Well-Known Secrets of AmigaDOS • Hacker News Board

Re: Well-Known Secrets of AmigaDOS

#11

Post by helf » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 2:27 PM UTC

jug wrote: post #9

wkjagt wrote: post #8

The Amiga was such an impressive computer for its time. I remember having an A500 when it was still fairly new, and compared to anything else out there it was way ahead in terms of graphics and sound. I had mine hooked up to an old amp and big speakers, and the sound that came out of this thing was amazing. Graphics were so colourful and fast scrolling too. It’s amazing to think that the Amiga series is only one gene…

Yes, it's so weird how that 7 MHz thing ran a perfectly usable graphical environment with a command line shell within the GUI and all. I had to wait another nine years for that to come to Windows in Windows 95. At least as impressive (now in hindsight that I understand the added effort that comes with this) was drivers were fairly plentyful and I could buy a random HP printer and just start printing documents. It jus…

[dead]

Re: Well-Known Secrets of AmigaDOS

#12

Post by richardjdare » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 2:46 PM UTC

mark_round wrote: post #4

doener wrote: post #2

The Amiga 500 and 1200 of my father were the first computers I got in touch with as a boy growing up in Germany in the 80s and early 90s. I think every generation feels more or less nostalgic about the things they grew up with. But oftentimes I get the impression that this is especially true for the Amiga community (in comparison to, let‘s say, people growing up with Ataris). If true, I wonder why this is.

I think it's the same reason I guess why people mourn e.g. BeOS. The Atari was a nice system, but it wasn't ground-breaking. The Amiga was decades ahead of it's time and could have been so much more if Commodore had any business-savvy. It's hard to overstate the impact of seeing an Amiga A500 in full flight, coming from the previous generation of 8-bit machines. It felt like it was straight from the future (and still…

Yes, I grew up on the Amiga and think about this a lot myself. I think the Amiga occupied a sweet spot in the history of computing. You could kick out the operating system and hit the hardware directly like an 8-bit machine, but you also had a true multitasking OS, a lightweight GUI and a command line environment that approached Unix only on a much cheaper machine. And as you say, it was feasible to learn and master all of it. And the hardware was interesting enough that devs could be creative with it throughout its lifetime.

Accessibility, and ergonomic access to the power of the machine definitely has a lot to do with it. Blitz Basic is a good example. With Blitz on the Amiga you could write hardware hitting games, native GUI apps and command line tools out of the box, with no dependencies and none of the tedious configuration and administrative work that now accompanies supposedly high-level languages today.

You'd think that in 2024 our high-level language environments would be even more ergonomic, that you could open a window, play a sound or draw something in one line of code, out of the box. But we've let that fall by the wayside. It frustrates me every day when I think back to the future I imagined as an Amiga user.

I really hope that the Amiga's accessibility and immersiveness is something we can revive in some way. Our systems are now very complex, but I don't believe that should preclude such complexity being within a humane, ergonomic framework that can be navigated and known.

Re: Well-Known Secrets of AmigaDOS

#13

Post by robinsonb5 » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 3:06 PM UTC

mark_round wrote: post #4

doener wrote: post #2

The Amiga 500 and 1200 of my father were the first computers I got in touch with as a boy growing up in Germany in the 80s and early 90s. I think every generation feels more or less nostalgic about the things they grew up with. But oftentimes I get the impression that this is especially true for the Amiga community (in comparison to, let‘s say, people growing up with Ataris). If true, I wonder why this is.

I think it's the same reason I guess why people mourn e.g. BeOS. The Atari was a nice system, but it wasn't ground-breaking. The Amiga was decades ahead of it's time and could have been so much more if Commodore had any business-savvy. It's hard to overstate the impact of seeing an Amiga A500 in full flight, coming from the previous generation of 8-bit machines. It felt like it was straight from the future (and still…

The other thing I miss from the Amiga is quite difficult to quantify, but it's that sense that you have the computer's full attention.

I put it down to low latency between the mouse counters and the hardware sprite, and immediacy of visual feedback due to the on-screen gadgets being rendered in a high-priority task distinct from the application's task.

A 40-year-old 7MHz computer can genuinely feel more responsive than a brand new machine thousands of times faster, because of those two things - even if the machine then takes minutes or hours to complete a job the new machine can perform almost instantly.

BeOS was probably the last system which offered that same degree of responsiveness.

Re: Well-Known Secrets of AmigaDOS

#14

Post by qubex » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 3:23 PM UTC

mark_round wrote: post #4

doener wrote: post #2

The Amiga 500 and 1200 of my father were the first computers I got in touch with as a boy growing up in Germany in the 80s and early 90s. I think every generation feels more or less nostalgic about the things they grew up with. But oftentimes I get the impression that this is especially true for the Amiga community (in comparison to, let‘s say, people growing up with Ataris). If true, I wonder why this is.

I think it's the same reason I guess why people mourn e.g. BeOS. The Atari was a nice system, but it wasn't ground-breaking. The Amiga was decades ahead of it's time and could have been so much more if Commodore had any business-savvy. It's hard to overstate the impact of seeing an Amiga A500 in full flight, coming from the previous generation of 8-bit machines. It felt like it was straight from the future (and still…

Nostalgic BeOS user here and I can absolutely relate. BeOS enshrined the design epitome of the time — nineties cartoonish icons and draggable yellow tabs on windows — and ran rings around existing software on similar hardware. BeOS was multithreaded and was designed from the ground up to support multiprocessor architectures at a time when even true preemptive multitasking, well-understood though it was, wasn’t implemented in the predominant consumer OSes of the time (pre-95 Windows and Classic MacOS). I keep trying to imagine a future in which Apple had acquired BeOS and had used that as the basis for their next-generation OS rather than purchasing NeXT and going the route that they took but Apple lacking the Second Coming of Steve Jobs is such an imponderable I cannot really draw any even wildly speculative conclusions as to how things might’ve played out…

Re: Well-Known Secrets of AmigaDOS

#15

Post by dansalvato » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 3:27 PM UTC

The Amiga I grew up with only ever had AmigaOS 1.3, but I’ve heard a lot of praise surrounding ARexx, a scripting language that I believe shipped with 2.0 and later.

From the AmigaOS wiki:

> The ARexx programming language can act as a central hub through which applications - even those created by different companies - can exchange data and commands. For example, using ARexx you can instruct a telecommunications package to dial an electronic bulletin board, download financial data from the bulletin board, and then automatically pass the data to a spreadsheet program for statistical analysis - without any user intervention.

On a more personal note, I’ve been working on a game for classic Amiga over the past couple years, and it feels like such a novelty to have OS bindings for things like memory allocation and file handling while working with a machine from 1985. Especially for file handling, I have the assurance that my game will run off of floppy, hard disk, or even a RAM disk on any generation Amiga, because I get to use modern file path logic via the DOS library.

Re: Well-Known Secrets of AmigaDOS

#16

Post by kstrauser » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 3:30 PM UTC

robinsonb5 wrote: post #13

mark_round wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's the same reason I guess why people mourn e.g. BeOS. The Atari was a nice system, but it wasn't ground-breaking. The Amiga was decades ahead of it's time and could have been so much more if Commodore had any business-savvy. It's hard to overstate the impact of seeing an Amiga A500 in full flight, coming from the previous generation of 8-bit machines. It felt like it was straight from the future (and still…

The other thing I miss from the Amiga is quite difficult to quantify, but it's that sense that you have the computer's full attention. I put it down to low latency between the mouse counters and the hardware sprite, and immediacy of visual feedback due to the on-screen gadgets being rendered in a high-priority task distinct from the application's task. A 40-year-old 7MHz computer can genuinely feel more responsive th…

The Amiga’s mouse never, ever lagged. Unless the thing was completely crashed, you could always wiggle the mouse and see the cursor instantly leap in the right way. The cursor was the mouse in a way I haven’t really experienced since.

Re: Well-Known Secrets of AmigaDOS

#17

Post by dansalvato » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 3:31 PM UTC

jug wrote: post #9

wkjagt wrote: post #8

The Amiga was such an impressive computer for its time. I remember having an A500 when it was still fairly new, and compared to anything else out there it was way ahead in terms of graphics and sound. I had mine hooked up to an old amp and big speakers, and the sound that came out of this thing was amazing. Graphics were so colourful and fast scrolling too. It’s amazing to think that the Amiga series is only one gene…

Yes, it's so weird how that 7 MHz thing ran a perfectly usable graphical environment with a command line shell within the GUI and all. I had to wait another nine years for that to come to Windows in Windows 95. At least as impressive (now in hindsight that I understand the added effort that comes with this) was drivers were fairly plentyful and I could buy a random HP printer and just start printing documents. It jus…

> Yes, it's so weird how that 7 MHz thing ran a perfectly usable graphical environment with a command line shell within the GUI and all.

Perhaps not as advanced as AmigaOS, but Commodore 64 famously had GEOS for a good few years in the second half of its lifespan, which ended up being very popular for that machine. On a 1MHz 6502! Although I don’t know if it came with a command line.

Re: Well-Known Secrets of AmigaDOS

#18

Post by robinsonb5 » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 5:03 PM UTC

kstrauser wrote: post #16

robinsonb5 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other thing I miss from the Amiga is quite difficult to quantify, but it's that sense that you have the computer's full attention. I put it down to low latency between the mouse counters and the hardware sprite, and immediacy of visual feedback due to the on-screen gadgets being rendered in a high-priority task distinct from the application's task. A 40-year-old 7MHz computer can genuinely feel more responsive th…

The Amiga’s mouse never, ever lagged. Unless the thing was completely crashed, you could always wiggle the mouse and see the cursor instantly leap in the right way. The cursor was the mouse in a way I haven’t really experienced since.

The only time I ever saw the Amiga's mouse pointer lag was when transferring files over serial with TwinExpress at an unrealistically ambitious rate (for a machine without a buffered UART, anyway.)

But yes, that direct connection is one of those things you don't really notice until it's not there any more. The first time I tried using a mouse on a PC (with 1200 baud serial mouse) I described the experience as like trying to walk when my foot's gone to sleep.

Re: Well-Known Secrets of AmigaDOS

#19

Post by teo_zero » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 5:56 PM UTC

MenhirMike wrote: post #6

mark_round wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's the same reason I guess why people mourn e.g. BeOS. The Atari was a nice system, but it wasn't ground-breaking. The Amiga was decades ahead of it's time and could have been so much more if Commodore had any business-savvy. It's hard to overstate the impact of seeing an Amiga A500 in full flight, coming from the previous generation of 8-bit machines. It felt like it was straight from the future (and still…

Amiga OS 2.04 still looks so clean and great, and Workbench 3.1 with MagicWB and MUI on an Amiga 1200 with a hard disk and some FastRAM was just amazing for it's time. This was when Windows 3.11 was the competition - or the Macintosh, which was much more expensive. Add AmiTCP and AMosaic and you're browsing the world wide web, in 1993. Or get your software from a Fred Fish PD Disk, or directly from the source, by whi…

> The pure elegance of ASSIGN/virtual drive letters is also one of those features that seems pointless until you used it with removable media. Arguably though, in this day and age it's no longer needed.

When you think about ASSIGN's capability to associate a virtual drive to many directories, it's still needed. Linux re-invented it with "mount -bind", much later.

Re: Well-Known Secrets of AmigaDOS

#20

Post by bgeeek » Sat, Feb 03, 2024, 6:09 PM UTC

mark_round wrote: post #4

doener wrote: post #2

The Amiga 500 and 1200 of my father were the first computers I got in touch with as a boy growing up in Germany in the 80s and early 90s. I think every generation feels more or less nostalgic about the things they grew up with. But oftentimes I get the impression that this is especially true for the Amiga community (in comparison to, let‘s say, people growing up with Ataris). If true, I wonder why this is.

I think it's the same reason I guess why people mourn e.g. BeOS. The Atari was a nice system, but it wasn't ground-breaking. The Amiga was decades ahead of it's time and could have been so much more if Commodore had any business-savvy. It's hard to overstate the impact of seeing an Amiga A500 in full flight, coming from the previous generation of 8-bit machines. It felt like it was straight from the future (and still…

I almost had an Atari, but ended up with the Amiga back in '88, which I am forever grateful for. I'm not sure that I would say the Atari wasn't ground-breaking, though. Think back to the '90s and you can see how much of an impact the Atari had on the music industry in the UK. It was huge, but specific to one particular area - music.