that's exactly why i was enjoying my old Amigas even a few years ago, because it was resisting me. Hours and hours trying to fix a hardware or software issue, the lousy hardware hacks, the patches, and satisfaction when you had almost everything running (skipping the fact that it's pretty useless to spend so much time and energy to make a computer simply work as much as it can).

Was it fun ? yeah but definitively in a masochist way.

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I went through that whole stage too, checking Aminet every day for better patches and how I could integrate them into my system. And picking stupidly overpriced hw upgrades that gave me equal amounts of trouble. It might be the reason why I now don't do any of that and demand that something "just works" out of the box. Don't buy too cheap, don't buy too expensive (i.e. overclocker stuff), and read the reviews before buying, and avoid beta software... and you should only rarely have issues with computing these days.

It could also be because my MorphOS experience was so smooth - I bought an April'ised Pegasos 1, put it together with no issues, installed MorphOS. By the point I did it was at 1.3 and so totally stable - indeed possibly more stable than some later releases. Apart from the DMA bug, which was eventually worked around, I don't think I ever had a single issue with that system the twelve years I used it. I must have liked that so much I determined I was going to keep doing it that way. I shudder to imagine what would have happened if I had bought an AmigaONE as I had planned to...

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No need to apologize. I have been using computers a long time, and its not just materials and workmanship (or the place they were made) that I would credit with the increase in failure rates I am see (but they are part of it).
Today's hardware is more complex, and with increased complexity comes an increase in the number of ways that it can possibly fail.

And the laptop I am typing on IS Chinese made (a Lenovo), its just from a company that insists on its hardware being somewhat more rugged (than say an HP).

Its possible to get any level of quality you want in a good you contract to be manufactured if you don't compromise.

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No, you are the one who are a member of the minority of Amiga owners/users, who "Frankenstiened" their Amiga computers, then abandoned them in the late 90's. More Amiga users kept and continue to use their Amiga computers even today, than all AmigaOne, MorphOS, & AROS users combined (though most Amiga users in that group have also at least tried out one or more of the 3 NG Amiga platforms). Most Amiga users just used their stock, or slightly modified Amiga computers using a standard Commodore release of AmigaOS1.3 to 3.1, to run games and Amgia programs. Most added hard drive controllers & accelerators that for the most part worked as advertised, without all the patches you mentioned. You think you are the majority, because you assume all Amiga users share your experiences, due to you being around a small group of users who were interested in pushing their Amiga computers to the limits and beyond, and when they could not go any faster or further, MorphOS was invented, and your small group moved to that platform. You are NOT the majority, or typical Amiga owner/user. Just look at the total numbers of Amiga computers sold world wide, and then look at the tiny number of PPC accelerators that were sold, and it will prove my point.

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Not for users who didn't change Zorro cards every few weeks/months. I never experienced any of the problems you mention above in any of my A1000, A2000, A3000/A3000T, or A4000/A4000T systems, and at one time my collection grew to over 30 Commodore Amgia systems. And all of my systems except 2 or 3 were accelerated and had internal hard drives, many had ZIP and/or JAZ drives as well. You are biased due to your bad experiences with Frankenstiened A1200 systems and probably a flaky Mediator bus boards in both A1200's and Big Box Amiga computers I think.

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Any Amiga user who knew anything about their system, knew to remove aging batteries that might leak later. Plugging an IDE cable in incorrectly is not an Amiga only problem, and only inexperienced users would make such a rookie mistake. Most users never added anything to their clock ports, and some probably never knew their Amiga even had a clock port. Only people who were "hard on their hardware", would be so impatient to bend pins on their PCMCIA port when inserting accessories into that interface port. And what fault in reliability is there in the machine, when a user chooses to use adapters if they wanted to use a PS2, or USB mouse, instead of the many different types of mice designed for use with Amiga computers? These are not faults of the machine, they are faults of the user and the way he chooses to use it.

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Newer designs almost always make improvements to how things worked that came before them, otherwise, no one would adopt the newer design, and they would continue to use the old standards, that is not news. Increased "ease of use" does not increase reliability, it only reduces user errors, for those users who were "hard on their hardware".

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Not for the majority of Amiga users. The glitches were mostly introduced by users who tried to push their Amiga systems far beyond what it was originally designed to do. Most Amiga users did not do that, they enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) the Amiga for what it was, and still is (even if some of their Amiga cases have yellowed, due to exposure to sunlight and/or smoke).

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Again, the severity and frequency of the problems you mention are directly related to how you used your Amiga, and how far beyond the official AmigaOS3.1 you tried to push it. The majority of Amiga users did not, and would not, put up with such unstable systems patches, and they enjoy their Amiga computers as they were originally released, or with slight modifications. Slight modifications that they have found to be successful, and stable. Most Amiga users did not try to make their mid 1980's hardware and late 1980's OS, perform like a late 1990's system, because they never expected such hardware and OS to have functionality equal to systems designed a decade or two decades after the original Amiga designs.

You, on the other hand, are a member of the minority of Amiga users, who pushed your hardware and its OS, far beyond its original specifications, and therefore introduced many more instabilities.

All good points David.
And I didn't have the urge to seriously modify any Amiga hardware I had, but I was one of those fanatics that kept pushing the envelope in the'80's and '90's on other hardware.
So I can kind of see both sides of this.
Besides, Amiga OS did/does have some stability issues, but then so did every other OS from that time period.
I truly not not miss the frequency of bsods I used to get with pre-NT Windows.

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I am not criticizing those users who pushed their Amiga systems to and beyond their limits, if not for them, we most likely would not have MorphOS today, so I say "Thank You" to all members of that group, at the bleeding edge of Amiga and MorphOS development.

I am just saying that they are not the majority, or typical for most Amiga users, and that for most Amiga users, their Commodore Amiga computers were very robust and reliable for many, many years. The most common maintenance needed (besides removing potentially leaky batteries) for those Amiga models was to re-seat the socketed chips, which would occasionally work there way loose, after repeated heating/cooling cycles.

Calling them crap wrapped in yellowed plastic is very disrespectful, IMO, and not true for most Amiga users (again, IMO).

I think I was probably more typical in the amount and type of modifications I did to my Amiga models, than Kenny and the group of users who eventually formed to create MorphOS are. IMO, I am more average in my usage and modification patterns, where Kenny and the MorphOS Dev. Team members, are more advanced, and daring, in what they would attempt to do when modifying their systems. They also were much more demanding on what they wanted to run on their systems, and had higher expectations of what could be accomplished, both with hardware add-on's, and software & kernel patches.

Thank god for them, as they are the group who are responsible for not letting the Amiga die, or have it become a tiny fraction of what it is today. It would probably be more like what is left of the Atari users, if these great "Power Users", like Kenny & the MorphOS Dev. Team members, had not pushed the envelope, and kept on going in their drive to make things better.

[ Edited by amigadave 25.08.2016 - 23:28 ]