Had an Amiga first, then bought an ST later??

galvatron1983 · Postby **galvatron1983** » Mon May 20, 2019 9:43 am

I never had an ST in the 90s, I was Amiga all the way. I did keep an eye on the ST side of things though, and I always liked the case design and I even thought that looked better then the Amiga. I got into the ST properly for the first time several years ago, and love it. Instead of dismissing a lot of the games as being inferior to the Amiga versions, I actually admire how close the ST games are to their counterparts. Im in awe of how the ST can be programmed to make up for the lack of custom chips to get near the Amiga versions.

I keep hearing about people who had an ST, then "upgraded" to the Amiga later. What are the thoughts of people like me who got an ST after the Amiga?

Frank B · Postby **Frank B** » Mon May 20, 2019 5:17 pm

It's simple. I love them both! Absolutely the best computers ever built.

Postby **Mug UK** » Mon May 20, 2019 5:45 pm

I went the other way as I bought a rather nicely souped up Amiga 500 from someone I knew who was upgrading to an Amiga 1200. It came in handy (mostly) for ripping modules from Amiga games so that I could port them to the ST via the Adrenalin UK .MOD disks. Other times it was for playing Syndicate by EA using the 28Mhz accelerator that came with the A500 to make it worth playing when you had so many people to control

dhedberg · Postby **dhedberg** » Mon May 20, 2019 8:37 pm

I have a friend that was surrounded by Amiga users, but that decided to buy an ST instead, just because it was "different"!

dma · Postby **dma** » Mon May 20, 2019 8:58 pm

I could not imagine an Amiga user acquiring a ST for games. But for MIDI software, no doubt!

[edit] "Back in the day" of course, because now, any computer collector owning an Amiga should have a ST as well.

calimero · Postby **calimero** » Tue May 21, 2019 7:29 am

I had ST from 1986 and I bought Amiga 500 somewhere in 1993. just to play games and continue to use ST for serious stuff (SM124 was unmatchable

)

wongck · Postby **wongck** » Tue May 21, 2019 7:48 am

my first ST was back in late 80s.
Always thought that the keyboard-CPU design was great... so I really like the Amiga 500 design.
But still just can't bear to buy an Amiga.... so now in 2019, I still have not an Amiga.

alexh · Postby **alexh** » Tue May 21, 2019 12:57 pm

I chose an Amiga (Shadow of the Beast had just been released) where all my friends had Atari STe and were in the Demo scene which made me somewhat of an outsider. I loved the ST demo scene and what they were able to squeeze out of their machine. I didn't get a ST until that period in the late 90's early 00's where they had hit rock bottom price wise. Thalion were my favourite game developers (can't you tell?) and they were all ST demo scene geeks. If I had my time again I'd probably have bought an ST instead of an Amiga just to prevent the friction it caused with my friends

dhedberg · Postby **dhedberg** » Tue May 21, 2019 1:02 pm

alexh wrote:I chose an Amiga (Shadow of the Beast had just been released) where all my friends had Atari STe and were in the Demo scene which made me somewhat of an outsider. I loved the ST demo scene and what they were able to squeeze out of their machine. I didn't get a ST until that period in the late 90's early 00's where they had hit rock bottom price wise. Thalion were my favourite game developers (can't you tell?) and they were all ST demo scene geeks. If I had my time again I'd probably have bought an ST instead of an Amiga just to prevent the friction it caused with my friends

Who were/are your ST demo friends? :-)

Postby **joska** » Tue May 21, 2019 1:03 pm

I switched from ST to Amiga in 1988. And back to the ST again after a few weeks.

dhedberg · Postby **dhedberg** » Tue May 21, 2019 1:49 pm

joska wrote:I switched from ST to Amiga in 1988. And back to the ST again after a few weeks.

Haha, what happened? Guru meditation?

alexh · Postby **alexh** » Tue May 21, 2019 7:35 pm

dhedberg wrote:Who were/are your ST demo friends?

The most famous was a friend of a friend. Mookie of Adrenalin UK. But my school friends had their own compact disk group called Safari

http://www.stonish.net/Safari-130#st1
http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=11116

siriushardware · Postby **siriushardware** » Tue May 21, 2019 11:43 pm

i still have virtually every computer that I have owned from new, the only notable exception being the Amiga 500 (+512MB RAM upgrade wedge) which I owned for about 2 years. Although it was of course an excellent games machine, somewhat superior to the ST in that respect especially in terms of sound and hardware assistance for scrolling, etc, I never really warmed to it as a programmer so when somebody let it be known that they wanted one I sold them mine, the only computer I have ever sold while it was still current. By contrast, my ST is the original one that I bought around 1986.

It might seem perverse to prefer a machine on which almost everything had to be done in software, but having come up through the Sinclair route, that was the sort of environment I was used to anyway. One way to look at it is to think of the Amiga fraternity as the Wizards, with lots of powerful spells at their disposal. We ST people are the Muggles, who somehow manage to do almost everything the Amiga lot do without access to any of that magic...

Postby **joska** » Wed May 22, 2019 7:06 am

dhedberg wrote:Haha, what happened? Guru meditation?

I was studying computer science at that time and needed a usable computer at home. The Amiga was just too unstable, it was difficult to exchange data with the DOS computers at school and the "productive" software was sh*tty compared to what the ST offered. I loved the sound and graphics hardware and I missed AMOS for years after selling it, but did not regret going back to the ST.

wongck · Postby **wongck** » Wed May 22, 2019 8:24 am

siriushardware wrote:We ST people are the Muggles

NOT !!

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/muggle
A person who is not conversant with a particular activity or skill.

oh yeah... may be correct.... no clue about AmigOS

siriushardware · Postby **siriushardware** » Wed May 22, 2019 7:22 pm

In the original (?) 'Harry Potter' context 'Muggle' simply means: Someone who is non-magical.

There's a recurring side thread in which one member of the Wizarding community (Mr Weasley) is endlessly fascinated by Muggle artefacts and machines, and marvels at the incredible things Muggles manage to do without magic.

Marakatti · Postby **Marakatti** » Thu May 23, 2019 10:05 am

dhedberg wrote:I have a friend that was surrounded by Amiga users, but that decided to buy an ST instead, just because it was "different"!

I did the same. It was all about Amiga where i lived so i wanted something different.

Never regretted my choice since a rock solid OS was more important to me than super smooth games. And i really appreciate ST programmers who had to invent their own 'software customchips' to do the tricks ST was never engineered for in the first place.

It's like Amiga developers bought a sofa from Ikea and put it together where ST programmers went to cut a pile of logs from a forest and hand crafted everything piece by piece. Sometimes the end results were crap, sometimes a work of art that lives forever.

ctirad · Postby **ctirad** » Thu May 23, 2019 10:41 am

I had and Amiga 500(+) a cople of years, then shortly A1200 and CD32, then switched to Falcon. Does it count?

dhedberg · Postby **dhedberg** » Thu May 23, 2019 11:56 am

Marakatti wrote:
dhedberg wrote:I have a friend that was surrounded by Amiga users, but that decided to buy an ST instead, just because it was "different"!

I did the same. It was all about Amiga where i lived so i wanted something different.

Never regretted my choice since a rock solid OS was more important to me than super smooth games. And i really appreciate ST programmers who had to invent their own 'software customchips' to do the tricks ST was never engineered for in the first place.

Yes, the Amiga was definitely more common where I lived as well, and when I look back I realize that most Amiga friends were just using their computers to play games, while my ST friends actually used their computers for many different tasks. I think the two primary reasons for that were the ST-High video mode, and that the complete OS was in ROM, making the friendly Desktop to appear almost instantly when the computer was switched on. No need to find the Workbench disks, and wait, and wait...

Cyprian · Postby **Cyprian** » Thu May 23, 2019 12:21 pm

dhedberg wrote:Yes, the Amiga was definitely more common where I lived as well, and when I look back I realize that most Amiga friends were just using their computers to play games, while my ST friends actually used their computers for many different tasks. I think the two primary reasons for that were the ST-High video mode, and that the complete OS was in ROM, making the friendly Desktop to appear almost instantly when the computer was switched on. No need to find the Workbench disks, and wait, and wait...

The same story here, Amiga was more popular than ST. In all cases it was only used as a cheap (thx to piracy) gaming console by a kids.
ST was mostly used for serious stuff, MIDI/DTP but also home power users (text editors ect) and for gaming.

wongck · Postby **wongck** » Fri May 24, 2019 4:52 am

Cyprian wrote:In all cases it was only used as a cheap (thx to piracy) gaming console by a kids.
ST was mostly used for serious stuff, MIDI/DTP but also home power users (text editors ect) and for gaming.

I was not even aware of cheap pirated software when i got my ST.
I just wanted a computer with my 1st few months saving from working and it was the ST.

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