The Apple Amiga of my Eye!

It was 20 years ago today that Sergent Pepper that I bought my Amiga 500 computer from a small Commodore reseller off Commercial Blvd in Ft. Lauderdale...

The excitement of that fateful day will always be with me. This is a computer that I had dreamed of owning since I first saw it at an independent computer store while shopping for my Apple IIc computer back in 1986. As much as I loved that Apple computer, it had an architecture dating back to the mid-70s. The Amiga 1000 was the machine I first fell in love with. I remember it was running a demo of Deluxe Paint at the time and the images that were being displayed on its color monitor were striking (for the day):





Although quite ironic, I ended up selling my Apple //c three years later in order to come up with enough dough to buy my Amiga 500.

The Amiga was quite an amazing machine. Designed originally by Jay Miner and bunch of ex-Atari engineers. These engineers, who were quite unsatisfied with how Warner communications had been running the show at Atari, decided to venture off on their own and form Amiga Technologies, Inc. They made a joystick and some other small hardware but the big picture project was a new computer system. Much like many of the computer systems in the days of 8 bit systems, it was usually just a handful of people working ridiculous hours with a dedication and passion that allowed them to design such wonderful creations. The Amiga computer had features which were truly put all the market leaders computers to shame (C64, Apple II, TRS80, et al). The most amazing part of the amiga was it's sound and graphics which unlike the Apple II was controlled by a custom chip set which offloaded the work from the CPU. This, combined with a "start of the art" 16bit CPU (The Motorola 68000) and a multitasking operating system is what the Amiga legend is made from.

Amiga, Inc and it's technology was eventually purchased by Commodore (minus their founder Jack Tramiel who had purchased Atari). The Amiga technology found it's way in their first machine called the Amiga 1000 and then eventually a lower cost machine known as the Amiga 500. The Amiga 500 was the machine that I purchased in the summer of 1989.





This computer has and will probably always be the most soulful, creative and enjoyable computer I've ever had the pleasure of owning. I've owned a lot of beige boxes and unmemorable laptops and even some of the new Apple Macs but none live up to the Amiga Legend.

And so begins my adventure back into Amiga-Land!