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All About Me.
Hi, In all of the books I have read about designing web pages the one thing they all say is not to do an About Me page, They say you dont care about me, my job, Where I live and what I like so hello freaks. :)
My name is Oliver Steven Hannaford-Day, I am 19 (28th December 1981) and I live in Lichfield (Staffordshire, United Kingdom) (Best known for the IRA booming our train station in 1989 (ish) and the only 3 spire cathedral in the UK (It did have 4 but we lost one (If anyone has it could they please return it and for the love of god :) dont sit on it.))).
I have lived here since I was one and have gone to one primary school (Scotch Orchard) and one secondary school (Netherstowe High School), Mainly because I dont like change but its also a great place.
A brief history of me and the Amiga. My parents brought me up on computers, First there was the Sinclair ZX80 which I dont remember at all (Strange that), Then they replaced it with a Sinclair ZX81 (I dont remember that but I still have its remains in my bed room, I tipexed the keys out and changed it into a shop till (And also removed the bottom including the motherboard, I have looked for them, They arnt in the house at all), I have grown up now, I now just write a new keymap, Tipex is to expensive :).
Then we moved onto the Sinclair Spectrum 128K and guess what, I dont remeber that either but the next one I do, The Sinclair Spectrum 128K +2 James Bond edition, Now why do I remember this one? simple, it came with a James Bond game (No, Really?) which had the game on one side and on the other was Q telling you the mission (This was on an Audio Casset, Sort of like an early CD, God Im old), Now there was no way to tell what was the mission and what was the game so I ended up playing the game side on my Hi-Fi (A nice Amstrad which I still have and use) and wondering why the mission breifing wasnt loading the game, If you have had a spectrum or any casset driven computer you will know that listening to the program on the Hi-Fi will really hurt.
I stayed with the Spectrum for as long as posiable, The 128K +2 was a lot easyer to use, Just select 128K mode and press play, Simple (I also picked up a litle knolage on Sinclair commands like typing load"" "This game will take forever to load" (I havent actually done that for about 8 years so I may have got it a little wrong), I played a lot of games on it and I still miss Jumping Jack (I didnt do that much jumping, I liked getting ran over by a bus one level from the top and them falling all the way down getting ran over as I go by lots of stupid items and making that great sound like Squelch dddddddddddd Squelch Etc etc, Great.) Manic Miner (My Mom and Dad liked that more than me but hey, My dad still plays it on his 166Mhz Pentium MMX and it stutters and stops a lot and its not an emulator, Its the PC version, So whats faster, A 2Mhz Sinclair or a 166Mhz Pentium MMX Running Windows 98? Hmmm) and The Teenage Mutant Turtles (I was good at that) oh and lastly a game called 1984 (Is that right) which I have just found out it was a film to, Great. :)
Anyway in late 1993 the news agent stopped stocking the Spectrum books and no one else sold them :( and then I found out that I had no friends so I needed something else, A girl or another computer.....
So we went shopping and for Christmas 1993 I got a Commodore CDTV, I didnt want it, There was a CD32 in the shop at the same time and which one would you choose? My parents thought that looked much more like a computer and that I could type letters and do work, Oh dear. :(, The first CDTV didnt work so we had it exchanged (I wonder what happened to that one? Is it lost in some empty factory, Wet, Cold and looking sad?) and the new one was very good, It had more than 4 colours, Cool ;), One of the first games I got was Lemmings, What a first game!!! I was working through it very slowly and it was great, I then found that pressing the .(Del) key skipped it on to the next level, With in 3 minutes I had finished the game, Great! I used the CDTV as a games machine with one of the only upgrades being a CDTV disable switch to give me the full 1 Meg of ram (There were not that many CDTV games so I played A500 ones instead), Then June (Mom) got a Panasonic printer and Wordsworth and turned my CDTV into a work tool (Not cool) (For the Marina we intended to set up) so I started looking for the next computer (In about 1995), At the same time my dad got an A500 and latter upgraded it to 2 Meg fast ram (Very expensive but nice), The PC was just turning into a popular computer, My friends had 386's so I saved up and put half to a 486 PC, It had 256 colours (From the CDTV which I often used HAM and good programs like Uridium 2 that looked like they where true colour but were only 32 to a PC that had 256 and showed a 2 colour dos promt) and had windows in it (No door though), Within a week I had crashed it, Jungle Strike (Which I had for the Amiga and then bought for the PC) had edited the command.com but luck for me we had a Jungle Strike Boot disk but we still had to send it away for the file to be put back on the drive. After that the win.ini file got corrupted (I think it was that file) and lot lot more problems I started wanting a simpler life, Sinclair was dead but Amiga was not so after getting the CDTV back out and enjoying the simplicity of just putting a CD in and it working, No harddrive installation, No corrupt OS and no need for DOS, Great.
So I started spending money on the Amiga's again, My local PC shop had an Amiga 2000 in, I think it was up for Ł100 but I could have it for Ł85 so I did, The harddrive didnt work (It did but it was on a A2090 controller that didnt auto boot and I hadnt got the disk and while trying the conenctors the little data line between the HDD reader and its little PCB got broken (It ran outside on this HDD), Its an old German version running OS2.04, 0.5Meg chip and it had a card that gave my I think 1 Meg fast ram (It fits in the CPU slot), I upgraded it with a C= 2630 68030 CPU and it flew, There was no harddrive or CD-Rom but I soon added them when I got a Buddha flash card (I got a cheap HDD, I think only 120 Meg but the CD-Rom was new and was 52X) I then tried to upgrade the OS but because of it only having .5 Meg chip the new kickstart wouldnt work :( (Even though it had 4 Meg fast ram), Anyway I also got a 2632 which lets you add 112Meg of fast ram to the CPU upgrade (Cool), Anyway I then saw the review in CU Amiga (RIP) for the Amiga Laptop project someone did so I got an Amiga 600 and an old 386 Amstrad Laptop (For the screen) but I then found out that they had the PC motherboard somehow patched onto the A600 and a standard PSU (To run both) and it was just such a patch, I thought I could do better but I cant find any pinouts for the LCD screen so I cant graft it onto the A600 :(, Latter I got a 68030 Viper CPU upgrade for it with 8 Meg ? of fast ram, It was great but the upgrade died latter when I was transporting it, I cant see anything, It must have shorted when I powered it back up :(, I upgraded it with the kickstart I got for the A2000 and it worked great (I actually had it running OS3.5 for a short time with the CPU upgrade before it died). While that was going on I picked up a cheap (Ł30) Amiga 1200 which was nice, It doesnt do much, I never power it up but it stays clean right next to the A600 now.
Anyway I ordered two harddrives, A 540 Meg for the A600 and a 2.1 Gig for the A1200 and they fitted great.
While this was going on the marina was set up and the PC was still ploding along with a little extra memory (Scavanged from a 386 we got cheap) and Windows 95 and was now on the internet (using the first 56K modem in the shop, A 3Com Message Modem) and I found a group called A.M.I.G.A. who sold OS upgrades for the CDTV, I hadnt even thought about upgrading the CDTV, Strange that ehh? But then I ordered it, Fitted it and it was great, So the next thing I ordered was the Amitrix SCSI-TV SCSI interface and it arrived just as we where upgrading our PC so I managed to strip it for its lovely 540 Meg SCSI HDD and soon had Windows off it and lovely Workbench 3.1, Great.
Then I saw some people with CDTV questions and by now I had picked up a lot of CDTV knolage so I helped them and decided to put up a page on our new Marina web site (www.used-boat.co.uk) the page (/cdtv.html) was simple, Just basic info and a few upgrades detailed but then lots of people said about there upgrade and how great it was to see a CDTV page, This was strange considering I spent all of 2 minutes doing it, No pictures, No links, No nothing so I expanded it with the info and looked for more, This was about the 15th December 2000 and here I am a year latter, On a new server, With my own domain name, Graphics, Users club and PCB designs. Just think what will happen next year!.
Anyway after the first page I decided I needed a powerfull Amiga and found an Amiga 4000 on auction for less than Ł50, It ended up at Ł100 and when I went to get it I also got a graphics tablet, Scanner & Laser printer for another Ł100, I got it back and decided I would give it a clean start so I deleted all the files, NOOOooooooo, The graphics card drivers, The tablet drivers, Printer driver, scanner driver, Adpro and god knows what, The owner was a developer and I deleted it all!
After 9 months its back to what it should be, The scanner program now works on the graphics card, The graphics cards back (That part was easy) and the printer works (In compatability mode) but the tablet still has no driver :(. I have since upgraded the kickstart (to 3.1) the OS (To 3.1 then 3.5 then 3.9), Added a 17' Hansol PC monitor (Very cool), IOBlix, Power Flyer and most recent a 68060 & 233Mhz PPC and a lovely RBM A4000 tower (And memory). It now kicks PC butt.
I have also picked up an Amiga 3000 (At my first Amiga show) and added an A570 and A590 to the A500 and at long last got two CD32's (Both are dead (ish)).
I have also got a few CDTV's including a CDTV Pre Production Prototype with bugs and all, Another CDTV (For the Graphics modulator) @ Ł50, Another CDTV @ Ł35 and the best, A very rare (1 of 5) CDTV CR Prototype. Plus all of the upgrades for the CDTV (See list).
Anyway thats about upto date, Late braking news is Amiga Active are changing to Microsoft CE and Amiga DE, Why? Anyway I am looking at launching a full mag which could see the first CDTV section ever in an Amiga mag.
Anyway I think thats the basics covered, You should have seen the full version :). Oh except the Sinclair QL which I got just because it was the first ever multitasking computer but you dont wana know about that.

My Computers. (All of them)
Heres a little list of all the computers I have (including some of my parents ones), Including the specs. Happy reading.
Sinclair Spectrum 128K +2 James Bond Edition.
Bog standard except a joystick in the shape of a turtle and a few hundered games, original books and magazines.
Sinclair ZX81 Keyboard.
As talked about above, God knows where the rest is. I have the expansion to mouse / joystick port adapter thing aswell.
Sinclair QL X2
OK then, 1 is working and 1 is dead (Blue screen), Both have modems (Tiny matchbox things) & memory upgrades. 1X parallel adapter, 1X mouse port adapter? could be serial adapter, 1X ICE rom, 1X diskdrive and interface. Books, Mags and a few programs.
Amiga A500.
OS2.04, 2 Meg fast ram, A570 CD-Rom, A590 HDD, A520.
Amiga A600.
OS3.1, 540Meg HDD and 1 dead Viper 630.
Amiga 1200.
Bog standard + 1 2.1 Gig Hdd.
Amiga 2000.
C2630, 2632, A2090, Buddha Flash & X2 A2088.
Amiga 3000.
OS3.1, 8Up Memory card, 2 Gig HDD.
Amiga 4000.
OS3.9, 68060 & 233Mhz PPC, IOBlix 4 Ser & 1 Par, Power Flyer Gold, GVP Spectrum 28/24, ISDN Surfer, Yamaha CDRW 24X8X8, RBM Tower & 3com 56Kb Message Modem.
Commodore CDTV
OS3.1, Prom V 2.1, Amitrix SCSI-TV, 540Meg HDD, Elbox mem upgrade, X2 64Kb Memory Card, Pro pack (Keyboard, Diskdrive, Mouse), IR mouse, Tracker ball, Amiga 14Kbs Surfer Modem.
Commodore CDTV
Bog standard Pro Pack (As above).
Commodore CDTV Pre Production Prototype
IR Rework, Flash Card, CD1301 Genlock.
Commodore CDTV
Bog Standard but with dead Video Modulator.
Commodore CDTV CR Prototype
Bog standard NTSC version, PSU switched to 240V.
Commodore CD32
Standard pack, PSU dies after a short time, May be power switch.
Commodore CD32
Just the CD32 and Joypad, No PSU.
Nokia 9000i Communicator
Standard, Loads of ring tones, Main screen a little ill.
Sega GameGear.
Standard unit with TV card and a few games.
Dead 386 Slim Line desktop.
Just got it for the memory, It may work but only if I get a PSU. :)
Dead? Wintel 486 desktop.
Great unit but now out of date, Evergreen P133 upgrade, Full 16 Meg 30 Pin memory, 256 colour Trident graphics card, 1X CD-Rom.
Dead? 386 Amstrad laptop.
It did work, Got it for my A600 laptop project, Now the computer wont boot and screen displays nothing.
Dead K2 400Mhz AMD Protek PC.
CPU overheated and burnt out, May have took motherboard. No memory.
AMD Duron 800Mhz PC
Fully working, Main marina computer, Typing this on this PC, Used for internet. 160Meg ram, 32Meg graphics card, 4.2Gig HDD & 54X CD-Rom.

Things That are currently on my mind.
1: UK Entering Euro.
2: New Amiga Magazine needed.
3: Marina goin gto Feb 2002 Boat show in Birmingham.
4: Making an Amiga laptop.
Now to explain in greater detail:
1: I am very very against us joining the "Euro", I think Blair is a fool to want to join, He thinks we should join the euro unless there is a reason not to, This is the wrong way around you fool! You only join if there is a reason to and there is not, We will have to change our currency, Blair says it will help businesses trade with other EU contries, It wont, 90% of UK companys dont deal with France or Germanym, If we were to do such a thing then it should be with the US or Japan (Which I am also against for other reasons), We buy about 1% of stuff from France and Germany. Companys will not be any better off but if we change 100% of companys will be effected, They will have to change all of there keyboards (But there is more chance that they will change there computer like they did with the Y2K thing), All the tills, Banks, Calculators and worst of all you will have to change and how many euros does a bag of peas cost from Tescos?
Blair says as we are next to France we need to be the same, Ermm NO, We have been next to them since England was founded and we are still here, Better than ever. Another thing he says we will need to be in the EU, We are already in the EU, That wont end when the Euro comes in!!!
Another thing is that he says it will be easyer to trade as all the products will be the same price in France, Germany and the UK, NO it wont, The price will be as different as it will be now, Wages are different, Costs change from country to country!!!
And already our laws are being changed (And this is being tollerated by us) to a Euro way, Take a thing I heard about a while ago, A person has to tell the police who is driving a car when a crash occurs or the owner of the car is assumed to be driving, A person said they were not going to say and took it to a euro court and won, The law can now not ask (Or be expected to be told) who was at the wheel of a car when it has crashed making the job take as long as the driver wants, If they dont want to tell then the police have to prove the driver was inface the driver, Providing evedence to a court. This is a stupid law done by a stupid group of about 150 people from different countrys who have enough problems understandig each other. THE WORLD HAS GONE MAD and if we are not carefull we will be right in there with these fools.
I do have to say that I dont thing Germans or (Most?) French people are mad but the laws that are coming out of there are not done by a sain mind, I like people from other countrys, I have met more through this site that ever and they are all nice people but I will not let us join the "Euro".
2: Amiga Active have moved on to reviewing Digital appliances, Now I was a spectrum user right upto the last mag was no longer available in shops and then over night the Spectrum was dead, The same will happen if there is no Amiga mag today, It will be slower because of the internet but it will die and this is sad so I want to help, I am E-Mailing around trying to see if anyone will print it and I will write it (With other writers who have already made themselves known) for free, I hope I can pull this off or someone else can. We will see. If I did it I would love to do a CDTV, CD32, ECS and Bog standard AGA sections as well as the normal PPC, 3D, 16 Bit Super Amiga section, Maybe we will get a full CDTV mag after all?
3: OK, This isnt published yet but the Marina I work for is going to the 2002 Boat, Caravan and leisure show and I am running the project, From accounts, printing, Displays and staff to a redesign of the marina web site and all before feb the 12th, Its a big job and I wont be able to do much on the above projects before then, This is very important to our small family marina and also commision directly to me if we sell lots of boats :), We did intend to take a Commodore CDTV running a program showing off the boats but with electric costing Ł150 for the show we desided not to (We will be taking a laptop instead, Just to put solds on the web page :) and for something to do when we get boored.).
4: An Amiga laptop is very very easy to make, Its just expensive, Now I have looked at making an A600 based laptop, A CDTV one, CD32 (For a very short time) and lastly an A1200 laptop. The A1200 is best and is the right size, I have two small LCD screens but no pinouts but with 14' LCD screens becoming cheap it is getting possiable, The A1200 uses a laptop harddrive, has a PCMCIA slot and can display 31Khz screens if needed. I saw the one in CU Amiga and it was terriable and very hard to make, It used a full 386 laptop, 240 volt PSU and an Amiga A600 with a viper pluged on (For a second anyway), all patched together, Very bad and that was credited for its design!!! I can do better but will I?
Had enough info yet?
I will add more soon, Maybe even a picture archive. :)