Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    I bought an Atari 800 back in '81, when they cost only slightly
    less than nuclear aircraft carriers. It was my first PC. It
    died in '84, at which time it was cheaper to buy a new 800 than
    to get it repaired. I never bothered getting a new one, and 
    I remained PC-less through my next 2 years of college until...
    
    In May of '86 I bought an Amiga, didn't buy it earlier due to
    my student status at the time. As soon as I read the article in
    the September Byte I knew it was the computer for me. Love
    at first sight, if you will. 
    
    I never regretted buying either system - on the contrary. They
    are both formidable computers, although the Atari is no longer
    quite "state of the art". 
    
    So what's next, 5 years from now? Will we all look upon Amy with
    condescension, or even pity? Will all of us Amiga owners go out
    en masse and buy the same exciting new system, whatever it may be?
    
    Incidentally the reason for this note is that someone (MPGS::BAEDER?)
    mentioned having an Atari 400 and it brought back those memories...

re .-1
It was the August '85 Byte

    Ahh, memories...
    
    My first computer was a Data General Enterprise, which was a 16-bit
    MicroNova disguised as a TRS-80 Model III.  I still love the packaging
    of that dinosaur.  
    
    I found this thing propping open a lab door at DG.  The owner said
    I could have it, so I signed it out, brought it home, and cleaned
    up the dual floppies and started to play.
                                                            
    Mind you, I'm a dumb old mechanical engineer, one step below auto
    mechanic grade, and the concept of 'software' hadn't quite sunk
    in yet.  After a few weeks of fooling around with MP-AOS commands
    and memorizing the contents of system disks, I got a bit bored.
    I asked around at work as to what one could do with the Enterprise,
    and they all laughed and suggested that I find a new door to prop
    open with it.
    
    About this time, I got a demo of a C'64.  I was stunned, hypnotized,
    blown away, you name it.  A thousand bucks later and I was in business
    with the 64.  I vaguely knew that Atari made a similar machine,
    but I never even looked at one.  Sorry Jay, I've since repented.

    After a year of thoroughly having the time of my life with the 64
    (in the process blowing up three of them just by turning them on;
    thanx JT for the great quality control) I began to hear rumors of
    a wondrous new machine called 'Lorraine'.  I still remember the
    first Compute! blurb.  I was determined to have an affair with
    Lorraine.
    
    My brother in law had started working for Apple, and really went
    into fits when I mentioned that my next computer might be Lorraine
    (now called 'Amiga' or some such), since he felt that I needed a
    MAC. As more and more info leaked about Amiga, and as the debut
    came and went, Bob became more and more adamant that the Amiga was
    a joke.  I said to myself, "Self, anything that Bob hates so much
    is worth looking at."
    
    After a five minute demo of the first Amiga to land in Worcester
    MA, I plunked down a deposit.  I then went to check out an ST, but
    at the time 'Ole Jack was pretty down on the Amiga.  I said to myself
    "Self, anthing that 'Ole Jack hates so much is OK by me."
    
    The rest, as they say, is history.

    It all started with videogames.  I bought a Colecovision because
    of it's graphics capabilities, and the promise of a 'keyboard expansion
    module.'  Well, by the time the keyboard was available, I had already
    bought a TI99/4A.  Talk about graphics!  15 sprites.  16 colors!
    WOW.  Soon the Colecovision was collecting dust.
    
    I used the TI to do some animation work for a videotape for DEC.
    Soon, I wanted more graphics power.  I bought an 800.  256 colors!
    But oh those player missle graphics...what a pain in the neck. 
    Programming sprites was a breeze on the TI, and next to impossible
    on the 800.  Soon, I bought a 130XE for more memory.  Nice machine,
    but lousy keyboard.  
                         
    The Atari was used to do more video work for DEC, but soon it was
    time to move up to something better...the ST series.  I couldn't
    wait for them to come out.  I thought that the Amiga was a buggy
    hunk of junk.  One day, I saw a demo of an Amiga.  Within two minutes
    (three less than Ed) my life changed.  I bought the Amiga...and
    have never looked back.  Granted, my use is primarily graphics,
    so the choice was right for me.
                         
    As for blue screens with white type...having used the 800/130XE,
    the move to the Amiga made me feel right at home.  My Pro380 here
    at DEC (I hate it) has the same blue/white screen display.
    
    The swapping of personnel at Atari and Commodore really shows in
    the products.  The swapping of users reflects this.  Atari used
    to offer machines that offered more, or more money.  Commodore was
    the price leader (unlike Coleco or TI or Sinclair...who were just
    dumping).  Now Commodore is offering more, for more...and Atari
    is the price leader.
    
    You pay for what you get...and in this case, the price difference
    is closing fast.
    
    

    When I bought the Atari 800 I had to be put on a waiting list for
    several months before I got it.  It cost $900 for 16K and a tape
    player.  I did some heavy basic programming on it for about three
    years, almost all games.  I tried to learn 6502 assemble, but I
    couldn't understand how to do indirect addressing (now I know how
    to do it, but I've lost interest).  Back when I bought the 800 the
    other choices were the Apple II and the VIC-20, an easy choice.
    
    So now I've got the Amiga.  I think I made the right choice in both
    cases.

    i bought my first computer when the Atari 400 dropped to $250.
    Spent about a year using the cassette recorder for programming
    and cartridges for games.  Amazing how you can get used to touch
    typing on a membrane keyboard.  The C64 tempted me, but just seemed
    to have too many cost cutting tradeoffs done to it, did have a
    better keyboard though.
    
    Since then i've upgraded to a disk drive, 48K, and a 1200xl keyboard.
    The Amiga was my way of upgrading the 400 to 80 column output :-)
    
    It follows the same beliefs - quality OS, flexible hardware, please
    write code in upward compatible ways, white letters on blue, etc.
    
    Now i only power on the 400 for cartridge based games.  Someday
    i might start using it again - i heard that ST-Log or some ST magazine
    would be publishing the Atari 8-bit emulator for the ST sometime
    soon.  Might be fun to try to port it to the Amiga.
    
    -Dave
    

    I guess our household went this route (800 -> Amiga).
    
    I first got interested in the Atari 800 when I decided I'd like
    a toy computer to do color graphic trailer for my video cassette
    library.  I played with S.O.'s Tandy Color Computer for a while,
    and although it was nice that we could do multitasking on it, and
    the 6809 inside had a pretty neat instruction set, the color graphics
    really stunk.  I decided there was something better in the world.
 
    At this point, S.O. remembers that Byte had recently run a series
    of articles on the Atari graphics chips.  I read the series of articles
    and decided that the Atari 800 was the system for me.  Of course,
    at the time, the prospect of buying ANY home computer was serious
    $$$ to me, as I was losing money on a house hand over fist, and
    busy paying for a car I couldn't afford.
    
    Sometime in here, the Commodore 64 hit the market, and everyone
    told me it was just the thing to have.  So, I went out and bought
    what appeared to be the best reference I could find on the machine,
    and read through it.  Yuk!  Convinced me to get an 800.  It also
    convinced Atari to lower their prices.
    
    So, sometime about 4.5 years ago, I plunked down $1K on a 48K Atari
    with a SSSD (90K) Percom drive.  As soon as finances recovered,
    the system was expanded to 2 SSDD drives and one medium density
    Atari drive, plus the serial/parallel box with a dot matrix printer
    and a Hayes 1200 baud smartmodem and a Zenith composit video/RGB
    color monitor (pretty up-town system, huh?).
    
    The system served me well until around October 1985 when we got
    the Amiga, at which time it just served Kermit duty until the first
    Kermit implementations came out for the Amiga.  (It was fun Kermiting
    the stuff down from the big system to the Atari, then XModeming
    from the Atari to the Amiga, then null stripping the file on the
    Amiga).  Interestingly, I did very little color graphics with the
    Atari, and spent most of my time writing assembler hacks and a terminal
    emulator.  The balance was spent running the terminal emulator and
    running SynCalc to do my income taxes.  And, of course, playing
    games.
    
    So, about the time the Atari 520 came out, I was interested.  Sure,
    the graphics support was a definite step down from the 800 in every
    respect but resolution, but it seemed like a nice enough 68000 system
    with an 80 column display.
    
    At this point, my S.O. informs me not to bother with the Atari 520,
    'cause we're gonna get an Amiga instead.  "Fine," says I, "as long
    as you're paying for it."  I couldn't afford an Amiga (new house,
    new car, ...).
    
    So, S.O. buys us a new Amiga about two years ago.  It came in the first
    shipment that Omnitek in Tewksbury got.   We spent the first month
    writing cruddy little ABasiC applications, complete with hand assembled
    code pounded into string variables.  After the first month, we managed
    to get ahold of a developer's kit, so we got to spend some time
    writing some real code.  As a matter of fact, the developer's kit
    came the day before Thanksgiving.  The turkey took the backseat
    to the Amiga that year.  I'd hack until I dropped, then S.O. would
    grab the machine while I was asleep, and hack 'till he dropped.
    
    Not much of a configuration, though.  512K, 3.5" expansion drive,
    5.25" expansion drive (talk to me about reading raw MFM data sometime),
    same cruddy dot matrix printer, same not-cruddy Zenith monitor left
    over from Atari days, same Hayes, recently acquired really-nice
    plotter bought used off someone else in this file.  Still, quite
    a nice system.

    re -1
    
    S.O.?
    
    So YOU got the plotter...
    
    How is your Zenith monitor working out.  Isn't it only Digital RGB
    and composite?
    
    re:-?  800 emulator for the Amiga...I LOVE it!  You would probably
    have to run the 'translator' to run some software packages tho...
    
    I still have my 800, a plotter, an Okimate 10 color printer and
    a pile of software and floppies.  I sold my 130XE, monitor and disk
    drive to my neighbor.  The rest is collecting dust in the cellar.
    
    The most amazing thing is how compact the software was for these
    machines.  The really squeezed a lot into only 16K.  Videoscape
    3D on the Amiga needs 2 megs to run right!
    
    Randy
    

    re: .8
    
    i like to think of it as a 400/800 emulator :-)
    Last time i checked it was going to use the 400/800 OS since that
    already existed on a disk (the famous translator disk).  I wonder
    how many of the more recent software titles assume they are running
    on a 64K XL computer.  Might not be too tough to add 130XE support
    later.  I can understand Atari finally letting them do a 400/800
    emulator, not so sure Atari would agree to a 65/130XE emulator.
    
    -Dave

    Isn't the primary (and possibly only) difference in the 130XE the
    bank selection for additional memory?  The 65XE should be identical
    to the 800XL internaly.
    
    All I want to know is where will I plug my cartridges and stuff
    my 5 1/4" floppies?  
    
    Oh...maybe I shouldn't have asked that...;^)
    
    Randy
    

    Re: .8:
    
    S.O.: "Significant Other".  You know, another yuppie term.  Actually,
    he got the plotter.
    
    The Zenith monitor is analog RGB.  We wouldn't have wasted time
    with a digital RGB monitor (this model is a ZVM-135).  We got it
    way back when with the Atari, knowing that a 640x200 monitor was
    too much for an Atari 800.  The main reason was that we had some
    grandiose scheme for building a graphics board that did 640x400
    (interlaced), 256 colors out of a 24 bit pallette.  We got the memory
    (chips still sitting on the shelf), an the monitor, then shelved
    the whole thing.  We picked the Zenith because it was low cost,
    WASN'T digital like all the PC compatible monitors on the market,
    had NTSC compatible scan rates and had a composit video IN jack
    so we could also use it with the Atari.
    
    The Zenith monitor really is quite nice on the Amiga.  I haven't
    done any A/B comparisons with something of known high standards
    (like that Sony that everyone likes so much), but it's got a pretty
    sharp looking picture just the same.  Only real disadvantage is
    trying to find an Amiga to ZVM-135 monitor cable, especially back
    when the Amiga had only been on the market for a couple of weeks.
    (We went the hacksaw the DB-25 route)

    Over the years I've moved from PDT, PDP T-11 Single board to Atari
    600 and then Amiga.
    
    The Bulletin Board Software that came with the 1030 Modem and available
    drives really made my $50 Atari from Spags a real inexpensive appliance.
    [I used to dial into work]
    
    Did anyone ever dream about the Adam when it made its debut [lucky
     I didn't buy]?
    
    The Canon Cat is my new window shopping interest.  Anyone else dream
    about good stuff cheap machines? [The ST never did it for me]
    
    

I'm amused.

I had a lot of fun with the Commodore PET before I got my Atari-1040.

    GAaaaaahhh! Those were the first computers I ever saw! I learned
    programming on those, and when BASIC wasn't enough, bought Lance
    Leventhal's book and learned 6502 assembler... since my high
    school was too cheap to get an assembler I learned to hand-
    compile. Got to the point where I could read/write hexadecimal
    code. Made it real easy to hack the Atari when I got that!

    re: .10
    
    there are other differences, but that probably should be discussed
    in the 8-bit atari notesfile.  Cartcopy and other similar programs
    can convert cartridges to loadable files.  Could hook up the disk
    drive by an interface to the atari serial cable.  All just mere
    implementation issues :-)
    
    -dave

    Odd how my attitude about computers and their relative values changed
    when I got out of school.  As a poor student, I got by with the
    not_even_heavy_enough_to_be_a_boat_anchor VIC-20 and later the
    C64, because, though I lusted after the Atari series, I reasoned
    that the Commodore machines had "more bang for the buck." [Don't
    you want to throttle Jerry Pournelle when he uses that term? :-]
    Now I've flip-flopped and don't mind paying the extra bucks for the
    bigger bang.
    
    Gary

    Gee, I feel all alone here.  I had an Apple before my Amiga I bought
    in '81 because it was (in my own always-correct opinion) the best
    computer available.  Atari, etc. had better graphics/sound, but
    Apple seemed a better overall computer.  We kept each other very
    happy for five years, then I saw the Amiga, tossed my Apple in the
    trash (or nearly so considering the little $$ I got for selling
    it), and have been happy w/ Amy every since.
    
    [Actually, about a day after I had sold it, I said, "Gee, stupid,
     since you got so little for it I guess you should have kept it.
     I could have been playing Bard's Tale II...]
    
    Andy Humphrey