Returning UK Amiga user.

[mattc444]

Hello all - I've been lurking around here for a while now and thought I should make myself known at last.  I probably won't be posting a huge amount (not much time) but I'll try and contribute when I can.

I got my first Amiga back in the early 90's.  It was an A500 Plus and was a massive leap from my Amstrad (still a great machine).  I remember the first game I loaded - it was Captain Planet (I had the Cartoon Classics pack).  A pretty mediocre game perhaps (albeit quite fun) but it seemed astonishing to me at the time with its high res, colourful graphics and hi-fi stereo sound.

Later I upgraded to the Amiga 1200, then moved on from the Amiga to the Apple Mac, and eventually (like everyone else) the PC.  However, I recently got back into the scene again, buying an Amiga 1200 from eBay (which came with a bonus Microbotics 030 accelerator), and later the machine I lusted after back in the day, an Amiga 4000.  This turned out to have major issues with the motherboard which I spent an awful lot of money not fixing.

I enjoy using the Amiga 1200 still (the A4000 is currently languishing in a corner), playing the old games and getting back into music with Octamed and programming with Amos (I'm amazed how much of the language I still remember!)  My most recent acquisition was a bargain priced Commmodore 1950 monitor, so I can now (for the first time) run Workbench in high resolution 640x400 mode with no annoying flicker.

It's nice to see so many people with so much affection for these old machines.  Long may the Amiga continue to inspire and entertain!

Regards, Matt

[mattc444]

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome!  I always thought you were a nice bunch of guys  :-)

[mattc444]

@ Mike

Sorry to hear about your motherboard problems - then again, the teen years are always the worst!

It is a real shame that the A4000 boards were released with such a major design flaw - namely, the leaky battery positioned directly above critical motherboard traces.  It seems to be a very rare occurence to find one without corrosive damage around this area.

I've been considering the Indivision - it's not much more expensive than some of the secondhand scandoublers I've seen selling on eBay, and this 1950 - while it's working great at the moment - isn't going to last forever.  I might go for it at some point.  It would be nice to use a new monitor on the Amiga for a change.

@ NostAmi

I remember my first hard drive too!  It was a 40mb Overdrive which plugged into the PCMCIA slot on the side of the A1200 making an already long cheese-wedge even longer.  Even way back then I felt it was a little too small and constraining, especially when installing some of the larger Lucasarts adventures which pretty much consumed a third of the available space, but when I had it I wondered how I'd ever managed without it.  I knew then, there was no going back to slow, cumbersome floppies.

Now I have an internal CF adapter and card in place of an internal hard disc which is silent, consumes barely any power and is super fast.  The perfect marriage of retro and new technology!