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

[amigakit]

Welcome back!

[ZeBeeDee]

Ahhhh it's good to see another one rejoining the fold :-P

Welcome back!

[da9000]

Welcome back to the scene Matt!

mattc444 wrote:
...then moved on from the Amiga to the Apple Mac, and eventually (like everyone else) the PC.

But speak for yourself there (and soon that statement will be quite passe) :-) I did the opposite: PC -> Mac and never looked back.

[tonyyeb]

Hi Matt

I too recently made the jump back. Its great fun!

Regards

Chris

[Chrome]

Lots of returning users appearing lately (including myself!)

Welcome.

[Hans_]

Welcome. It's good to see yet another user signing up to a.org.

Hans

[mattc444]

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

[mike-]

Congrats on finding your way back =)

Sounds like your in my shoes about the 4000 and all, im a step behind you there, the motherboard has issues, like a pregnant teenager with a drug habit sort of issues. i bought an a4000 and a1200 after about a year after i broke out the a600 and re-discovered the amiga.

Are you going for the indivision aga btw?

[NostAmi]

I to have recently made my way back! Although I have been messing about with Winuae for ages.

My first Amiga was a 600 back in the early 90's. I loved that machine! I still remember getting blown away by my 1st harddrive! it was insane the differance it made!It was a massive 15meg!

I later upgraded to a 1200 with a 030 and Squirrel SCSI CDRom drive.

Good times!

[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!