How many years have you been an Amiga user?

[ferix]

I met Amiga on a department store in late 80's, about '88 or '89, but I never got one on such decade. Later, on '93, a friend of mine bought one A500. That was the first Amiga I touched, and that was also the first one I owned. Well, when he gave It to me, It was totally destroyed... He gave me a dead motherboard (full of soldered wires), the upper and the lower covers whit some holes from his experiments, and a dead power supply, no shielding cover, no screws, no floppy drive and no wires... Not too much. I just stored these parts... Until this year, when I started my restoration project (I'll post It later). Now It's a full working "black" Amiga.
My first working amiga was, and still It is, an A500+ I bought on ebay on '98.
It was a dead one, but I managed to get It working. Quite simple, just clean some chip's rusted legs. There was no power supply, but I fixed the dead one I got (replacing some faulty caps). I don't remember from where the mouse came, but I guess I got It for free...
So I'm a '90 user...

Edit:
I forgot to mention I've got an A600 I bought on ebay circa 2003...
I alsow own two C64, one is a nacked board from the same guy who gave me the A500 (also dead), and the other one from ebay, bought as not working, I don't remember the date, but It was cheap.
The first one has a dead PLA, but working VIC. The last one, has a working PLA, but a dead VIC... I bet you guess how I fixed one of them
Now, I bought a VIC on ebay, and I'm working on a CPLD replacement for the PLA... just for fun

[drHirudo]

I am Amiga user since September 1993. By this time I also had Turbo XT/8MHz, but quickly forgat about it and went to Amiga only till today.
Amigas I have used A500, A600, A1200, A4000, A1000, mA1, in that chronological order.

[ElZorro]

It all started in the summer of 1994 with the A1200 which I still have and use. Before that I had the C= 64

Because making music is my hobby I sold the C64 to buy me a synthersizer Keyboard.

After spending many many weeks peeling tullip bulbs, planting Begoniaceae and taking out weeds from a mustardplant field I finaly could buy this very nice machine The Amiga A1200.
With this A1200 I bought also a DSS 8+ sampler and a harddisk of 170mb.. :crazy:
(If you convert the currency to euro it would be : € 500,00
The harddisk crashed in 2006, and I did not have any back up.
So I bought the Blizzard IV with SCSI and 64MB Ram and a external HD of 2 GB. Later I also bought the 250 MB internal HD just in case and faster start up

We will all know the glorious way we tried anf succeded as young people to become the generation that made a statement with Commodore machines: to change the world!

[dannyp1]

I think I got my first Amiga in 1992.  I was heavy into C=64/128 before that.  Our club president bought a brand new A1200 as soon as they came out and I bought his A2000.

[Bif]

I saw the A1000 in a store I guess in 1985 or so and I was totally blown away by it. I wanted it so bad. But I could never convince my parents to get me any kind of computer, even though I wanted one since I was probably 10. So when I finished high school I got my first job delivering pizza, and saved my first paycheques and got an A500 as the first thing I ever spent my own money on. I guess that would be 1988. I really wish I could have gotten one earlier, as I was pretty good with computers and wonder if I could have gotten ahead better in the early days of computing when you could actually invent something unique and gain market share pretty easily. I had a keen interest in developing audio software (that's what I do for a living now).
 
I sold the A500 and upgraded to an A3000 some time later on... I can't quite remember, but maybe a couple of years later. I loved it, but a year or so later I traded it for a new PC and $1400 as I needed the PC and cash for computer studies. I really wish I never had to sell it, but I guess I had to. Wish I could buy it back now. It was just such a huge part of my life being my first computer, and I always compare every other computer to it, and never feel the same magic. It's the stuff like pull down screens and amiga-n/m that I miss.
 
Luckily I forced my wife to keep her A2000HD (we actually met and eventually married by meeting on an Amiga chat BBS). I just broke the A2000 out after a 15 year hibernation, and I was surprised how well it still works. I expected the Amiga experience to not be as fond as I remembered given getting used to contemporary systems, but it still does the odd thing better than the stuff I have to use now. Amazing how serviceable it is for a 20 year old system.
 
I still have a soft spot for the A1000 that I never could get my hands on at the time. Wouldn't mind owning one just as a collector piece.
 
Maybe one day if I no longer have to work I will get involved in Amiga coding again. I know it's totally pointless but at least you can write some software that fills voids, where other platforms are just flooded with too much software. So it might seem more rewarding and fun, and remind me of those simpler times. I always wanted to do it back then, but didn't have the skill set, but there is still time to fulfill those dreams =). It feels like the only computer I owe something to.

[cecilia]

around 1987ish I met Rose Lovell who with her husband Doug wrote the Summagraphics Tablet driver for the Amiga and LightBox - the first such program on the AMiga which was later incorporated into DeluxePaint.

I played around on her 1000. wow, what a beautiful computer!

1989 I got my 2000.

been in love ever since

[dougal]

First was an A500 Plus back in 1992. Cartoon Classics pack with Simpsons, Lemmings, Captain Planet and D-Paint III .

I remember HATING the A600 because i saw an issue of Amiga Format saying "The Amiga 500 is Dead, Long live the Amiga"

[Amiga_Nut]

I had to have an A1000 and was first in the queue for one. Never regretted it since (unlike many Mac/PC purchases since) it was the perfect machine, light years ahead of all other computers in its day.

Loved it...and still own the little bugger...it's not leaving me until my last heart beat is over.

[aturnbull]

1993 was when I got my A1200, which retired my ever-faithful C64.

Andy

[Nlandas]

I got my Amiga 2000 in 1988 the year before I went to college with a 8088 Bridgeboard to run MSDOS compiler on. The differences between an Amiga with AmigaDOS 1.3 and MSDOS 5 were stark indeed. Those were the days.

[Drummerboy]

Ohhh. WoW!!.. What wonderfull historys!!.. I identify myself with many of thats storys!.. Great!..

Cool, to read all this things happened, its like back in time becouse i remember many of thats steps in the Amiga history!!..

[AmigaPixel]

I first saw an Amiga 500 with a Digiview doing some demos in 1987, I was blown away and hooked. I wanted to be on that cutting edge. My wife and I bought are first Amiga 2000 in 1992 or early 93 and we still have it.

[AmigaPixel]

"It was just such a huge part of my life being my first computer, and I always compare every other computer to it, and never feel the same magic."

I couldn't agree more, I know that feeling well!

[Bamiga2002]

I accidentally voted wrong. I selected "In 1985" where i meant "Late 80´s after sold my C=64".

[kinshi]

First Amiga I got to use was the A1000 in '86, and later my boss got an A2000 for the office and got to play with that as well. My best friend got an A500 in 87 for his birthday so was at his place all the time.

I did not get an Amiga of my own until '91 when I bought an A500. (had to sell my trusty C=128 to help fund that)

[punkyclown]

I got my first Amiga in 1988 an A500, I think I saw some ad in Computer shopper for Dpaint and I was just drooling.  At the time I owned a Mac plus which was a cool computer but I ended up selling it and spending all my money on Amiga stuff.  I had a modem and a midi connector printer.  Great days, I took it to work one day and blew everybody away.