Epic Amiga battle on osnews.com Extra Floppy vs No Extra Floppy!

[specialK]

Yep, every Amiga owner I knew had an external drive. Pretty much a necessity as we all know. External floppies back then were as common as internal hard drives are today.  

For someone to argue otherwise, obviously never owned or used an Amiga before.

he stated that where he is from most or all of people he knew with an Amiga did not have an external\second disk drive... please think about it, the necessity you mention was not always available in many parts of the world.

its sad how many Amiga users from the western countries forget about the rest...

i for eg never owned an Amiga in the late 80's and early 90's...most i saw and used were my mates who also did not have a second disk drive with their Amiga setup.
only time i saw some external disk drives were at "shops" and "swap meets" where the copying of an original game\program was done for a fee.

[specialK]

definietly second disk drive was a God sent but just to explain myself and so our friends from the west can visualise, earnings and prices in eastern europe until maybe say early 1990's ?

Poland 1986, average monthly wage of a Polish worker was $26, prices of some of the imported goods you could purchase with USD, GBP or DM in specialty shops PEWEX;

so for eg when i finally saved up for my Atari 65XE in 1989, for the first year i had to borrow the casette player from a mate if i wanted to load games

[specialK]

A few Poles posting here so I am curious: I have heard mention from a friend who grew up in Chechoslovakia, that machines with 68K processors were not sold to the communist bloc, due to the power of the processor, and its suitability for military use. Any truth to that?

Could you get apple, atari or amiga machines before 91 from import shops? (assuming you had saved up of course)

Europe is sort of a funny thing. What was typical in scandinavia wouldn't be typical in Italy etc.

At least from personal experience in Denmark, external floppies were quite common. Hard drives somewhat less so.

 How are ya mate?
  As far as I know and remember, yes there was an embargo on many items in order to stop them being sold to the eastern block countries.
  I can only speak for myself and from what I remember and experienced when living in those times. Possibly other members from larger cities such as Warsaw and Krakow can share their memories?
  The local Pewex shop in my town only had Atari 8bit computers, very limited selection, 65XE and XC12 and some Joysticks.
  During the time from 1987 to about 1990 I have never seen any other computer on sale in this shop. There were no Atari ST’s, no Amigas and no Apple computers.
  Please note that even in Poland depending on geographical location there were significant divisions in what computers majority of people owned or wanted to own.  I lived in south west of Poland and for the life of me I cant remember anyone owning a C64, everyone I knew and all the citizen clubs (Miejski Osrodek Kultury) had Atari XL\XE’s.  
  From a circle of about 20 to 25 people I knew who did own Atari XL\XE only 3 owned Disk Drives and that’s including the citizens club and the two guys who had families in USA
  This is then very interesting because once the Amiga vs ST era approached and the wealthier (aka. Family abroad) friends who owned Atari 8bits begun to get their new shiny…Amigas!   That’s right, most guys I was friends with and swapped Atari 8bit games with chose the Amiga rather than Atari ST!
  All of the mates who did get their Amiga 500’s (imported via grey market from  West Germany) never had the second disk drive.