The ZX81 was my very first home computer, purchased in 1982 as a Christmas present! I think it cost about 50 - 60 pound.

Mr Sinclair (The man who still prefers a calculator over a computer for working out sums) was a very nice man creating such machines as this and the spectrum, the reduced cost brought micro computing to the masses.

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I purchased my first Amiga in 1989, it was the Batman Pack. The Bat-Pack retailed at £399.00 from Comet; this was a little expensive so I had to purchase it on HP, I was still paying it off three years later! The bundled games that came with the package included, Batman the Movie, New Zealand Story, F18 Interceptor and Deluxe Paint 2. Below is an image of the A500 Plus, identical to the A500 with a few extra bells and whistles.

A500 Specifications

• CPU: Motorola 68000
• Clock Speed: 7.14Mhz
• Storage: Internal 880KB 3.5" Floppy disk drive

The Amiga and Atari St were so far ahead of the rest of the competition. Oh the days of banter about which machine was the best! The version of MS Windows during this time was Windows 2.0, not a contender for the Amiga GUI.

Looking back to 1985 the Amiga Workbench version 1.0 was first relea ed for the A1000; MS Windows was on version 1.1. Look at the difference below, Workbench on the left MS Windows the right. MS Windows did not allow overlapping of windows, icons where at the bottom of the screen and windows could not overlap this area.

One of the great things about the Amiga Workbench was that early versions were release on one disk. Workbench 1.3 came on a single sided Floppy Disk. How big is XP?

I still have an A500 and purchased an A600 in 1992. The A600 has a built in modulator and PCMCIA slot, the external modulator was my only dislike with the A500, and the clunky drive! I also purchased 2 Megabytes of RAM for my A600, which was awkward to fit.

Does anyone remember the GURU Error, the Red Box of Death!!?

My favorite game on the Amiga had to be between IK+, Menace, Dungeon Master II, Shadow of the Beast, Panza Kick Boxer, No Second Prize and Vroom. Battle Chess was cool, so was Test Drive 2, coming to think of it there were so many classics. I remember hacking into Pinball Dreams with Disk Master and changing the high score table to set my friend Ronnie a challenge. I told him in the end!

One thing I liked about the PC when I first moved into the market was the upgradeability factor. This does not seem to be the case now; you have to practically buy a new machine every time they release the latest processor. The only thing for keeps is the Monitor, Graphics Card and Sound Card, which you want to upgrade anyway!

The Amiga is making a comeback, you can check out the latest operating system (OS4) @ AmigaOS. The fans just wont let this machine GO, will you?? I don t think it will ever be what it was, but who knows.....

Emulators

There are two main emulators for the Amiga, WinFellow and WinUAE. I prefer WinFellow as it is easier to use and I had sound problems with Winuae, although Winuae is the more realistic emulator.

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I have been playing Ghouls & Ghosts on the Gens Megadrive emulator, this was one of the first games I owned for the console. The emulator emulates the Megadrive perfectly without any sound hiccups or speed problems. The Megadrive was an awesome beast for its time, released in Japan in 1988; when Nintendo seemed to dominate the console market.

Below is an image of the Sega Megadrive I used to own, I swapped it for a 4 channel Phonic mixing desk:

Marked in yellow is the volume-slider and head-phone socket which were missing on the Megadrive 2. These were a must at the time so my mum (Radar Ears!!) could not hear me playing on late through the night. The first name that Saga came up with for the Megadrive was MK-1601, then changed it to Megadrive, 'Mega' had the connotation of superiority, and 'Drive' had the connotation of speed and power.

Below are the technical specs for the Megadrive:

• Generation : 16-Bit
• Processor : Motorola 68000 @ 7.68mhz
• Sound : FM (YM2612), Ti-PSG, DAC controlled by Z80, Stereo
• RAM:64k
• Resolution: 320x224
• Color: 64 on-screenout out of 512
• Media: Cartridge

Here is a link to download Gens

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