This is going to make me feel old...
My first encounter with a computer was in primary school. I went to a club after school on I think Thursdays and the teacher who took it brought in her Apple 2. This must have been around 1980. Later on my Dad got a ZX81 which he later gave to me, couldn't do much with it as was 1K RAM! so we got huge the 16K RAM pack - complete with the infamous RAM Pack wobble (touched it and it crashed).
My Dad then got a Spectrum Plus (with the weird keyboard) and we upgraded this later with microdrives (no more loading from tape!) and a thermal printer (remember those?).
It was a round 87 when I'd seen a friends C128 and was going to buy it because of the music stuff he had with it. He was asking a lot of money but then I seen a ad for an Atari ST which blew the C128 away and decided I would get it instead.
Then one day I was up in Belfast and happened to walk past a computer shop who were showing an Amiga with the NewTek demo. This was showing pictures in 4096 colours and as soon as I lifited my jaw from the ground I decided the ST wasn't me after all, I wanted an Amiga!
Unfortunately they were too expensive but it turned out a company was selling French A1000s cheap so I got one of these - complete with stickers on the keyboard to make it QUERTY instead of AZERTY which is of course evil.
Of course when I got it it didn't have a TV modulator so I had to go a day without using it. I went through all the first "demos", Boing, Juggler, The artificial heart etc. I couldn't afford any software so but I managed to get a PD copy of Space Invaders which was my only application for quite a while. Later I upgraded it with an A590HD / RAM combo (which went in backwards).
Later sold the A1000 and moved up to an A500+ and then an A1200 which got a 50MHz 030. After this I wanderd off to PC land to enjoy the "joys" of Windows 95 and then (rather more sensibly) BeOS and even Linux.
I "came home" last year when I got an A1000 at a show complete with Juggler etc. when I was meeting the MOS guys for the first time :-)
I later discovered the A1000 is an NTSC model and as such possibly from the very first batch :-D
Right now I'm typing this on a Mac iBook complete with AZERTY keyboard...
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BTW anyone know how to change an NTSC A1000 to PAL?
I'd like to find out to confirm it's age.
