The History Of Borrowed-Time

I first got an Amiga Emulator, even before i had a PC. I needed a PC for College, as i was doing computing, and i was still using an Amiga. I went to a local computer fair, to check out PCs, and saw a CD for sale, full of emulators, including Amiga emulators. I brought the CD, but even when i had my PC, still used my real Amiga. I first used UAE on Christmas day, 1997. Through the following year, i transferred all my Amiga software to ADF, and collected ADFs off the net using the college computers. In the following months, i built up a large collection, and also got a modem to use the net at home.
I first became a webmaster on January 2nd, 1999. A college friend (Chris Goostry) was also a keen Amiga Lover, and he told me he was starting an Amiga Emulation site. I decided to join him and started by uploading the zip files, from my own collection. Chris did all the design for the site, and i chose and uploaded the games. I wanted to be original, and uploaded games that weren't available on other sites at that time. Chris also christened the site 'Amiga 4 Ever'. We started up using free space for our games, and i opened many Geocities and Fortune cities sites. I uploaded games as often as i could, but the HTML files were all on Chris's own space, which he paid for, and i didn't have access. So i could only upload the games. After a few months, we moved the site to a Xoom account. I could then update the HTML files, and xoom also offered 'unlimited space'. This was a godsend, as i had access to an ISDN line at college, and i could upload 100s in a day. I also tried by hand at web design, and put together my own design. I also decided to move into the PD area of emulation and uploaded the 'Assassins' games collections, and all the LSD doc disks. At the time, my site was the only site where these were available. (Although the lsd docs had been previously available on Lazarus ). But Xoom accounts were very bad - They deleted all my work after a few weeks (even a PD account !!).. I also renamed my site to Borrowed-Time. I thought that this was an appropriate title, scenes as my games on 'Borrowed Time' due to my accounts being illegal. I was always getting desperate for webspace, but luckily a great guy offered me unlimited space on his FTP. The only catch was that i could only use there space for legal software. This was great for the Assassins and LSD doc disks, and they were soon back online. But i still had many Illegal games. Then one day, i had several mails saying that some of my links didn't work. I also received mail from the space providers, saying my accounts were deleted. I was sick of my games living on ' Borrowed Time' and decided to become 100 % legal. It was around this time, that Chris left Borrowed-Time. I didn't update for a month or so due to A-Level commitments, but in that time, I got into contact with companies and got some great permissions. I only obtained permissions from companies which hadnt already granted permission to other sites. I strongly believe that we only need one site with the permission, and we don't need mirror sites, or leeches who just copy permissions. I reopened the site 100% legal, with commercial games. I also decided to open a new section - A look at how the websites in the scene had ivolved. I had a lot of help for this by Bernd from Ami Sector One and Bobic from Back To The Roots. They have contributed greatly to this section.
Unfortunatly, many new starters in the scene do not share my opinions and views, and there have been incidents of people copying others work.
And now that my site is over a year old, i thought i might as well join it. Unfortunately i work a lot of hours, and am also a full time uni student. I cant update this site as often as i would like, but i do my best... Hope you enjoyed the read, and the site

Ant

January 2000