Your first A500

[Desolator]

Yup, this have been posted before but this one is specifically about the Amiga 500. What was the first things you did when you either heard of it, or bought it?

one of my earliest memories is playing around with a little game called Boo! on it, where this black square with eyes tried to survive in a little mazelike dungeon. (came of a disk called JumpDisk)

[redrumloa]

-moved to hardware forum-

Thge A500 was my first Amiga, I got it in about early 1988. I would have owned a A1000 earlier if I could have afforded it. I got the A500 in a sweetheart deal with my local dealer, who happened to be a very good friend. i got the A500 in a direct trade for my C128. I had a hard time adjusting from 8bit commies to the Amiga, but I loved it from the start.

My first Ami was the A500 Batpack in Christmas 1989.  I begged my parents for one for two years before i got one.  £399 was a lot of money at the time and I was only 12.

That christmas was the best one ever.  I spent all day messing about with the Amiga.  Especially New Zealand Story and Batman.

It would be another year before I learnt to use DevPac. Oh the memories!!  :-)

[Jupp3]

My first Amiga 500... ah, the memories... :-)

Well, it came with 1MB Chip RAM, lots of games (copies, as usual)
For display, there was Commodore's monitor...

Bought it in fall 2002 :-)

Before that, I have bought A1200 and A2000 (in that order)

(I'm writing this on my A1200 now)

And now I'm just waiting for my Pegasos... :-)

[SlimJim]

I upgraded from a C64. One reason for that, and one reason only:
 
Dungeon Master.
 
Thus I had to buy a memory module to boost to 1MB of
RAM. Man, that was one nifty machine ... And how I loved
that game!
 
I never really used the Worklbench until I got the A1200
(and eventually put a HD in it). Before that it was
floppy-rule only. I remember playing Rise of the Dragon on
floppy. Great game, looooooots of disk-swapping (the music
was on a separate disk, if I remember correctly). When I
got my first HD (360MB), it made life a whole lot easier
indeed.
 
But I'm straying. You were only asking about the A500.
.
SlimJim

[Kronos]

My A500 ?

Yeap, that was cool ....
I had no other SW than WB/Extra1.3 for the 1st week, so I
played around with that ....

"Whats that stupid shell-window for ? And why can't I close it"

Next 12 months was controlled by AmigaBasic and some games
(Rick-Dangerous and Lotus(1) are most remembered.

I also bought Data-Becker(Red-Sector) Demommaker and had to get
a 512k expansion and a floppy for that..

[Lando]

I never had an A500, my first Amiga was the A600.  I upgraded from a SNES, as my friends all had hundreds of disks full of games that I could get for free, while SNES games sosted £40 or more,   I bought a few originals too, though.

Later I got a 1MB expansion.  I only kept it for a year and then the A1200 came out so I sold the 600.  

[JurassicCamper]

1989 A500 1.3 Roms but came with 1.2 Workbench and the Very First Disk. That was cool.

Bought an 512K A501 (£150) at the same time with Dragons Lair / AfterBurner / Purple Saturn Day.

It came from Evesham Micros in Birmingham, UK.

First thing was playing around with Basic and the Music demo that drawed the straight lines on the screen then ended up in a circle.

Still got it and it still works a treat to this day. Playing Cannon Fodder / Sensi Soccer on a 32" widescreen TV with a Scart Lead is impressive even today. Who needs a PS2

Still got Dragons Lair and the copy of ST-Amiga Format I got given free with it.

Nostalgia Rocks... Going for a game of commando now... :-)

[Mike_Amiga]

A500 Memories:

Using the Say program for the first time on workbench 1.3 and changing the voice settings and all of that PD stuff.

[sprinter]

My first A500 was was a workbench 1.2 , and came with delux paint 1. So i spent many happy hours drawing pictures using the provided clip art, that i could`nt save ! as i had no disks. The box came with a sticker on it saying "Catch the Amiga Fever" and we did ... I also remember the demos on the disk for drawing spots, lines boxes and circles , the speed of the box fill was jaw dropping ....at the time , and still quit impressive today. The other impressive thing was they could alll run together at the same time or multiple versions of the same demo.  My Mac owning friends nearly died . My PC owning friends DID.

I cant remember exactly when i bought it but it was one of the first batch into the UK and came from a small computer shop called GB MicroLand in Waterlooville ,Hampshire. Every time you went into the shop they had an A1000 connected to a BIG AMP and SPEAKERS, sounded boooommming brilliant.

Ahhhh those were the days....

I got my A500+ because I saw a mates running GODS and it knocked my socks off. That music and those graphics blew me away. I had a Amstrad CPC6128 at the time and I thought that it was pretty cool.

The A500+ still works and has since been given the gifts of a 28Mhz 020 and as much RAM as it can handle. It also has a HD, CD and I built one of those Yamaha XG midi boxes from CU Amiga. I got it a proper monitor and a flickerfixer/scan doubler and it has OS 3.1.

Sadly it doesnt get used that much any more cos I just dont have the desk space to support it and the PC but I did buy Amiga Forever and I copied the entire HD over to the PC ( a whopping 420Mb!!! well, in those days anyway), so in a way it still lives on.

I bought it from Silica Shop in Sidcup, I went with my Dad (who stumped up half the cash) and on the way home he decided to stop off at my Nans house to see how she was. "NOOOOOOOO, I have to get home and play!", but he wasnt having it. So I just had to take over Nans TV and ended up playing Lemmings, Bart Vs Space Mutants and Captain Planet with the A500 on the living room floor.

The best times I had on the A500 were when I was doing something creative, the machine was built to be creative. I had a go at music, graphics, 3d rendering, the lot. I loved the demos also - State Of The Art, Nine Fingers and all that. I am glad to see that they are still being produced. Downloaded one the other day that required a graphics card. It ran fairly well on Amiga Forever.

Towards the end of Commodore some of my friends left the Amiga and went to the PC but I held on for a while and I was producing College and Uni reports that looked every bit as good as the PC's.

Hmmm, feeling the need to build a larger desk set up and get it out again. :-)

[duesi]

Yes I remember the A500 was my first computer
I got she in 1989..
First I was playing games and checking out the
Kick/Workbench1.3
I was also Online later on (14400 Modem) :-)
(using amosaic for Internet) TERM for connecting to BBS-Boxes
The upgrades I got where OS31, 1MB chipram,    GVP SCSI with 4MB Fast-RAM and 120MB Quantum HDD

I always had nice evenings watching all the new demos from the scene..

Was a cool time

[Paul_Gadd]

First 500 in 1989 and boy what a great machine it was plus everyone at school was trading games, so hundreds of games for a machine was just what i needed and parents was saying "We will buy the machine but you will have to buy the games"  :-D

[Cyberus]

I got the 'Screen Gems' pack , must have been some time around 1989. I wanted an Amiga after seeing my mate's A2000 (well it belonged to his Dad, and i think it had a 286 bridgeboard, whoa!) I pleaded with my Mum to get it, and she stumped up the 400 quid (Pounds) (which as someone else said was a lot of money back then...) I remember watching the intro to Shadow of the Beast II, that blew me away....
I also remember hankering after a 512kb expansion, when I got it I was well happy, I could play Prince of Persia at last!
I used my Amiga for playing around really, no homework ever got done, I was always glued to it from when I got in to when i went to bed.

Stuff I used a lot:
Med/Octamed
Deluxe Paint II
A few games
Demodisks (does anyone remember Jesus on Es?)
The 'Grapevine' disk mag
Blitz Basic (toward the end)
Hell, i even bought Paul Overaa's "Mastering Amiga Assembler". Have been reading that recently actually. Back then I thought it was too complicated and i was too young. 12 years later I realise (after gaining knowledge of programming and electronics) that he is a terrible author.
But I s'pose that was back in the days before books such as "Turning your PC on for Dummies".
Hell look at all the 'lamers' that use 'puters these days....

[KingTutt]

I saw my first Amiga in '87 - at a friends b'day (lucky bastard - talk about the best bday present ever). One of the original A500s, running Bobble Bubble, Future Tank and later on Marble Madness. I was only 11 at the time but knew from that day forwards what I wanted.

It would be another 3 years of begging and whining to my parents before my turn came to own greatness. Meanwhile I had countless sleepovers to the several friends that lived nearby that owned Amiga. And everytime I would leave with an unquenched thirst and a yearning to have just another hit of Amiga.

It was torture, 3 years! of seeing games like Dogs of War, New Zealand story, Supercars, Rainbow Islands, Robocop, Rickdangerous, Turrican, Midnight Resistance etc etc.

I enoyed my Amiga for many years after 1990, playing the likes of Wings, Defender of the crown, It came from the Desert, Shadow of the beast, Magic Pockets, Jumpin Jack'son, Simcity and many more. I always liked the true classics (Marble Madness was considered classic even in the amiga days).

One thing was certain back then, computers were fun. Little did I know that never again was I to be this happy about anything. Nowadays games like Unreal2 and the upcoming Doom3 hold the attention factor for maybe 30 minutes.