What made you leave the Amiga scene?

[Harrison]

The fact older platforms were based on a fixed hardware design helped prolong their life and software support greatly. These days that is really only the case for games consoles. For the PC market that has never been the case due to its completely modular nature, and the PC market being the centre of continued hardware development, so the components are continually in a state of progression.

Continued software development and use of older platforms for a long time after they should have ended just shows how much people become attached to something. The Amiga especially still has something very special that keeps many people continuing to use it even today. It is hard to explain what that special something is to someone who isn't a part of that continuing community, or has any memories of using the systems back in the day.

Maybe we are all just overly sentimental? Or just the determination to prove a special platform still has some life left in it and still serves a use. The legacy of their designers.

It is also made what some people have managed to achieve on old systems. Look at the Commodore 64 web server for example. Or some of the ported famous Amiga demos to the C64 and Vic20, just to prove they could be done.

BTW, good luck getting your A600 up and running. Do you still have the A630 and are going to try getting that to work also?

[AD-RS1600i]

@Harrison - totally agree these days I am far more interested (and attached actually) to see what developers will end up getting out of the PS3, rather than the PC which as always will be a simple case of upgrade or don't participate if your machine is not up to it. Where I am coming from with this statement is of course things become superseded by the next big thing in terms of hardware, but to my mind the shelf life of a PC is far too short and I am sure good hardware gets buried in the ground when it actually has a use if people developed responsibly - that's my inner hippy coming out lol Besides, the PC was always, and still is a faceless device - my A600 on the other hand, I am sure at least 5 people reading this post will have one - exactly the same - for classic games etc I guess that might be why there may not be a following for Classic DX2-66 486 machines out there on the net - although there might be

I am sooooooooooooo glad to see the Amiga scene so vibrant and fresh after so many years - well done all of you for keep it alive

Sadly, I sold the Viper 630 card in 2005 due to money issues I had at the time and the fact it hadn't been used since 1997! Boy do I regret that now as they have become incredibly rare and sought after..... I have my fingers and toes crossed that someone like Individual Computers could be brave enough to manufacture another batch of A600 accelerators. A 030 with 32gig of ram running at 25mhz would be ideal as there would not be the associated heat issues as suffered by the Apollo and Viper back in the day running at 40mhz

---------- Post added at 11:20 ---------- Previous post was at 11:14 ----------

32meg BTW - shows how much everything has changed lol

[Harrison]

It is so easy to type or think in terms of GB these days, and have to remember we once thought a Megabyte was big!

[AD-RS1600i]

It is so easy to type or think in terms of GB these days, and have to remember we once thought a Megabyte was big!

I sooo know what you are saying - machines started off with K of ram for me so it can get really confusing.! I want to buy a 4gig flash drive for my A600, that would have been totally unthinkable back in the day

[Harrison]

I've had a load of trouble getting CF cards to work as flash drives in A1200's, but others equally seem to have no problems. Very strange.

I would recommend you avoid Kingston CF cards as I've never managed to get those to work, and have read others with the same problem. The best and most compatible are SanDisk CF cards and I'm currently using a 4GB one in one of my A1200's, although it still has some problems. Good luck trying to get one to work in your A600. I'm also attempting the same at the moment so will share any info I can to help you out. You can easily find IDE to CF adapters for about £2 on ebay, and 4GB Sandisk cards for about £10. So quite an affordable SSD solution for the Amiga.

Plus being CF cards, you can plug them into a PC card reader, boot up WinUAE, and add them as an Amiga HDD to set them up and copy the software wanted onto them. Is a great solution.

And as you say, having a 4GB HDD was totally unthinkable back in the day, let alone a solidstate HDD solution! It still amazes me every day how fast technology keeps moving forward.

[Jay]

I think when I noticed the scene shrinking I knew the writing was on the wall. As the CU mags decreased in pages and increased in price it was pretty evident that public interest and new releases were fading fast. I held off for a long time then jumped to the PC. Felt like a traitor at the time but it had to be done!

[chrispy]

What made me leave was the fact all these Johnny Come Lately's arrived on the scene and started selling bootleg copies of everything. I was no angel and had loads of copied stuff but I never once sold discs. I used to love trading with friends etc and towards the end I was proud to say I had contacts as far afield as Australia, Japan, California even Russia. The whole scene was great until the moneygrabbers got into it and spoiled it. I soon became disillusioned with it all and moved on to the PC which was never anything like the Amiga scene. Me and a mate used to go to the big Amiga shows in Earls Court which was cool.

[Harrison]

I think when I noticed the scene shrinking I knew the writing was on the wall. As the CU mags decreased in pages and increased in price it was pretty evident that public interest and new releases were fading fast. I held off for a long time then jumped to the PC. Felt like a traitor at the time but it had to be done!

Exactly the same for me. I also held on to the Amiga magazines until the end. The most popular 2 AF and Cu tried their best with the great cover CDs (I have every issue), but once a system fails there is only so long a magazine can continue to find enough content to survive. The sadest closures were.. Aui got thinner and thinner and turned from monthly, to bi-monthly, then closed. Amiga Computing then closed. And eventually Cu Amiga ended, and that was a very sad day as it was my favourite one. And all that was left was Amiga Format. It tried its best to hang on as the last great Amiga magazine, but soon started to struggle... and finally ended.

We do however still have one Amiga magazine going strong. Amiga Future. created by a devoted German Amiga fan, with a lot of guest writers every month, it is well worth buying if you have some spare change. He advertises the magazine on the main classicamiga.com homepage, so if interested please use that link to take a look at the latest issue.

[Harrison]

What made me leave was the fact all these Johnny Come Lately's arrived on the scene and started selling bootleg copies of everything.

Luckily I never encountered that. For me towards the end, all of the gaming stores were starting to sell of all their Amiga games at discounted prices and I was grabbing everything I could find that I didn't already have. Most games were selling for £1-2. It was sad to know the Amiga was losing popularity and the stores were trying to shift their stock, but at the same time it was great being able to grab so many great bargains.

The same happened when the Sega Dreamcast was starting to fail. I managed to collect a massive DC games collection for next to nothing. And still have the lot. Every good game ever released for that system. and the Dreamcast still remains one of my favourite consoles to this day.

moved on to the PC which was never anything like the Amiga scene. Me and a mate used to go to the big Amiga shows in Earls Court which was cool.

The PC demo scene does have a lot of talent and some amazing demo releases, but like you say, it just never had the amazing atmosphere of the Amiga scene. The Amiga was the centre of the demo scene, and most coders and continuing demo groups can be traced back to the Amiga somehow. Amazing days and amazing productions.

[Vangar]

I was never really 'in' the Amiga scene, but the Amiga is still my favorite PC and if there was a new one, I'd definitely switch back.