I too was an Atari ST guy. In fact, I still have a 520ST, a 1040ST, a Mega 2, and a Falcon030. So I guess I am still an Atari ST guy![]()
Booo, get out of here
Actually, for MIDI software the Atari was unsurpassed.
I too was an Atari ST guy. In fact, I still have a 520ST, a 1040ST, a Mega 2, and a Falcon030. So I guess I am still an Atari ST guy![]()
Booo, get out of here![]()
Actually, for MIDI software the Atari was unsurpassed.
Ahhh, "Shadow of the Beast" was one of the best Amiga games. Also Lemmings and Defender of the crown.
More politely you could name it "they took what the market allowed". I don't know anymore from which source I read it (could have been Brian Bagnalls insightful book "Commodore: A company on the edge"), but the european prices had been set very deliberately, because C= sold their machines like hotcakes in Europe - despite pricing, despite poor marketing and despite several other shortcomings. After all, a company is no welfare organization *shrug*.US-made computer stuff was ridiculously expensive in the UK [...] Don't know if this was greed
Amongst the hardcore nerds the Archy was well known, not least for it's impressive "Zarch" game. But the Amiga had a much broader software base and was significantly cheaper, so the ARM machine stayed a dream for most.Acorn [...] Archimedes
You just mentioned two main factors for Commodore's demise:Over in the U.S [Commodore] primarily tried to sell the damn thing into the IBM and Apple dominated markers of office and publishing while their European division went very heavily for the games market with great success.
When Jack left C= and poached Shiraz Shivji (of C64 development fame) to create the ST in a very short time in an attempt to compete with the upcoming Amiga, both Jack and Shiraz tried to repeat the C64 success: Slap together a couple of nice specs, make the whole package cheap and try to sell by volume (Hmm - why do I have to think of an Android looking through some Windows right now?Ahh yes, the famous "Jackintosh" - annoying Amiga owners and Apple lawyers since 1985.
No Amiga (that was a lot more sophisticated under the hood), but an awful lot of bangs-per-buck: a 68000 processor and the 1040ST had a whole megabyte of RAM (that was, like, 32GB in 1985 money) for under £1000 (that was, like, £2800 in 2016 money)!
Ahhh, "Shadow of the Beast" was one of the best Amiga games. Also Lemmings and Defender of the crown.
And not to be forgotten: Marble Madness!North & South
Amiga was a spectacular computer in it's day.
It crushed monochrome DOS-based PCs and was priced well below "expensive" Macintosh's that were still mostly viewed as monochrome (and tiny screens) too. The local computer store carried all 3 platforms and it appeared to be so far ahead with color graphics, sound and animation.
With both PCs and Macs monochrome, Amiga was like color TV for lower cost rolling out to compete with Black & White TVs. Just the variable of "color" was enough to be the "killer app" when comparing it to the more established players at the time... but the Amiga was so much more than PC-DOS (no Windows yet) or the Mac OS in color.
The "bouncing ball" demo amazed...
The (32-color) King Tut image from Deluxe Paint was a mesmorizing, digital Mona Lisa at that time. Not only could one create such graphics IN COLOR, but the palette was big enough to offer this crazy thing called painting in color GRADIENTS...
![]()
At the time, one might see spot color in print, such as adding one shade of red to a B&W print ad. On Amiga, you could make that same ad and if red was all you needed, you could use 30 (THIRTY!) variants of red. Crrrrrrrazy.
Then, this thing called "halfbrite" mode (I think) upped that to 64 colors, and then "hold & modify" mode opened up 4096 colors. At school, PC screens were still generally green or amber (insert Ford paraphrase: "you can have any color on a PC as long as it is green or amber"). The Mac labs had tiny-screened Macs with only shades of gray... superior to PCs for at least having a range of colors... but they were colorless.
I remember the same King Tut image being recreated on a Mac... in grayscale... and while it looked great on a Mac too, grayscale vs. color was a "what's the point?" moment for anyone looking to buy a computer at that time.
Amiga's "hold & modify" mode could be used for animations too. When exploited, it whammed anyone interested in color graphic animation from a computer with the ray-traced "Juggler" demo in 4096 colors (a mind-blower at the time). Looking back at it now...
...it doesn't look so special but back then it was basically showing a computer could create a new world, what appeared to be 3D characters in that world (that even cast shadows) and have them moving around with sampled sound choreographed with on-screen actions. Juggler begged for concepts like Ray tracing and similar to come to the masses in apps and several good ones quickly followed. Could the inspiration and then implementation of a Pixar be very far behind?
It had a voice long before the others had much of anything that way. It could speak and with a voice one could understand. Every time I hear the Steven Hawking "voice" (even today) I recognize that as one of the voices of Amiga. I suspect that's where HE got it (but don't know that for sure).
It had standardized file formats so that one could share files between apps made by many different companies. The explosion of creative arts software to take advantage of Amiga was really helped along by being able to do some stuff in one app and then move the project into any number of other apps. It all "just worked."
Deluxe Paint and Deluxe Music Construction Set were very early killer apps. I remember taking an elective "arts" course in college and bringing in some original music I had created on an Amiga. DMCS let you compose in music notation and then print the music. I remember the music teacher being shocked when he found out I couldn't play a musical instrument but had written some original music anyway. "You wrote this on a computer?" By the end of that semester, I still couldn't play any instrument but got an "A" anyway on the strength of that (and probably lingering shock).
Games rivaled arcade machines at the time. I think some Amiga games made it into Arcade machines. And game developers really pushed that hardware to stand out from rivals. Arcade translations tended to look & sound just like the arcade games without compromises (except the insatiable hunger for quarters). Those games typically (& entirely) fit into 880K (yes "K") or less. They were tiny files but funnnnnnnnnnn games that looked & sounded great. One didn't have to spend hours or days (or dollars) building a character/car/plane/etc- we just ran the game and played it. Fun. Uncomplicated. Classic arcade without quarters.
If one wanted to learn to code, the native language with Amiga was C (I think well before the other platforms got there). The OS was loaded with callable routines to do relatively complex stuff in graphics, sound, animation, etc without having to know physics or calculus. Stock code libraries were a treasure trove for anyone wanting to code something interesting themselves.
Hardware offloaded complex tasks in graphics, sound & animation to coprocessors well before the others were doing that.
It had a terrific, real multitasking, icon/windows/mouse-based OS that entirely fit in 256K (later 512K) Yes that's "K." The whole OS was so compact that it was built into ROM and thus offered "instant on."
Early computer animators, graphic designers, etc could simply do much more with an Amiga than the other platforms at the time. For gamers, there was pretty much nothing better. Atari ST tried to be a poor man's Amiga and they all competed for gamers against platforms like Atari 5200 and Colecovision. Friends were always impressed with Amiga games and then soon owned an Amiga themselves.
Personally, I wish it could have made it. I'd love to see what a 2017 Amiga would be like.
In Poland, where I come from, it was Spectrum first.
More politely you could name it "they took what the market allowed".
Oh yes, that King Tut image. Any of you New Yorkers here probably know J&R Music World. I worked as a bike messenger in the building right next to the basement computer section at J&R. I would often go downstairs and play with and drool on that Amiga, printed many copies of that King Tut image there lol. I eventually saved up enough to buy a 500, then saved up some more and upgraded to the 1000. Constantly flipping through Computer Shoppers looking at upgrades. I remember phone ordering individual DRAM chips to upgrade the 1000. Later adding a 10MB hard drive and I was in heaven! Social networking back then meant actually meeting others in person lol.Amiga was a spectacular computer in it's day.
It crushed monochrome DOS-based PCs and was priced well below "expensive" Macintosh's that were still mostly viewed as monochrome (and tiny screens) too. The local computer store carried all 3 platforms and it appeared to be so far ahead with color graphics, sound and animation.
With both PCs and Macs monochrome, Amiga was like color TV for lower cost rolling out to compete with Black & White TVs. Just the variable of "color" was enough to be the "killer app" when comparing it to the more established players at the time... but the Amiga was so much more than PC-DOS (no Windows yet) or the Mac OS in color.
The "bouncing ball" demo amazed...
The (32-color) King Tut image from Deluxe Paint was a mesmorizing, digital Mona Lisa at that time. Not only could one create such graphics IN COLOR, but the palette was big enough to offer this crazy thing called painting in color GRADIENTS...
![]()
At the time, one might see spot color in print, such as adding one shade of red to a B&W print ad. On Amiga, you could make that same ad and if red was all you needed, you could use 30 (THIRTY!) variants of red. Crrrrrrrazy.
Then, this thing called "halfbrite" mode (I think) upped that to 64 colors, and then "hold & modify" mode opened up 4096 colors. At school, PC screens were still generally green or amber (insert Ford paraphrase: "you can have any color on a PC as long as it is green or amber"). The Mac labs had tiny-screened Macs with only shades of gray... superior to PCs for at least having a range of colors... but they were colorless.
I remember the same King Tut image being recreated on a Mac... in grayscale... and while it looked great on a Mac too, grayscale vs. color was a "what's the point?" moment for anyone looking to buy a computer at that time.
Amiga's "hold & modify" mode could be used for animations too. When exploited, it whammed anyone interested in color graphic animation from a computer with the ray-traced "Juggler" demo in 4096 colors (a mind-blower at the time). Looking back at it now...
...it doesn't look so special but back then it was basically showing a computer could create a new world, what appeared to be 3D characters in that world (that even cast shadows) and have them moving around with sampled sound choreographed with on-screen actions. Juggler begged for concepts like Ray tracing and similar to come to the masses in apps and several good ones quickly followed. Could the inspiration and then implementation of a Pixar be very far behind?
It had a voice long before the others had much of anything that way. It could speak and with a voice one could understand. Every time I hear the Steven Hawking "voice" (even today) I recognize that as one of the voices of Amiga. I suspect that's where HE got it (but don't know that for sure).
It had standardized file formats so that one could share files between apps made by many different companies. The explosion of creative arts software to take advantage of Amiga was really helped along by being able to do some stuff in one app and then move the project into any number of other apps. It all "just worked."
Deluxe Paint and Deluxe Music Construction Set were very early killer apps. I remember taking an elective "arts" course in college and bringing in some original music I had created on an Amiga. DMCS let you compose in music notation and then print the music. I remember the music teacher being shocked when he found out I couldn't play a musical instrument but had written some original music anyway. "You wrote this on a computer?" By the end of that semester, I still couldn't play any instrument but got an "A" anyway on the strength of that (and probably lingering shock).
Games rivaled arcade machines at the time. I think some Amiga games made it into Arcade machines. And game developers really pushed that hardware to stand out from rivals. Arcade translations tended to look & sound just like the arcade games without compromises (except the insatiable hunger for quarters). Those games typically (& entirely) fit into 880K (yes "K") or less. They were tiny files but funnnnnnnnnnn games that looked & sounded great. One didn't have to spend hours or days (or dollars) building a character/car/plane/etc- we just ran the game and played it. Fun. Uncomplicated. Classic arcade without quarters.
If one wanted to learn to code, the native language with Amiga was C (I think well before the other platforms got there). The OS was loaded with callable routines to do relatively complex stuff in graphics, sound, animation, etc without having to know physics or calculus. Stock code libraries were a treasure trove for anyone wanting to code something interesting themselves.
Hardware offloaded complex tasks in graphics, sound & animation to coprocessors well before the others were doing that.
It had a terrific, real multitasking, icon/windows/mouse-based OS that entirely fit in 256K (later 512K) Yes that's "K." The whole OS was so compact that it was built into ROM and thus offered "instant on."
Early computer animators, graphic designers, etc could simply do much more with an Amiga than the other platforms at the time. For gamers, there was pretty much nothing better. Atari ST tried to be a poor man's Amiga and they all competed for gamers against platforms like Atari 5200 and Colecovision. Friends were always impressed with Amiga games and then soon owned an Amiga themselves.
Personally, I wish it could have made it. I'd love to see what a 2017 Amiga would be like.
Amiga was a spectacular computer in it's day.
It crushed monochrome DOS-based PCs and was priced well below the "expensive" Macintosh that were still mostly viewed as monochrome (and tiny screens) too. The local computer store carried all 3 platforms and it appeared to be so far ahead with color graphics, sound and animation.
With both PCs and Macs monochrome, Amiga was like color TV for lower cost rolling out to compete with Black & White TVs. Just the variable of "color" was enough to be the "killer app" when comparing it to the more established players at the time... but the Amiga was so much more than PC-DOS (no Windows yet) or the Mac OS in color.
The "bouncing ball" demo amazed...
The (32-color) King Tut image from Deluxe Paint was a mesmorizing, digital Mona Lisa at that time. Not only could one create such graphics IN COLOR, but the palette was big enough to offer this crazy thing called painting in color GRADIENTS...
![]()
At the time, one might see spot color in print, such as adding one shade of red to a B&W print ad. On Amiga, you could make that same ad and if red was all you needed, you could use 30 (THIRTY!) variants of red. Crrrrrrrazy.
Then, this thing called "halfbrite" mode (I think) upped that to 64 colors, and then "hold & modify" mode opened up 4096 colors. At school, PC screens were still generally green or amber (insert Ford paraphrase: "you can have any color on a PC as long as it is green or amber"). The Mac labs had tiny-screened Macs with only shades of gray... superior to PCs for at least having a range of colors... but they were colorless.
I remember the same King Tut image being recreated on a Mac... in grayscale... and while it looked great on a Mac too, grayscale vs. color was a "what's the point?" moment for anyone looking to buy a computer at that time.
Amiga's "hold & modify" mode could be used for animations too. When exploited, it whammed anyone interested in color graphic animation from a computer with the ray-traced "Juggler" demo in 4096 colors (a mind-blower at the time). Looking back at it now...
...it doesn't look so special but back then it was basically showing a computer could create a new world, what appeared to be 3D characters in that world (that even cast shadows) and have them moving around with sampled sound choreographed with on-screen actions. Juggler begged for concepts like Ray tracing and similar to come to the masses in apps and several good ones quickly followed. Could the inspiration and then implementation of a Pixar be very far behind?
It had a voice long before the others had much of anything that way. It could speak and with a voice one could understand. Every time I hear the Steven Hawking "voice" (even today) I recognize that as one of the voices of Amiga. I suspect that's where HE got it (but don't know that for sure).
It had standardized file formats so that one could share files between apps made by many different companies. The explosion of creative arts software to take advantage of Amiga was really helped along by being able to do some stuff in one app and then move the project into any number of other apps. It all "just worked."
Deluxe Paint and Deluxe Music Construction Set were very early killer apps. I remember taking an elective "arts" course in college and bringing in some original music I had created on an Amiga. DMCS let you compose in music notation and then print the music. I remember the music teacher being shocked when he found out I couldn't play a musical instrument but had written some original music anyway. "You wrote this on a computer?" By the end of that semester, I still couldn't play any instrument but got an "A" anyway on the strength of that (and probably lingering shock).
Games rivaled arcade machines at the time. I think some Amiga games made it into Arcade machines. And game developers really pushed that hardware to stand out from rivals. Arcade translations tended to look & sound just like the arcade games without compromises (except the insatiable hunger for quarters). Those games typically (& entirely) fit into 880K (yes "K") or less. They were tiny files but funnnnnnnnnnn games that looked & sounded great. One didn't have to spend hours or days (or dollars) building a character/car/plane/etc- we just ran the game and played it. Fun. Uncomplicated. Classic arcade without quarters.
If one wanted to learn to code, the native language with Amiga was C (I think well before the other platforms got there). The OS was loaded with callable routines to do relatively complex stuff in graphics, sound, animation, etc without having to know physics or calculus. Stock code libraries were a treasure trove for anyone wanting to code something interesting themselves.
Hardware offloaded complex tasks in graphics, sound & animation to coprocessors well before the others were doing that.
It had a terrific, real multitasking, icon/windows/mouse-based OS that entirely fit in 256K (later 512K) Yes that's "K." The whole OS was so compact that it was built into ROM and thus offered "instant on."
Early computer animators, graphic designers, etc could simply do much more with an Amiga than the other platforms at the time. For gamers, there was pretty much nothing better. Atari ST tried to be a poor man's Amiga and they all competed for gamers against platforms like Atari 5200 and Colecovision. Friends were always impressed with Amiga games and then soon owned an Amiga themselves.
Personally, I wish it could have made it. I'd love to see what a 2017 Amiga would be like.
Nice piece reflecting the market at the time the Amiga arrived.
View attachment 684942 View attachment 684943
Games!
Music!
I worked with A1200's for Scala MM 300 and the 4000's for the Video Toaster and Broadcast Titler in the 90's. The documentary was more like an hour long trailer. Nothing that we didn't already know was presented. I was hoping to hear the technical reason for the superiority and more details on how the video toasters hardware hack really worked. Maybe even some good stories for people. The doc was a bit lite or real substance. And for the record....Andy Worrall used a Macintosh before he used an Amiga. That is historic fact. The Kickstart OS was very primitive compared to the Macintosh at the time. Sure it had color and could do more...but it was very clunky to use and unrefined. I always hated having to use that for anything. It felt more like trying to use Mario Paint than a computer. Thank God the Toaster launched itself! It was not very good OS in terms of interface.
...
A year later at a Toronto World of Commodore show I saw an Amiga 2000 souped-up with a GVP A-3001+ board and I had to have one. the A-3001+ was a card that replaced the stock MC68000 @ 8MHz with a MC68030 @ 25MHz. Plus it had room for an astounding 8MB of RAM. I wrote a check for around $6,000 that day. When I brought my system home it even had an 80MB hard drive. SA4D absolutely flew on that system in comparison to the A-500; it would do a ray-traced render in maybe 30 minutes instead of 6 hours. Shortly after I bought my 25MHz system GVP bumped the speed up to 28MHz and then 33MHz but that's the risk of being an early adopter.