I had an old acquaintance over for a few hours on Thursday. This was the telling hour for him as he was here to try and decide (once and for all) to either remain with his Amigas - an A1200 and nice A4k desktop - or go pc. (Second person I've seen with the same predicament in past few weeks). He wanted to compare both machines side by side and if possible, task for task. While we waited for the transfer of a master's contents over into a Seagate slave, I checked the emails sitting on the server, deleted some "Spam" then downloaded those deemed as being acceptable. In nanoseconds the various letters popped into their pre-appointed folders and then I opened up those from ASA. We read through the emails and then a simple comment from Garry got us into that old debate about "going over to the "dark side".
I tried to explain to Gordon what Garry meant by this term and how people interpreted such action. Not ever being a member of any Amiga group he was totally unaware of the depth of ill feeling there used to be between users of different computer platforms. I explained how people were actually ostracised if they even mentioned that they were contemplating a change over to PC. Sometimes, all hell was let loose and tempers were frayed if one decided to abandon the Amiga. I informed him that people used to flame each other via email and tempers would run high and on occasions people even got expelled from groups and mailing lists. Screeds of Anglo Saxon expletives would pepper the emails and rather than "sign out" with their usual signature, people often finished with the descriptive FU ya bass.
Looking back, such actions seems so puerile and senseless but it did at least demonstrate the depth of feeling some people could possess for inanimate objects such as the Amiga. Or did it?
I suspect it was probably more to do with someone having an unhealthy intolerance of other people's preferences and opinions - but these people sometimes hid behind the veil of "just a staunch loyal follower of the Amiga". Dangerous!
My friend agreed. "And how would your friends on ASA feel if you print my story Peter?" he asked. "I`ll post it up, then we'll take it from there" I suggested.
It's now early Saturday afternoon (12/10/2002) and yesterday I spent the best part of my day sitting at the dining room table. I had covered the highly polished walnut with a few thick table covers to act as protection because this large piece of furniture now had various computer components scattered all over it. Gordon had made his mind up. He came to the conclusion that the time had come to give up on the Amiga and so, he had driven down to Hawick where he purchased some components from Alistair the pc man. The prices were good and now in front of me were such things as blue fronted pc case with 300+watt AC/DC power supply, large cooler fan, Jet mobo, GeForce gfx card, Athlon CPU and modem etc.
Gordon not being the DIY type suffered from technofear - a common complaint. I therefore volunteered to assemble his new pc for him. Within a short space of time, I had set up the various parts and was now awaiting the installation of the hard drive. In his excitement Gordon had for some reason forgotten to buy a hard drive while down in Hawick (pity because Alistair`s prices were very low) so now he had to drive along to Shawlands to get one. He returned 40 minutes or so later with a new 20GIG-(£38) Quantum ide hard drive and in it went. All cables were checked and when I switched it on, everything powered up as normal. Less than an hour later, MSWindowsXP Home version was up and running. All I had to do then was show him how to set up the internal modem properly and then I set up drivers for his printer. I tested the ports and set up a temp driver so that I could do a test print via my own printer. It all worked as planned. I finished off by setting up some User Accounts for him and his family. If by chance he need further help, then he knew that he could always phone me. Valerie came in and informed us that our evening meal was awaiting us in the kitchen, so we tore ourselves away from the new computer, washed and dined.
"Are you happy with your decision?" I asked him later.
"Absolutely" he replied after downing the last of the red vino.
"Going to sell your A4k now then?"
Gordon looked over at me and smiled. "You bet, I've had enough of the Amiga".
I knew what he meant. He wasn't being disloyal; he was just being honest.
Gordon had been with the Amiga for good many years now and a few months back, his PicassoIV blew. I had given him a PII to fill in while he searched for a replacement but then, the inevitable happened, the A4k`s power supply died. Analogic could possibly get one but he was unsure to spend just under £100 on a mere power supply. Then curses upon curses, his CyberStormII started throwing wobblies - followed by it not being recognised by the system on a number of occasions. Within 2 days, it too died a death. I had already replaced minor things like led power lights and floppy etc on his A4k but could do nothing for him in the way of repairs regarding the accelerator or Picasso card. Repairs (if possible) for these items would no doubt prove costly. His Microvitec monitor then took a doze of the shingles along the right hand side of the screen and other strange things started to happen within the tube. I checked for loose wires or dust shortings but could not locate the source of the strange crackling sounds emanating from inside the monitor. It did not look good and with each passing day, Gordon was getting more and more despondent.
That was why he asked to come round and see my (somewhat shrinking) computer collection. Being an owner, he already knew the capabilities of a well-specified A4k but he was surprised to see the high quality a simple A2k could produce. My main A2000 has a PIV installed alongside a Blizzard 060-50 SCSI accelerator. The MIPs on this baby can near match my old CyberStormIII`s performance so this glorified 32bit 500 (A2000) is one mean machine - and that's why I keep it. With its HyperComZ30 I/O zorro unit and Robotics Courier modem, it was by far the fastest non-ADSL modem set-up available. My Pace modem is very swift but the Courier is lightning fast.
He liked sitting down at the A2k and commented on how he preferred the heavy-duty keyboard as opposed to those feather-light pc efforts. Then I powered up the 2 pcs (Win98 and XP) via a Dell (Trinitron) 17" and a NEC MultiSyncXV15 monitors. There was a definite sea change.
Gordon was impressed with my self -built Athlon 1,200mhz, Gigabyte mobo and Gforce gfx card machine but he was totally bowled over by my newly built super cooled XP1800Mhz Athlon via Jet mobo and Gforce running XP Windows Home edition. He was instantly converted.
I invited him to sit down and wander through some of the programs then a little later, I ran the XP Demo. His eyes flashed with excitement and after glancing quickly over at the Amiga OS and Win98 screens, he stared at the XP and exclaimed. "I really like this Peter, could you build one like this for me. I don't think I`ll want to go back to the Amiga-ever again"
I must admit that inside, I felt an element of guilt. Had I put another stake into the heart of Amiga? "Are you sure you want a pc Gordon?"
"Absolutely sure. Build one for me soon please" he said rather boyishly. He was very eager to own a unit similar to mine and after he pestered me a little, I eventually complied with his wishes. Tomorrow he would go and get the parts and within a day or so he would become the proud owner of a new 1800Mhz XP pc. He appeared happy.
"Any guilt?" I asked him.
His eyebrows furrowed a little "Whatever for Peter?" he asked innocently.
"Exactly" I thought to myself.
