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Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Thu Nov 17, 2016 6:06 pm

Hi All,

I found this forum recently when I was doing research on the number of Amiga's sold, especially in the USA. I found a good posting by the site admin and another user here that got closer to reality. After reading through some posts I liked what I read and this seems like a nice board.

My first Amiga was probably around 1987/1988 with an A500. I had been a Commodore guy since about 1981 when we got a VIC-20 and 1983 when we replaced it with a C64. It was that year that I discovered the many BBS being run in my area and Zippy Zapp was my handle then in my teens and now.

I currently still have an A500, A1200, and an A2000 that I got from a neighbor in 1988. It needs a bit of love though to get it back to working order.

I am having fun digging through the boxes I pulled out of storage a couple years ago finding all my old software and games, still in the boxes. Man I was a packrat then.

Anyway, don't mean to put you to sleep, but it is nice to find this board. Thanks!

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Nov 17, 2016 7:18 pm

Hey there Zippy Zapp!

Getting numbers on old 8-bit and 16/32-bit systems is HARD. So many of the documents from back in the day were either never digitized or shared publicly (except in broad terms for those that were publicly traded). I've researched Amiga, Commodore and Atari. The numbers are all so frustratingly incomplete.

I've even tracked down some old sales figures for Inform at one point this year and half of the numbers are hand-written onto notepaper! It's totally tragic.

Trying to break things down on a country level is virtually impossible in most cases, too. And then that leads many (in some forums) to use anecdotal memories as factual evidence of this and that. Here, I like to try and at least do my homework in terms of what is online anymore and go from there. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

So glad you found us! And so glad you've joined the site. 2016 has been a fun ride and 2017 should be great.
It was that year that I discovered the many BBS being run in my area and Zippy Zapp was my handle then in my teens and now.
I've only this week finally gotten my C64 online via WiFi and have been hitting some telnet-capable C64 boards. There is a very vibrant retro scene on a few of them. These days there are probably less than 50 people talking on the board, but I know half of them (via Twitter) and everyone is really into it. I actually find it quite relaxing - and ironically exciting at the same time - when I'm catching up on messages each day. I am in the process of writing up a post about it that I hope to publish soon.

I'm even kicking around the idea of (maybe) using one of my spare Amigas to launch a simple BBS myself. We'll see. I have to admit the PETSCII 40 column mode (color) BBSes have hit my nostalgia buttons big time right now. Little "off the grid" communities that still exist - mainly for communication these days and less so for file swapping ... the pirating days are over. And from a communication standpoint, it's pretty fun. And no - we're not doing dial-up! Haha The Amiga could easily handle some of the 80col BBSes I've run across. ..

See you around the site!

User avatar
Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Thu Nov 17, 2016 8:06 pm

Welcome to the forum, hope you'll be around from time to time. I know Intric8 and myself try to delve deeply into whatever topic is being discussed, with as much evidence as can be found and, when theories are discussed they come from a logical standpoint. Things I have not found from most of the bigger forums... If you try to reason with them you get an all out attack and you're just trying to figure out the truth... Not sure some want to know the truth if it means they're a little less special. The gut feeling can help, I mean my gut feeling told me the Amiga was not the biggest thing ever but from living at the time in America and having 4 Amiga stores nearby I always felt it was bigger in America than how the world is currently portraying it. My gut feeling always told me things are not how they are portrayed, but all that made me do is delve into it and see who was right. Some people have no desire to collect that kind of information. sigh. But I've been here since shortly after its inception and I love coming back.

User avatar
Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Thu Nov 17, 2016 10:33 pm

Thank You both so much for the warm welcome. This site will definitely be on my list of sites to frequent.

@intric8,

Thanks for the information on sales. I have been researching this off and on for a few years and have gotten pretty much nowhere. It is pretty sad because it just seems to me, based on the stores that were around and selling Amigas that they sold a whole lot more then what is reported by Amiga friends over seas. I watched one documentary and this guy reported that only a few 100k Amiga's were sold in USA which is just absolutely absurd. Yes the larger forums preach this stuff as fact and it is hard to make any headway so I don't bother anymore. I used to help out back in the 80's at several Amiga stores in our area and I know they sold quite well but I guess that is mostly anecdotal.

Which Wifi modem did you pickup? I picked up the WiModem from CBMstuff.com It works great and I have signed on to a couple of BBSs and it is great to experience the early years of online fun again. There is a request to make the WiModem for plugging into the serial port of the Amiga to use for BBSing on Amiga so hopefully it happens.

@Shot97,

I had similar experience to you in the 80's. My city is pretty small, even now but then I think our population was less then 60k, yet there was no less then 5 stores in our city that sold Amiga stuff. And within 6 miles add on another 3 so we had no shortage of Amiga stuff to browse. I had people in every area of the city to trade disks with so it was never a problem finding demos and graphics and such.

This probably isn't the right place to bring this up but I do find it irritating that computer history revisionists within the Amiga base have decided that there is nothing on Amiga for NTSC users and don't bother unless you buy a PAL machine. North America is irrelevant and it was never a noticeable computer here. At least that is what they preach as fact. It sure is odd how I have literally over 1000 - 1500 disks loaded with software, 95% NTSC. My collection of junk is a very small amount of the available software here.

But I digress, it is refreshing to find another board with more open mindedness. I am going to mention this board to a few of my Amiga friends that are also growing tired of the larger boards.

Thanks again.

User avatar
Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Fri Nov 18, 2016 10:43 am

Won't get it into too deep but yeah, I've always said if I reviewed NOTHING but Amiga games designed in North America for NTSC machines I would have more than enough material to work with. And rich, deep material at that. I believe it's all about age really. The average computer user at the time of the Amiga in the United States was between 20-45 years old. They were nerds/hobbyists/creative people, they had money, they bought plenty of the machines and once more they bought plenty of software. If I only did games I'd have plenty to work with but if you add on software practically all of it was designed with the U.S. in mind. Those older people loved the Amiga very much, bought modems, were online... Search up old group topics from the early 90's and you'd think that everyone who had an Amiga had an Amiga 3000 and was from America just based on those posts. Those were the people who had modems. In Europe, they loved their Amiga's as well but it was the parents buying the machine for the kids, the parents didn't use the thing, didn't know about it, didn't love it. The kids were also primarily stealing games. That's an important fact of history and they talk quite fondly about it, but they refuse to see the fact that even though piracy certainly existed in America it was far less of a thing in the United States. Companies did not like selling to Europeans because of this very issue. Kids grew up playing games, "certain" types of games, games the kids here played on an NES like side scrollers. In America they played Pool of Radiance, just different markets. But European users are of the perfect age to be online in their 30's and talking about their experiences with the machine. They don't tend to hear too much of the American side of things because those people are not of the age that tends to spend time making videos or being on forums. They do exist though and yes, from my experience there's a never ending supply of quality software and games for NTSC machines. Never throw away a beautiful Amiga, and even if you want to play PAL stuff there are options for NTSC machines to play those titles. I never wish to put down our European brothers because they certainly loved the Amiga, but we did too, and I believe there are stories they should be more willing to listen to from this side of the pond.

User avatar
Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Fri Nov 18, 2016 12:04 pm

Totally Agree. Never really thought about it like that but I think you are right there was a big age difference. I was pretty young at the time, during the height of Amiga (1990-1992, at least seamed so here) I was in my early 20's. BBSs were still quite popular and the last bundles of the A500 were being sold at places like Software Etc. and Babbages. This was the bundle that included the last revision of the A500 here, an A520 adapter, TextCraft and a bunch of other software, I seem to remember Carmen Sandiego. I still have the software and the adapter but not the boxes.

But yeah I knew several people that were much older, had A2000 and later A3000s and were very into Desktop Publishing software. haha. No Batman bundle over here. If they had a better bundle with games and such it probably would have sold better then the bundle I bought. It is almost like they did not want to market it as a game system like they basically did in the UK.





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