My Computer Timeline: Atari ST, Amiga 500, DOS 486
Every retro computing setup has a story. Here's mine, from the first time I sat in front of a screen to the machines I use today.
1983-1987: First contact
When I started primary school in 1983, friends already had computers. One showed me everything a C64 could do, except the Lego game he kept promising to show me. That never happened, but I was hooked on computers anyway. Around the same time my father brought home an Epson HX-20, a tiny portable with a small screen and a built-in microcassette drive. That's where I wrote my very first BASIC programs.
1987-1990: The Atari ST era
In secondary school a friend named Matthias had an Atari, and a couple of classmates in the class also got Ataris over time. For Christmas 1989 I got my own 1040STFM. A year later, Christmas 1990, came the Mega ST 4 with a MegaFile hard disk, the beginning of a much deeper relationship with the platform. Early programming started with Omikron BASIC, then quickly moved to GFA BASIC, which became the main tool for writing software on the ST. Some of the things I built during that time are preserved here: Tropic Dreams.
1990-1992: The Amiga detour
More and more classmates had Amigas, and I wanted one too. The Amiga arrived around April 1991, and while the Atari ST remained the programming machine, the Amiga became the creative hub: ProTracker for music, Deluxe Paint for graphics. I also released a few things under the Esprit label: ESPRIT releases.
1992-1994: The PC arrives
Christmas 1993 brought a Vobis Highscreen 486 DX2-66 in its distinctive Colani tower case. The PC opened the door to DOS games, and in 1994 the real creative phase began: DOSMENU, the SkyLine demo group, and the first modem connecting to the outside world.
1994-2000: The Fido era
A modem in spring 1994 led to the FidoNet world, and by late 1995 I was running my own BBS node. Through the mid-90s I collected old and new machines enthusiastically, building up a collection that lasted until 2005 when most of it was sold off. By 2000, the FidoNet hobby had quietly faded.
2000-2009: The Linux server years
After the FidoNet era wound down, the focus shifted to Linux. A home network grew in Augsburg with a Smoothwall firewall, a Red Hat server, a Postfix/Apache mail and web server, and a multimedia workstation, all connected over 10 Mbit thin-Ethernet and a demand-dial RAS connection. A FreeBSD server ran Apache, Sendmail and Perl scripts alongside a Windows NT 4.0 file server. Microsoft certifications in Windows NT 4.0 and IIS 4.0 followed in 2000, and the work at IXOS SOFTWARE AG as a Web Engineer rounded out the professional side. The retro hobby took a back seat during this period, but the collection of old machines was still growing quietly in the background until 2005. The location, network and projects pages of the timecapsule have the full story.
2009-2017: The Apple years
Everything got reduced down to what I actually used daily. The old collection was gone, and the stack became an iMac, an iPhone, and an iPad, with no PCs at home for the first time. A Windows notebook from work was the only non-Apple machine in the house. The retro hobby was completely dormant during this period, while on the iMac .NET Mono tools kept things running.
2017-2020: The rebuild begins
In 2017 a Chromebook from Google joined the setup for everyday tasks, and a Synology NAS arrived. MQTT and the first ESP32 LED matrix projects ran directly on the NAS, while Arduino and ESP32 development started as a parallel hobby. The retro hobby was still dormant, but the groundwork for the homelab and smart home was being laid.
2020: The retro revival
In 2020 the retro computing hobby came back in full force. The Mega ST 4 fleet was rebuilt, the MiSTer and MIST FPGA boards were added, and this site was born to document it all. The machines from the 90s were given new roles instead of gathering dust: a workstation, a demo machine, a reference piece, and a spare.
At the same time the homelab infrastructure grew: Proxmox servers, a Synology NAS, network planning, and a growing smart home setup with Home Assistant, MQTT and various ESP projects.
The pattern seems to be: every 10-15 years I rediscover the machines I grew up with and find new ways to use them.