Keeping the Amiga dream alive!
Back in the late 90's most people were starting to put their dusty old Amigas up in the loft, and moving on with much sleeker and modern Playstations and PCs.
However, an elite group of us, known as Amigans hung onto our beloved platform and raced it against the almighty PC, with a belief and hope that one day, the Amiga would rise again and that it would be Back for the Future.

I must admit, it was quite amazing, how a system shipped in 1992 with a 14Mhz Processor and 2MB of RAM was happily standing up against Pentium 3 Windows 98 machines. By towering an Amiga 1200, gave room to some amazing expansion and upgrades. In fact I was running a dual 68040/25mhz PPC603+ 200mhz processor. With 32MB RAM, 8MB Permidia 3D 2 Graphics card. 10GB hard Disk, CD Writer, Zip drive and more. I was running a desktop operating system far better than what Microsoft were offering at the time.

Even with PCs getting bigger and better. I was still achieving the same, if not better results from the aged Amiga with only a fraction of the horsepower. That system was years ahead of its time, and its somewhat criminal that to this day we are now reliant on 3Ghz processors, high end graphics cards just to achieve basic stuff. I mean what fundamental things are we doing with computers now that we weren't doing 10 years ago? The only advancements have been communications and video. The Amiga community squeezed every bit of resource they could out of the custom chips and made some amazing things out of so little. With overpowered, overheating crap we have now, programmers are just lazy and rely on the hardware to cover up inefficient design.

Even in 2002, I was still running my Amiga, in fact I was hosting my website off it! And with its true multitasking capabilities, I was also running an interactive shoutcast radio station from it. FTP Server, IRC Server and my regular desktop interaction. Being completely invincible against viruses, nukes, evilpings etc, yet having the tools to whoop ass on the internet made me somewhat of a legend on some darker IRC networks at the time.

What killed the Amiga for me, was the World Wide Web was advancing faster than any Amiga browser at the time. So my Amiga then became a server, and I had to finally get a crappy PC to access websites and stuff that I needed. Still, my Amiga then became my file server over a Local Area Network with Samba until she finally retired in 2004. I know of others that kept the dream alive longer than I did.

I still miss Amiga Workbench even when using Windows 7. I mean just look in your windows folder. What a mess, everything bunged in there. Amiga OS was beautiful and slick. So neatly organised, so efficient. I’ve yet to see a PC boot quicker than my Amiga did. So called "New" stuff, such as Codecs were there in Amiga Workbench from 1990 known as Datatypes. Portable Apps were actually pretty normal for Amiga. Most apps ran quite happily on the original shared DLLs (known as libraries) built into the O.S. I would love to see a world where Amiga had carried on developing at the rate it started. We'd be 10 years ahead of where we are now.

I still don’t understand why you have to "Shut Down" a computer when you finished using it. Do you run a Shut Down on your TV, your Hoover, your Microwave or your car when you finish using it? No! You just switch it off!
(Miggyman, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 14:32, 14 replies)

I didn't have an Amiga but
I had a 166 MHz Pentium with 32 MB of RAM and 1 meg of video memory. I was sad when its motherboard got fried.
(Archeleus hates cabbage, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 14:37, closed)

At the time...
I would have celebrated the demise of another Peeee Ceee. (I was rather passionate about the Amiga :) )
(Miggyman, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 14:45, closed)

I love this QOTW
I like it when other Amiga geeks come out of the woodwork :)

Whilst my fondness for the machine is mostly nostalgic (Anything after about 1998 I'm not that bothered about) I love digging out old stuff, especially disk magazines, demos and PD games.

Although I have to say, most of my Amiga stuff is done through emulation now, despite the fact I have an A1200 sat there, seemingly for decorative reasons.
( Mike Fishcake teamfishcake.co.uk - better than your mum's face, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 14:41, closed)

So many Amiga people have come out of the woodwork
I'm wondering just how many of the things are still up and running.
(Leonard Hatred briefly did some work on, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 16:01, closed)

I don't understand most of what you typed
but as a fellow Amiga user, I salute you *Salutes*
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 14:47, closed)

Mmm
I would have been your bestest friend and used you the CPU time. REAl3D and lightwave.
(waxdart hello., Fri 5 Nov 2010, 15:00, closed)

Woohoo
The Amiga was truly awesome. HaM was awesome. Fat(ter) Agnus was awesome. Paula was awesome. Best Christmas present I ever got (1988 I think... the Batman pack).
( Mr Spleen Can do better. C-, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 15:40, closed)

1989...
...actually!

/pedant.

I've already replied to two other Amiga centric posts here, suffice to say I know the platform well and have WinUAE running nicely at home.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Fri 5 Nov 2010, 15:53, closed)

You're right
I was still mucking about with the Acorn Electron when I was 13.
( Mr Spleen Can do better. C-, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 16:13, closed)

I could not afford an Amiga
I had a C64, and I really liked what you typed there, even if I don't understand 95% of it. Click.
(mersault, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 17:01, closed)

You shut down a computer
when it's too busy pissing memory out left right and centre onto the swap, and you risk it throwing a wobbly at not being able to load the IPL. If that's held on ROM then it's not really a problem.

Conclusion : disk based operating systems are a lot of mouse cock.

EDIT : Got a 1200 running off a compact flash / IDE adaptor. It is faster than shit off a shovel and never breaks.
(mymilkshakebringsallthemongstotheyard poison hearts, poison minds - joining hate, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 18:17, closed)

Bill gates ruined persnal computers.
For some reason a certain William Gates decided that computers needed to run a WIMP interface on top of their DOS and then decided it had to consume all resources without actually controlling anything.
If it weren't for Microsoft we would be using computers that consume far less power and crash less whilst doing the same as those today. Thanks to Bill and the other fucktards at Microsoft we are stuck using OSs designed upon older, shitter OSs.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 18:20, closed)

I think you'll find Apple ruined them first...
...If you believe the hype.

VIVA LA AMIGA!

Still, nice NIN ref in your username Me(You), I'm(You're) Not(Are?)
(xaer0mancer, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 22:15, closed)

Hating Windows 7? And hating Windows in general?
Delve into the world of Linux, for the same bullet-proofness your Amiga setup once had. No viruses, spyware issues, and runs like hot shit off a shovel. Been on my PC for six months with no bloatware shite at all. Has a boot time that shames most Windows PC's.

Try Ubuntu 10.4LTS. Wiped my PC of Windows 7 and keep it inside Oracle Virtualbox. It's like locking a unwanted ginger stepchild in the basement, Fritzel style.
(Panteneman Isn't entirely sure why he bothered on, Sun 7 Nov 2010, 19:44, closed)