Re: how did you get started?
Sorry. this is long!
For me it all began at the arcades. Everywhere you went at the very end of the 70's and beginning of the 80's you would find arcades and my Dad would give me a pile of 10 pence pieces and let me have some fun. Playing Space Invaders, Galaxian, Galaga, Donkey Kong, and Pac-Man. And one favourite of mine was always Q*bert.
Some neighbours over the road also owned an Atari 2600 and when we visited, their kids (who were a few years older than me), would load up some games for me to play. A few years later they gave me the Atari 2600 and I've still got it and it still works.
A friend of my parents also worked for IBM at the time, and when we would visit their house he would load up the latest games he had and let me play them whilst they chatted. That was one of the original early IBM PCs with the huge desktop case and 5.25" drives. A model 5100 series IBM PC I think.
Then at infant school we got an Acorn BBC A and that got me really interested in computers. A couple of friends then got BBC B's at home and I would go round after school to play some games. Another friend then got a ZX Spectrum, and again we would play some games after school.
Then in 1984 my parents could see that computers were going to be important in the future, and so decided to save up to buy me one that Christmas. They didn't have any money so it was a big thing for them. We visited some stores together and initially they wanted to buy an Acorn BBC Micro as the schools were using them and they thought that would be the best. However they were expensive and they just couldn't afford one. They were then thinking of buying me a C64, as mum is very musical and she was impressed with the music bundle that included the musical keyboard that fitted over the C64's keyboard. However they then saw the new (in 1984) Amstrad CPC464 computer which came with its own colour monitor. And as they would have needed to also buy me a TV for any of the other systems they decided the Amstrad was the better value computer, so I ended up getting an Amstrad CPC464 with colour monitor for Christmas 1984.
Being the only person I knew with a CPC I couldn't swap or copy games for it. So I had to buy games when I could afford them. And not being able to buy many I started to copy the code listings included in magazines. I also got books out of the local library. Most were for the BBC or Spectrum, but I noticed the code was very similar so played around changing it until it ran on the CPC.
Then my school got a BBC Master and started to do some very interesting things with it. Connecting a mouse up to it (not the mouse we use today, but a physical device on wheels with sensors that could negotiate a maze) and we were allowed to try and write using a simple language to control it. And after being involved with the Doomsday project we then got a laserdisc player to access the project and that was really the first thing that showed me some future possibilities of computers and got me interested in computer multimedia.
Going to secondary school in 1985 I made lots of new friends who had computers. One as really into the ZX Spectrum and it was often at his house that I would first get tom play most new game releases. I would then buy the best ones for the CPC and he would then come round to play the better versions of the same games. We also visited arcades together throughout the late 80's to play all the latest games. The arcade in Portsmouth/SouthSea was the best in the area and we would go there by train.
In 1987 our secondary school got the new Acorn Archimedes. These were the 300 and 400 models. These computers were way ahead of anything else I'd ever seen. The Arthur OS (later RISC OS) was miles ahead of anything I had used before, and it was the first time I got to use a mouse and WIMP based OS for any length of time (I had played around on Macs before this).
The Archimedes instantly made me decided I needed to move into this new evolving 16-bit era. I had been reading a lot about the Atari ST during its development, and continued to follow it via magazines. I didn't know much about the competing Amiga at the time as most cross platform UK magazines at the time were not covering it as much as the ST. However I realised the Amiga was more powerful and the games were better, but it cost £100 more than the ST, and games were released on both platforms. I saved up for most of the year and my parents gave me £100 (that year's Christmas present) towards it, but still didn't have enough money for an Amiga so I ended up buying an Atari 520 STFM in 1987.
I then spent the next 3/4 years as an Atari ST user and really enjoyed the platform. I always knew it wasn't as good as the Amiga, but the games were still good and whilst TOS and GEM were complete crap compared to Workbench or RISCOS, it still allowed me to do word processing using 1st word plus, and it got me into graphical art using a package called Degas Elite. I remember seeing that package reviewed in a magazine and saving up for it, getting the bus into town and reading the manual on the way home, rushing into the house and loading it up. The cycling colour feature used for a waterfall picture really impressed me. I also got hold of STOS (the ST programming language for games that was later ported to the Amiga as AMOS) and spent ages playing around with it, but I never coded games. I used it to create interactive presentations and multimedia programs.
During this time I was visiting the local tip one day and discovered an Amstrad PC 1512 computer. The main system and monitor cases were both cracked but I took it home anyway. And it worked. So I had an old working PC. The first PC compatible I had owned.
Games wise I still looked at the Amiga versions and wished I had an Amiga, but having spent so much on the ST I stuck with the ST. A few friends had A500's and I would play games on them and so I knew what they were capable of.
Then finally in 1991 with the launch of the Amiga A600 I was walking past a Dixons store and noticed the A600 for sale at an introductory special price of £199. I went home and couldn't stop thinking about finally being able to own an Amiga. So I got the bus back into the city centre the same afternoon and bought one! And that was the beginning of my long term love and enjoyment of the Amiga.
The A600 instantly took over from the Atari ST and became my main computer. I used that through college for word processing and graphics, spending money on a digitizer to capture video to do some stop frame animation, and playing loads of games. Then in 1993 I bought an A1200, and then a CD32 on its launch. Before owning an Amiga I had seen the CDTV and had really wanted one, but they were really expensive, so when the CD32 was released I had to have one. Such a shame it never really took off.
Towards the end of the Amiga's life I also bought my first new console. A SNES. In 1994 I think. And one of the original gameboys. I had been looking at the console market the whole time I had owned STs and Amigas and always wanted to be able to play the games they had in addition to the great games on the Amiga. So I finally bit the bullet and got one.
Then at university in 1996 a friend on my course said he was getting rid of his old Amiga as he had just bought a new PC and didn't want it any more. I then discovered it was an A4000 and had to have it. So for £250 I bought the A4000 from him. A great price at the time you have to agree! And it wasn't just the computer. He delivered it to my house and he gave me everything he had for the Amiga. 2 monitors, 3 disk boxes containing over 800 disks, tons of original games and software and loads of extra hardware such as a MIDI interface. That was a great deal.
I then used that A4000 as my main system for the first two years of my university course. However I knew the Amiga was quickly falling behind in capabilities and games were not begin developed or released. So at the beginning of 1997 I bought a Playstation to be able to play the latest games.
But in 1998 at the end of the second year of my university course I knew I needed a good PC as we were doing multimedia design that needed it. Especially for using Macromedia Director, and the newly released Flash. And also so I could get hold of Photoshop for myself to use at home. So I saved all summer and at the end of August 1998 I bought my first new PC. A Pentium 2 400MHz with 256MB ram, 12GB HD, DVD-Rom, 4x CD-RW, 8MB G460 graphics card, 12MB Voodoo 2, Soundblaster audio card, Buz video capture and SCSI card, SCSI A4 flatbed scanner, and 21" CRT monitor. That cost me something like £2600.
That PC was a good investment though as it got me through the final year of my course, and also allowed me to learn Photoshop properly, as well as do video editing, 3D and play the latest PC games. Plus learning web design and many other design related things.
Then in 2000 I decided to buy a Dreamcast. I'm not 100% sure why I decided to get one, but I'm glad I did. Most people just view it as an unsuccessful system, but I loved it. It had some amazing games and I think the DC hardware was really good for the time. Christmas of that year I then got a PS2, and so my buying of every console released began. That soon followed by a Gamecube, and eventually an Xbox.
Since then I've build many newer PCs. And this got me into computer hardware more seriously. I've now build loads of PCs for other people, and regularly fix them for people too.
As for the Amiga. I kept the A600, A1200, A4000 and CD32 and still played and used them alongside the PC. I did lose interest for a bit and packed them all away. But continued to use Amiga emulation. I then started classicamiga.com and the Amiga collecting bug continued. Friends gave me their old Amiga's they no longer wanted, along with software. So I have ended up with A500's and A500 Plus's as well. I also had an A1500 for a while that was given to me when a school was having a clear out. It worked for a while, but it then died, so I sold it for spares. I still would love to own a CDTV though.
and that began the road that i travel on now...
)
And i had given my old Amiga's to my nephews (what a loss, actually, they did give much care for those