Which Workbench versions have you used the most?

Rather than asking you all which version of Workbench is your favourite, as this would return the later releases as most peoples favourites, I thought it would be more interesting to find out which version of Workbench you think you have each used the most over the years?

For me I think it is probably 2.04. I never owned a 1.3 based machines back in the day and only ever rebooted one of my Amigas into 1.3 to get a game to run rather than to use Workbench. I did you 3.0 a lot once I had an A1200 and then A4000, but before this my only Amiga was the A600 and I used that a lot before and after getting the other models.

For me it was 1.3 as it was the only one I had to use with my amiga 500. I sold my amiga in 1994 when I got my first PC, and haven't used amigas since early 2000 now, and that is also a 500, and lately a 1200.

Did you regret selling your original A500 after purchasing the PC?

Nope, not in the beginning. At that time, I didn't also have a C64 anymore, and didn't regret it. But after some time, when getting older, searching for some retro fun, you get that nostalgic feeling, and you have to buy some of the machines again. And knowing now as I am, I will never sell them again.

For me I could never have sold my Amigas in the 90's when I moved over to the PC as my main platform. Maybe it was due to collecting such a large collection of original Amiga games, copied games, magazines, manuals and models of Amiga that was the reason I wouldn't have sold them. In fact I was still purchasing original Amiga hardware and software up until around 1998.

I only had an A600 during the Amiga's heyday. I only got my A1200 as a donation from a family member after the PC had taken over (around year 2000). So 2.04 for me as well.

I've definitly used Workbench 3.0 the most. Used the 1.3 on the 500 for a few years, until 1994, when I got my first Amiga 1200. Since then I've been using 3.0, but did of course upgrade to 3.1 after a while. Now I'm running Workbench 3.5.

I have had an A500+ for longest so 2.04.

I use 3.1 on my A1200 though.

Had 2.04 for a while as my first Miggy was a 500+
Sold that to put towards an A1200.
Have had my A1200 for a lot longer though.
Used 3.0 for the longest length of time.
Using 3.9 at the mo.

I had a 500 for a long time, but never used the workbench on it. So for me it has to be v2.05 on the 600HD.

I think that I've only ever used the mighty (and classic) 1.3 on my A500. A friend had an A600 but I don't remember ever using workbench on it all that much.

COme to think of it, I never really used workbench all that much, really.

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COme to think of it, I never really used workbench all that much, really.

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Me neither, at the age when I got my amiga in 1987, I had 16 years, and I had better things to do than fiddle around with the workbench.

I used Workbench a lot at the time for college work, as well as many other things. And even for University work, writing my essays on it using Wordsworth and Pagestream and creating animations and artwork.

I used the Basic program at one time, when I had Basic at school for a year. After all I ended up having no more free memory, because for Basic, the amount of memory you have is very limited (as was on the C64). I can't remember how much that is though, it's a very long time ago.

I remember struggling for memory coding in basic on many early platforms. On the Amstrad CPC464 I tried to code my own graphics program, a bit like a primitive version of Windows Paint. I got so far with it and could move a cursor around the screen with the cursor keys, and draw lines and filled boxes, but when I tried to add any more features I ran out of ram. And if I added more than a few lines and shapes to the screen I also got an out of ram error.

There was also this text adventure creator I had on the CPC. I tried drawing some images using the built in image editor but kept running out of ram half way through the image. Very frustrating and due to this I gave up and never did build a full adventure with it!

We are very lucky to now have lots of nice ram to do great things with. And many people just don't realise how lucky they are. often moaning about a computer being slow or not having enough ram, and they don't realise how far computers have come in such a short time.

I had an A500 back in the day so 1.3 for me. I still got the A500 in fact but dunno if it works haven't tried it in years haven't tried the C64 in years either.

I had 3.0 A1200 for years! it was only around 18months ago I upgraded to 3.1 and then in the last year 3.5.

Now I own an accelerator I can use os 3.9 okish!

3.0 here, as i only owned a A600 for som months with wb 2.04, then buyed a A1200 with os 3.0 and thats the one i used the most.

Started off with 3.0 managed to get a copy of 3.1 then i upgraded to 3.5 when it came out and i'm now on 3.9. Would love to be able to get MorphOS working on my 1200 but haven't been able to yet.

Can you run MorphOS on an A1200? I thought it would only run on something like the Pegasos II?

BTW, does anyone know if OS4 could be made to run on a Pegasos board?

There's 2 versions of MorphOS one for A1's and PPC based computers and one of PowerUP Classic Amigas although the PowerUp version doesn't recognise a lot of the IDE adapters and has a strange registration system whereby it will work at normal speed for 2hrs and then after that it will slow down considerably unless you use the registration programme in MorphOS which means you have to be able to connect your Ami to 'tinternet.

For more info on PowerUP MorphOS goto http://powerup.morphos-team.net/. As far as i know as MorphOs was designed for Pegasos it should work with pegasosII

Workbench 1.3 for me.

I only bought the A1200 when Commodore was about to go bankrupt, so I've only used 3.0 for a relatively short period of time.

Shortly after Commodore was no more, I bought a PC (for school work) and a PlayStation (for games), and I haven't used the A1200 much since then.

It's interesting that you bought a PC for work and a Playstation for gaming as I did much the same thing, but in my case I was using an A1200 for my design foundation work, and then upgraded to a second-hand Amiga A4000 for my university work, and bought a Playstation for gaming.

I could see that with the death of Commodore that the gaming community was quickly moving on and leaving our beloved platform behind, even with the purchase by Escom, so while we could still get some new games, anything next generation at the time in full 3D was just beyond the Amiga by then. So rather than spend thousands on a PC the Playstation was perfect. And the Amiga was still perfectly capable of doing everything else I needed (animation, graphics, word processing, DTP etc).

I did however eventually have to bite the bullet and buy into the PC world in 1998 though as my university course work required design and multimedia packages (Photoshop, illustrator, Director, Flash, Dreamweaver etc...) that the Amiga just could not compete with. That was a sad day as the Amiga quickly became a second system and the PC took over as my main one.

I did a simmilar thing except i didn't get a Playstation. I got a Sega Saturn, N64 the GC for gaming. my Amiga has retired to mostly Nostalgia as although i now have a PPC there's nothing out there to show it off with and my graphics card is Great for Workbench but useless for almost everything else. As a hradware platform Amiga is pretty much dead. I can't comment on OS4 as I haven't tried it yet but unless it's a huge improvement on 3.9 then that's a dead end.

It sure wasn't easy 'abandoning' my trusty Amiga and moving onto something new, though. After all, I'd owned the thing for years, spending many evenings playing some of the most memorable games in the history of gaming. It was a genuinely sad thing to see support for the Amiga dying slowly in the waning days of Commodore, seeing friends selling their Amigas in favour of something else.

I never felt sad when I moved on from the PlayStation to the PlayStation 2, or from PS2 to PS3, even though I must've spent at least as much time on those as I had with the ol' 'miggy. That's enough of a testament to how dear the Amiga platform was to me, and to most of us here on CA!

Very true.

Also my allegence to specific platforms ended after the Amiga. From the 16-bit era onwards the Amiga was the only platform I've ever really felt like defending when arguments flared up over which was better.

But as soon as I owned a Playstation and then a PC I was suddenly looking more at the games than the platform they were on. For that reason ever since I've ended up owning nearly every platform on the market and picking the best games for each, rather than sticking to a specific platform, being loyal, and missing many great games.

It is strange because I remember at the time the Amiga was at it's height seeing games on the Megadrive and SNES and wishing they were on the Amiga, but not actually buying a SNES because it wasn't an Amiga! But then towards the end of the SNES's life I did buy one and all the games I wanted to play over the years and realised what a great gaming platform it was. The Amiga was a better overall system, but i think being completely loyal to one platform can force you to miss out on great games released on everything else.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still a fan of the Amiga before any other platform of the era and always will be (with the exception of arcade machines of course). But looking at things today I wouldn't say I'm a fan of one platform on sale today over any other. I enjoy playing games on anything and everything if the game is good. The platform doesn't seem to mater quite so much.

OS4.0 being a massive improvement on 3.9 is not going to change much.
It's not the OS that's the problem.

Comming home to use 3.9 after being stuck with XP all day is an absolute joy.

It's the lack of modern hardware, apps and to some degree games, is the problem.

I find coming home to use my own Windows computer nice if I have been using someone's badly setup windows computer all day (this mostly happened at school).

I'm sure the software situation will improve, especially when we get some new hardware to run OS4 one. But so far, MindSpace and AmiPhoto look quite interesting. I could probably make use of those two if I had OS4.

So many people use badly configured OSs, or they just keep installing junk on them and then moaning that their machines are slow. Laptops always seem the worst.

Very true.
People really don`t help themselves.

Interesting thinking about this now.....

When i had the A500, although i remember seeing workbench, actually using it i remember hardly at all... when i got the A600 I used to use 2.x and got into light programming and SAS C ... ahhh feels good.... but it was all disk based.... so OMG slow!!!

when I got my A1200, i was ushered into OS3.0 and found it very comftable, I then got into some of the addons like newicons etc.. not much love for magic workbench though... then 3.1 was pretty much the same.... got into a new icons 4 / 5....

a few years back go OS3.5 and i have to admit, I really do like it for expanded / emu based amiga's

I may have a play with OS3.9 but OS4 I have no interest in to be sincerely honest.

I used to use a heavly modified 3.0

I use 3.0 the most, I did used to use 2.04 a lot when I used an A500+ but when I got an A1200 and a hard drive I use WB3 a lot more, and I've customised it quite a lot.