Who Used / Is Still Using An Amiga?

After looking at this thread, which led me to this, I thought it would be interesting to see how many of us had / has an Amiga.

What did / do you use it for?
Music & Games

What’s your favourite thing about them?
The unpatronising OS, copper, and TRUE multitasking - way ahead of it’s time.

Would anyone like to see an OS4 port of renoise?
I would, but I guess that’s HIGHLY unlikely!!

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On Amiga I found trackers (Startrekker, which I have been using from 1993 to 1995), but also played videogames a lot.

edit:
just wanted to add that I don’t play the damned videogames anymore :)

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i just took mine out the cupboard yesterday. :)
just wanted to listen to some old tunes, and right now i’m having a hard time trying to find a place for it on my desk (and the monitor)

back in the days i had to weld the left & right cinch wires together to get the same sound on both speakers.

now i can send the left/right channel each to an individual mixer channel, pan them to center and have a 4 channel 2outputs tracking console. :)

the feature i most like on amiga is that the mouse cursor is actually a sprite.
you can’t compare it’s smootheness to the windows one.

i owned an amiga500 from 1989 till 1993.
upgrades it had were additional 5.25" + 3.5" floppies, +512kb RAM, 80MB SCSI HD with ~80ms access time.
from 89-92 i only played games (well, i was 11-14 years old) with 15, in 1993, i started writing 4 channel chip-tunes with protracker until i switched to a 486DX50 PC /w fasttracker 1.0 later that year.
been a great time, but i don’t really wanna go back anymore. =)

I retired my beloved Amiga and OctaMED five years ago. Now it’s collecting dust on the attic…

I got my first one in 1988 and just happened to get Soundtracker 1.0 from a friend a few days after. It was mostly about music and not so much about gaming and other stuff… Creating is so much more fun than playing games! :)

Thing I loved the most about the OS was probably the responsiveness of everything. When I switched to Windows I was amazed that some things (like the mouse cursor) were so slow and just felt awkward. Boot up time is another such issue…

Anyway, a port seems… well… not too likely as you say :) In that case I would much rather see a Zeta/BeOS port. Haven’t tried it for many years but then it was very resposive and simply had a good feeling about it which reminded me of AmigaOS.

I used an A500 and later an A1200. First with Protracker and Techno Sound Turbo Sampler (yeee ;) then with Miditracker. I used Miditracker until 2003, a really great tracker which has all midi-features you need - and a tight resolution (which is sadly still a lack of renoise).

Renoise for OS4 would be great, it would be definatly a reason to buy OS4; but unfortunatly it is really not that realistic, well let’s see how’s OS4 developing.

I loved the Amiga most for it’s reliability, stability and the warm feeling it gives me. And of course for the fantastic games.

Games are pretty much out the window for me too, they all lack that certain originality most of todays games offer (e.g: Cannon Fodder & Lemmings). I do like a bout on Colin McRae 2005 every now & then though.

BeOS… I heard about that, wasn’t it envisaged to be quite good for music apps?

I remember one of my old housemates working on soundfonts whilst using it, but never saw it in action, but did hear it. I’d like to see something comparable to Amiga OS again, it’s about time we had a change imo. I’m sure most devs wouldn’t like it much though.

My Amiga still remains pretty functional, (except on the odd occasion, when it gives me a yellow screen on boot, I just hit it on the side firmly :D) and I would like to get OS4 when it’s released, (if I decide to by a PPC card or AmigaOne), as it’s wirelessly networked and would be good for browsing and graphic work. Perhaps even a MIDI slave for Renoise… hmmmm :rolleyes:

:D

I was an Atari ST user myself, but I did mess around on my friend’s Amiga a little bit as well. Good times.

A500 A1200 A4000 are models used by me for games, but mostly for music.
I began with OctaMED, but soon went to Protracker. The latest software I used an bought was Digibooster pro. Renoise is the software that made me abandon my amiga’s.

I still have an hard time to recode the DBM files to Renoise

seemed like a great thread to join in…

I had an AMiga600 with the massive 20MB hard drive. Used to run protracker and AudioEngineerII and got my first track out on vinyl by sending the four tracks into a mixer and turning it to mono. A song was generally about 800K and the module format meant you can put the wholelot onto disk and carry it around to someone’s Amiga and load it up.

I bought renoise about 4 months ago and finally got it on the desktop over the weekend…

I wish I could turn back the clock with the same technology in hand.

At least I would not be so prone to getting those Amiga jitters from staring at a low resolution PAL screens until 5am in the morning!

:drummer:

I used to be great Amiga fan for years, and still at home I have 200mhz PPC Amiga 1200t w/ 060 + BVision that is used daily, nearly non-stop by my father - he is using PageStream for creating tons of his documents & printouts.

I bought A1200 in 1990. & started with ProTracker V2.1b. Until 2002. I created over 100 modules and around 60 MEDs and several DigiBooster DBM’s… & released 2 albums published by big labels here almost 10 years ago… You can download most of them from my homepage [downloads section].

Now I fall in love with ReNoise and almost 2 weeks I`m trying to register it :slight_smile:

When talk about Amiga, I used it for everything - from music to GFX & design. The best software I ever used is PageStream [QuarkXpress & Illustrator in one] and ArtEffect [Photoshop clone], YAM [for emails] and its great AmigaOS with DOpusMagellan installed.

I wish there will be ReNoise converted to AmigaOS4 one day… If I got some money, I`ll definitely buy AmigaOne… Great machine for great little OS :)

http://www.djnick.org/pix/room.jpg

all best!

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First I had an Atari 1020 Ste I think it was called then I got an A500 and later a A1200 with HD and some accelerator + xtra ram. Which I still have in a box.

I used it for graphics, music and ofcourse some gaming :) Used to pixel in Dpaint, Ppaint and Brilliance and made music in Noisetracker Protracker and DigiBooster.

Acctually I´m still doing some pixelwork as I work as a mobile games graphic artist. So I acctually got some us for the technique I learnt :) Have also done some music for mobile games. But music is mainly a hobby to me.
One of the coders is now making the music, he turned out to be a maestro…

I had an A500 since 1990, in 1992 i got myself a 16 bit sampler (only 16 bit mono, yet 8 bit stereo).
Started with Noisetracker, did some stuff in Oktalyzer, fell in love with Protracker (2.03 and later) but also tried various other trackers (Audio Sculpture, Future Composer, TFMX, Octamed). I was not fond of Startrekker, it was worse than Oktalyzer.

Btw, which famous group in the early 90’s used Audio Sculpture for their voice generated synthesis?

amiga was my first contact with computers :) i didnt own one though, but used it at some “computer enthusiast course” for youngsters. at that place i tried my first tracker too, witch was protracker if im not mistaken.

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Yes, it was said to be a media OS, amongst other things. I guess it could perform very well too if, but it never got that many apps to be a widely supported OS. Zeta is the newly released follower and then there’s a opensource project Haiku in progress, to be completed in a year or so. This Zeta review covers the history if anyones interested:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/zeta-1.0.ars

Oh, and sorry for going a bit OT :)

I’m suprised not that many of you used OctaMED more. I thought it was the killer app, especially with Arexx & it’s own scripting.
I guess I got more into MIDI at that time, and some of the other apps (that I now wish I tried) only offered more options for sample playing / editing. The resolution must have been a problem for many too.

Yup, Med&Octomed were for midiheads.

Protracker really was Amiga + line out. (usually mashed together to create a mono that could be outputted on a club amp!)

He… long story. I had a friend who owned an A500 back when we were in school together. I was rather impressed by what was possible with it, and when my own C64 deceased, I ask Santa to bring me an A600 for Christmas. Fortunately my parents listened to the salesman, so they instead gae me an A1200 as a present, on which I started doing music in 1992 on NewTracker. Protracker has never been my cup of tea, though.

Of course I also played various games on my A1200 - who wouldn’t? Especially with all the upgrades I bought for it. Blizzard 1230-IV with 8 MB RAM, CD-ROM, 260 GB harddisk. And I lived happily ever after… until some part of it died, and it crashed every other minute, no matter what I did… so I finally switched to my first PC.

Now, I am looking for a slighty used Amiga 1200 for my home, but as far as I can tell from eBay, I am not the only one… :smiley:

Wow! A 260 GB hard disk? Not too shabby.

I had an A500 and later on an A1200. Never had many upgrades, an extra disk drive and expanded memory. That was it. I’m sorry I didn’t keep it, but I needed the money for something that I can’t remember now. Noisetracker and Deluxe Paint were the favorites, but I played a lot of games as well. I remember Monkey Island and Mech Force as two of the favorites.

i finnaly found a place for it on my desk. had to move everything again
i also have a midi adapter connected to it right now. (triggering notes with midi keyboard in octamed [a shame protracker doesnt have this feature {not even the 4 beta2 :( }] is really cool)

think i’m gonna get myself a pcmcia ethernet card. hope i can get one @ ebay.

btw: blizzard 1230 40 mhz + 8mb + 230mb here.