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Has anyone got an Armiga and are they any good?


abeswick

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  • 2 months later...

This is a really broad question so not sure from what aspect you're coming from, so I just give you my memories from owning one when I was a kid.

 

Compared to what was available at the time ( IBM XT/AT 286/ 386 etc) it was definitely great for gaming. It was a GUI interface from the start (think windows 1, but called something like Kickstart) and was mouse driven. It also had plenty of productivity software to do word processing, spreadsheets, card making, professional music software etc.

 

I had an Amiga 500 and from what I can remember it had 4 channel stereo sound (no additional "soundblaster card" needed), EGA graphics, dedicated video and sound chips (Motorola I think). It started with 512k ram but most were expanded to 1024k, including mine, with a simple user installed memory board.

 

Floppy disk drive 3.5inch 720k drive built in, but most had separate 2nd drive. Both the additional ram and drive were almost a must for gaming. You could get a 20meg hard disc but it was prohibitively expensive and I actually never saw one.

 

 

Plenty of games and gaming accessories (joysticks etc). Lots of 2 player games. At the time, games were simpler and many were released first on amiga well before PC. There were many arcade/console ports. Towards the later years as PC technology caught up and overtook Amiga, it was the other way round. This became really apparent to me when the Amiga version of a game (Eye of the Beholder) came out on 4+ disks and played slow compared to the PC version.

 

There were also monthly Amiga magazines, mostly UK based, but I remember hanging out for the cover disks that came with them to tryout new game demos as well as cheat codes and walk throughs.

 

I remember that everything just "worked" when compared to my friends who had IBM based PCs. You didn't need to muck around with config/autoexec settings to make things work as you did back in the day with IBM based PC's, although I got good at that!! No need to install drivers etc. you just plugged in the mouse, joystick, floppy drive etc and it worked. This plug and play and things working was a big deal back in the day (think 1985 to early to mid 90s) as I recall having to setup different configs different games I wanted to use on PC.

 

The default out of the box was to plug into your TV (Amiga 500), which was ok but no good for word processing or anything that needed really clear text as it was basically a RF converter. I had a commodore 1084s monitor which was a colour stereo monitor. It also had other inputs RCA/RGB which I used for TV/video input.

 

Finally the other thing that Amiga was really good at was music. You could get commercial music recording software and hook up a keyboard synthesizer and create professional recording tracks, which was also used in schools at the time.

 

 

I have many great memories of playing my Amiga with my friends, listening to music on it, using Amiga Paint (like Windows paint) to create art, and also using it to complete my school assignments using WordPerfect. There were also many BBS's (Bulletin Board Service) where you could chat to others, download software and demos etc. Think of it like the modern Pirate Bay. Things were a lot slower at 2400/4800/9600 baud!!

 

Anyway I don't know if I answered any of your questions, but I enjoyed thinking back to a much simpler time, when Amiga's ruled the world!!

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looks like a cracker of an A500 rebirth.

 

being able to rip disks and also dual boot into android means a whole host of other emulators and roms can also be added so your armiga could also be a nes, snes, megadrive, c64 etc

 

standard usb support for peripherals also is awesome. would be a fun toy to have!

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Last I researched it could only rip unprotected disks, rendering it a useless feature unless there is an easy way to circumvent.

 

don't underestimate the pleasure in the 'kerchunk' of putting in a 3.5" floppy disk and listening to it grind away.

 

i still enjoy that on my A500, even though i know i'm in for a wait while the game loads...

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