A history of the Amiga

#1

Post by cesare » Tue, Aug 31, 2010, 9:34 AM UTC

Re: A history of the Amiga

#2

Post by MC27 » Tue, Aug 31, 2010, 12:25 PM UTC

Having stuck with the Amiga until '98, with an overly expanded computer - capable of playing Quake etc, it was the last real computer platform I cared for. All these useless companies that purchased it without a long term plan was exasperating. If anything, it's taught me to take a step backwards and avoid becoming tribal over any technology.

Re: A history of the Amiga

#3

Post by Kurtz79 » Tue, Aug 31, 2010, 12:25 PM UTC

Amiga 500: Best Computer Ever.

Re: A history of the Amiga

#4

Post by jlc » Tue, Aug 31, 2010, 12:38 PM UTC

My Amiga 1000 is sitting about five feet from me. I haven't turned it on in a very long while.

Even my beloved Commodore 64 is long gone, but I haven't been able to part with the Amiga. Not saying this is a good thing. Just saying.

Re: A history of the Amiga

#5

Post by Robin_Message » Tue, Aug 31, 2010, 12:53 PM UTC

If you are irritated by the fact this was only part one, part 7 - with links to the earlier parts - can be found here. http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2008/05/amiga-history-p...

Re: A history of the Amiga

#6

Post by vyrotek » Tue, Aug 31, 2010, 1:10 PM UTC

Oh, so many memories of playing FirePower and Impossible Mission!

Re: A history of the Amiga

#7

Post by unwind » Tue, Aug 31, 2010, 1:17 PM UTC

The Amiga remains magical to me, having grown up programming it and having had more "aahaa!" moments thanks to it than any other computer in particular.

I still have things like this, floating around in my brain somewhere[]:

  .loop: move.w $dff006,$dff180
         btst.b #6,$bfe001
         bne.s  .loop

It was so awesome, a computer with a great CPU, intriguing and poweful custom hardware for graphics/sound, and still a very decent operating system on top. It had it all. Sniff.

[] Somewhere slightly shady, since I mis-remembered the two first register addresses, and also the sign of the /FE0 bit being read by the third instruction. Still, it's been 14 years since I switched to Linux, so I'm kind of happy.

Re: A history of the Amiga

#8

Post by rbanffy » Tue, Aug 31, 2010, 1:32 PM UTC

I really wish we had more hardware diversity. With open-source software, it shouldn't be very hard to do.

Having to choose between a Core i3, i5, Athlon, Duron, Sempron, Whateveron, or between embedded, ATI or Nvidia doesn`t really feel like having any choice...

Or, to paraphrase Henry Ford, you can choose any architecture, as long as it runs Windows.

Re: A history of the Amiga

#9

Post by DLWormwood » Tue, Aug 31, 2010, 1:36 PM UTC

I honestly feel as though I missed out on something big regarding the Amiga. While a teenager, I would regularly get .info magazine, and wonder in awe at the games and media tools the platform had. However, in my neck of the country (NW Ohio), there were no stores or support for the platform. Ironically, given its marginal status at the time, it was easier to find tech service and stores selling Macs than other platforms in the late 80’s. When I got my first “modern” computer (a Mac LC) in college, one of the first things I put on it was an Amiga module tracker…

Re: A history of the Amiga

#10

Post by henrikschroder » Tue, Aug 31, 2010, 1:40 PM UTC

I had an Atari 512 STE. Clearly the superior choice.

(More of my school friends back then had Ataris than Amigas, so it was a no-brainer decision for me.)

I'm curious what spurred the insane die-hard mentality though. Most of us left the Amigas and Ataris for the PC in the early 90s, except for a few who swore by their Amigas and loved them to bits even though their relative performance grew more and more pathetic.

So what caused it? First love? Or was there something genuinely good about the system? I'm genuinely curious.