My interest in the Amiga started early, at the age of six, when I
began to observe the captures of the screens of the games that appeared
in a magazine of the time, Crash (ZX Spectrum).
So that you may have the opportunity to know more about my course, I leave here a summary of my experience with the Amiga until the creation of the Vamped Amiga Telegram channel.
My Introduction to the Amiga home computer
The game screens in Amiga were almost
always better graphically to the other platforms of the time (1987), and
sometimes quite superior.
After a while I had the opportunity to listen to some tapes with recordings of songs from various games, when to my amazement the audio was at the level of the best graphics I had observed in Crash.
The fascination began there…
That wonderful machine presented to the
public in 1985, had come into contact with me, only through the
photographs of a simple magazine and some audio tapes.
Never again was it the same, because even though my elder brother owns a Timex TC 2048 (compatible Sinclair ZX Spectrum), I always compare Spectrum games with the Amiga.
The difference in some titles was abysmal either at the sound or graphic level.
When in 1991 we had the misfortune of the Timex TC 2048 crash while playing Robocop, one of the great titles for Spectrum.
Not everything was bad news, because after the storm comes always the bonanza. Amiga 600 introduced me to the Amiga
It was here that the opportunity to acquire a fabulous Amiga 600 appeared on Christmas 1992, by the way in one of the best Portuguese computer stores, 26 years ago.
Contact with the Amiga 600 was the
beginning of a new stage, for the first time had come into contact with a
serious personal computer, which exuded power and features never before
seen.
Applications such as Deluxe Paint,
Personal Paint, Final Writer, Final Calc, HippoPlayer, PowerPacker,
Turbo Imploder, and X-Copy proved to be of great utility and efficiency.
At that time, although it was a platform
clearly superior to the rest, it was unimaginable for us to reach it,
but with the passage of time we realized that the possibilities were
almost limitless.
Amiga gave multitasking and Efficiency a totally new Meaning
The multitasking and multimedia
capabilities, always carried out with great efficiency, still today are
only surpassed by the brute force of the processing of more recent
machines.
We did not know that we were in the
presence of the “father” of modern computing. Intros, crackers, demos,
games and applications, most of them consume relatively few resources.
Amiga 880 KB floppy’s introduced me to True Multimedia Wonders
The experience of inserting a 880 KB
floppy disk into a computer with just 1 MB of RAM, which instantly
brought true multimedia wonders (intros, crackers, demos, games,
applications) to the monitor and speakers.
What other platform had in 1989 a compressor with ambient music?
Yes, the Amiga already had the Turbo Imploder.
Amiga Demoscene has brought us and continues to bring some of the best 2D, 3D and audio effects that a computer can offer.
In my computer classes some of the most powerful computers were 486 DX2 with 66 MHz. They had Windows 3.11 or some Linux distro installed, and their capabilities were markedly lower than Workbench 2.0.
My classmates who had the honor of attending some demos and games on our Amiga 600, they kept their mouths open.
How could a machine so small and relatively unknown to them, charge so much multimedia capability ?!
This was all at a time when most PCs still only knew how to whistle.
“Commodore’s high point was the Amiga 1000 (1985). The Amiga was so far ahead of its time that almost nobody – including Commodore’s marketing department – could fully articulate what it was all about. multimedia computer, but in those days it was given to a game machine because few people grasped the importance of advanced graphics, sound, and video. Nine years later, vendors are still struggling to make systems that work like 1985 Amigas.–Byte Magazine, August 1994“
Amiga Clubs and Interest disappearing in 1994, but I kept my passion alive
In 1994, I was forced to buy a PC
(Pentium), in order to use the software (Pascal, C compilers, etc.) that
we used in the Computer Technology Course.
Amiga’s clubs and stores were disappearing little by little in the area where he lived over the years.
At the moment I only have the pleasure
to have a store in my zone that owns a museum of retro computers. Here
they got several Amiga home computers among other platforms.
In 2003, I acquired another PC (Pentium
4), which I used for several years to run the Fellow, WinFellow, FS-UAE,
WinUAE among other things. The Amiga bug however always stayed. I’ve
been trying to keep up with community news over the years, and that was
one of the reasons that made me join social networks.
However to try to contribute in some way to our wonderful community (Amiga), I decided to create a Amiga News Channel on the Telegram, where everyone can follow the latest news that I share.
At this moment I look forward to the arrival of the Apollo Vampire V4 standalone. There is nothing like a real Amiga and in this case updated with some of the more modern techniques.
I’m powered by the Amiga!
