Has anyone had any bad/scarring amiga-related experiences?

[CodePoet]

I need to tell someone about this. I've held it in for fourteen freakin' years.

I remember falling in-love with Aminet after I discovered how to use crossdos with my brothers Win95 PC (circa ~1997)

I'd browse Aminet for hours on-end, most of the time I went after modules and applications for sound editing/playback; it was absolute HEAVEN for me. Now it seems kind of silly, but I really did love the Amiga platform and everything that came with it, I defended it with a passion.

...Then I came across this file, "PC JOKE" I believe it was called, I can't find it on aminet anymore. I ran it on the PC and it created an un-deletable icon on the windows desktop with some sort of anti-pc text attached to it. I thought it was funny at first, but then I realised it was my BROTHERS PC, and he'd probably kill me!

So I frantically opened my shiny new yahoo mail account, found and mailed the author, and pretty much begged for his help. Well, he didn't help me. His exact response was:

Amiga?! AMIGA! The world laughs behind your back.

I felt absolutely gutted that a fellow Amigan would do that to me. I didn't eat for days! (mind you I had just entered highschool at that time) - In the end an old friend of the family bailed me out by editing the registry, I'm fairly sure I even cried over it heh.

Hopefully I'm not the only one to go through something like this, probably should've posted from a throw-away account or something! Have you guys had any similar experiences?

[Tension]

Lol

[Crom00]

Lol

Well I used to have an A2500 that I pieced together. I used Emplant to run MacOS and did all my school graphics assignments as the Macs at school were always occupied.

When I told my instructor what I was using to create my assignments he acted like I was a spawn of Satan. I was like dude relax, it gets the Job done and I run Lightwave3D.

Mac folks back then thought Strata Studio3D or Electric Image was the only 3d App worth a damn.

Just a lot of stupid bias.

[mdv2000]

When I told my instructor what I was using to create my assignments he acted like I was a spawn of Satan

Ha! ROFL! That brings back some memories...  I had a teacher once back in early 80s not want to accept a paper I typed because I used a "must be cheating or something" Coleco Adam SmartWriter word processor to type the paper.  She couldn't type without mistakes, so how could I? Of course I had a word processor long before they did!  

And, you should of seen the reaction to my video book report I did with my Amiga 500 making text credits and graphics to summarize the story - along with Amiga made music for the background!  Deluxe Video Ruled and they where clueless with their green screen PCs!

[tone007]

I zapped myself good (110V) by touching the live heatsink inside an A3000T power supply while it was plugged in.  Live heatsink indeed.

[jorkany]

Back around 1987 a friend's 3-yr old son managed to shove a diskette backwards completely into the internal drive of my A1000. I think I ended up having to disassemble the drive housing to get it out...I was pissed!

[a1200]

@CodePoet

That is one creepy story! I wonder why the author created such a thing? Don't think I have had any horrific stories. I remember doing quite an intricate piece of technology coursework, some display stand as I remember it, and all the graphics were done on my A1200 and Panasonic KX-P2123 printer (a colour dot matrix), man that printer was good, if anyone has one still in ace condition I will buy it!

[spihunter]

I spilled an entire 64oz diet Coke into the open front of my A2000 back in 1994...The screen stated turning different colors before I yanked the power cord out. I put a fan on it and dried it out for a few days...It actually booted right back up a week later. I was really suprised!. Hey! an 030 A2000 was still pretty expensive back then!

[sdesros]

I had an external HD on my A1200. For some reason I've always had trouble with it disconnecting and I once made the mistake of connecting it backwards (it was a special connector that had power and IDE lines in one).  Long story short, I killed the main harddrive.  A friend of mine who had stored some art he was creating on Deluxe Paint on my system was pissed.

Oh, and for some reason everytime I had to open my A3000, it drew blood.

[Boudicca]

No real scary things with an Amiga, other than the usual, things not sitting right in the 4000 mobo etc, and paniciking that I had killed it. Always got me for a few seconds sometimes.

Did manage to kill a 68000 on a 500 with the GVP drive when it was powered on.

Best things that I will be scarred for life are PC ones unfortunately.

* Was cold so I put the Gas heater on at work and pulled it close behind my chair, at home time I dismantled my pc to take it home, turned push the chair out the way with my knee and fell over the heater, send my pc in into a triple somersault and crashing to the floor, one dead drive and a "doing the splits" case

* Same again but trip over in car park and nearly broke my foot trying to stop the case hitting the floor. My foot managed to get underneath but it still killed the drive and a bruised my foot.

* Probably my best PC Murder/Death/Kill was during a full works upgrade with brand new case, mobo, processor, memory, gfx and hard disk in that I had tested working using the existing case PSU but decide to upgrade with a bigger rating one I had knocking about to allow me to put raid drives in, unfortunately this PSU went pop and killed everything bar the hard disk. Expensive day.

[billt]

I'm pretty sure I've cut myself on casework before, but I'm not sure it was ever bad enough to leave a scar.

[Crom00]

The instructor tired to convince me that emulation was illegal and that Commodore could not run Mac or do graphcis aside from games... Rreally? that's news to me. I borught in copies of Video Toaster User and Amiga World to show him what was possible but he just dismissed it...FAmous quote "No one is ever going to make use of 3d computer graphics.. it's too trendy"

What a douche...

[Gulliver]

My most scary Amiga experience was about two weeks ago. I had dismantled all my amiga gear as i was expecting a new tower to arrive. Everything was carefully stored in a closet. For me, that i live really far away from any Amiga usergroup, shop, etc every Amiga device i have is like a small treasure, non replaceable, you have to consider that it is very difficult and expensive to buy things and have them shipped to Chile.
Then on the 27th february, an earthquake of 8.8 Richter scale, shook the entire  country.
My house and my family were okay, so the next thing i did, was to look for my Amiga stuff. It was all violently scattered in the floor. I said myself, goodbye to my two A1200, accelerators, mediator board, etc.
I was extremely pissed.
Four days later, we got electricity back and the first thing i did, was test every single bit of Amiga gear, and fortunately everything was working, nothing harmed at all!

[koshman]

Glad to hear your family survived the disaster unharmed, Gulliver.

[rvo_nl]

I had an external HD on my A1200. For some reason I've always had trouble with it disconnecting and I once made the mistake of connecting it backwards (it was a special connector that had power and IDE lines in one). Long story short, I killed the main harddrive.

had exactly the same experience. it was dark, late, and I had the power cable wrong. It was an internal drive, mind. I was lucky to receive a new drive under warranty but lost a lot of work in the process.
 
My other scarring moments were all about phone bills and my first modem..