Well I'll start with a bit of a "Introduce yourself".
Got my first Amiga in (I think) 1988 - I was involved with a little outfit making community videos - we acquired a Amiga 500 + genlocker for captions and bits of graphics stuff. Got me sufficiently interested to buy my personal 500 - Basic job with A501 + external floppy. I was already into my 30s by this time. I spent untold hours futzing around with (mostly) Deluxe Paint III - learnt just about keyboard shortcut for that programme. To this day I think its one of the best-designed computer programmes I've encountered. Never really got into playing Amiga games.
Few months later decided I needed a hard drive - got a A590 with 20MB MFM drive - cost me a small fortune
.... but I thought "20MB !! I'll never fill all that !! ". Heh.
Soon after I got a mate to sell me a used 40MB Quantum SCSI drive for the A590 .... and wow - also 3MB of RAM !
Round about this time I started to get a few bits of work with Team 4 Video - because I had some knowledge of video edit suites and knew some stuff about Amiga.
Team 4 was actually a registered Commodore develeoper (long story) and supplied Amiga systems to corporate clients for video work.
I got a deal on a A2000+2091 at trade price through Team 4 - and - long-term loan of a A2630 card - wow was I chuffed with that 68030 setup - but it was _horrible_ when I had to return the 2630
Coupla years later - I think it was around the time C= went t*ts up - I got a very good deal on a 3000, as Team 4 were getting out of supplying Amiga, so I sold the 2000 ..... but yeah that 3000 was a lovely machine. For a while it had a (on-loan) PAR system in it - well 'ard.
But around this time I was also getting into PCs a bit - building them etc. Then my Amiga 3000 started going dicky - chip memory was playing up. The 3000 sat in bits for a while - then I wound up selling it for peanuts :-/ The PC was my main machine by this time anyway - and I was getting bits of PC-related work .....
Forward a few years .... in about 2001-2002 (I think) I inherited a bunch of Amiga stuff from an animation outfit who had long-since abandoned Amiga - were moving premises and I got a 1200 with 030 card, a PAR system, load of hardware like Picasso card, AD516 card ...... loads of stuff. Sold most of it very cheaply (via usenet I think). Never had a thought about using Amiga really at that time.
Soooooo ..... forward to now - WHY-O-WHY do I want an Amiga NOW ?????? Please can someone explain ?
[Just settling down on the couch now]
Seems like most Amiga folk in here get nostalgic about Amiga gaming - and I get that completely. Its why most of the amazing new Amiga hardware projects are gaming orientated (like TF530, Gotek/whload etc.) - and it makes perfect sense.
But why do _I_ want one ? I mean there are plenty of folk spending sizeable money on 060/PPC cards/upgrades + all the rest if it - now surely this is not for gaming - is it ?
So whats going on ? Do we just hanker after systems we had in the past ?
I currently have a A2000 rescued from someone's effects after he died .... was in his basement man cave as part of his home video setup. Highly likely it hadn't been used for many years. Got a 2090A + 46MB MFM drive in it
- horrible thing really - amazing it still works.
But the A2000 is the transit van of Amigas - I like it- but its too big/unwieldy. I think an Amiga is something I want to take out now and again and futz around with - not a permanent fixture, as I don't have space to leave it set up .... and its too slow to be "satisying" to use. Of course a 2630 card would be nice - but the prices ..... ouch. Then I'd need a 2091 or similar (another 100 quid or so) .... then more on a stupidly over-priced SCSI HDD .... grrr.
So I looked into TF530 - I really like that project - but the only 2MB RAM is a bit of a deal-breaker - fine for games, but not great for DPaint, Scala etc.
Also AGA would be nice - but 1200's go for lots of money - then you've gotta spend a whole load more on 32-bit CPUs, memory etc. Grrrr .... how I can I justify spending several hundred quid on a machine that can't really do anything _useful_ ..... I could build a turbo-nutter i7 machine for less !!
BUT - I still want one - at least something better than 68000 that a bit nice and snappy. Why ?
Sorry for the length of this
P.S. Other cmputers I've owned and futzed with previously (some just briefly)
Apple PCi Powermac, G4
Sun SS20, UltraSparc 5
SGI O2 and Indigo 2
Got my first Amiga in (I think) 1988 - I was involved with a little outfit making community videos - we acquired a Amiga 500 + genlocker for captions and bits of graphics stuff. Got me sufficiently interested to buy my personal 500 - Basic job with A501 + external floppy. I was already into my 30s by this time. I spent untold hours futzing around with (mostly) Deluxe Paint III - learnt just about keyboard shortcut for that programme. To this day I think its one of the best-designed computer programmes I've encountered. Never really got into playing Amiga games.
Few months later decided I needed a hard drive - got a A590 with 20MB MFM drive - cost me a small fortune
.... but I thought "20MB !! I'll never fill all that !! ". Heh.Soon after I got a mate to sell me a used 40MB Quantum SCSI drive for the A590 .... and wow - also 3MB of RAM !
Round about this time I started to get a few bits of work with Team 4 Video - because I had some knowledge of video edit suites and knew some stuff about Amiga.
Team 4 was actually a registered Commodore develeoper (long story) and supplied Amiga systems to corporate clients for video work.
I got a deal on a A2000+2091 at trade price through Team 4 - and - long-term loan of a A2630 card - wow was I chuffed with that 68030 setup
- but it was _horrible_ when I had to return the 2630 Coupla years later - I think it was around the time C= went t*ts up - I got a very good deal on a 3000, as Team 4 were getting out of supplying Amiga, so I sold the 2000 ..... but yeah that 3000 was a lovely machine. For a while it had a (on-loan) PAR system in it - well 'ard.
But around this time I was also getting into PCs a bit - building them etc. Then my Amiga 3000 started going dicky - chip memory was playing up. The 3000 sat in bits for a while - then I wound up selling it for peanuts :-/ The PC was my main machine by this time anyway - and I was getting bits of PC-related work .....
Forward a few years .... in about 2001-2002 (I think) I inherited a bunch of Amiga stuff from an animation outfit who had long-since abandoned Amiga - were moving premises and I got a 1200 with 030 card, a PAR system, load of hardware like Picasso card, AD516 card ...... loads of stuff. Sold most of it very cheaply (via usenet I think). Never had a thought about using Amiga really at that time.
Soooooo ..... forward to now - WHY-O-WHY do I want an Amiga NOW ?????? Please can someone explain ?
[Just settling down on the couch now]
Seems like most Amiga folk in here get nostalgic about Amiga gaming - and I get that completely. Its why most of the amazing new Amiga hardware projects are gaming orientated (like TF530, Gotek/whload etc.) - and it makes perfect sense.
But why do _I_ want one ? I mean there are plenty of folk spending sizeable money on 060/PPC cards/upgrades + all the rest if it - now surely this is not for gaming - is it ?
So whats going on ? Do we just hanker after systems we had in the past ?
I currently have a A2000 rescued from someone's effects after he died .... was in his basement man cave as part of his home video setup. Highly likely it hadn't been used for many years. Got a 2090A + 46MB MFM drive in it
- horrible thing really - amazing it still works.But the A2000 is the transit van of Amigas - I like it- but its too big/unwieldy. I think an Amiga is something I want to take out now and again and futz around with - not a permanent fixture, as I don't have space to leave it set up .... and its too slow to be "satisying" to use. Of course a 2630 card would be nice - but the prices ..... ouch. Then I'd need a 2091 or similar (another 100 quid or so) .... then more on a stupidly over-priced SCSI HDD .... grrr.
So I looked into TF530 - I really like that project - but the only 2MB RAM is a bit of a deal-breaker - fine for games, but not great for DPaint, Scala etc.
Also AGA would be nice - but 1200's go for lots of money - then you've gotta spend a whole load more on 32-bit CPUs, memory etc. Grrrr .... how I can I justify spending several hundred quid on a machine that can't really do anything _useful_ ..... I could build a turbo-nutter i7 machine for less !!
BUT - I still want one - at least something better than 68000 that a bit nice and snappy. Why ?
Sorry for the length of this
P.S. Other cmputers I've owned and futzed with previously (some just briefly)
Apple PCi Powermac, G4
Sun SS20, UltraSparc 5
SGI O2 and Indigo 2
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