endellion.me.uk Amiga 1000
Having seen the price tag on the Apple Lisa and Macintosh machines, the announcement of the Amiga was very happy news indeed. I pre-ordered one as soon as there was a company offering this facility.
The next couple of months was spent scouring the computer press for news of its arrival, and oddly enough, having been the suicidal type practically from birth onwards, being rather afraid that I wouldn't live to see it on my desk. This nearly became a reality when a builder threw a lump of wall down onto the pavement from 4 storeys up, which landed in front of my feet. Hatred of punks never knew bounds in the eighties. Witness my attempt to buy a monitor for my Commodore 64.
Despite it's grubby visage, this is actually still a working computer. I still have several "kickstart" disks, but have unfortunately lost the "Workbench" (mainly because I never actually used that much) |
After a lengthy wait I received news of its arrival, and I took my 3000 guilders to this very fancy office on an out-of-town industrial estate. These people were also "somewhat" surprised to see me -- previous contact had been by phone -- but after some shaking of heads they decided that pecunia non olet after all, and I had all the paperwork.
Within the month I was back to purchase the memory expansion kit. They started to feel quite happy with me, I could tell. Next purchases were a second floppy drive, and a printer.
Also needed were books: all furiously expensive american imports. I estimate that during the eighties, I must have spent nearly half my annual income on computer-related materials.