How old are you and when was your first "Amiga Experiance"?

[Steril707]

Seems i am pretty typical:

I am 32 now, and got my first hands on Amiga experience back in what must have been 86 or maybe early 87...I was 12 years old, and this was an Amiga 1000 with a loaded Workbench. What a beauty, nevertheless I was a little bit disappointed, for i didn't know what to do with it.

You know, on the usual Homecomputer of that age you could type in stuff like
10 print "Spectrum 48k sucks!!"
20 goto 10
run

and had some stupid fun..

but with the workbench, i didn't know exactly what to make out of this.

Anyway, i got my first Amiga (a 500) in Christmas 87, but lost interest in computers somehow around late 1991. At that time i already felt that the pc would crush the Amiga into pieces, to be honest. Seeing Wing Commander and Gunship 2000 in all of their glory, i felt the Amiga was quite underpowered, and Doom in 93 really sealed their fate.

Anyway, the Amiga is still a big love affair of mine. It was the only computer with its own character in these 22 years i am into computers now. Everything else was just silicon.

[dimgr]

I am 31 years old.

First acquaintance with the Amiga 500 (as my own computer) was around 1987 during which I was 11 years old. Later the A500 was succeeded by an Amiga 2000 (Kickstart 2.04)
Previously had owned an Amstrad CPC6128 since 1985

Nowdays I have a working CPC6128, a C64c, an Amiga600HD and looking forward to obtaining a A3000 but these are hard to come by in Europe.

[tokyoracer]

Great to see there are users around my age too! Thanks again for the great reception! :-D

[pan1k]

I'm 27.. 28 in a month!

I got my first Amiga 1000 back in 1993. I think my Mom paid $200 for it. Had lots of software.. box, extra drive, memory etc. I showed my Dad, and he found some Amiga 2000s in the trash.. we had them for the longest time, using Pagestream and Deluxe Paint and DCTV... Then I got an A3000 and a Retina Z2 video card.. and I couldnt find too many resources online for help and I sold it to someone who was helping with some kind of Linux port to Amiga.. he was from San Diego...

I got the Amiga Itch™ again and bought a A1200 and upgraded  the ROMs from Anti-Gravity (remember the BoXeR guys??) had that thing forever.. then sold it and had a 4000T for ahwile.. then got another 1200 at a yard sale and built it into a tower...now I'm back! I have:

3 A4000s
1 A1200
1 A2000

Nothing like the Amiga.. the hardware has a personality for sure... I sure miss my first 1000.. used to stay up late playing games and looking for a sidecar expansion HD!

[Starrunner]

I am going to be 32 the middle of this month.

The first time I saw an Amiga was in 1990.  The cable access studio for my town was located in the high school.  They got in an Amiga 2500.

Around this time my friend got an A500.  I would later buy that off him for my first Amiga in 1992. (I had bought his C64C and still have that old girl.)

I have owned 2 different A500's, one of which I still have.  I also owned an A2000 that never worked right.  I had an A3000 blowup on me.  I have an A4000D that is going to be going to a new home soon.

I run AmiKit on my PC.  I also have an A1200 in a tower that I want to make more functional.

I was out of the Amiga scene after the 2000 didn't work and my A300 just plain died on me for a few years.  I lucked out on getting the A4000 and now the A1200 tower.

[Megaball]

When I was 14...

It'll be 5 years to the day on the tenth. My first Amiga experience was the most eye-opening thing I could have ever done. I remember, giggling like a 6th grader after finding his dad's stash of old playboys... Except it was his old Amiga1000, which I still have to this day.

I sat down in the living room and pulled out of its box...

Covered with the dust of the ages, I blew on it, and was puzzled by what I saw. I had no idea what this archaic beast was, all I knew was that I wanted it.

I turned it on...
Waited...
Waited...
the screen was flashing strange colors of which I could only familiarize with LSD.

And then I saw it...

THE HAND!

It had startled me so much I nearly cried with terror!. It was hungry, so I fed it a disk.

Then it wanted more. So I fed it another.

Workbench 1.3, what the hell is Workbench?

Ah no matter, I wanna use this thing!

Long hours were spent making it say funny things and trying to figure out how to make it say them properly...

Megaball, Lemmings, Blood Money, Dungeon Master (lalala... Aw crap, here comes a monster!), BEYOND ZORK!

This created my childhood. Other kids had Playstations. Other kids had Pokemon cards. Other kids had friends. I had my Amiga.

It changed my life.

It only fits that I turn people on to the power of the Amiga, albeit through the powers of Emulation, through a modded Xbox, in that very same living room.

I've had plenty of firsts in my life, my first guitar, my first bike, my first kiss... But I'd trade it all away to relive that one day... The best birthday present I could ever receive... My Amiga.

-edit-
I played with it for about three years after i found it... Then it sat around for a while. Now I'm back at it with a fervor that surpasses the first with a breakneck force!

[Donar]

I seem to be in good company here being 31 years old myself. But nice to see that we have some "Next Gen" Amiga Users growing up here, and hope we will get more of them with the release of new (maybe "cheap" hardware. I think i had my first AMIGA at about 14-15.

[Waccoon]

I'll be 30 in a few months.

I saw an A1000 running Deluxe Music Construction Set sometime in 1989 and I knew right then and there that I had to have an Amiga.  Of course, I was 12 at the time, so I had to make do with my C64.  I bought a green 880K floppy with my allowance money as a consolation, even though I couldn't do anything with it.

In 1990 my dad got me a 2nd-hand A1000.  Being in so late in the game, and living in the USA, of course it was difficult to get any software, but I finally used my green floppy to store some Deluxe Paint pictures and documents written with Scribble.  I was in heaven.

I pre-ordered the A1200 by four months, so I had one of the first A1200's in New England.  It's still my favorite computer of all time, but I remember how disappointed I was in the performance with the 020 and AGA chipset, even with the fast RAM card I added later.  If only the fabled A1000+ had been released!

I couldn't get much software for my A1200, so I made my own.  Pinball Illusions was the last game I managed to buy in a store, which oddly was also the first "real" AGA game I owned.  I remember arguing passionately about the merits of the Amiga, and how much PC users rolled their eyes.

Ah, well.  I still got my money's worth out of the machine, along with a passion for proper UI design.

I mostly use WinUAE now.  I use my A1200 maybe once a month to play DuneII, which doesn't run correctly under emulation.

[Dandy]

tokyoracer wrote:

Just a topic to find out some intresting info from you guys. It worked on a few forums so why not here?
As I started I will walk into the potential minefield!

Age: 18

First "Amiga experiance": Early 1993. (Aged about 4 on a new 1200) Hooked on computing since!

Age: 50
First "Amiga experiance": 1987

[patts]

Age: 32

First amiga experiance : 1987 my friends A500. First i got a C128. Then in 1990 i got my first amiga (A1000), since then i have owned, A500+, A600, A1260, A4040.. i still got my old A500+..

[AmigaBlitter]

35

First time i saw an amiga i was 16. When i saw Port of Calls and Defender of the crown sea animation, my jaws fallen on the  floor and my eyes squirt out of the orbits. I bought my a500, exchanged later with an a600. I don't have an amiga at the moment  :cry:

[Framiga]

Dandy wrote:

tokyoracer wrote:

Just a topic to find out some intresting info from you guys. It worked on a few forums so why not here?
As I started I will walk into the potential minefield!

Age: 18

First "Amiga experiance": Early 1993. (Aged about 4 on a new 1200) Hooked on computing since!

Age: 50
First "Amiga experiance": 1987

hugh Dandy! same here.

Time to grow up both! eh, eh! :-)

[Protek]

Age: 33

First Amiga experience: About 1989. A friend had an A500. I got my first Amiga (A500) in 2005.

[McVenco]

30

I remember being at a friend's house once when I was some 9 years old, and they had a computer with a program that could make the computer speak. I don't know if it was an Amiga (only been there once and I wasn't much into computers at that age), but it could as well have been an Amiga 1000.

Apart from that, when I was around 12-13 (somewhere in 1990/1991) I spent quite a few afternoons at another friend, who had an A500. I was absolutely addicted to all those high-tech games (we had an XT with CGA monitor at home), so I wanted one as well. A few months later I bought my very first A500.

Now, some 16 years have passed, 4 of which without any Amiga, and currently I own 8 Amigas, and there are about 8 more on their way to my home. :crazy:

[Paradox]

my first commodore experience was the C16 when I was 6.

A500 when I was about 12 then skiped the a600 for more lavish a1200 when was about 13-14 never hd a HD amiga until about 5 years ago.

Im 28 now by the way.

I remember watching Another world intro and wolfchild,moonstone etc skid marks nd stunt car racer & jimmy whites and pinball dreams/fantasy's and I knew this computer was for me.

I loved using Dpaint and protracker and octamed.

Regards.

[marcfrick2112]

Age 37:
 First Amiga Experience: 17(?) years old at a friends' who strangely was an Atari ST fan. One day, he has an A500 next to his beloved Atari 1040ST. Didn't actually think much of the 500, until he loaded up Adventure Construction Set... and I heard what actually sounded like trumpets coming from a computer, in stereo no less! Then he showed me DPaint...
In April 15, 1988 I bought an A500 bundle with my first Tax Refund Sadly, my 500 is no longer with us, but my 1200's, 4000's, and CD32 keep its' memory alive.....