Author: Shalroth (host213-1-10-242.host.btclick.com)
Date: 06-29-2000 12:06
Let me recount a little of my personal history.
All through the eighties, I used a Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer. I know it didn't mean that much in the US, but in the UK our Sinclair-C64 battle was as fierce as the US C64vsAtari battle was. The spectrum was smaller, with less expansion and worse graphics and terrible sound (two channel buzzer versus the SID chip!) but it was easy to program and *cheap*. During this time, I also played a lot on the Atari 2600 at my Grandma's house, so I knew what atari meant.
In the very early nineties, I made best friends with a fellow spectrum owner. It was great - we'd swap and share games and hardware, and if the C64 kids kicked of at us, we knew enough about the hardware to defend ourselves pretty well (My computer runs at 3.5MHz, what does yours run at? Oh, it's measured in KHz, right? ;-)
Now, inevitably, we had to shed our 8-bits and venture into the weird world of the 16-bits. I did so first - I got a 1040 STE with two diskdrives and a MIDI keyboard. Well, my dad had a 520STm, so it was only natural, he knew the ST was the best choice for me, because he had one.
Sadly, my friend's dad was an amiga owner - so a year after I got my ST, Robert got an amiga 1200. At this point, let me say the A1200 was impressive. I know, not a patch on the Falcon030 which it was aimed at, but still a good computer. Compared with my STe it had better graphics and similar sound (without MIDI), and when games like Gloom, Dreams and Alien breed 3D (all Doom-clones) came out, we had a good time playing them, and I was jealous. He was better off than I was, so he had more memory, a bigger hard drive (although mine was SCSI :) a *colour* scanner, a *24* pin printer to my 9-pin, etc. When we both finished up at school, we drifted apart a little, and didn't socialise as much.
When we made contact again, the rivalry was gone! We both had PCs, and yeah, we 'compared' our PCs like we did with our 16-bits (I had more RAM, he had more speed and 3d GFX, etc) but we both still used our Atari/Amiga for stuff - and we had that in common! It was a good feeling - we both supported our machines, instead we were saying 'My 16-bit still does that better than a PC','Yeah mine too! Check out cubase on my atari compared with this rock'
And *that's* the feeling in the on-line community now. I visited the Commodore chat-room in Delphi.com one time - and they were all like, 'So you still use your ST? That's cool! Go for it!" The rivalry has disappeared and been replaced with a new community spirit, and sense of commradery.
I always used to hate the amiga - but the A1200 had a very nice GUI - way better than windows, and the multitasking was smooth and stable. Of course, I use MagiC on my ST now, so I think my ST multitasks better than a PC, but I admire the effectiveness of the AmigaOS, just like I admire the efficiency of TOS.
What do you all think - about the 'coming together' of the atari/amiga users into a 16-bit usre group? I think it's really ironic, and pretty damn cool.
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