Retrospective - When Amigas die. 09/10/97

Time, eh? Displaying the manners of an uncouth yobster in it's woefully lacking patience with no man, yet revered for it's great healing abilities. Tch.

As this is the first piece I’ve written for Lazarus, I figured I`d give you all (all 3 of you who will actually READ this) an insight into my ”Amiga History.”

It’s now 2 years since I defected to the PC. (1 year since I moved to Canada.) I had an Amiga 1200 with an 80 meg hard drive. (Those were the days. When 80 megs could see you right with an OS, and LOADS of other software. Gone are those days, thanks to companies like Microbloat. Who do you have to blow today?) It’s biggest failing was the fact that I had very little money, and had to settle for whatever ram expansion I could get, which was a nasty little 16bit PCM card which slowed the system down (according to the wonderful Sysinfo program) from 2.49 times faster than an A500, to 1.57 times faster. The word nanosecond never really entered into the equation with that sort of expansion...

Before that, I had an A500. Well, truth be told, I had 4 of them. (Sort of.) Why? Was I some greedy consumer who could never just have 1 of anything? No. Was I ludicrously wealthy, determined to stockpile them, only to sell them for an obscene profit to an oddball who collects old computers about 10 years down the line? Nyet. Was it because I developed this habit of destroying them? No more calls please, we have a winner.

If there was ever a job position created called ”Amiga Killer”, I could more than easily fill the position, as I have plenty of experience. (I did actually get through 2 1200’s, but that’s not entirely fair, since the shop (who will remain anonymous, I may tell you in an email though) sold me a second hand 1200 as new. So it wasn’t my fault.)

The first one died within days of me purchasing it from that bastion of well educated and knowledgeable computer sales staff, Dixons. They weren’t interested in helping me out, saying it wasn’t their problem, until I reminded them that in England, we have these things called Statutory Rights, and they soon changed their tune. I was now in possession of a nice shiny new Amiga. (Which had replaced the nice shiny new and BROKEN one.)

This one lasted me just about 2 years. At the end of 1989, I threw in a 512k expansion, taking it to the dizzying heights of 1 meg. (Is it me, or were the expansion slots designed by the Marquis De Sade?) That Christmas was spent playing Curse of the Azure Bonds. I never did complete the game, but I can’t look at a Drow Elf without thinking of it to this day. I remember a character in the game who communicated by smell. That must be tricky if he’d had a curry the night before. ”Are you angry, or did you just have chicken madras last night?” The mind boggles...

Things were purring along nicely when BOOM! One day, in the dark recesses of early 91, the disk drive bombed. (It didn’t actually go BOOM, but I figure I’m allowed a little creative license.) I still had a warranty, so contacted Dixons repair people, Disastercare... Sorry, Mastercare, and was told it would take about 2 weeks. (I removed the ram expansion, as I trusted them about as much I’d trust a starving rottweiler not to eat me.) The old “I need it for my work/study/iron lung ” (delete as applicable) routine completely failed to cause an increase in speed, and 8 weeks later, I was in receipt of a not very shiny, and now scratched, A500 with a new floppy drive. (Have you noticed the fact I never mention external drives? Well, up until my last year on the Amiga, I didn’t have one. That made playing Monkey Island 2 entertaining I can tell you. For a while I thought that Guybrushes middle name was ”Insert Disk”.)

Things were going fine and dandy, until a friend of mine acquired, through nefarious means, some illicit pornography. Not being online in those days, in other words not having direct access to such vast quantities of porn, I thought this was one of the best uses for computers, and greedily borrowed his box of unused disks, and hurried home, eager to copy the luscious delights that the wondrous magnetic media held within...

I got home, went into my room, switched on the computer, loaded Deluxe Paint, and sat patiently for the best painting program EVER to load. It loaded. I put the disk in the drive. The drive whirred... The drive whirred again... The drive sounded ill... The drive started making grinding noises... I hit the eject button... I panicked. Had I just killed my A500 for the 3rd time? You betcha. I reset, seeing that friendly WB1.3 logo. (How I miss thee.) I dug through my collection of roughly 500 disks, and happened upon Hunter. (Still one of my favorite games ever. Nice to play it again on UAE.) AHA! I thought. What a good band. No, AHA! I thought, and inserted the disk. The standard cracker boot, groovy, followed by the title screen, better still, followed by... Well, nothing. Not so much as a visit from the Guru. Nothing, nada, zip, zero, bugger all. Feeling moderately depressed at this time, I removed Hunter from the drive, and found Lemmings in my collection. AHA! I thought again, my brain not wanting to take in the face that I had, in all honesty, completely buggered the computer for the 3rd time in as many years. Nothing happened. The logo just stayed on screen, like some evil grin. Nothing would make it go away.

I spent the next couple of days depressed. Realizing that this wouldn’t fix the computer, I decided, as I had no warranty, that I had grab the bull by the udders, and repair it myself.

After a trip to acquire a new internal drive, (which, for some inexplicable reason, was 10 pounds MORE than an external) I arrived home, box in hand, Amiga in pieces on the kitchen table. I prepped for surgery. I discharged any static in me, the static that OH SO wants to be friends with the chips, and sat down. I removed the metal casing, and examined the drive. Okay, wires and stuff. Nothing too techie or frightening there. I grounded myself again to be extra sure there was no static, and went in...

After a couple of dodgy moments, it survived the operation. Having expected the machine to go Whiz Bang or some such derivation on bootup, imagine my surprise when I saw the logo staring at me. Evil grin no more. More a sort of greeting from an old friend. (I had the KICK1.3 emulator on the 1200, I never used it, other than to gaze at the 1.3 logo and remember better days. We’ll have none of your modern Kickstart3 animated garbage thank you very much.)

I disconnected the computer, and hurried into my bedroom, grabbing a disk at random. It just happened to be the self same disk I tested when it died. Hunter. Imagine my joy when it worked. I celebrated by riding around in circles on my bike in the game, jumping off at the right moment, leaving the bike going around and around for all eternity, and running people over with tanks. I felt much better.

Then, as I stated at the start, I went 1200 for a while. It was using the 1200 that I first went online. BBSing first, then the Internet. (If any ex Mostly Harmless BBS users are reading this, greetings.) Using the net from an Amiga is not exactly what I would call entertaining. Hair tearingly frustrating yes, but not entertaining.

Is there any originality on the PC? No. Was there originality on the Amiga? You bet your left buttock there was. The Bitmap Brothers (Speedball was one of the reasons I bought an Amiga in the first place), Sensible Software, Bullfrog... The names just bring back so many memories. Game names too. Hunter, Virus, Populous... I hope that Amiga emulation goes the way of Sega Megadrive/Genesis emulation. The current best (in my opinion) Genesis emulator is KGEN. It runs Sega games PERFECTLY on my P166. If UAE ever achieves that, the ability to play sound and shift stuff around the screen perfectly, I’ll be ecstatic. At the moment, UAE is very good. I can’t wait for it to get better, if for no other reason than to hear the music from Cannon Fodder without jumps or blank spots.

War, never been so much fun, war, never been so much fun...

Until (maybe) next time... Dr. Drood