Evolution of a legend . .
.My first Home Computer was a Commodore-64, bought when I was about 13 years old, while I was still at school. It was a remarkable machine for it's day, and I can hardly believe, looking back on it, how I ever managed to get anything done when files were saved onto and loaded from audio/data cassettes. I even managed to upgrade my C=64 with an external 5+1/4" harddrive which was as long as the Amiga A1200's case is wide, and the C=64 was connected to a Portable Colour TV's RF-aerial socket.
I still had this Commodore-64 system 5 years later, when I left high-school, got a job, and enrolled at College. When I was about 18 years old, after my first two-year course, I sold my C=64 and bought a Commodore-128, which had twice the memory (all of 128Kb).
That computer saw me through my second two-year course at College. When I continued my education, by enrolling at University, I sold my C=128 and bought an Amiga A500 (with 512Kb of memory) from Gordon Harwood Computers, with a proper 14" Monitor (Philips) and a Dot-Matrix Printer (Citizen).
Another year later, when I was about 21 years old, I traded my A500 in against an Amiga CDTV. This offered the three-fold capability of playing Audio-CD's, accessing CDTV titles such as "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" as well as having the Amiga A500 kickstart operating system built-in and Workbench Ver 1.3 on CD-Rom, so with an external keyboard and floppy disk-drive I could still run all my existing Amiga software and games. Another year later, I sold my CDTV and bought the bigger and better Commodore Amiga A1200.
My Amiga A1200 . .
.I have had this wonderful machine since 1993, It started out as a bare A1200. The technical specifications being ;-.
There has been a lot of uncertainty in the Amiga Community following the bankruptcy of Commodore and the drawn out liquidation process. Followed by the subsequent bankruptcy of the Amiga's new owner, ESCOM. Now that Amiga Technologies is a force unto itself, with not only the full backing of their latest owners, Gateway 2000, but some positive and exciting plans for the future (PowerPC RISC Processing, all the way ???), our baby looks to be in better hands now, and it's about time!
What I use it for -I use my Amiga to organise my finances by using a package called "Personal Finance Manager PLUS" to track past, current and projected future transactions against my various bank accounts (Current, Savings, Personal-Loan and TESSA) my Credit card account and my Building Society account. With this package, I have never once fallen into the RED since using this package and its predecessor (PFM).
When I first bought an A500, I also bought the Softwood "Pen Pal" word-processor, and since buying my A1200 I have upgraded to their "Final Copy, II" advanced word-processor. Since joining the Internet, I have been considering upgrading to Softwood's "Final Writer 97" Desktop-Publishing package, which includes HTML authoring tools.
I would not describe myself as a heavy games player, but ever since I bought my first C=64, the first game I played on it was the all-time Classic, ELITE. When I moved to the C=128 I kept on playing the same game, and when I moved onto the Amiga A500, I found an Amiga version of ELITE and kept on playing it. When Frontier:Elite II hit the shelves, it nearly blew me away! And I am still flying and buying, trading and strafing my way through that incredible gameplay. I was more than a little disappointed that the third chapter "First Encounters:Frontier II" never made it off the PC platform and onto the Amiga.
I also enjoy playing GOD-Games such as Sim-City, CIV and Colonization, Shoot-em-Up's such as Cannon-Fodder2 and Alien Breed-II as well as Flight-Sim's like Dogfight from Microprose, and Strategy games such as Flames of Freedom.
How I have Upgraded &
Customised it -I have since invested in an external 880Kb floppy disk drive, a 2.5" internal 170Mb harddrive, a Blizzard 1230-Mk IV Turbo accelerator, a replacement 3.5" 1.3Gb IDE internal harddrive, an external 16-speed IDE CD-Rom drive (Connected via an Alfa-Data PCMCIA Controller) and finally a Diamond SupraExpress 56e desktop modem (Connected via a Whippet High-speed (230,400 bps) PCMCIA serial-port adaptor). I have also had a Hewlett Packard DeskJet 400 printer since 1996, finally replacing my long serving dot-matrix printer. My machine's additional specifications are currently ;-
Going On-Line
-For connecting to the Internet, I bought a bundle-pack from Power Computing, including Hisoft's NET&WEB(I) suite which includes Ami-TCP/IP Ver 3.0 TCP/IP Stack and Metatool E-Mail client. The bundle also contained Hisoft's IBrowse Ver 1.22 web browser.
I have also tried a 100-Day trial version of the NetConnect package which includes the Ami-TCP/IP Ver 4.2 TCP/IP Stack, the Microdot-II E-Mail/Newsreader client, I have also downloaded YAM (Yet Another Mailer) Ver 2.0 from AMINET and I am waiting to see what Ver 2.0 is capable of, and I have tried Vaporware's Voyager-NG Web-Browser as part of a 100-Day Demo - The NetConnect Suite is available on FD or CD from Active Software, and I am planning to buy it as well.
However, in the meantime, I prefer to use the Miami Ver 3.0d TCP/IP Stack in conjunction with the YAM E-Mail Client and Hisoft's IBrowse Web-Browser. The original Hisoft bundle came with a one-month's free trail (with no setup charge) of a standard dial-up account with the Demon ISP Provider which I found to be remarkably easy to setup.
In the beginning, using NET&WEB(I), I found that my connection to Demon did not go smoothly; I could dial the "Lo-Call" 0845 POP number and establish a PPP connection, but my IBrowse browser could not browse anywhere. I then tried Miami, and after running the intuitive MUI-Based Miami-Init program to generate the config-file, then loading that file into Miami itself, I found that it automatically sensed the Domain Name Servers and other details and let me browse the web with IBrowse. I used the configuration information from Miami to re-configure Ami-TCP/IP and managed to accomplish the same thing. I later had a problem sending e-mail from within IBrowse, but I quickly tracked this down to the wrong SMTP mail-server entry in IBrowse's preferences, which was configured correctly, by default under NET&WEB(I). My next problem to be solved was the fact than my first few test e-mails to myself were going OUT onto the net, but not coming IN. IBrowse can only SEND mail, but YAM is supposed to collect it. In the end I found the POP3 mail-server setting within YAM was also set incorrectly, and once filled in properly, all of my waiting test e-mails quickly arrived in my waiting mailbox.
My Dream-Machine . .
.If I could start again, from scratch, and if I had the money to afford it, I would definitely go for a complete tower system, either from Blittersoft or Eyetech, with something like the following specification ;-
