COMPUTERS

My current config is a rather kewl Amiga A4000, complete with Cyberstorm 68060 accelerator, a rather healthy 40megs of ram and 2.6gigs of hard-disk space. Plugged into various ports are a Picasso 11 graphics card, a pair of speakers, a Dynalink 33.6k modem, a USR V.FC modem (for sale), and a beautiful Wizard 560dpi three button mouse.

Down beside that is my 1200. At the moment it's a little underused, but it's hacked into a tower case, got a 40mhz 68030 accelerator and 10megs ram, plus a 1.3gig HD! Floppy drive is bust though :(

On my A4000 I'm using Directory Opus 5.5, which I recommend to everyone. It's brilliant! It's coupled to MCP (you name it, it does it!), ARQ (to sweeten up my requestors), Magic Menus (to patch the the pull down menus), executive (a unix style multitasking controller), NewIcons 4 (an improved icon system) and Screen Wizard (to handle public screens). I have to use Windoze at school, and compared to this, it's a chore!!!

At present I'm begining to collect personal e-mail addresses. Not too many at the moment, but I'am working on it :)
You can find me at the end of:

If you'd like to know more about the fidonet, please visit The Nemesis Dungeon, or my Friendly Sysop [email protected].

If you're interested in my computing history, read on:

A friend by the name of Aidan Kenny introduced me to his Commodore C64. It took three seconds to get hooked!! Sure, by todays standards the C64 should'nt even be spoken about, but I loved (and still do!) that machine. It took me three years to persuade my parents to get me one, but on Christmas 1991 there was a shiney new C64c under the tree. And that's how it started, playing sub-standard games like AfterBurner an d RoadBlasters. I amassed a game collection of over 200! There are still games in my closet I haven't played. I also tried my hand at BASIC, which I thought was the bees Knees! My all time fave game on that platform is Turrican. I still play it through emulation - it's excellant! Secondary School introduced me to the Apple Mac. A shitty Classic, complete with mono monitor and 40meg HD. Ahhh! The days spent annoying my teachers through changing my alert sounds to something more Interesting. Forrest Gump will never be the same again!

Macs were fine, if a little restraining to use, so I understand why they have such a loyal following, but it was fourth year and Cathal O Brien who really turned me into what I am today. At the time I was putting together The bounds of no Budget, and I needed to do star-fight involving the Booby-Prise and a Plarpian death squadron. Having used an Amiga 500 for games, I knew of the amiga's existance, but not it's capibilities! Cathal showed me some of his animation syuff (a rather violent re-working of an anim-brish), and it clicked! An Amiga 600 with a one meg ram expansion became the animation studio. Dpaint 4 was the tool. And it worked! The star-fight was done in 32 colour low-res interlace and the results were excellant! I became hooked! I bought his machine a year later, and became an amiga-holic. Games and animations at first, then I bought a modem.

Comms! My first modem, a little viper 14.4k jobbie was the begining a never ending phone-bill nightmare and a source of constant enjoyment. I journeyed into comms with a 2meg A600, with no local BBS's in sight. The first port of call? ENGLAND . I found this BBS by the name of Techno One. I don't know it's current state, but at the time it was brilliant! Grimbo has to be one of the friendliest Sysops I've ever met (bar Jon and Damien that is ;) ). He got me on my feet comms wise. As this all happened, my computer became an A1200 - twice the speed (a wopping 14.2mhz 020!!!!!) of the 600, I was in heaven. I also discovered imageFX didn't take hours doing fairly easy tasks :) . Workbench 3.0 started me on a never ending crusade to put together the kewlest Amiga OS! At present I use DOpus Magellan - it's excellant! At that time I was using Magic WorkBench to improve things astethically. Coupled with Magic Menu's and Tool Daemon and MultiCX it was a pretty mean little system. The system really began to work when I got the hard-disk. A 1 gig hard-disk from Wizard developments. Suddenly Fidonet became realistic.

It was about this time when I discovered FWibblE! A BBS operated in West Meath. I'd come across it in the CU AMIGA comms bible and wanted to give fido a try (and lower my England phone calls). My first attempt to dial-in was a failure - the front end mailer flately refusing to accept my call. A few weeks later I rang the sysop Damien McKenna, and he pointed out that I needed a mailer to access his BBS (D'oh!). I agreed to become a point, and the rest, as they say, is history!

Around the same time the internet began to get huge media coverage. Having played around with it in Primus I had to have a piece ;). With a 2meg A1200, the excellant Miami TCP/IP suite and a browser called Voyager the internet became a reality. In those days I was with Ireland On-Line, who were the only decent people at the time. Iloved the internet from day-one! My 1200 soon sprouted an 030 accelerator, complete with 8megs fast ram, putting me into the "hey he upgraded catogory!" and firmly into the loads of programs at the same time on the internet seat! I luv multitasking.

I urge anyone still using a base machine to up-grade, it's like owning a whole new machine and it does actually give any PC I've used (only up to 200mhz Pentium 11!!!) a severe trashing :)

The only complaint I ever had on the internet (bar not having access to shockwave) is immagr decoding, well, on the 030 at least. Add a graphics card and an '060, and suddenly the Web on TWO browsers, IRC, FTP and mail, all at once. All I have to do is click my middle mouse button to flick screens WITH No SLOW DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Internet as it's supposed to be :)

In short I love my computer!