I have to vote for Atari ST purely because learning on that got me the knowledge (to some extent) that I still use to this day.
As nice as the Amiga was for its custom chips, I couldn’t use a stock A500+ the same way I could use an ST sans h/drive.
I voted – ” Amiga “, as I used the A500 > A1200 until 1996, until I got my first Pentium PC from Escom.
I think it really depends where you hail from. Being British, I was an Acorn Archimedes user at school. My Parents also then got one (A3000) for home use. A while later I got an A500+. Night and day. The A500 inspired far more from me than the A3000 ever did.. in fact, it still lives in my loft and the A3000, which I did inherit, has long gone.
Had we lived in the USA, all of this would have been extremely different. I don’t think we realise over here quite how small the Amiga and ST markets were in the US. There’s an interesting video blog by a guy called Steve Benway ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcbeOd5vH7k ) where he discusses this, after having received a message from one of his viewers detailing the US experience ( http://retrogamingcollector.blogspot.com/2011/02/4000-youtube-subscribers-q-special.html <- read down a bit, the video is probably less helpful, the text is the important part.) Very interesting.
I have to vote for Atari ST purely because learning on that got me the knowledge (to some extent) that I still use to this day.
As nice as the Amiga was for its custom chips, I couldn’t use a stock A500+ the same way I could use an ST sans h/drive.
I voted – ” Amiga “, as I used the A500 > A1200 until 1996, until I got my first Pentium PC from Escom.
I think it really depends where you hail from. Being British, I was an Acorn Archimedes user at school. My Parents also then got one (A3000) for home use. A while later I got an A500+. Night and day. The A500 inspired far more from me than the A3000 ever did.. in fact, it still lives in my loft and the A3000, which I did inherit, has long gone.
Had we lived in the USA, all of this would have been extremely different. I don’t think we realise over here quite how small the Amiga and ST markets were in the US. There’s an interesting video blog by a guy called Steve Benway ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcbeOd5vH7k ) where he discusses this, after having received a message from one of his viewers detailing the US experience ( http://retrogamingcollector.blogspot.com/2011/02/4000-youtube-subscribers-q-special.html <- read down a bit, the video is probably less helpful, the text is the important part.) Very interesting.