I had the Amiga 500, 500+ then the 1200. Loved these computers and have fantastic memories. Shame they never lived on. Deluxe paint series was brilliant.
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iTunes Documentary 'Viva Amiga' Charts the History of the Upstart Apple Rival That Had Steve Jobs Worried
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Yet another lesson in how bad management, while being paid millions of dollars, manages to kill a great company.
Take heed Apple shareholders.
Take heed Apple shareholders.
I don't know why I didn't buy one. I had the Sinclair, Ti99, and Atari ST 600/800 and they were great and wrote games in assembly and basic. Fresh out of programming school I was writing applications and even wrote my own paint programs that you could save pictures and recall them off a tape recorder and wrote a word processor with bitmap fonts for my impact printer.
Then I was introduced to a Mac Plus and Macintosh IIci and ImageWriter and Quark Xpress and the rest was history.
[doublepost=1485109535][/doublepost]Too bad it didn't survive into the Power 5,6,7&8 chipset. It would be interesting to see Amiga push the graphic even further than it is today.
It's hard to do a startup now. The project Talos with the Power8 failed because they didn't reach their goal. https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing-systems/talos-secure-workstation
Then I was introduced to a Mac Plus and Macintosh IIci and ImageWriter and Quark Xpress and the rest was history.
[doublepost=1485109535][/doublepost]Too bad it didn't survive into the Power 5,6,7&8 chipset. It would be interesting to see Amiga push the graphic even further than it is today.
It's hard to do a startup now. The project Talos with the Power8 failed because they didn't reach their goal. https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing-systems/talos-secure-workstation
I just watched this the other day (it's on Hulu I believe ...), fun stuff. I had a 1000, 500, a 2000 (with a Toaster/KS), and a 3000. The computer store I worked at in high school sold them, it was kind of a side business as their primary focus were PCs (Leading Edge, AST and ****** clones) and selling pallets of Lotus 1-2-3 and Print Shop (for Apple) to schools 
Loved that machine, the A1000 was of course way ahead of it's time, but I could see there was something more to computing than just spreadsheets I think I paid about $1300 or so for a 256K model and some ridiculous amount for the additional 256K upgrade. I did a little professional work with the 2000/Toaster, some credits/titles a little F/X work for some local video production - remember using Lightwave, VideoFX, some great introduction to 3D design/rendering, etc., and I even used ProWrite for most of my college writing.
Definitely worth a watch for anyone who was a fan of the machine, or anyone interested in a really fascinating moment in computer history.
Loved that machine, the A1000 was of course way ahead of it's time, but I could see there was something more to computing than just spreadsheets
I think I paid about $1300 or so for a 256K model and some ridiculous amount for the additional 256K upgrade. I did a little professional work with the 2000/Toaster, some credits/titles a little F/X work for some local video production - remember using Lightwave, VideoFX, some great introduction to 3D design/rendering, etc., and I even used ProWrite for most of my college writing.Definitely worth a watch for anyone who was a fan of the machine, or anyone interested in a really fascinating moment in computer history.
I also remember owning 3 external disk drives, in built 250mb HDD, memory expansion and even a hand scanner!!! Living the dream....lol
On the C64 you could enter Machine code programs from magazines. Compute had a system called MLX to make it easier and had error correction. I used to enter lots of these.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLX_(software)
I had the Amiga 1000, Amiga 2000 with PC Bridgeboard to run DOS at hardware speeds, 80MB SCSI drive and a IBM 30 MB drive card, Flicker fixer card. I liked Deluxe Paint (my favorite app), Amiga Vision, Deluxe Video III was really good, Automaster or something like it to create digitized sound loops. The loops allowed me to take a short sound and with loops do some really creative things.
It surprises me that some icons on my Mac today are bigger than the entire memory the standard Amiga.
It surprises me that some icons on my Mac today are bigger than the entire memory the standard Amiga.
Still available to watch for free on view.yahoo.com, by the way.
The Amiga 2000 was my first computer; a present from my family when I was six – and my start in music composition, word processing, digital art and animation, and programming; all things now at the core of my life. It was great to watch and listen to some of the people responsible for bringing it to market.
The Amiga 2000 was my first computer; a present from my family when I was six – and my start in music composition, word processing, digital art and animation, and programming; all things now at the core of my life. It was great to watch and listen to some of the people responsible for bringing it to market.
I might well check this documentary out at some point for the nostalgia.
The Amiga got me into computing and I shall always love it. It taught me music more than my school did; it taught me pixel art, and I could play awesome games on it. It had much of the freedom and customisation of the PC, but with the community and fun of the mac, but mostly it was genuinely different to both, with its own, somewhat hard to quantify but almost tangible 'feel' and character. For me, it was the best.
Even now, if you look up stuff on Youtube that even a standard A500 (the most popular model) was capable of for its time it is impressive, I think. The State of the Art demo that ran off a couple of 880k floppies (or was it even just one? I forget... Edit: Yep, one floppy. Insane.). 4096-colour HAM mode then on something cheaper than an iPhone is today. The Stardust (game) tunnel demo that blew my socks off on a magazine cover-mounted disk. So many great game soundtracks. So much great free software written by people who just wanted to make software because it was fun, or to do something cool because they could... Paint programs and music trackers that everyone had, and everyone used.
In the context of Apple and the Mac, I think it should also serve as a cautionary tale that even with amazing hardware and software poor business management can utterly ruin what should be a world-beating sure-thing - but it should also serve as a hopeful thing, that when users really love a platform, the most loyal amongst them will keep it going long after you'd think possible.
My A500 Plus and (upgraded) A1200 are both still running...
The Amiga got me into computing and I shall always love it. It taught me music more than my school did; it taught me pixel art, and I could play awesome games on it. It had much of the freedom and customisation of the PC, but with the community and fun of the mac, but mostly it was genuinely different to both, with its own, somewhat hard to quantify but almost tangible 'feel' and character. For me, it was the best.
Even now, if you look up stuff on Youtube that even a standard A500 (the most popular model) was capable of for its time it is impressive, I think. The State of the Art demo that ran off a couple of 880k floppies (or was it even just one? I forget... Edit: Yep, one floppy. Insane.). 4096-colour HAM mode then on something cheaper than an iPhone is today. The Stardust (game) tunnel demo that blew my socks off on a magazine cover-mounted disk. So many great game soundtracks. So much great free software written by people who just wanted to make software because it was fun, or to do something cool because they could... Paint programs and music trackers that everyone had, and everyone used.
In the context of Apple and the Mac, I think it should also serve as a cautionary tale that even with amazing hardware and software poor business management can utterly ruin what should be a world-beating sure-thing - but it should also serve as a hopeful thing, that when users really love a platform, the most loyal amongst them will keep it going long after you'd think possible.
My A500 Plus and (upgraded) A1200 are both still running...
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My first game was coded on the Amiga 500 in BASIC using Easy Amos (remember that?).
It basically consisted of a mustachioed Amos dude pinging around the screen, and you had to click the sprite before he moved. I was in awe when my three pages of code ran faultlessly.
I also learned animation in Deluxe Paint. What an amazing time to be alive!
It basically consisted of a mustachioed Amos dude pinging around the screen, and you had to click the sprite before he moved. I was in awe when my three pages of code ran faultlessly.
I also learned animation in Deluxe Paint. What an amazing time to be alive!
Amiga was an awesome device if you loved coding in machine language and learned the hardware it came with. The hardware in general had "mini computers" that you could program and preschedule to do things for you'll; Something called Blitter to change graphics and colors based on CRT beam position, things called DMAs which were like wormholes and moved data around (point one end to audio file, other end to sound register, and you can play sound), etc.
The MIT press recently published a very nice book on the computer too, called The Future Was Here, which would make a great gift for some former Amiga fans.
The MIT press recently published a very nice book on the computer too, called The Future Was Here, which would make a great gift for some former Amiga fans.
To the people above that said best computer days of my life. Me too. 1000%. Loved the 80's for computers. Everything was so new and exciting.
Hehe. I was an Atari kid, so never had an Amiga back in the day.
I'm currently resuscitating a Commodore CDTV. Built and installed a mod to switch between standard A500 and CDTV modes, and another to provide standard DE-9 mouse/joystick ports. Just need to get a flash-drive floppy emulator to get some software running!
I'm currently resuscitating a Commodore CDTV. Built and installed a mod to switch between standard A500 and CDTV modes, and another to provide standard DE-9 mouse/joystick ports. Just need to get a flash-drive floppy emulator to get some software running!
I loved my Amiga A500 and then A1200. I hated moving to Windows after that, but the Amiga was dead and dated by the time I switched. OS X was a breath of fresh air after Windows, but I wish AmigaOS was still around. Computers could be so much more with that competition around.
Were you living under a rock during the 80s-early 90s or something ?
Anyway, Amiga was THE machine to have back then. A legendary computer in the golden era of home computing. I am still using mine (well, not all of them, I have too many to list or boot). The community never died either. That is 23 years after the lame parent company committed suicide (had it planned for years though).
I think Amiga is still the most impressive computer for it's time ever created. Previously owning ZX Spectrum 48k and Commodore 64, I still remember my reaction when I was buying my first Amiga 500 (used, not new) and the owner demonstrated to me Lotus Turbo Challenge II... when I heard that music, sampled talking, saw butter smooth colorful graphics... it was basically a sealed deal PCs were laughable compared to what this machine could do, and to be honest, Macs weren't that much better - it really was that much ahead (yeah, it was because of that "too much hardware", that Jobs didn't like ) Also my music career started on Amiga with Protracker and later Octamed PRO.
After Amiga 500 (expanded to 1 MB of ram) I bought new Amiga 1200 and expanded it to 6MB of RAM, 420 MB hard drive, sampler and a printer - it was quite a serious machine, not just for games but also for work. The OS was so fast and stable compared to Windows, which I couldn't stand at the time, I usually crashed them in first 10 minutes of working with them - I was probably clicking too fast and run too much software at the same time Amiga had no problem with this - Amiga OS had real preemptive multitasking in '85, which PCs got yeeears later and Macs only with OS X... it also had autoconfig way before plug&play (also much better working) - basically you plugged in the expansion and everything was configured automatically - no DMAs and IRQs to mess with like on PC or million of BIOS settings (btw. even the Amiga "BIOS" called Kickstart was graphical and used mouse straight from the ROM). Basically Amiga combined the simplicity and "just works" concept of a Mac and expendability of a PC (in the pro A1000/A2000/A3000/A4000 models at least), while being more powerful than both (that was true even for home all-in one versions).
OS X actually reminded me a lot at Amiga OS, which is part of why I switched to Mac 8 years ago. It's a shame they didn't have true leader like Apple had Jobs or MS had Gates, Amiga might still be around... but to be honest, it probably wouldn't be that much different these days compared to Mac or PC, since there's only a few chip makers that rule the market today (Intel, nVidia, AMD...) and both most popular operating systems of today reached similar level of power... it could have happened quite a few years earlier with Amiga though...
I thing I'm going to launch my FS-UAE now and play my first amiga game
PCs were laughable compared to what this machine could do, and to be honest, Macs weren't that much better - it really was that much ahead (yeah, it was because of that "too much hardware", that Jobs didn't like ) Also my music career started on Amiga with Protracker and later Octamed PRO.After Amiga 500 (expanded to 1 MB of ram) I bought new Amiga 1200 and expanded it to 6MB of RAM, 420 MB hard drive, sampler and a printer - it was quite a serious machine, not just for games but also for work. The OS was so fast and stable compared to Windows, which I couldn't stand at the time, I usually crashed them in first 10 minutes of working with them - I was probably clicking too fast and run too much software at the same time
Amiga had no problem with this - Amiga OS had real preemptive multitasking in '85, which PCs got yeeears later and Macs only with OS X... it also had autoconfig way before plug&play (also much better working) - basically you plugged in the expansion and everything was configured automatically - no DMAs and IRQs to mess with like on PC or million of BIOS settings (btw. even the Amiga "BIOS" called Kickstart was graphical and used mouse straight from the ROM). Basically Amiga combined the simplicity and "just works" concept of a Mac and expendability of a PC (in the pro A1000/A2000/A3000/A4000 models at least), while being more powerful than both (that was true even for home all-in one versions).OS X actually reminded me a lot at Amiga OS, which is part of why I switched to Mac 8 years ago. It's a shame they didn't have true leader like Apple had Jobs or MS had Gates, Amiga might still be around... but to be honest, it probably wouldn't be that much different these days compared to Mac or PC, since there's only a few chip makers that rule the market today (Intel, nVidia, AMD...) and both most popular operating systems of today reached similar level of power... it could have happened quite a few years earlier with Amiga though...
I thing I'm going to launch my FS-UAE now and play my first amiga game
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There's a fantastic Amiga article (and series) over at Arstechnica.
In that article it implies Jobs was interested in merging with Commadore but Commadore were the ones that rebuffed him and any talk of mergers/acquisitions. This says the complete opposite. I guess these things are always open to interpretations and it depends which side is telling the story.
I didn't actually realise how similar the two companies were but one died while the other almost died and then exploded.
My parents (and consequently I) moved from Amiga to the Mac, which at the time was expensive but it had a hard drive and CD-ROM so was definitely an upgrade from the A500.
In that article it implies Jobs was interested in merging with Commadore but Commadore were the ones that rebuffed him and any talk of mergers/acquisitions. This says the complete opposite. I guess these things are always open to interpretations and it depends which side is telling the story.
I didn't actually realise how similar the two companies were but one died while the other almost died and then exploded.
My parents (and consequently I) moved from Amiga to the Mac, which at the time was expensive but it had a hard drive and CD-ROM so was definitely an upgrade from the A500.
OMG just watching that 100 games video brought so many memoirs back, games were much better before they just became eye candy
The A3000 (68030), A1200 (68020), A4000 (68030,68040) and CD32 (68020) were all 32-bit. The other models were 16-bit, but (with the exception of the A600) could receive a 32-bit processor upgrade.
I had an A1200 with a 68040 and a 175MHz PPC 603 for a while, along with a Permedia 2 3D graphics accelerator. I miss those days, where a lean and mean OS could compete with what Windows does now in a fraction of the system resources.
Earlier this month, a new KickStarter-funded documentary debuted on iTunes covering the intriguing history of the popular Amiga computer. Directed by Zach Weddington, Viva Amiga tells the story of how the Amiga project was started in 1985, and successfully captures the excitement of developers and users for what was considered a game-changing platform at the time.
The documentary features interviews with key Amiga engineers as well as some interviews with Amiga users (some of whom continue to use Amigas today), and charts the tremendous highs and incredible lows of the platform over the ensuing decades.
Acquired by Commodore in 1984 for an estimated $30 million, the multimedia Amiga computer created a stir in Silicon Valley, thanks to accelerated graphics and advanced audio hardware that leapfrogged the competition.
Steve Jobs reportedly became worried about the buzz surrounding the Amiga, because the machine used the same Motorola 68000 processor as the Macintosh, but with its 4,096-color display output, 4-channel sampled stereo sound and multi-tasking GUI, it made the year-old Macintosh look seriously dated.
During an event held at the Computer History Museum, California, where Viva Amiga got its first showing, Amiga Corp. investor Bill Hart confirmed that Steve Jobs took an early interest in the Amiga, and visited the group to watch a demo of what would later become the Amiga 1000. An Apple buyout was even floated, but Jobs reportedly never took the proposition seriously.
Ultimately, little came of the visit, which was later described as a "fishing expedition" for Jobs. Despite being integrated into just three chips, the machine had too much hardware for the Apple CEO's liking, while its full-bus-access expansion port was anathema to Jobs' pursuit of a closed architecture system.
Despite some successes - notably, the best-selling Amiga 500 home computer, introduced in 1987 - poor marketing and an inability to reproduce the heights of early innovations led to the Amiga losing market share to game consoles, IBM PCs, and Apple computers, and Commodore ultimately went bankrupt in April 1994.
Viva Amiga is available to buy for $9.99 or rent for $4.99 on iTunes. [Direct Link]
Article Link: iTunes Documentary 'Viva Amiga' Charts the History of the Upstart Apple Rival That Had Steve Jobs Worried
My first proper computer/computers. Started out with an Amiga 600 then graduated to the 1200. Made all the better by getting a second disk drive!
The wonders of the pcmcia port opened up the world of scsi peripherals which included cd drives, scanners and the fantastic Zip drive(which finally removed the need for floppy disks) various other bits added more ide ports and a faster processor and memory.
In the end I ended up with a right beast of a computer where I installed the a1200 motherboard into a PC style case along with adding a daughter board hanging off the expansion port (which was bigger than the motherboard). All that gave pci ports, graphics card, processor upgrades, etc.
A few bits of software and I had a fully functional mac too!
A wonderful bit of kit!!
But just shows how innovative third party manufacturers can be.