Your first ever Amiga experience?

[minator]

It was 1987 I think, a friend was going to sell me his C128 but then I read about the Atari and thought that sounds far better...  Then one day I was in Belfast and went to have a look in a computer shop at the Atari, they had an Amiga showing the Newtek demo reel 1 with HAM pics, I was completely gobsmaked - forget the Atari!

I couldn't afford an A500 (they were 700 GBP at the time) but I later found somewhere selling old French A1000's cheap, so I got one of those - complete with stickers over the keys!

I later got an A520 20MB HD and 2MB RAM upgrade which plugged into the A1000 backwards and made a lot of noise.  I also changed the CPU for a 68010.

Then in about 91 I got an A500+, later I went to an A1200 and a 60MB HD.  It also got a 50MHz 030, Zip and Jaz drives.  I still have it but haven't used it in years.

I got an A1000 in 2002 in France this time but this time with US keyboard - go figure.  I was messing with it the other night, I finally found a driver for Radeon video capture in BeOS and was checking it out.

[Seehund]

Playing with the A2000 they had in art class.

My first "own Amiga experience"? Admiring every last detail of the exterior of my shiny new A500, which I kept doing for a week after I realised that I should've bought an A520 RF-modulator too, and every store in town was sold out...

[J-Golden]

HE HE!

My first experience was when I borrowed an A500 for the computer store I was working at.

I got several cover disks and played around with the demos.  Being the impatient person I was, I just ran the programs without reading the 'readme' files....

One program was called "Nightmare" (if anyone could find this and post it I'd would die happy).

I ran it but it didn't do anything.  I tried over and over again and nothing came up.  I was in a hurry to work so I just left it up and running....

Heres the good part, I come home to a very, VERY pissed of brother.  Aparently the Nightmare program was an early screne saver of sorts that would flash a bloody skull for a second on the screen while letting out a very, very loud, blood curdling scream (in sterio ofcourse).

The first time it went off it had my bro. OUT of the shower and into the backyard thinking some one was killing our cat (no JOKE!!!)

The second time had him so paranoid he walked around the whole house with a bat!

Durring his rounds he was in front of the Miggy when it went off the third time and I think he used all his reserve NOT to put the bat through the 1084    :-D

OK, anyone top that?!?!?!!?! :crazy:

[odin]

@J-golden:
Hehehe, I remember that skull/scream thingy.......it was scary  even when you know what it did ;-).

[Akiko]

My first experience with Amiga was seeing a A500 at a friends house ... I remember him showing of the "say" program in workbench making it say some very rude things to his granny!!! :-o and playing i think it was turbo outrun & some flight sim. I was totally amazed at the graphics and sound, it was something i had never seen before, me and most of my other mates at the time still had spectrums. I then begged and begged my parents for a A500 finally a few month's later for my 10th birthday i received my first amiga a new A500+ with cartoon classics, later i went on to get a 1200, CD32, & 4000  :-D

[that_punk_guy]

odin wrote:
@J-golden:
Hehehe, I remember that skull/scream thingy.......it was scary  even when you know what it did ;-).

The Hitchcock effect! You knew it was going to happen, but you never knew exactly when, and the tension was off the meter! Seventeen years old, and I was cowering behind the bed with my friend, neither of us dared go near the bloody thing.

Whoever coded that was a sadist. :-D

@J-Golden
I have it somewhere, I'll see if I can dig it out.

[that_punk_guy]

Nightmare.lha (19K)

I'm pretty sure that's it. :-)

[Bobben]

My first computer experience was a PC back in 1984 or 1985,
(I visited my oldest brother at work).
It was text only, black background with green text, that's about all I remember,
since I was only 6 years old at the time, but I do remember ONE thing...
I wasn't impressed :-)
So, my first Amiga experience was back in 1987 or 1988, when seeing adverts in
a store, that you could make animated cartoons on it and that really impressed me!
About the same time one of my brothers bought a ZX 128k Spectrum, although he
wanted an A500, but it was too expensive at the time.
I wasn't too impressed by the Spectrum either :-)
So in 1990 or 1991, two of my brothers (one of them owned the Spectrum) put
togther some cash and bought a used A500, now I was impressed :-)
About the same time I sat with a Mac for the first time,
(my oldest brother had lend it from work, to play some golf game on it :-)
it was a Macintosh Classic and it could only display greyscale, not impressed :-)
And in 1992 my brothers bought a second used A500, so they could have one each!
At this time I started to have some computer learning in school and yes
you guessed right, on PC's...
It was Victor 386's with Win 3.1 and since then I get sick whenever I see Win 3.1
again :-) It must be the worst piece of crap I have EVER seen, I can't believe
how it could be so freaking popular, yuck!!
In 1993 (I think it was) I played Chaos Engine and Flashback for the first time
and since then, they are my absolute favourite games!!
About the same time, one of my brothers (not the Spectrum one) bought a Rochard
harddrive for his A500. At this time he bought a computer magazine called
"Dator Magazin" or "DMZ", the biggest computer magazine in Sweden at the time
and it only covered Amiga :-) I ofcourse also read them and started to learn more
and more about the Amiga.
In 1994 he sold his A500 with the Rochard and bought an A1200 and I really liked
it, since it had better graphics and was faster and I was amazed about the
startup time!
And in 1995 I bought the A1200 from my brother and since then I have been a serious
Amiga/computer user. Before, I only used my brothers Amigas once in a while to play
some games.
On x-mas 1995 my oldest brother bought us younger brothers a PC, a P75 to be exact
with Win 95 and thanks to that I got to learn Win 95 (and up), quite a bit, which
is a neccesity these days since there are PC's everywhere (just hoping AmigaOne
and OS4 will change that, at least a bit).
In 1996 I bought a Blizzard 1230-IV with 16Mb ram for my A1200. Shortly after the
orginial 120Mb HD died and lost a lot of stuff, that I didn't want to loose and
that was a bit tough!
In 1997 one of my brothers bought a PC (the one I bought the A1200 from).
In 1998 I bought a BlizzardPPC, with the 040 overclocked since 2002 and it
works perfectly!
But the cooling and power troubles made it impossible to run the BPPC in the
original case, so in 1999 I bought a PowerTower with a new A1200 motherboard and
sold the other A1200.
About the same time the other Amiga brother went to PC, I still got his A500, now
with a GVP Impact Series II HD and an extra floppy drive, jeehaw :-)
In 2001 I bought a PC (sorry, didn't know better :-) and in 2002 I bought a
BVisionPPC for the Amiga. And in 2003 I gave the PC to one of my brothers
(the Spectrum one) since I was fed up with all the troubles Windows gave me, so I
bought a PowerMac G4 instead and I'm quite happy with that so far!
Now that we have come to 2004 (the year of the Amiga, hopefully :-)
I'm planning to buy AmigaOS 4 for my BPPC and maybe an AmigaOne also,
if money allows it!
I hope that the Amiga can get in the fastlane again (just enough), so that I can
convert my brothers back to the Amiga!
I also try to support the Amiga community in any way I can, have registered 21
shareware progs so far, done some catalog translations, done a little betatesting
and maintains the Famous Amiga Uses list.
Although I use other computers like Mac's and PC's, the Amiga is still my favourite
computer, mostly because it got that something special, that makes it so fun to use!
Up until 1998, I thought that Amiga was the best computer and I didn't want to
have a job where I had to work with PC's, but with time and alot of computer usage
and experience, I have learned that no computer is the best, they all have
their pros and cons and as luck turned out, I got a job where there are Amigas that
I use on a daily basis! I use it to put in adverts, like buy and sell stuff for our
local TV channel, and we use Scala InfoChannel 500 for the job. But since I'm a
system technician I also get to work with Mac's and PC's.

Wow, that was NOT the short version :-) any way I still use my A1200 quite alot
and intend to do so for the forseeable future!

Happy Amiga computing everybody!!
And thanks to the Hyperion guys and all the rest for the great job with AmigaOS 4!!

[slippymadfrog]

My Amiga...the first time I saw her I was in love.  Then I paid her a few thousand  pesos and she loved me.  It was love at first transaction.

[Cyberus]

:lol:

[B00tDisk]

Ah...my first time, you ask?  Oh the memories.

It was in the spring of '89...I was just finishing my first semester of college when I met her, there, in the corner of that computer store.  She was sitting on a clean white table, looking like she'd been sitting there all day waiting just for me.

I sat down in front of her.  God, I thought.  She's so beautiful...so talented...too much for me to handle.  I bet she can tell how nervous I am.

I felt bold.  But not bold enough.   I sat there next to her, and felt as if she was saying "Go ahead, silly.  I don't bite."

I gently slid the mouse across the screen and opened her Deluxe Paint.  Oh...oh God the things she showed me.  I wanted her, then.  I wanted to take her home and ... do things with her.  I wanted to create new vistas and explore things as I never had before.  But the price.  It was more than I could pay.  Or was it?

I considered the worldly things I'd been waiting for, and put them aside, mentally.

We went home together, and I laid her down gently on the bed, slowly removing every covering until she sat exposed in front of me.  I traced every line with my fingertip, feeling the lambent power like scenting a heady perfume...

In the time we had together I saw more in those short years than I had in the decade I'd spent with others before her.  Others came after her - younger, faster, sexier.  But I'll never forget her, my first Amiga 500.

 :lol:

[DonnyEMU]

My first Amiga experience was in NYC back in 85 watching Debbie Harry and Andy Warhol painting in PaintCraft (Aegis Images) and using an Amiga Live! to digitize then make Debbie into a work of Art on the computer... Then watching the A1000 genlock work and thinking my life is about to change, and it did..

-Don

[Stargazer]

When I was around 13-14 years old there was a computerstore close to my school. They had different Amigas running all the time and the games they ran on them looked so much better than those on my C128. I used to visit the store every day after school just to play Amigagames. Finally I saved up enough money to buy a used A500 with a 1084S monitor back in 1989. I still use the monitor, talk about quality.  ;-)

[TjLaZer]

Mine was seeing the Amiga 1000 at a Micro Age computer store in the Bay Area of CA.  It was running the Boing demo and I was amazed!  I wanted one so bad but I was only 14.  (I later saw the demo on a Atari 800XL lol)  I was into the Atari XL and C64 at the time and did not get an Amiga until 1987 when I finally sold off my Atari/Commodore stuff!  I have been hooked ever since.  I own every Amiga model except for the CDTV and 32.

[sir_inferno]

mine was in '95 when i played K240 on an a500+

then it was hidden away in storage

now i've got an a1200 and very happy since i have internet on it  :-)

[HopperJF]

my first amiga expereince was around '94 when i was playing on a mates A500+
i loved it and enjoyed all the games, but i didnt get my first amiga until 98 which was an A600.
In 2000 i got an A1200 which i sold to get an A1, got the A1 wasnt impressed, and in February 2003 i got another A1200 which i use for the old games. it sits here in fantastic condition nice and white  :-)