...
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The trick is making sure the 'It's me or them' confrontation is at the very beginning of the relationship so that when you explain that 'you can get a new girlfriend if you keep the computer, but not a new computer if you keep the girlfrind', you are not already emotionally vested.
Hear hear! Very well put Belial6! I have a pet tarantula, I've had some girls over and they freaked out, saying 'You have to get rid of that Thing! ' I show them the door, quickly....
Female tarantulas can live up to 32 years, few marriages last that long. :roflmao:
And to Gulliver, I'm also very happy that you, your family, and your miggies are OK. My prayers are with you.
'bad / scarring Amiga experiences'. Hmmm, my first ever hard drive.... I ordered a Supra SCSI interface w/ 40MB Quantum from one of the countless companies that had little ads in the back of various C64/Amiga mags. .... My drive never came... I called the company, then UPS... It seems that my drive was delivered to a vacant lot, and signed for.... :( The company was great about it, they sent a replacement.... but, it rarely ever use UPS anymore.
Not amiga-related... but with the same A500 / '030 system, I had a 100MB Zip drive, I loved it.... I had it sitting on the 'sidecar' HD interface of my 500. (the HD was in a seperate enclosure) One day, the drive slipped off and fell, a whopping 2 inches to the desk.... it killed my Zip drive...... I would have never gotten another, except a good friend gave me one.. and just then I found all of my old Zip disks...
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Worst I have had happen was the internal floppy drive dying in my 1200.
Unfortunately most games could only boot from the internal floppy so I was stuck playing Dune 2 for a week, before I could get it fixed
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The experience i can think of is when some keys on my A500 Plus's keyboard started failing for me. I don't know if it was normal for the time (circa 1993) or else if it was my local shop being a rip-off merchant, but i paid the equivelent of 100 Euros to replace the keyboard.
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Yep, my floppy drive died on my A500 and the certified service center charged $200 for a replacement floppy and $100 to install it. (Less than 10 minutes work).
Since then if something breaks, I replace it myself.
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Well, are you guys sure you're looking at the "It's me or them" thing the right way? I mean, it's not that anyone would stop you from owning your property, but it's if you spend more time on Aminet than talking to her, no wonder she'd be pi$$ed.
Having said that, maybe I'm just very lucky - I have 4 towers under my desk (will possibly be 5 when the X1000 arrives), plus another two A1200s. The girlfriend really doesn't have any interest in them at all, but she's perfectly happy to let me work away :)
Back on topic, years ago (Christ, about 13 years now!) I was using an A600 as the basis for a room automation system and managed to pass mains electricity (230V) through the shielding and ground plane. Needless to say I feared the worst, but turned it off and on again (after fixing the bad wiring!) and it was fine! Still works to this day!
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Well, in 2008 something finally went wrong with my stocked to the max A2000. It killed the A2091 card and the very hard to find GURU-ROM that was on it. That was a key component to my system, cured the DMA problem with RAM transfers to my 68040 card. So when it went, I knew it would just be way too hard and expensive to track down another one. I upgraded to WinUAE on a fast Pentium CPU and I can get twice the work done in half the time (I am mainly an Amiga apps user not a gamer) so everything runs great. I keep real Amigas around though for the day I'll get the bug for nostalgic hardware.
But that's not the tramautic story - since I knew it was only a matter of time for that cobbled together jumble of hardware to fail. It was frustrating, but I was resigned to the fact it would happen.
The only semi-traumatic experience I had was one time when I was considering buying a used 68060 accelerator from someone in the US (I am in Canada). I wasn't sure it would work on my older revision A2000 motherboard, but the fellow Amigan was nice enough to ship it to me for testing.
I forgot to tell him two things:
1) DON'T use a courier for cross-border items (they charge import brokerage fees).
2) DON'T claim it at full value on the customs declaration form, instead, check it off as a gift of "sample of merchandise".
The package arrived at my house via UPS. I was not home and my wife signed for it.
There was a $50 cross border brokerage fee charged by UPS just for taking it across the border (the regular postal service doesn't charge this).
There was a $75 dollar Canada Customs import fee (based on the declared value of $500US for the hardware).
There was another $25 in shipping fees on top of that for various "services".
Total: $150 just to get it into the country, which my wife, unknowingly, paid in cash at the door on my behalf (so I owed her). If I had been there when it had arrived and been told I owed $150, I would have refused the package and just had it returned to sender.
It wasn't the sender's fault - as he didn't have much experience shipping to Canada. In fact - I think he's here on Amiga.org (hi!). Nice guy - he felt bad about it - and it's a funny story to laugh about now.
It turned out the accelerator had compatibility issues with my Amiga and I couldn't use it...so I also paid return shipping on top of that.