Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: HopperJF on June 18, 2004, 11:05:46 PM
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Hi all,
What was your first Amiga and when did you buy it? What did you eventually do to it? Do you still have it? How much was it?
To get the ball rolling...
I got a second hand Amiga 600 from a friend in September 1999 in exchange for £6 and a 2Mb PlayStation memory card.
The machine came with around 10 boxed games.
When I picked it up I dropped it outside in the rain. The F4 key has been missing since, but after a quick clean it worked.
I swapped it for an A500 with a friend in 2000. I eventually sold that A500 and got an A1200 which I towered and eventually sold for £75. I then purchased a desktop A1200 in February 2003 for gaming for around £45, and the famous yellow A600 in December 2003 for games that would not run on the 1200.
I currently have that A1200 set up.
Mike.
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Hey, didn't we have this topic already, like a million times now? :-)
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1st amiga was a Amiga500 with 512k ram expansion... swapped it for a Mega drive :-)
Then got my a500+, 2mb ram, then a2k with 8mb ram, 68030, 286 TV card, some SCSCI drive, every slot full really (got it given to me), that caught fire! (no lie)!
Got my a1200 and butchered it into a PC tower.
Amiga!
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x56h34 wrote:
Hey, didn't we have this topic already, like a million times now? :-)
Probably, but I missed it :-P
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Ah memories. Bought my first 500 from a local computer store in 1988. Took an old desktop CPM system, gutted it, then built the 500 MotherBoard with goodies like HD, Accel, memory, 2meg chipmem and dual floppies. I cabled the keyboard so the whole thing was similar to an A2000 that I couldn't afford at the time. I labled it the TS500. I still have it today on a shelf. I take it down once in a while and make sure it still works. The last time I used it was about a year ago to test some C programs I compiled on my 4000. It still worked. A500/8meg/2megchip/030-882-50mhz/220megHD/
Plaz
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Plaz wrote:
Ah memories. Bought my first 500 from a local computer store in 1988. Took an old desktop CPM system, gutted it, then built the 500 MotherBoard with goodies like HD, Accel, memory, 2meg chipmem and dual floppies. I cabled the keyboard so the whole thing was similar to an A2000 that I couldn't afford at the time. I labled it the TS500. I still have it today on a shelf. I take it down once in a while and make sure it still works. The last time I used it was about a year ago to test some C programs I compiled on my 4000. It still worked. A500/8meg/2megchip/030-882-50mhz/220megHD/
Plaz
Wow, an interesting first Amiga :-)
Do you have any photographs online of it?
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What was your first Amiga and when did you buy it? What did you eventually do to it? Do you still have it? How much was it?
I think we had a poll on this. (http://www.amiga.org/modules/xoopspoll/pollresults.php?poll_id=27)
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Polls arent as fun. I'm sure many people on here have many interesting stories as to their first Amigas...
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My first Amiga was a 1.3 A500 with a 512k ram expansion.
It was the "Sceen Gems" games pack, with Shaddow of the Beast 2, Nightbreed, Back to the future 2 and Days of thunder...
It was bought as a family machine in 1989/1990, to replace the aging ZX81... which obviously couldn't do the Word processing which my Mother needed.
That was replaced in 1993 (or maybe 1992) with an A1200... which got a 540Meg hard drive in 1993/1994... along with a Blizzard 030/50Mhz... it was upgraded in 1995/1996 with a 240Mhz PPC and a 56K modem... and was my primary machine until 2000 when I had to get a 600Mhz Athlon...
I currently have a 1.3 A500, an A1K, 2 A600's and 2 A1200's... A 600Mhz Athlon, a 1Ghz Athlon, an 800Mhz Mini-ITX and a 3.06Ghz Laptop... oh and 2 ZX81's :-D
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My A1200 was my main machine in 2001/2002. But I then only used it for the odd games until selling it in 2002.
Used a Duron 750 running Windows 98, eventually got XP in July 2003.
In November 2003 my main machine beccame a Mac, which I sit typing at now.
I use a desktop 1200 purchased in February 2003 for games.
I have a PS2, b ut it collects dust.
The A1200 is my ONLY gaming machine (look at sig).
Although in a few weeks I will have a 520 ST and might set that up for a while instead.
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My first ever computer was the A500, KS 1.3, WB 1.3.2, Flight of Fantasy pack in 1989. I still remember first opening the box, and hooking it up to the TV in my parents room. The first disk I loaded into the machine was "Escape from the Planet of Robot Monsters", and I was absolutely blown away.
That slab of plastic on the floor caught my imagination, and inspired me to develop a greater understanding into how computers work - I now lecture at university level, in computer hardware architectures, C++ programming, and software engineering!
I then went on to buy an A1200 (can't remember when though), with the intention of hooking it up with a Siamese PC system - but that never happened :-(
I was given two A1000's which I chucked cos I had no use for them (I know, I know, I'm a dick :-( )
After dropping the Amiga for a few years, I rediscovered it and went on a spending spree, and bought every single piece of Amiga hardware I could never afford as a child. Bought a couple of A500+'s, a power tower 1200, with 1260/66MHz accelerator etc etc. Too much for too little though, and I ended up ditching the Amiga again as I wasn't really using it.
A few years later (present day now), I sold the power tower setup to a nice Amigan, who has since sparked my interest in the AmigaOne and OS4.
I've now got OS 3.9 running on my wicked AthlonXP 2500+ (with 1GB RAM :-) ) via WinUAE, and am very happy with that - I really don't need a classic Amiga for anything that I want to do. I will seriously (very seriously) consider buying a microA1 when they come out, if the price is not too high.
BTW, I also had an iMac, and 12" PowerBook, which I have since sold. Although these were really nice machines, I really want to run OS4. I wouldn't mind a new 15" PowerBook though, or even an Athlon64 notebook :-)
Anyway, that's me...
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My first amiga was an A500 during 1991 or so following my Commodore 64. I used it with two floppies and 1MB of ram for about a year, and then picked up a GVP 80MB with 2MB of ram. I ran a BBS on it for awhile (CNET) until the 1200's came out and dropped a bit in price. Then I sold the A500 (I think) and bought an A1200 with an additional MB of fastram. Eventually I added an Apollo 1230 and 4mb of ram, for a total of 6.
In the late nineties I sold it in favor of a 486 laptop and started working professionally as a software developer.
Since then I occasionally get nostaligic and buy a bunch of Amiga stuff. Last year I found an A3000 and 1084s for $15 in a pawn shop. Later I picked up two more A500s with harddrives and ram for another 50 bucks.
I sold it all on ebay....
Recently I picked up another A3000 and after receiving it I have to admit I'm questioning whether I really wanted another classic Amiga... I think I might just hold on to it this time and save myself the trouble next time I get nostalgic.
In the future I'll be running AROS. At this point I'm desperately awaiting a TCP stack and ethernet support... when that happens I'll be installing it on my laptop (dual boot) and contributing in development. In my opinion tying the AmigaOS to expensive, proprietary, or non-standard hardware (A1, OS4, Pegasos) is putting one foot in the grave. Lets not go through this mess again. I think we've learned our lesson a few times already. AROS will be exactly what I want... a lightweight, fast, simple, clean, and customizable Amiga based OS which runs on common (inexpensive) hardware. If it'll run Amiga software (whether recompiled or emulated) that's even better.
-tom
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Good Call!
My first Amiga must have been the A500, after years of owning C64 in various forms. I remember owning it, cant recall for the hell of it what happened to it though, but I can recall a golden era of game playing with loads of controllers and gimmicks etc.
The next Amiga I bought was the last. I was one of the first to jump on the A1200. It was quickly accompanied by the the Zappo CDROM, a 3.5" HDD (Internal), The obligatory 1.76M Ext Floppy, a Citizen swift 24 pin printer (Colour Dot matrix rules!!), the Microvitec multisync monitor. I think the last thing I did, shortly after commodore went bust, was to buy the last ever Sensible Soccer :-(. Though I had grand dreams of going PPC, I didnt see where it was going, it looked to me back then like the proprietary PPC code from the major board makers wouldnt amount to much. Also having zero SW support for them outside of these proprietary extensions was very off-putting.
At some point around then I walked away. Years of owning no "computer" at all (of course my console inventory was going through the roof over this time!). Then various bouts of x86 laptops mostly on linux. I do like XP pro a lot though and now have a desktop running it + cygwin + UAE.
Recently I sold my setup on ebay, finally c. 12-13 yrs of owning it. House was completely full of console related crap, and it in away was responsible for it all, so I thought a little FIFO was in order. When listing I noticed a few other setups and instantly recognised some of the oldie goodies with them, and wondered where they all went. The bug joystick, the Zipstick, One of those shoot at the screen guns, all these toys :-) Its only then I recalled my A500 and The Beginning. A Beginning before the A1200.
When I do go PPC it will be on an A1 with OS4.0 I'll probably tweak it to make it a silent server box and its primary use will be to host my website. Does anyone know if OS4.0 supports remote connections? A la RDPv5 on XP Pro or any linux / X11 fwding via ssh? In any case I am happy for it to remain Debian until the OS has matured. Would beat running cygwin anyway. The rational chap inside me is telling me to grab AROS on a mini-itx board, (http://www.mini-itx.com/ - and you guys thought the Walker looked whacky :-) Check the Teddy and picture frame) it'd cost a whole lot less and would do what I need it to do. But do I want PPC to pass me by?
Decisions decisions. Whoever said lifestyle computing would be easy? (fun even :-) )
How much was the A1200? 300GBP rings a bell. In fact all of the major peripherals were about that mark, the multisync monitor, the CDROM, the printer. Kids dont know how good they got it these days!
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Well our (me and my bro's) first Amiga was an A500 that we bought around '88-89 (at first we were using it without monitor on a little black&white tv set until we got Commodore's 1084sd monitor) then we exchange it on a local computer store with an Amiga500+ in '91. Later on `96 I bought an Amiga4000/030 and a year later I bought also an AmigaCD32. The last Amiga I bought was an A600HD (which now has a 030@40Mhz accelarator, 32mb ram and 4gb hard disk) in 2002. On our A4000 we have cyberstorm PPC604 with 68060, cybervision3d & scandoubler, X-surf ethernet card.
well my next Amiga will be AmigaOne when the AmigaOS 4.0 will be ready ;-)
PS: lol it always gave me the nerves when I heard people calling Amiga a game machine! Especially from friends that their computer had 4 colours and a sound speaker that made only beeps. Their argument was: "PCs are professional computers because they are using them on the banks!" my answer was like "are you mad, do you thing that they would ever buy on a bank computers with 4 channel stereo sound, 4096 colours, multitasking operating system etc and that costs 300.000 drachmas each, without the monitor, just for using a database?!, Amiga is a computer that use professionals to do graphics, music etc"
PS: On the photo its me and my A600HD :-D (I also have in the house a vanilla A1200 but its not mine)
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I started with a VIC-20 back in 1981, then quickly progressed to a C-64. I remember comparing the C-64 to a friend's new $5000 PC-XT. The PC was so far behind, it was laughable!
My first Amiga came in 1988, an A500 (I had been drooling over the A1000 ever since I first heard of it, but was never able to afford it). I later purchased a "Spirit Inboard" 1.5MB RAM expansion for about $1,500.
My second A500 was in 1990, it was a rev 6, with the 1MB Agnes chip. The old 500 was sold. I also purchased an A590 for it.
In 1992 I purchased an A2000. I hacked it to take my A590 temporarily until I could afford a proper SCSI card for it. A few weeks later I purchased a GVP-series II with 105MB Quantum and 2MB Fast Ram for $1,700!!!! Over the next couple of years I added a VXL-30 accelerator, more RAM, Retina II graphics card.....
Just before Commodore died in 1994, I got my A4000, and use it to this day as my primary computer (despite numerous attempts to jump ship to the PC). The A4000 has now been heavily expanded, Micronik tower case and Zorro expander, Cyberstorm PPC, Cybervision PPC, and numerous other expansion cards.
Last year I purchased an Amiga One, and am still awaiting OS4. (Why is it Australia is always LAST in getting Amiga stuff!!)
Incidentally, a couple of years ago I purchased an Athlon XP1800 system for running Amithlon and Windows XP. I was never able to get windows to work to my satisfaction (I refuse to wait 5 mins for a system to boot!), so I dismembered the PC and used the case and other accessories for my Amiga One.
Over the years, I have also accumulated other Amigas, such as more A500s, 1200s, another 2000, an A3000, CD32....
David
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Well, a little off topic, but I have to admit that Windows XP is the first M$ operating system which I can live with. Sure it's a sloppy house guest, and it's sort of stubborn at times, but for the most part it's dependable (as long as you are careful with service packs) and fairly plug and play.
Ok back to the Amiga... I forgot to mention that when I bought my first A500, I told the dealer I wanted a REV6 motherboard. This was the one which had 512K on the board and chip holes for another 512. Basically this meant you could have 1MB chip ram without an expansion card if you just obtained the chips.
The dealer opened about 4 A500 cases until they found a REV 6 motherboard. What fun! The best part is I never got around to using those extra chip sockets.... I bought a GVP harddrive/ram expansion instead, and used the A501 and cut a jumper to get 1MB of chipram in addition to the gvp fast ram.
I sure miss those days. Cruising at 2400, mods playing, disks formatting... Amiga in all it's glory...
-tom
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All those drugs in the late 70's / early 80's! :-)
Now I remember! For a while (before the C64 era) I did have a Vic20, I can picture myself playing some cartridge based game, Defender ? It was F**** A, back then :-)
And one of those atari things, the original console, one of those is somehwere in distant memory too :-)
But yeah in terms of Amiga-specific history I think thats covered above :-)
One thing though, dont you guys see what made the old Commodores / Amiga sell? Value. Plain old fashioned value.
Though the HW wasnt anything to write home about, it certainly was not substandard, the SW was so lean it kicked ass :-)
The key was that the price was many-fold lower than competitors products that were in some cases under-specced (even if we just took a HW view!)
Seems to be in direct contrast to todays A1 situation. There are similarities. We are still trying to use the OS to leverage some gains out of recent HW. The thing that is missing though is value.
It costs more and we can do less with it. If it really was carrying on the legacy of those early machines then OS4 would run on the cheapest boards and have capabilities exceeding any top-end ix86 system. Could that happen today?
I dont think so. I think competitors OS's arent as wasteful as they were in the old days, and hence we have lost a major competitive advantage. Just the nostalgia / anti-mainstream sentiment that is fuelling sales now.
AROS might live up to this though. We'll have to see how it turns out.
:-)
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I got my A500 with Kickstart 1.2 in 1987, at most two months after it came out in the Netherlands. I had been happily playing about with my Schneider CPC464 until that time, but found it hard to do something worthwhile with. Also, the cassette deck was becoming an annoying pain. I was looking at other, bigger computers (mostly PCs) when I was offered an Amiga leaflet. I liked the specs, and bought it along with a monitor.
Then I didn't do a damn thing with it, since there was a chronic lack of software for the machine, and what there was, was hideously expensive. If it wasn't for my mother spotting a German magazine at a store in 1988, and some timely translations of Data Becker books ('The Big AmigaBASIC Book', 'Tips & Tricks for the Amiga', etc.) I might have sold it off a year later. I hammered away in BASIC, typed in many programs and hex code listings. I managed to upgrade to Kickstart 1.3, and eventually started swapping games a little. Illegal as hell, of course, even though the cracks were done by mystical groups in Germany and Denmark. Those were the days.
Then slowly real life caught up with me, as I needed to run software for my study in chemical engineering which my Amiga could not cope with. (Neither in CPU-power nor in compatibility.) I had two machines in my room for many months, and at some time even upgraded the A500 to a A500+, then added an aging A590 with SCSI-1 harddisk. Eventually, the A500 was replaced by a A4000/030. I did my best coding on that machine, as I finally was able to get hold of a decent C-compiler at an affordable price. I wasted more money in equipping it first with a 68882, then with a 68040-card, a SCSI-controller and a CyberVision64. What money was left I spent on the PC, which was running at 10 times the speed of the Amiga 8 years ago. When I moved out, I sold off the A4000 and haven't regretted that for a second. Well, sometimes I miss the simplicity of DeluxePaint or PhotoPaint, and there are times when I code (for Linux) when I wished I could look something up in an Amiga manual.
Recently, I have given AROS a try, but threw away the CD after about an hour or so. It felt weird to be staring at (and using) a Workbench-clone. It was light-years behind the GUIs I've come to use and expect from a computer system. I applaud the efforts being undertaken in order to make sure that the core Amiga system lives on---although not in the form many diehards and fanboys would like---they truly are impressive projects. But I also found the efforts naively, nearly tragically pointless and futile. I also realised that people should abandon the idea of porting Mozilla or Firefox to the system (even AmigaOS4): the Amiga is too simplistic to be burdened by such complex beasts. I felt it as being sacriligeous in some way.
For me, the Amiga was mortally injured Commodore turned turtle, and it was irrevocably dead by the time I sold off the 4000. A few times I wondered about getting a system for a few bucks and tinker with it, but I think I'd rather like a CPC in that case. The Amiga, I mastered. The CPC I never did, so that offers a challenge at least, even if it is just a minor one.
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Hmmm.
A few good points. I havent used AROS so cant contribute any comments towards it.
You are right a lot of the Amiga revival is based on denial.
For me however the lure is in seeing the birth of an alternative OS. I would love for Amiga OS to become feature-rich and push forward OS design, as WB did in previous years.
Not likely to happen if any growth is strangled before it is realised with oppressive HW regimes.
It needs to be targeted at a wider user base, perhaps the entire alternative OS market. Moreover it needs a model that will make it money so that it can afford to continue to evolve.
Both of these I dont think are objectives of the propietors yet.
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my first amiga was my brothers A600 which he bought a very long time ago(dont know) the first amiga I bought was my A1200 that was last chrismas.
Since then I have bought another A600 some months ago AND today I have recieved my third A600 :-P
ARRRGGG I just love those A600 :-D
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My first Amiga was an A500 that I bought from a friend. Took it to college with me to write/print reports on, do BBSing with it, play games and MOD files. An electrical engineering student down the hall built his own parallel port sound board from scratch for his Win-DOHS PC. He also collected MODs and other music files that we traded back and forth. I had my A500 connected to my 150 W/channel stereo with big 'ol tower speakers (those 15 inch woofers can really pound) to blast MODs and game sound effects from. He'd always come running down to my dorm room whenver I cranked up the MODs. Ahh.... the good old days.
I still have that very A500. See my computers -> here (http://mikerye.homeip.net/about_my_computers.html).