The Beginning

[A4000Bear]

I started with a VIC-20 back in 1981, then quickly progressed to a C-64. I remember comparing the C-64 to a friend's new $5000 PC-XT. The PC was so far behind, it was laughable!

My first Amiga came in 1988, an A500 (I had been drooling over the A1000 ever since I first heard of it, but was never able to afford it). I later purchased a "Spirit Inboard" 1.5MB RAM expansion for about $1,500.

My second A500 was in 1990, it was a rev 6, with the 1MB Agnes chip. The old 500 was sold. I also purchased an A590 for it.

In 1992 I purchased an A2000. I hacked it to take my A590 temporarily until I could afford a proper SCSI card for it. A few weeks later I purchased a GVP-series II with 105MB Quantum and 2MB Fast Ram for $1,700!!!! Over the next couple of years I added a VXL-30 accelerator, more RAM, Retina II graphics card.....

Just before Commodore died in 1994, I got my A4000, and use it to this day as my primary computer (despite numerous attempts to jump ship to the PC). The A4000 has now been heavily expanded, Micronik tower case and Zorro expander, Cyberstorm PPC, Cybervision PPC, and numerous other expansion cards.

Last year I purchased an Amiga One, and am still awaiting OS4. (Why is it Australia is always LAST in getting Amiga stuff!!)

Incidentally, a couple of years ago I purchased an Athlon XP1800 system for running Amithlon and Windows XP. I was never able to get windows to work to my satisfaction (I refuse to wait 5 mins for a system to boot!), so I dismembered the PC and used the case and other accessories for my Amiga One.

Over the years, I have also accumulated other Amigas, such as more A500s, 1200s, another 2000, an A3000, CD32....

David

[vic20owner]

Well, a little off topic, but I have to admit that Windows XP is the first M$ operating system which I can live with. Sure it's a sloppy house guest, and it's sort of stubborn at times, but for the most part it's dependable (as long as you are careful with service packs) and fairly plug and play.

Ok back to the Amiga... I forgot to mention that when I bought my first A500, I told the dealer I wanted a REV6 motherboard.  This was the one which had 512K on the board and chip holes for another 512.  Basically this meant you could have 1MB chip ram without an expansion card if you just obtained the chips.

The dealer opened about 4 A500 cases until they found a REV 6 motherboard. What fun! The best part is I never got around to using those extra chip sockets.... I bought a GVP harddrive/ram expansion instead, and used the A501 and cut a jumper to get 1MB of chipram in addition to the gvp fast ram.

I sure miss those days.  Cruising at 2400, mods playing, disks formatting... Amiga in all it's glory...

-tom

[Naeem]

All those drugs in the late 70's / early 80's!  :-)

Now I remember! For a while (before the C64 era) I did have a Vic20, I can picture myself playing some cartridge based game, Defender ? It was F**** A, back then :-)

And one of those atari things, the original console, one of those is somehwere in distant memory too :-)

But yeah in terms of Amiga-specific history I think thats covered above :-)


One thing though,  dont you guys see what made the old Commodores / Amiga sell?  Value.  Plain old fashioned value.

Though the HW wasnt anything to write home about, it certainly was not substandard, the SW was so lean it kicked ass :-)  

The key was that the price was many-fold lower than competitors products that were in some cases under-specced (even if we just took a HW view!)

Seems to be in direct contrast to todays A1 situation.  There are similarities.  We are still trying to use the OS to leverage some gains out of recent HW.  The thing that is missing though is value.

It costs more and we can do less with it.  If it really was carrying on the legacy of those early machines then OS4 would run on the cheapest boards and have capabilities exceeding any top-end ix86 system.  Could that happen today?

I dont think so.  I think competitors OS's arent as wasteful as they were in the old days, and hence we have lost a major competitive advantage.  Just the nostalgia / anti-mainstream sentiment that is fuelling sales now.

AROS might live up to this though.  We'll have to see how it turns out.

:-)

[Cymric]

I got my A500 with Kickstart 1.2 in 1987, at most two months after it came out in the Netherlands. I had been happily playing about with my Schneider CPC464 until that time, but found it hard to do something worthwhile with. Also, the cassette deck was becoming an annoying pain. I was looking at other, bigger computers (mostly PCs) when I was offered an Amiga leaflet. I liked the specs, and bought it along with a monitor.

Then I didn't do a damn thing with it, since there was a chronic lack of software for the machine, and what there was, was hideously expensive. If it wasn't for my mother spotting a German magazine at a store in 1988, and some timely translations of Data Becker books ('The Big AmigaBASIC Book', 'Tips & Tricks for the Amiga', etc.) I might have sold it off a year later. I hammered away in BASIC, typed in many programs and hex code listings. I managed to upgrade to Kickstart 1.3, and eventually started swapping games a little. Illegal as hell, of course, even though the cracks were done by mystical groups in Germany and Denmark. Those were the days.

Then slowly real life caught up with me, as I needed to run software for my study in chemical engineering which my Amiga could not cope with. (Neither in CPU-power nor in compatibility.) I had two machines in my room for many months, and at some time even upgraded the A500 to a A500+, then added an aging A590 with SCSI-1 harddisk. Eventually, the A500 was replaced by a A4000/030. I did my best coding on that machine, as I finally was able to get hold of a decent C-compiler at an affordable price. I wasted more money in equipping it first with a 68882, then with a 68040-card, a SCSI-controller and a CyberVision64. What money was left I spent on the PC, which was running at 10 times the speed of the Amiga 8 years ago. When I moved out, I sold off the A4000 and haven't regretted that for a second. Well, sometimes I miss the simplicity of DeluxePaint or PhotoPaint, and there are times when I code (for Linux) when I wished I could look something up in an Amiga manual.

Recently, I have given AROS a try, but threw away the CD after about an hour or so. It felt weird to be staring at (and using) a Workbench-clone. It was light-years behind the GUIs I've come to use and expect from a computer system. I applaud the efforts being undertaken in order to make sure that the core Amiga system lives on---although not in the form many diehards and fanboys would like---they truly are impressive projects. But I also found the efforts naively, nearly tragically pointless and futile. I also realised that people should abandon the idea of porting Mozilla or Firefox to the system (even AmigaOS4): the Amiga is too simplistic to be burdened by such complex beasts. I felt it as being sacriligeous in some way.

For me, the Amiga was mortally injured Commodore turned turtle, and it was irrevocably dead by the time I sold off the 4000. A few times I wondered about getting a system for a few bucks and tinker with it, but I think I'd rather like a CPC in that case. The Amiga, I mastered. The CPC I never did, so that offers a challenge at least, even if it is just a minor one.

[Naeem]

Hmmm.

A few good points.  I havent used AROS so cant contribute any comments towards it.

You are right a lot of the Amiga revival is based on denial.

For me however the lure is in seeing the birth of an alternative OS.  I would love for Amiga OS to become feature-rich and push forward OS design, as WB did in previous years.

Not likely to happen if any growth is strangled before it is realised with oppressive HW regimes.

It needs to be targeted at a wider user base, perhaps the entire alternative OS market.  Moreover it needs a model that will make it money so that it can afford to continue to evolve.

Both of these I dont think are objectives of the propietors yet.

[kvasarnomad]

my first amiga was my brothers A600 which he bought a very long time ago(dont know) the first amiga I bought was my A1200 that was last chrismas.
Since then I have bought another A600 some months ago AND today I have recieved my third A600 :-P
ARRRGGG I just love those A600 :-D

[SilvrDrgn]

My first Amiga was an A500 that I bought from a friend.  Took it to college with me to write/print reports on, do BBSing with it, play games and MOD files.  An electrical engineering student down the hall built his own parallel port sound board from scratch for his Win-DOHS PC.  He also collected MODs and other music files that we traded back and forth.  I had my A500 connected to my 150 W/channel stereo with big 'ol tower speakers (those 15 inch woofers can really pound) to blast MODs and game sound effects from.  He'd always come running down to my dorm room whenver I cranked up the MODs.  Ahh.... the good old days.

I still have that very A500.  See my computers -> here.