Your first A500

[Tenacious]

The A500 was my first real (flexable) computer in 1989, had a Timex/Sinclair and an Atari 1200 before that.  I first saw it in a shop next to an IBM XT, both were playing Battle Chess.  The game play and sound were fluid on the Amiga, the XT was jerky with no sound.  I couldn't wait to get more software!

[tony23]

I picked up my first A500 in the early 90's and my fondest memory was playing Chaos Engine with a buddy till our fingers could no longer push the buttons.

 Wow, those were the days. :-)

[graffias79]

I realize this thread is old but I had to share my story.  My A500 was bought from a local computer store in 1995, I was 16, incidently I now work for that store.  My first experiences with that computer were some of the most enjoyable times I've ever had with a computer.  It was a 68000 rev A6 MB, 512kChip 512kFast/clock, an external A1010 FDD and a C=1084 monitor.  I used OctaMED mostly on it as well as DPaint II, III, IV.  Bought a Megalosound sampler one year later.  To this day I am fascinated with making music on computers, just bought a microkorg synth.  I still have my A500 but I upgraded it with kickstart 2.04 and a fat(ter?) agnus board with 2MB chip onboard, but it disabled the fastram on the card, however the clock still works (?)  Anyway, I also own an A1200 with a 40MHz 68030, 32MB fastram, 2GB ide drive and panasonic 5 disc cd-rom changer (modded the case to let out an ATA ribbon) and a bigfoot psu.  I got online for the first time with that 1200. :-)~ i miss using my babies - WinUAE just doesnt cut it.

[whabang]

Pirates!
Ahr, matey!

[Madgun68]

I think we got ours in 1988. (I say we because I went in on the purchase with a friend.) I remember many a night trying to get to sleep when I'd hear a knock on the window telling me he wanted to play Dungeon Master again.

I've owned many machines since then, but have not been able to get the Amiga out of my blood.

[RedWarrior]

The first experience I had of the amiga was when my mate brounght it over to my house- we plugged into the tv and started making the opening credits for a movie!  I was so jealous when we were running Dpaint- Daniel asked me
" What shade of red should we use?"

I had been using my PC for years and only had 4 colours... no SHADES!

So then I got one... and then an A2000...  Still got my a500 and am looking to buy a 600 to save space...

So very sad that all we have left is nostalgia.... Amiga could have changed the whole world.

[Steady]

The A500 was the first computer our family owned. All I wanted to do was play King's Quest 3. Nothing like EGA graphics and beeps to show off an Amiga, but hell, I didn't know.

Unfortunately, the first thing I did was Initialise the King's Quest disk. I was NOT a happy chappy. A quick lie to the retailer and I was happily playing. ;-)

Within 18 months I was experimenting with 68k assembler after the limitations of AmigaBASIC on Extras made themselves felt.

I reckon one of the best things about Amiga was the way Commodore wrote the technical documentation. It just seemed to be explained in a way I understood and learned really quick. Maybe I'm alone here, but it worked for me.

[Spyros]

My first Amiga was the A500. The first programs I run were some public domain disks that I was given from the store where I bought it. They were 17bit disks (slideshows I think) and some demos. I didn't mess with workbench until I bought some blank disks, a few days later, to make copies of it and keep the originals in a safe place. They are still in that safe place. I really liked WB1.3.

The A500 was also a goodlooking machine. I used to spend time just looking at it when it was off.  Well I still do some times ;-)

[akifreda]

it was in June 1988.
WB 1.2 and GFA.basic
some games : two on two, karting, marble madness,
crystal hammer,wold games, Formula one.
It was so fun.

[browny]

Yep, I bought the batman pack too, it was exhilerating !!,and it took my breath away  :-D
I mainy used it for games and really did not go deeper into the OS until  a year or so.
Every thing was so damm expensive 1/2 meg upgrades for £50, we made commodore a lot of wonga  at the time,pity they did not match their extortionate rates with good  bussiness sense,ah well :-x
When prices dropped i could not get me hands quick enough on more Ram,HD, CD, Extra drive, Fatter Agnus, Denise, Rom switcher ECT..........the list is endless. it still sings today !.
But then I bought my beloved A1200(swoon).
and the A500, became dormant piece of hardware.
Missed but not forgotten !.

[tintin]

I got my first Amiga 500 in 1987 after having played with a A1000 in filmschool.  A friend of mine actually won two in some lotery and sold me one at half price.  I also had an external diskdrive which made life a lot easier, lot's of disk swapping in those days.    I remember buying an external harddisk for it, (20 MB storing space ! ) but that was probably quite a bit later, The program I used first and most on that machine was Dpaint and a program that later became TAD/ADPro  (forgot the name).  I also used Aegis animator and Deluxe Video for a while but didn't really like them.  There was also a 3D program, I think it was called Videoscape.
Later I replaced that with Sculpt4D.