Hello Everyone:
I guess I can start by saying, My name is Mike Needham and I am a fanatic Amigan.
My story starts with a young man very interested in computers and electronics and at about the age of 7 years old, I saw my first machine... A Tandy TRS-80 (not sure if it was a model 3 or 4, but of that ilk). A bit later, I found myself using Apple II/+/e in school and began to learn BASIC. Fast forward to junior high school where I was using IBM PCs as well as the Apple II series machines.
Around 1991, I began a BBS (The Electronic Oblivion BBS) which ran on Remote Access version 2 for about 2 years part-time. I still play with my BBS on an old 486 and recently acquired a license for MajorBBS with 64 nodes... obviously it was transferred ;-) I also acquired a DigiBoard with 16 ports which is a nice piece of serial hardware indeed.
In College I drank the Macintosh kool-aid and only recently got out of the cult of Mac in favor of staying with Linux on a PC and now really looking forward to what the Amiga X1000 offers as my next computer.
Oh yeah, I stated I am an Amigan earlier. I actually missed out on the hey day of the Commodore Amiga, but there is a VERY interesting personal history here. My first computer that I actually owned was to be an Amiga 2500 I saw in a local store. I was busily saving my sheckles to come up with the I believe $3000 for that system in about 1991 (I could be off on the year). I got to about half of the money and heard that Commodore was in trouble so decided not to invest in that system and instead bought a 386SX system from a mail order outfit. Around 1993, I went to work for a local ISP (who was a bulletin board system turned Internet provider and the owner/Sysop was a friend from my association in the BBS community). There I was in charge of Macintosh support (sipping the kool-aid) and general support overage on the PC side of the house. The ISP also supported Amiga and the fellow in charge of that end of the world got my interested once again in the Amiga. Then I was still unable to buy one and Commodore was actually out of business for all intents and purposes at this time. My experience at this ISP did two things to shape my future, 1) Interest in UNIX was fostered and we used a UNIX box in routers and DNS servers, I am a UNIX admin/developer today. 2) Sparked my interest in my current hobbies, especially the Amiga.
If you care to learn more about me, I welcome you to visit my LinkedIn profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/jmikeneedham
I guess I can start by saying, My name is Mike Needham and I am a fanatic Amigan.
My story starts with a young man very interested in computers and electronics and at about the age of 7 years old, I saw my first machine... A Tandy TRS-80 (not sure if it was a model 3 or 4, but of that ilk). A bit later, I found myself using Apple II/+/e in school and began to learn BASIC. Fast forward to junior high school where I was using IBM PCs as well as the Apple II series machines.
Around 1991, I began a BBS (The Electronic Oblivion BBS) which ran on Remote Access version 2 for about 2 years part-time. I still play with my BBS on an old 486 and recently acquired a license for MajorBBS with 64 nodes... obviously it was transferred ;-) I also acquired a DigiBoard with 16 ports which is a nice piece of serial hardware indeed.
In College I drank the Macintosh kool-aid and only recently got out of the cult of Mac in favor of staying with Linux on a PC and now really looking forward to what the Amiga X1000 offers as my next computer.
Oh yeah, I stated I am an Amigan earlier. I actually missed out on the hey day of the Commodore Amiga, but there is a VERY interesting personal history here. My first computer that I actually owned was to be an Amiga 2500 I saw in a local store. I was busily saving my sheckles to come up with the I believe $3000 for that system in about 1991 (I could be off on the year). I got to about half of the money and heard that Commodore was in trouble so decided not to invest in that system and instead bought a 386SX system from a mail order outfit. Around 1993, I went to work for a local ISP (who was a bulletin board system turned Internet provider and the owner/Sysop was a friend from my association in the BBS community). There I was in charge of Macintosh support (sipping the kool-aid) and general support overage on the PC side of the house. The ISP also supported Amiga and the fellow in charge of that end of the world got my interested once again in the Amiga. Then I was still unable to buy one and Commodore was actually out of business for all intents and purposes at this time. My experience at this ISP did two things to shape my future, 1) Interest in UNIX was fostered and we used a UNIX box in routers and DNS servers, I am a UNIX admin/developer today. 2) Sparked my interest in my current hobbies, especially the Amiga.
If you care to learn more about me, I welcome you to visit my LinkedIn profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/jmikeneedham
