That's a great question.
What made me get one. I saw a 1000 in Myer with the ball man juggleing.
There was another demo later that I also saw in Myer a year or so later, I am still looking for everyone!! if you know what it is, and can help me find it!! I'll describe it breifly.
It had music and red balls at the top of the screen I think they moved to the diff channel music then they turned into little winged devils and back again to the red balls. I WANT THIS DEMO. I saw it on a compilation disk for Sonix or Audiomaster.
Anyway I was sheerly amazed. I used to play on my dad's XT turbo with herculese graphics card, green screen and 10 MB hdd which I thought was so cool. I used to draw on it. Halo Paint was the program, but my mates dad's apple Mack, wow, it was sooo cool even though it was also mono, it had a black & white screen!
When I finaly saw the AMIGA, I was simply floored. When I heard the AMIGA, I nearly fainted. When I saw the multitasking OS, I died went to heaven then asked GOD to send me back so I could play some more.
I remember it was over a grand, nearly 2 from memory. I thought, there's no way I'm ever going to afford this puta, my friends were getting them, my mates mum bought her son one, I was like woah, you mum spent $1700 on you? But I worked and saved and finaly, I went, with my dad, and bought my first AMIGA 500 with the extra disk drive. Oh how I was in HEAVEN. This PC rocked big time, it was just the best thing I have ever had, I sooo loved it. Normaly when I buy things I think, geez should I have spent so much for just this...
Not with my AMIGA. It took me no time at all to learn the GUI and befor I knew it I was writing basic programs in WB 1.2.
Then My mates mum got him the 500 for nothing and it had 1.3 roms. I was so jealouse. I wanted to swap motherboards, he'd never use the HDD booting ability and I wanted it, not to mention, it had more on board ram chip slots. You could populate that puppy with 1MB ram, the new Fat Agnus chip and not even use the trap door.
Out came the 2000b wooo what a beast! a big desktop. My mate had one with a graphics card cost him nearly 5 grand. I was going to have to wait a little then low and behold the 3000. Now, the 3k did something to me, it got hold of me and shook me. I remember going into the Melb city store, just to play on one. I used arc at the time to do some file archiving, this computer store let you come in with disks and get free PD utils. Man, I went there every weekend!. The 3k was INSANE in the speed department, it was 10x faster than my mates 3k and I saw some amazing demos.
My mate gets a 500+ Lucky {bleep}!! with os 2.1 I'm jealouse it does some hi rez modes! I want a new miggy real bad
Saving like frantic suddenly out of nowhere the AMIGA 1200 is released. OH MY GOD. The graphics!!!! OH. and a 020 and hdd to boot. OK, that's a must have. I almost had enough money from trying to save for the 500+ and so I borrowed money from mum and caught a train to Croyden in Victoria Australia to a place called MVB computers where I ran the whole way from the train station to get there before the shope closed. I was greeted with broad smyles as I had called up 3 or 4 times that week to make sure they would hold the store open for just a little for me to get there after school. The guys there were all teasing me saying they had to sell the last one because they had to finish the order but they would have some more next week. I was so dissapointed I turned to leave and thanked them pleading with them to please hold the next one for me when the other guy came out of the back holding the 1200 box with a big grin on his face I lept for joy and hugged the lady near me lol They were all laughing
I held that puppy so tight all the way home on 3 trains. took 2 1/2 hrs for the trip but I HAD ONE!! oh, it was insane. It almost made me fail school that year lol.
I had now just finished High School and was studying Electronics.
Then the 4k came out. OK, I'm not going to bore any of you any more, you all probably think I'm a nut by now, but I saved, and saved and saved and finaly I got one for $4800 and I loved it. It was a {bleep}load of money for me at the time, and it was the first time I thought, geez have I done the right thing, but I look at how long I got the use out of that PC and I judge it that it most certainly was. I'm not sure if I would spend that kind of money again, but the 4k was the stuff dreams are made of and Oh yeah OS 3.1 MAAAADDD wow.
Anyway, never in my life has a peice of machine ever had that kind of an effect on me. And never again since. MVB now sell PC's and most of the people are gone. Big HI to Michael if he still reads AMIGA posts! You're the best man, I have such fond memories of you and that store.
