Hello!

[jstocks]

Hello everyone

I gave up my Amiga and switched to PC 8 years ago, after starting a games development course that was strictly Wintel.

I was obsessed with the Amiga up until then. Initially, I bragged about it being the superiour machine. As Windows machines started to dominate and increasingly appear in the average household, I defended the Amiga as being elegant and powerful for its modest abilities.

I have to admit, after getting familiar with Windows I have never looked back; except perhaps for fond memories of a time when computers were real computers and hard-drives were optional extras.

When I used the Amiga, I played LOTS of games though I couldn't afford to buy many new ones. My favourites included Frontier, Wing Commander, Syndicate and Llamatron.
I also made songs in Octamed, then a tracker I forget the name of but came free with a magazine, then Octamed Sound Studio.
I made a couple of games in Blitz Basic. I didn't know about Object Orientated or dynamic structures at that point, so my games were crude.

Anyway, I have signed up because I'd love to see what is happening with Amigas these days! Hardware and OS info, game screenshots etc
So if anyone has anything exciting/interesting to show, let me know!

Cheers, and respect to all Amiga users!

[swift240]

Hi and welcome the the club.
Well there are many add ons that you can buy for the Amiga these days.
One such example is a Mediator board, I use one a Mediator SX 6 slot PCI board.
I use a Voodo 3 PCI card, a Sb128 Sound card PCI, Fast ethernet PCI.
So the Amiga is still a useful computer to own.
Compared to AGA graphics with a maximum of 256 colours on screen I get to use 16.7 million as you would on a PC.

There is of course others that you can add like a Spider USB PCI card, a TV PCI card and so on.

Take a look at this site below.

http://www.amigakit.com


Mike.

[golem]

jstocks wrote:
Hello everyone

I gave up my Amiga and switched to PC 8 years ago, after starting a games development course that was strictly Wintel.

I was obsessed with the Amiga up until then. Initially, I bragged about it being the superiour machine. As Windows machines started to dominate and increasingly appear in the average household, I defended the Amiga as being elegant and powerful for its modest abilities.

I have to admit, after getting familiar with Windows I have never looked back; except perhaps for fond memories of a time when computers were real computers and hard-drives were optional extras.

When I used the Amiga, I played LOTS of games though I couldn't afford to buy many new ones. My favourites included Frontier, Wing Commander, Syndicate and Llamatron.
I also made songs in Octamed, then a tracker I forget the name of but came free with a magazine, then Octamed Sound Studio.
I made a couple of games in Blitz Basic. I didn't know about Object Orientated or dynamic structures at that point, so my games were crude.

Anyway, I have signed up because I'd love to see what is happening with Amigas these days! Hardware and OS info, game screenshots etc
So if anyone has anything exciting/interesting to show, let me know!

Cheers, and respect to all Amiga users!

Hi and welcome to A.org. You remember the Amiga as superior because I think something went wrong in computers when PCs won that battle due to peoples stupidity. There is something intrinsically wrong with a PC (even though I am typing this on one right now). I thought it may be rose tinted spectacles but this feeling has stuck with me for the 15 years or so that PCs have had supremacy. The path of Amiga was akin to Betamax they say. Superior but majority rule sunk it. Yet none of the so-called successors to the throne like OS4 on PPC or MorphOS quite cut it. The Amiga was of it's time. And a good time it was.
Q. How many folk singers does it take to change a light bulb?
A. Four. One to change the light bulb and three to sing about how good the old one was. :lol:

[KThunder]

if you havent already check out AROS

[jstocks]

The "cat girl" on the AROS page... I remember that! It was some artist... Eric-someone? I never had any of his disks, I just remember him being mentioned in magazines.

I think something went wrong in computers when PCs won that battle due to peoples stupidity. There is something intrinsically wrong with a PC

I don't agree with this. I do think PCs are better, and I can't look back. But when I had the Amiga, I could not believe that people were paying so much money for so much raw power; when an Amiga with elegant software could do the same job.
Part of why I loved Amiga was because I was a poor kid. I only had the Amiga, and I came to appreciate how good I had it. The kids with PCs were shelling out money to play the latest game (e.g. Duke Nukem) or application (rubbish like Microsoft Encarta haha); while I had my Amiga with excellent creative software and games made by enthusiastic young guys who put time, frustration, and a personal touch into what they were making.

[KThunder]

i think we have a case of simple denial here, you made a statement like:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't agree with this. I do think PCs are better, and I can't look back.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
then you spend an entire paragraph looking back
 
its ok you are among friends weve been there and found peace

well ok maybe some of us dealt with doommaster or ebay or doommaster and ebay and will never have peace again but the rest of us are ok

use computers for whatever you want to use them for. dont worry about cpu speed or memory or watever, there will always be those that are worried about always having more and faster and better

and then there are those of us who dont worry about any of that and just have fun with computers.

[jstocks]

I did mean "never look back" as a figure of speech - I meant I can not consider going back to an Amiga as a personal computer.
But of course I can look back on the memories.

use computers for whatever you want to use them for.

Currently I use this computer to:
Watch DVDs and downloaded movies
"Logmein" remotely to work while on-call
Play games such as Grand Theft Auto, Morrowind, Thief and Might and Magic (note that these are all "good" classic games, not just fancy-pants eye candy) as well as emulated games
Produce music using software where I can quickly create and manipulate professional quality sound.
Web and email via wireless router

Now, I don't consider any of these to be causing me to worry about the PC being faster/better. For games, I have resigned myself to not being able to play the current hot titles. And for the music production, I still use tracker software and never really push my PC

I would consider buying an Amiga and trying it out. What would I need? (The site linked to seemed to sell classic A1200s and then kit parts; not complete systems?)

[KThunder]

alot of people around here seem to be against ebay but ive gotten some really good deals there.
i got a 1200 for 75us that ended up having not only a hard drive but a ram card that werent listed in the auction.
ive also gotten some great lots of software for really cheap and other odds and ends chips and such for very little
im looking for a midi box next as i do quite a bit of music stuff mostly keyboard and guitar

[justthatgood]

Okay, welcome back.

I won't be in denial. Until I can get my Amiga up to a state that it will be able to emulate just about every console I've had or played AT FULL speed, I can't use it as a full time computer.

Until my Amiga is able to be able to run a FULLY functional web browser to browser the internet, it will have to remain a hobbyist computer.

There are other quirks that irk me too, but that's enough to keep me from doing things. Just the other day I found a Intel Pentium III, for free, that is many times more powerful then my "top of the line" Amiga 4000. I'm sure I would be able to get another on free too. In order for me to even get near any type of performance from my Amiga I would have to spend equivalent to 3 of my full paychecks to get ahold of a Cyberstorm PPC. Not going to happen any time soon.