In 1985 I saw the Amiga for the very first time.  I had been reading about it for some time but didn't fully understand all of the terminology and the impact that things like "multitasking" would have on the way we used computers.  It all seemed really business oriented to me.  Unlike the previous TI-994A, Commodore 64, Atari's and Apples, this new Amiga was an awesome thing to behold.  I saw this machine as something businesses would swarm to and that home users like myself would have little reason to buy.  But after I saw it in action, I realized that I was wrong.  If I knew anything, it was that I definitely wanted one for myself.

In March 1987, I ordered my Amiga 1000 from Abby's Discount Computers via mail order.  A week or so after ordering it, the UPS truck pulled up to my apartment and unloaded 2 big boxes.  It was an exciting time.  The dawn of a new computing era was at my doorsteps, and about to become my very own.  I unboxed it carefully, and set it up.  I'll never forget that glowing white screen with the hand prompting me to insert a disk.  It came with Workbench 1.1 and had several demos including a very well done turorial on using the system, mouse, etc.  This was the future of computing.  And it was sitting on my desk awaiting my command.

The very first thing I purchased for my new Amiga was Deluxe Paint.  I was amazed with the application when I first saw the Amiga in 1985, and knew that it was a must have item.  After all, I was use to creating my graphics on grid paper and translating it to hex code to create the images.  This would change all of that forever.

I continued to use my Amiga 1000 until around 1993 as things were slowing down for Amiga drastically here in the US, I was consistently turning it on less and less.  Although I never upgraded anything but the ram, it was a solid machine.  I still have it today, it works as good as it ever did.

In 1997, after several years of trying to get use to using a Windows PC, I bought my A3000 from another user who was leaving the Amiga scene.  He wanted to sell his machine to someone who would use it, and so for $250 it became mine.  I received it later that week.  The system was basically stock with 4MB of fast ram and 1MB chip ram and a 40MB hard drive.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that it did have the 3.1 ROM upgrade and included the full OS3.1 diskette pack with manuals.  He also threw in several games which included Birds of Prey, AD&D Champions of Krynn, AD&D Eye of the Beholder, Global Effect, some productivity software, Superbase Pro 2 and the full version of AmigaVision complete with binder and software.  I also received several manuals and books for Amiga.  This was a really good buy.  And for the first time I was about to see the Amiga in a different light from my old floppy disk based A1000.  The first thing I did was replace the 40MB drive with a 4GB Seagate Barracuda drive, which I split into 2GB partitions.  I also added an external SCSI CD-Rom drive.

The next thing I bought was an AmiFast 3000 Zip to Simm adapter, since zips were getting hard to find and were more difficult to work with.  This caused me some problems from the start.  You see, I soon discovered that my Amiga 3000 was one of those early models that Commodore messed up with the pin outs on the ROM sockets.  They fixed this with what was known as a "Rom Tower".  Imagine my dismay when I discovered that the Rom Tower was standing right in the place where part of my AmiFast 3000 adapter needed to be!  This was impossible, it would never work!  I called the place where I ordered the adapter and talked with the guy for a bit explaining my problem.  He told me that several others had this problem as well and had to create an "extension cable" for the tower so it could be placed elsewhere in the case.   I set out to make my cable which turned into a tedious project.  (See pics below) 

As you can see, it was alot of work, but everything fit into place afterwards!

Problem solved!  I now had 16MB of fast ram and after moving the first 1MB over to the other side of the board, I now had 2MB chip ram. Cool!

In late 1997 I decided that I wanted to add a graphic card.  I had read alot about the various ones available, and decided to go with the Cybervision 64/3D.  At $259 it was pricey, but I knew that it would be worth it for me.  This was the best upgrade I ever added to my Amiga, as it really made a difference in viewing picture files and web pages.  My little miggy was growing up, but I still wanted more.  I started looking at accelerators and I really wanted a CyberstormPPC but they were just too expensive (and still are).  I finally found an A3640 from a shop for $240.00 and decided that would be the right upgrade for me.  I got it and went through the usual fumbling of motherboard jumpers and such until I got a nice boot screen.  Now we are cooking!  Not only is my Amiga getting a CPU upgrade, but the CV64/3D will now work at full Zorro III mode.   This was the second best upgrade I did.

The A3640 accelerator board.

Soon I had my PC and Mac talking to each other via an ethernet network and found that it was easy to share files between the two.  Once again, I decided that I wanted my Amiga to get in on this network as well.  So I preordered the Ariadne II ethernet card from National Amiga in Canada.  It took over a month to get it, as they had to reprogram the roms with new firmware once they got their shipment in.  But it was worth the wait.  This was yet another great addition to my Amiga.  And today, allows me to connect the A3000 to the Internet via my broadband router, as well as share files with the PC.

Ariadne II ethernet card (top) and Cybervision 64/3D (bottom)

This is pretty much all of my history with the Amiga.  I hope to add another chapter to include the AmigaOne and OS4.  That chapter may become known as "The Legend Continues!"

-Tony-