What was your Amiga moment?

[EugeneNine]

@EugeneNine



Windows XP was the first 'good' Windows OS (if you discount the Windows NT line). I don't really follow you. Do you mean Vista was a flop?

Windows 2000 was the best.  It was the first with the NT4 kernel with the 9x interface.  XP moved some portions of the outer OS into the kernel and forced the IE integration as well as a bunch of other crap that wasn't needed
2000 was way more stable, faster, more secure.

Most people forget 2000 because XP came out so fast due to the IE court case.

[vince_6]

My first machine was (and still is) a cpc 6128, quite blind buy back then as I knew nothing about computers.
Amiga was on magazines but didn't impressed me at all.
I went to a friends house who had an A500 and I saw and hear operation thunderbolt...
After changing my diapers I ran workbench and did some pointer changes.
Then DPaint nailed the coffin, I turned at him and said:
This computers was made for me.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Windows 2000 was the best.  It was the first with the NT4 kernel with the 9x interface.  XP moved some portions of the outer OS into the kernel and forced the IE integration as well as a bunch of other crap that wasn't needed
2000 was way more stable, faster, more secure.

Most people forget 2000 because XP came out so fast due to the IE court case.

Windows NT4 had a 9x interface. Pre-4 NT windows versions had a Win3.1 interface.
Windows XP was practically based on Windows 2000, but the main 'difference' was that they ported the whole up-to-date directX library to it. Perhaps also some other backwards compatible features came with it and some server-specific functions were left out in the home version, but I don't know the details of that.
Perhaps those backward compatibility features rendered it somewhat unreliable but the main reason I think is badly written (often pre-installed) virusscanners/firewalls that clogged the system most often over time.

[TheMagicM]

Hard to remember what exactly was the moment.   I remember seeing screenshots in C64 mags of games and they would have "Amiga screenshot" and it looked so good.  

I had seen the game "Hostages" at a local shop that dealt mostly with Commodore hardware.  It was the coolest game I'd ever seen.  The graphics, speed etc.    I had to get myself an Amiga 500.

[EugeneNine]

Windows NT4 had a 9x interface. Pre-4 NT windows versions had a Win3.1 interface.
Windows XP was practically based on Windows 2000, but the main 'difference' was that they ported the whole up-to-date directX library to it. Perhaps also some other backwards compatible features came with it and some server-specific functions were left out in the home version, but I don't know the details of that.
Perhaps those backward compatibility features rendered it somewhat unreliable but the main reason I think is badly written (often pre-installed) virusscanners/firewalls that clogged the system most often over time.

The biggest XP issue was IE.  With 2000 I could install or uninstall IE, XP it was forced in to win the court case and therefore no matter how hard you worked at securing XP IE was a big hole straight to the OS Kernel that was easily exploited. XP got better after a few years and three service packs but I still can't get an XP box (or win7) to go 9 months of daily use without needing a reboot (even if you exclude patching).

The second issue was lack of control of virtual memory.  I wasted one of my technet cases asking Microsoft why it was still swapping at 50% when I had set the reg key to swap at 99%, they told me they dropped support of that.  So when my W2k workstation could easily run 3-4 virtual guests XP fell over at 1-2.
The inability to repeatedly use USB or resume were two other big issues I had.  This was from a clean install without third party virus stuff either, those didn't start to get bad until later when they all tried to fix IE.
I saw many more XP BSOD's than I ever saw Amiga GURU's.  Win2k I ran the beta for 9 months without a reboot, suspending and resuming my laptop at home, the office and client sites.

[klx300r]

mid 80's and there was a Commodore dealer/ repair center called Comspec just a 10 minute bicycle ride from my parents house.  We used to marvel at all the new C64 games every weekend and one normal weekend there was an Amiga 1000 on display with the infamous Boing Ball demo running and when the guy at the store pulled down the screen and some other cool demos were running our teenage minds were just blown up..priceless:)

[Iggy]

Uh, why are we discussing Windows XP?

As to Amiga moments, the King Tut Sarcophagus HAM picture, anyone else with that one?

[EugeneNine]

The biggest thing I remember was ability to multitask.  I was in college at the time and nothing else could.  The Amiga I could have my word processor open, a drawing program to put diagrams in it and play music while I worked as well as download something from a BBS all at the same time.  Nothing else at the time could do it.

Though one could also say multitasking causes our overly short attention spans now a days and blame the Amiga for that

[Zadoc]

I was an Atari 8-bit user back in the mid-80's and was feeling the pressure from the Atari scene back then to upgrade to the Atari ST, however I just wasn't really wowed by any of the ST demos, apps, or games that I'd seen at the time.

One day I remember walking into an Electronics Boutique store in my local shopping mall and seeing what to me was the "Holy Grail" of gaming acheivements back then - a port of Dragon's Lair that captured the visual style of the arcade game (unlike the Coleco Adam and C=64 versions that took many liberties due to hardware constraints).

Utlitmately I opted to stick with my Atari 800XL for BBSing and gravitated towards the NES for gaming, but I would sell both systems in a few years to support my newly found interest in guitars. After I got out of high school in the early 90's I met musican and Amiga enthusiast through a local BBS and he introduced me to OctaMED 4. I bought a used A500 and 1084 for about $150, discovered that 512K of RAM wasn't enough for MED, and bought a trapdoor memory/clock expansion. Unfortunately the first card I bought only had a working clock, so I exchanged it for a card out of one of their floor model A500s (ironically the clock didn't work on this card).

I spent most of the 90's composing on OctaMED, gradually upgrading to a sidecar hard drive, then to an A3000, then to an A4000 with a notoriously bad Buster chip, and finally to an A1200 tower setup before a brief fling with an Amithlon setup. Although my fondest Amiga music memory was of the CDTV that I placed in a rack and used to gig with. We'd fit and entire scripted setlist (the startup-sequence loaded an IFF image of our band logo and our setlist, awaited a button press from the remote, loaded each song - decompressed with powerpacker lib - and played via the MEDplayer) on a single 880KB floppy. It impressed a lot of people in the late 90s. Those were great times. :-)

[Pentad]

...I turned at him and said: This computer was made for me

You know, I think that is the best description of the Amiga I've ever heard.

It really did feel like it was made for me...for how I think. Probably for all of us. Though I enjoy Windows, Linux, and MacOS, I probably had the most fun with the Amiga.

I remember seeing the Miami Vice demo on the Amiga 1000 (playing the theme) and just being blown away with how good it sounded. Watching Flight Simulator for DOS in a window on the Amiga with Sidecar. King Tut in Dpaint probably sold a bunch of Amigas as well...

[midway]

I had two friends, just starting high school in swizerland, who had an amiga 2000. One showed me firepower, batman, dark castle and marble madness. I was thrilled with firepower. The other one showed me deluxe paint, digi paint 3 and defender of the crown, outrun. Man i was in my parents ears until i got my own with printer and monitor for 4k at the time.
Got so many buddies through the amiga, had some great times with that machine. Still have it and working with 2091 2630 hd and cdrom, through 3 psus and battery replaced of course. Later i acquired a couple of 4000s and 4000ts which i sold to make it through University better. Good times!

[modrobert]

Watching the Wild Copper demo shortly after getting my A500, must have been 1988, or 1989.

[vince_6]

You know, I think that is the best description of the Amiga I've ever heard.

It really did feel like it was made for me...for how I think. Probably for all of us. Though I enjoy Windows, Linux, and MacOS, I probably had the most fun with the Amiga.

I remember seeing the Miami Vice demo on the Amiga 1000 (playing the theme) and just being blown away with how good it sounded. Watching Flight Simulator for DOS in a window on the Amiga with Sidecar. King Tut in Dpaint probably sold a bunch of Amigas as well...

Well except for this we have something else in common, same avatar on youtube :-D

[scuzzb494]

I was on my way to college and walking through Smiths in Walsall taking a shortcut from the bus station and there sitting in a glass case in the middle if the shop was a ZX81. It really was a Waynes World kind of moment ' Oh yes it will be mine '.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7jJnwEeiU0

I kinda had the same feeling about the VIC 20 in the window of Dixons in Birmingham as I travelled to work. In those days I think most that sat by me on the bus must have thought I was bonkers as I read pages and pages of machine code.

And the Amiga... I was transfixed by this full screen animation of a female eye just blinking at me in Lansdown Computers window in Bournemouth.

I guess when you're addicted you gotta have your fix. Still the same today. Probably too late to get help.... I have a GVP Turbo on the go in the next room on a 500 and I'm raring to go. As you do.

PS Here is my ZX81 with expansion and keyboard that I got from a Sinclair Exhibition in Edinburgh... That was a long journey from the Midlands I can tell you. But worth it.

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/car_0108/car1207190.jpg

[Haranguer]

My mother was a teacher, and her school sent her to a presentation of the Apple Lisa - this occurred before the release of the Mac, of course - and the people there told her about a wonderful new machine called Lorraine that would be so much better than the Lisa.

As soon as I heard about it, I started waiting breathlessly for it's release.

[agami]

My story is similar to that of tasmania guy. During my high school years the C64 was very popular, it was the thing to have. For most it was a gaming computer, but this one friend and I used our machines for more than just games. He even went as far as writing a couple of simple games for it. I still remember our long assembly debugging sessions.

We were aware of the Amiga from reading computer magazines. It had high appeal, both from specs and from the view of an existing Commodore user. No one in our small town had the money or the inclination to get the A1000. Many years later, my friend was the first to move to the Amiga (A500). I went over to his place to check it out. After seeing Test Drive and F/A-18 Interceptor I was convinced and determined to follow the same upgrade path. Being a broke student, it took me about a year before I could get my very own A500.

That was the first Amiga moment. And I've had other Amiga moments after that. Sometimes from witnessing the power of a new peripheral and matching software, and other times when seeing new Amiga models, e.g. A3000, A1200, CD32. I remember when I saw the Microcosm intro on a CD32 at our local Amiga re-seller. This in an era of Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive (Genesis). And whilst not an Amiga per se, when I first saw the Casablanca video editor being demoed, I really wanted one.