Amiga

[JPC-Larry]

Who owned one and do you have any fond memories of it? Does anyone still have theirs? I wish I still had mine.

[the_ancient]

No but I did find an Atari 2600 and Atari 400 when I went over to help my Dad clean out his garage this weekend........

[JPC-Tracie]

I should get my husband in here. He's a huge Amiga fan. He has owned likely every Amiga ever made at one point or another. He's used them for music and video editing, games, just to dink around with, etc. We just had a garage sale a couple weeks ago and he sold off a lot of his Amiga stuff. A guy even drove a couple hundred miles to buy some of his stuff. So they are obviously still popular.

To prove how geeky my husband is (ok fine, WE are), we even went to an Amiga Convention in 1999 in St. Louis... lol

[Ron]

I had a TRS-80 (Model 1), does that count?

[Pawel Kowalski]

I wish I knew what you guys are talking about without having to google it .

[jason]

I never had an Amiga though I remember them as having the best graphics for their day. I started out with an IntelliVision II with the IntelliVoice and Computer modules. I don't recall ever get the IntelliVoice to work, but I did write lots of BASIC programs (saved to audio cassette tape and virtually impossible load back in)--the only thing you could do with the computer, really.

From there I moved on to the Apple IIGS with its speedy 2.8Mhz processor.

--Jason

[Vin DSL]

Who owned one and do you have any fond memories of it?

Yep, I owned one...

I owned an Amiga 500 'Fat Agnus' with 1 MB RAM. LoL! It cost me $360 to populate a piggyback with USED RAM - new RAM would have been astronomical - double that amount, at least!!!

I owned a Commodore SX-64 too, if you know what that was...

As an aside, some of our local TV stations (Phoenix Area) still use A500's for Genlock - no kidding - seen the boot screen at times...

Does anyone still have theirs? I wish I still had mine.

They were the sh!t, back in those days - kinda wish I hadn't sold it, actually!

[JPC-Larry]

Back in the days when floppy disks were actually floppy.

[Vin DSL]

Back in the days when floppy disks were actually floppy.

Speaking of which...

I also owned a totally loaded TI-99/4A with every option available, including a (ahem) floppy disk!!!

http://oldcomputers.net/ti994a.html

It was the first time I actually got excited about PCs, so called, and ALL because I was able to store data on a floppy - floppies were a godsend, IMHO - blew cassettes out of the water!

I had around $1200+ tied up in my TI-99/4A and was looking at a total loss when TI announced they were going to quit making them. However, as fate would have it, ppl went into a buying frenzy when TI made the announcement - and I actually sold it for a profit - $1500 if I remember correctly.

It was V odd for someone to have 'the real thing'. Most ppl just used them for a game console, not computing - so, I came out smelling like a rose on that one...

[jason]

Wow, I remember those TI-99s. The funny thing is that my TI-85 graphing calculator (old, I know, but I haven't taken a calculus class in several years) probably has a million times more horsepower.

--Jason

[Roach]

I have an A500 sitting in my living room... modified with an internal hard drive... I forget the device connecting them.... but they were pretty big back in the day.

My first computer I used in school was a Commodore PET.

Beat that!!

300 baud modem on a VIC-20 was my first online outing.... Qlink... BBS's... throw in the Atari 2600/400/ColecoVision... Trash-80..

Good times... good times.

[JPC-Larry]

300 baud modem

Speaking of, I remember when I got my brand new 56k modem and thought wow this is blazing fast. Now with FiOS, I can't imagine how I thought that.

[Ron]

Haha! Was the 300 baud MoDem with an RJ-45 plug, or was it an acoustic coupler?

I actually used a facsimilie machine in 1978! You clamped onle long edge of a page on a rotating drum and the reading head sloooooowly passed across as the page flapped around.

[Roach]

It was with the RJ45 jack...

I was talking to my friend about this, and I can't remember 100%, but I *think* you had to switch the switch from tx to rx... so I would be connected with my friend with some dumb term or something... and I'd type... then flip the switch.. and he would reply.

Of course, there is a chance that I just dreamed that.....

I feel very lucky to have been around back then at the start of it all.... Granted, a C64 can't hold a stick to the XBox et al, but I would not trade the history I had for anything.....

[Ron]

I don't think you had to switch the MoDem back and forth during a conversation, but perhaps you had to change the software.

If you wanted your friend to call you, you had to send a different AT string to the MoDem to set it up to answer calls.

I inherited a 1200 baud Prometheus Promodem from a friend. That was one special box; it was $600 new!! It could answer the phone and deliver messages (to other modems, of course)! How 'bout THAT!