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Amiga 1000: Ten years ahead of its time

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Re: Amiga 1000: Ten years ahead of its time

#21

Post by jorisw »

doener wrote: post #19
spacedcowboy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, its main contemporary in the non-PC realm was the Atari ST, which was cheaper, arrived on the market sooner, and took the “professional” market because of its excellent mono monitor (“small, but perfectly formed”). The ST didn’t multitask, but Amiga multitasking wasn’t memory-protected, so crashing something meant you could (would) lose everything running. It also couldn’t do the graphical tricks the Amiga…

> but Amiga multitasking wasn’t memory-protected This was not the case for Windows 95/98 and ME, either BTW IIRC. Only with Windows XP Microsoft introduced memory protection for the mass market.

Probably Windows NT rather, which turned into Windows 2000 (and then XP)

Re: Amiga 1000: Ten years ahead of its time

#23

Post by dd8601fn »

vidarh wrote: post #15
somat wrote: post #12

I was trying to figure out it's contemporaries, the i386 was still a few months away, you could get a sun-2, which had a sweet 4 MB of ram, but wikipedia sez that would cost you a eye watering 29 thousand dollars, in 1985, for the low end monochrome graphics version, oh, you want color that is "just" a cool 50k. Yeah Sun is not really playing the same game. The mac was probably the closest equivalent, it came out the…

The Mac hit a completely different market. Nobody I knew got a Mac until after the iMac. Lots had Amigas. In the 80's Mac's were expensive machines for professionals, and while the Amiga due to Commodore's persistent sales and marketing failures were also pigeon holed in professional markers in the US, in Europe the Amiga was also the step up from 8-bit home computers, and the Mac didn't compete in that space at all.…

Around here it was schools. Every machine in every school in every district was an apple, from the 80s to the late 90s. Many thousands of kids spent more time using those than anything else.

At home, very few had apple machines. We did have programs where we could take a IIgs home over break, and loaner macbooks in later years. But if your family owned a machine it almost certainly wasn’t an apple.

Mine was an IBM house, from the xt, on.

Re: Amiga 1000: Ten years ahead of its time

#24

Post by jjav »

somat wrote: post #12

I was trying to figure out it's contemporaries, the i386 was still a few months away, you could get a sun-2, which had a sweet 4 MB of ram, but wikipedia sez that would cost you a eye watering 29 thousand dollars, in 1985, for the low end monochrome graphics version, oh, you want color that is "just" a cool 50k. Yeah Sun is not really playing the same game. The mac was probably the closest equivalent, it came out the…

> The real shocker is how little memory these systems had, amiga1000 only 256K

Mid 80s my first computer had 16K and that was a lot. Later upgraded to 64K which was mind blowingly huge, couldn't imagine how to use so much RAM!

Re: Amiga 1000: Ten years ahead of its time

#25

Post by actionfromafar »

SwellJoe wrote: post #11

The Amiga was the best and worst thing to happen to a kid in the late 80s. It was heartbreaking watching Commodore die, but it was an amazing introduction to the possibilities of computing. I made a ton of music with OctaMED, learned a bunch about programming, learned how to use all sorts of graphics tools, made all my own icons and wallpaper images, wrote an interactive book in AmigaGuide (an early hypertext system)…

Don't you mean "it was heartbreaking watching Commodore shooting heroin with dirty needles in an alley, then later scouring trash bins for food" before finally dying? (Twice.)

You are right about graphics.

Re: Amiga 1000: Ten years ahead of its time

#26

Post by mmustapic »

doener wrote: post #19
spacedcowboy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, its main contemporary in the non-PC realm was the Atari ST, which was cheaper, arrived on the market sooner, and took the “professional” market because of its excellent mono monitor (“small, but perfectly formed”). The ST didn’t multitask, but Amiga multitasking wasn’t memory-protected, so crashing something meant you could (would) lose everything running. It also couldn’t do the graphical tricks the Amiga…

> but Amiga multitasking wasn’t memory-protected This was not the case for Windows 95/98 and ME, either BTW IIRC. Only with Windows XP Microsoft introduced memory protection for the mass market.

No, Windows 95 had memory protection for 32-bit apps. Usually when a 32-bit app crashed, the rest of the OS worked fine.

Re: Amiga 1000: Ten years ahead of its time

#27

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

vidarh wrote: post #8
TacticalCoder wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... which will inevitably draw the rose-tinted comments from the boomers and gen-x-ers. Believe me when I say I get how tiring that must be Any boomer here that used an Amiga? As a GenXer I can tell you that my parents, the OG boomers, were completely lost when it came to home computing. > A friend got his hands on an A1000 and when I saw it and spent some time with it, I not only thought this was the end of the li…

Boomer is a tricky term now - it's starting to become a generic term for old people. Personally it still felt like a step backwards when I felt I no longer had a choice but to switch to Linux in '97 or so (I'd used a souped up Amiga 3000 until then) Sure, you could get far faster PCs with better graphics, but even Linux still felt like a step back in usability. By '99 I was using Enlightenment with draggable virtual…

> Boomer is a tricky term now - it's starting to become a generic term for old people.

We Gen-Xers are used to being completely ignored as a generation. That is not new at all.

Re: Amiga 1000: Ten years ahead of its time

#28

Post by dev0p »

I’d argue that it's still ahead of a lot of modern systems.

Aside from the loading times, the thing is incredibly fast. I invite you to try one if you have the chance, as words don't make it justice. I can't think of anything today that comes close to how instantly it responds to user input, even iOS feels sluggish in comparison.

It had only a few kilobytes of memory, a bunch of CPU cycles and a dream, but By God they made damn sure not to waste a single instructions and it shows. We need to go back.

Re: Amiga 1000: Ten years ahead of its time

#29

Post by giov4 »

I would not be who I am if my father didn't buy an amiga 1000 for my bigger brother. I was around 7 years old, I still have a few memory frames of the original package unboxing when it arrived. I was too small but I remember the feeling, after that I merged with computers.

the kickstarting, deluxe paint, the huge amiga basic manual, the games... an amazing world that shaped how my brain works.

thank you commodore, thank you dad.

and thanks for this time traveling post!

Re: Amiga 1000: Ten years ahead of its time

#30

Post by vidarh »

Annatar wrote: post #16
kryptonomist wrote: post #10

Though the Atari ST was a superior machine.

We all have our delusions.

The Atari fans showing up does bring up the nostalgia of BBS and Usenet flamewars though. The Atari was so unpopular in my parts that was the only exposure I had to the two of them.
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