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Main Area and Open Discussion => Living Room => Topic started by: zridling on December 03, 2007, 06:30 AM

Title: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: zridling on December 03, 2007, 06:30 AM: Back in the 1980s, Amiga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga) users were among the best programmers and tech people I knew. They always would shake their heads and softly laugh when repairing PCs. There's a History of the Amiga film on usenet under alt.binaries.documentaries that tells the story.

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The Amiga 500 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_500)
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Perry Mowbray on December 03, 2007, 06:49 AM: Ah... my first computer :-*

I wonder what I'd really think if I was able to dust it off again... memory is such a funny thing, eh?
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: zridling on December 03, 2007, 07:17 AM: Amiga is another instance of better tech losing out to monied marketing. By making it expandable in a variety of ways (external drives/ports, memory), the machine actually lasted far longer than the traditional 3-year upgrade cycle and saved you money.

Go figure.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Ralf Maximus on December 03, 2007, 07:18 AM: I sold Amigas. Does that count?
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: zridling on December 03, 2007, 07:56 AM: Definitely! I don't remember — were they expensive, cheap, or about the same as other computers, such as Apple and PCs?
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Ampa on December 03, 2007, 08:09 AM: I had and loved an Amiga 500 - I still fire up an emulator now and again to enjoy some of the games of my youth.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: nontroppo on December 03, 2007, 08:23 AM: My second home computer after the Commodore Vic 20.

Twas a great machine indeed. I remember when I used MSDOS-based machines (and even Windows 3.x) some years later what a step back it felt...

I also remember the silly tribal animosity between Amiga and Atari ST users; some things never change...
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Ralf Maximus on December 03, 2007, 08:26 AM: Whelp, in 1984 an Amiga 1000 (first gen) cost $1295. That got you 256K of RAM, and a floppy drive. With a monitor, figure $1700. For reference, a Commodore 64 sold for $299 at that time without discounts.

As the IBM PC was selling for $5000, that was a big deal. PC clones (like the Compaq and Kaypro) were in the $2000-$3000 range.

One thing that sold a lot of Amigas for us was the promise of the "IBM compatibility box" (sorry, forget the product name) that would allow Amiga to emulate an IBM PC for a coupla hundred bucks more. People bought Amigas like crazy, expecting to be able to do everything an Amiga could + run all the IBM software at some point in the future. Note that the IBM box was delayed for a loooong time, but that didn't stop people from placing advance orders for it. It was crazy.

When it finally did come out, it was a bit of a disappointment. The "compatibility box" consisted of a separate module (and power supply?) that actually had an Intel processor and RAM on it. It connected to the Amiga's motherboard via a ribbon cable and allowed the user to dual-boot into the Amiga or MS-DOS. But not both at the same time. Which was kind of retarded.

Nobody had hard-drives or CD-ROMs; those were freakishly expensive. I think I special ordered a 3rd party Amiga hard-drive once and it was over $5000.

We started accepting orders for the Amiga 1000 a full year before we ever saw one. On the strength of the brochure alone we took in many dozens of advance orders. When shipments first arrived, the machines were beautiful... but very fragile. One had the impression Commodore was cranking them out the door 24/7 without regard for build quality. Our technician spent much of his time the first months after deliveries started resoldering broken traces on the Amiga motherboard.

Near riots would break out when we'd get our shipments, as customers learned our schedule and would stake out the store. We'd get maybe six or twelve machines at a time (despite our having ordered hundreds from Commodore; they were soooo backordered) and I was the lucky one who'd break out The List and call the next lucky customers at the top. It was almost a lottery atmosphere, with people jumping in the air and yelling if they happened to be in the store when I was reading off The List.

And I took a *lot* of abuse from folks who'd paid their money and were still waiting. And honestly, I didn't blame them. The only thing that kept me alive was that they could see the small shipments from Commodore themselves. Not our fault. But I could easily imagine a convoy of pissed off customers driving to King of Prussia, Pennsylvania to torch Commodore headquarters.

Eventually the frenzy died down and shipments came in regularly, and build quality came up. We stopped crossing our fingers whenever we'd hand somebody a new Amiga box.

Then the cycle repeated itself when the 256K memory expansion modules were announced...
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: cranioscopical on December 03, 2007, 09:15 AM: Depends in which sense you mean "old" :)

You bet! 1000, 2000, 3000. (Had to drive to Buffalo from Toronto to pick up a FlickerFixer.)
I could do little with the 256K in the 1000 apart from making friends with Guru Meditation Errors ;)
I'm still using two Northgate Omnikey keyboards that have been in daily use since that era, switchable between Amiga and IBM.
I've never found another keyboard that's nearly as good.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Ralf Maximus on December 03, 2007, 09:24 AM: I've never found another keyboard that's nearly as good.
-cranioscopical (December 03, 2007, 09:15 AM)

They still make 'em:
http://www.pckeyboard.com/customizer.html

Not exactly the Omnikey, but tough-as-nails, either "quiet" or IBM PC buckling-spring clunky varieties, and they're not terribly expensive.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Lashiec on December 03, 2007, 01:04 PM: I also remember the silly tribal animosity between Amiga and Atari ST users; some things never change...
-nontroppo (December 03, 2007, 08:23 AM)

In this case it was a bit more justified than modern animosity. Or at least there was a logical reason :D
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Mark0 on December 03, 2007, 01:38 PM: I had - wait, I still have it! - an Amiga 500, with the usual 512KB+clock expansion, and a 2nd 3.5" drive.
Certainly the computer that I had most fun with!
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Daleus on December 03, 2007, 02:16 PM: Oh yeah baby! Those were the days!

I had an Amiga 500 with an external HD that slapped onto the left side via the expansion port and a snazzy wedge shaped box! I paid 400+ for a HD I swear was 20 MBs!

In those days I was running a BBS on my C64. I was so thrilled to *now* be able to run the BBS in the background while I continued to play video games. It was like being alive, but still going to heaven...roflmao!

My favourite recollection was a PC friend asking why in the world I needed thousands of colours on screen and digital stereo sound. Like someone up top said, all I could do was shake my head and smile knowingly.

I was in my late 20's/early thirties at the time and I remember that hearing comments like that one made me feel as though I was a tenager - you know, on cloud nine, totally empowered and ready to take over the world and solve all it's problems.

Now that I'm in the PC world, I despair...... Okay maybe it's not that bad ;)

The Amiga is dead! Long live the Amiga!
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Ralf Maximus on December 03, 2007, 04:38 PM: In those days I was running a BBS on my C64. I was so thrilled to *now* be able to run the BBS in the background while I continued to play video games. It was like being alive, but still going to heaven...roflmao!
-Daleus (December 03, 2007, 02:16 PM)

Hehehehe, yes indeed!

One of the most impressive demos we did at the computer store was to format a disk on the Amiga and then open the bouncing-ball animation in a foreground window. People were just floored.

One IBM PC guy who bought stuff at our store saw the demo one day and asked, "why on earth would somebody need a disk formatting program that bounced a ball around the screen?"

When told what was really happening, he didn't believe it, and wouldn't look at the Amiga again at the risk of having his reality shattered.

Another guy (whom I knew was perpetually broke, so I kind of sympathized) said, "if I need to do TWO things at once, I'll just get another Commodore 64." I just nodded in agreement.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Perry Mowbray on December 03, 2007, 08:33 PM: Looking back, one of the most useful things about Amigas was the AREXX port in each programme. It allowed me to tie many programmes together in my office... GoldED was the text editor, PageStream was the DTP, ProVector for drawings...

I remember the first coding I did was to alter the BASIC programme that came with the setup disks; someone had hard coded the response to the question "What's your name?" to "Tiffany's a nice name!"
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: cranioscopical on December 03, 2007, 09:50 PM: Looking back, one of the most useful things about Amigas was the AREXX port in each programme. It allowed me to tie many programmes together in my office... GoldED was the text editor, PageStream was the DTP, ProVector for drawings...
-Perry Mowbray (December 03, 2007, 08:33 PM)
Too true, that and Bill Hawes' WShell !
When Commodore finally woke up and made ARexx part of the Amiga bundle they did many Amiga users a big favour.
The ability to cherry pick applications and create a custom suite of software that was also tied into the shell was great.
I see the 'new' Amiga OS has just been released... finally.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Perry Mowbray on December 04, 2007, 05:31 AM: When Commodore finally woke up and made ARexx part of the Amiga bundle they did many Amiga users a big favour.
The ability to cherry pick applications and create a custom suite of software that was also tied into the shell was great.
-cranioscopical (December 03, 2007, 09:50 PM)

It's probably what I miss most about my windows experience too.

I've just remembered SBase too... how could I forget??

I see the 'new' Amiga OS has just been released... finally.
-cranioscopical (December 03, 2007, 09:50 PM)

I've read some user's posts about it, sounds somewhat temping, but maybe not quite enough.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: zridling on December 04, 2007, 02:37 PM: Holy crap, cranioscopical, I had a Northgate Omnikey keyboard and nothing's come close since. Damn thing weighed about 20 lbs. I think, made of steel. Even Superman would rip a hernia trying to bend that sucker!

If you had a Northgate on your Amiga, dude, you were living the life.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Darwin on December 04, 2007, 03:04 PM: When Commodore finally woke up and made ARexx part of the Amiga bundle they did many Amiga users a big favour.
The ability to cherry pick applications and create a custom suite of software that was also tied into the shell was great.
-cranioscopical (December 03, 2007, 09:50 PM)

It's probably what I miss most about my windows experience too.

I've just remembered SBase too... how could I forget??

I see the 'new' Amiga OS has just been released... finally.
-cranioscopical (December 03, 2007, 09:50 PM)

I've read some user's posts about it, sounds somewhat temping, but maybe not quite enough.
-Perry Mowbray (December 04, 2007, 05:31 AM)

AFAICT the new OS (AmigaOS4) is available as a free upgrade to anyone who has an Amiga computer. Other than that, I can't find any other information about it and assume that it will not run on IBM clone hardware. A powerpc perhaps, though...? I'm also unable to find a download link for it anywhere.

At any rate, Perry, if you've still got an Amiga machine kicking around it seems you've got nothing to lose!

EDIT: fixed borked quotes... :o
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: leland on December 04, 2007, 03:31 PM: I just noticed this post. Well, here is another Amiga users. My third computer was a A500, which I made many expansions to like the 2MB of chip ram, hard drive, etc... Then later I bought an A2000 used and expanded that like crazy too. Those were some fun days. Even now there are many things I find myself missing from the Amiga that the PC still does not have. Yes, ARexx was great, the VB for Applications doesn't come close to matching it's power. I did however get one of my favorite Amiga app for the PC when Directory Opus was released for Windows. That made my PC a much more usable computer. Oh, those were the days...

Leland
:D

PS I still keep an eye on the Amiga from time to time, but the new stuff just doesn't seem the same to me anymore... Is it just me?
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: cranioscopical on December 04, 2007, 06:08 PM: AFAICT the new OS (AmigaOS4) is available as a free upgrade to anyone who has an Amiga computer. Other than that, I can't find any other information about it and assume that it will not run on IBM clone hardware. A powerpc perhaps, though...? I'm also unable to find a download link for it anywhere.

At any rate, Perry, if you've still got an Amiga machine kicking around it seems you've got nothing to lose!
-Darwin (December 04, 2007, 03:04 PM)

I think you need one of the later "T" models.

I have NO doubt that Windows, now, is fantastically much better than was the Amiga OS on the 3000 (my last Amiga). What fills me with dismay is the thought of where home computing might have been today had Commodore handled things differently.

I moved from the Amiga to OS/2 as a (poor) second best... same story *sigh*.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: cranioscopical on December 04, 2007, 06:19 PM: Holy crap, cranioscopical, I had a Northgate Omnikey keyboard and nothing's come close since.
-zridling (December 04, 2007, 02:37 PM)

It's true. The keyboards to which Ralf helpfully refers aren't a bad second choice but none of them quite does it for me.

Northgate made the Omnikey dip-switchable between Amiga and PC and sold a keycap-and-puller set to change the few keys that were in different places. I still have the Amiga keys somewhere -- heaven only knows why! Anyway, both of my Omnikeys are just fine and each has had a lot of use. All of the letters are as clear on the keys, now, as on the day they were manufactured.

If you had a Northgate on your Amiga, dude, you were living the life.

I was having fun, that's for sure :Thmbsup:
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Lashiec on December 05, 2007, 11:11 AM: More Amiga goodness (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071204-under-the-shadow-of-lawsuits-amiga-development-goes-on.html) for you, guys
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Darwin on December 05, 2007, 03:54 PM: Interesting find, Lashiec, and answers my questions about where AmigaOS4 is and what it will run under. Good read, but a sort of tragicomedic story!
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: cranioscopical on December 05, 2007, 05:05 PM: More Amiga goodness (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071204-under-the-shadow-of-lawsuits-amiga-development-goes-on.html) for you, guys
-Lashiec (December 05, 2007, 11:11 AM)
Thanks for the pointer, Lashiec. Seems I was wrong about the 'T' series being required. Too bad I junked my 3000s during my last (and I hope final) house move.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: app103 on December 06, 2007, 04:16 PM: I found this video about 2 months ago and posted it to my blog (http://cranialsoup.blogspot.com/2007/10/amiga-1988.html). The embedding seems not to work properly for a lot of people so I'll just give you a link to it here and repeat what I said to introduce it:

The 'New' Amiga (1988)

Originally broadcast in 1988, this 28 minute Computer Chronicles (http://www.archive.org/details/computerchronicles) video takes a look at what was then, the brand new Amiga, and the amazing things it could do.

Considering one could own one of these for less than $1000, it made affordable to small businesses and home users, the kinds of things that once were only available to large businesses with tons of cash.

Compared to the capabilities and cost of a PC with MS-DOS 4 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS) or Windows 386 (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4915875929930836239)/2.1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2.1x) ($5,000 (http://library.thinkquest.org/4116/Science/computin.htm)) or a Mac with OS2 ($4,869 (http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-9200980_ITM)), buying an Amiga made a lot of sense.

[ You are not allowed to view attachments ] (http://www.archive.org/details/amiga_2)
This time warp brought to you by archive.org (http://www.archive.org/details/amiga_2). High resolution copies of this Creative Commons licensed video are available for download.

I wasn't into computers when the Amiga was at its height, unfortunately. I wish I could have had a chance to have used one of these. I feel a bit deprived.

I kind of look at all Amigas, including the newer µ-A1 (http://www.mrhardwarecomputers.com/pages/ma1.htm), sort of like how a city child looks at a pony, wishing they could have one as a pet, running loose in their house. :-*

I think part of my fondness for them is based on thoughts of what could have been and what computing life would be like now, if they had become the top dog instead of Microsoft. Just imagine how Win95 could have been if Amiga had created & released it. It probably would only have needed 2MB of RAM. :D
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: cranioscopical on December 06, 2007, 04:58 PM: Thanks for the post. A happy journey into nostalgia :)
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Ralf Maximus on December 06, 2007, 07:16 PM: For all its flaws, AmigaDOS was *amazing*. Quite literally 10 years ahead of its time, and even the first-gen version that shipped with the original machine was stable and quick. Since service packs were shipped on floppy disks in the mail, I don't think we even applied any for the first year or so it was out.

It had everything we take for granted in modern operating systems: pre-emptive multitasking, integrated memory management, windowed GUI, command-line, long file names, daemons, hardware graphics support, and more. Yet it was developed on a shoestring and under intense deadline pressure and shipped with only a few minor defects.

It's the equivalent of building a jet aircraft in 1935 and having it fly & land perfectly the first time. THEN building a million of them and handing them over to novice pilots and none of them crashing. Simply amazing.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: cranioscopical on December 06, 2007, 09:44 PM: Ralf: THEN building a million of them and handing them over to novice pilots and none of them crashing.

I was a huge fan of the Amiga, Ralf, but I'm not sure about the never crashing part of your analogy.

I don't want to see one of these in the Learjet ;)

Spoiler
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Edit: messed things up (again).
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: zridling on December 06, 2007, 09:54 PM: Thanks for the link and video, app, and how'd you get that error message copied, cranio?! Got to love the sense of humor.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: thefritz_j on December 07, 2007, 12:22 PM: I cut my programming teeth on our Vic 20, C64 and then Amiga 500. Wow, what a machine!, just wish I could get some of my old programs off those single density disks!
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: 4wd on December 07, 2007, 04:35 PM: @Ralf, it was called the 'IBM Sidecar', and worked fine on the A500 pointing the wrong way :)

Yes, I admit it.....I'm an old Amiga user, (or should that be 'a user of old Amigas'?). I've bought every version of Cloanto's 'Amiga Forever' and Amithlon, (very, VERY quick), when it was available.

I've had an A500, A600, A500+ and numerous attachments - SupraTurbo28 anyone? All sold off when I migrated to my ultimate - the A3000. (AGA sucks, ECS RULEZ!!!! :)

My poor 'old' 1990 A3000 with CyberStormPPC 180, PicassoIV (including Paloma and Pablo II), 132MB, A2065, HDs, 1.76MB floppy(!) and Wizard mouse now lies lonely and semi-forgotten in the wardrobe. I've often thought about selling it off but just can't bring myself to do it :(

And yes, every damn day on the PC I really, REALLY miss ARexx - VBScript is a complete dog's breakfast by comparison, and all these bl**dy uncommunicative programs........AAAARRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

60 programs to do what you could do with 10 really good ones plus ARexx. Bill Hawes was my hero, WShell still can't be beat IMHO.

For those that are interested still, my sites: http://4x4.hopto.org and http://4wd.hopto.org

A new emulator that has appeared, (well not really new, more 'tuned'): http://xamiga.net/index.html

....Jeeezz....I'm feeling inclined to get the A3000 out and fire it up again......

EDIT: One of my favourite games that I always returned to on the Amiga, (after killing things in whatever the latest fps was), was Larn - and now I play it on the PC in the guise of ULarn, 2.91MB :) When a Level III Demon Lord belts you one from nowhere......the suspense ;D
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Mark0 on December 07, 2007, 04:51 PM: Mandatory pic:

(http://www.kaiiv.de/img/amiga/bild13.jpg)

:Thmbsup:
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Ralf Maximus on December 07, 2007, 04:59 PM: *sob* King tut! My old friend.

And here's another...

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Your own Windows version of Boing! can be had here.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Mark0 on December 07, 2007, 05:10 PM: Even more mandatory!

(http://ascii.textfiles.com/images/amiga-juggler.gif)

:-*
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Tinman57 on December 07, 2007, 09:19 PM: I still have a highly customized Amiga 500 and a ton of software in a closet (over 500 games). It hasn't been fired up in years. Heck, I even have a digidroid and a digitizing platform for it, external hard drive/4mb ram, fat agnes, doubled speed, dual boot switch (1.3 or 2.1), and a bunch of other stuff that I can't even remember now. I even have Cloanto Amiga Forever, the software (CD) that runs AmigaDOS on a PC. It comes with AmigaROM's from 2.1 all the way down to 1.0. :D
I do miss the old AmigaDOS, it was a fine operating system for the times. Hard to believe MicroSoft wrote it. Really hard to believe that they sold the rights to it. No telling what it could have been if a certain president of C= hadn't of sabotaged the company for $$$. Ever wonder what Congress came up with on the investigation of Commodore's bankruptcy?

I have seen ads for the New Amiga's, basically a PC with some kind of Amiga board in a PCI slot, or something like that.

I was also the co-sysop of the 2nd largest Amiga BBS system in the U.S. way back when. Ah, the memories.......
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Mark0 on December 08, 2007, 02:38 AM: I do miss the old AmigaDOS, it was a fine operating system for the times. Hard to believe MicroSoft wrote it.
-Tinman57 (December 07, 2007, 09:19 PM)
Yes, and in facts they didn't! :)
If I remember correctly, Just the Amiga BASIC was from Microsoft (and it shows, I have to add!).

Bye!
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: marta on December 08, 2007, 04:29 AM: I still have an Amiga 3,000 with the Invision "LIVE!" board
Because the LIVE! board has never been adapted by PC, or MAC (as far as we know) my partner still occasionally uses it for live music performances.
If anyone know show to adapt the board to a PC, I'd love to hear about it.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: beermatt on December 08, 2007, 07:40 AM: Thanks for this thread - happy memories! HAM mode to get all the colours onscreen at once etc. :D

I started with an A500, then later bought an A1200 with an 80MB(!) Hard disk. I then upgraded it with a 4MB Blizzard (I think) expansion that also had a faster CPU.. :)

I got it down from the loft last year, and it still managed to get from being switched on to Workbench fully loaded and ready to go in ~10 seconds. How long do our PCs take to boot these days?

I also found some info on networking Amigas - and with a standard laptop PCMCIA card managed to get it hooked up onto my LAN, and then transfer the contents of the hard disk onto my PC (so that I can now have "my" amiga working in WinUAE (http://www.winuae.net/)) 8)

All good fun.. :Thmbsup:
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: insert_nick on December 08, 2007, 09:45 AM: My Amiga 500 is still in front on me, while I use my PC. I hardly will put it away.
What about the way the creators named the main chips inside? Weren't they among the most creative tech minds in the world at that time? :)
I remember there was a legend about a "hello mom" message by one of the engeeners in some unused blocks of the ROM, do you know if it was true and details?

The only bad thing in Amiga imho was the fact that a lot of time was needed to retrieve the disk directory when it was full of little files.
Every other memory about that little cheap computer is something like... "SO GOOD!"
Besides, when I bought it all my nice C64 joysticks where compatible, nice save...
And, that was my first approach with that useful thing called mouse bundled in the box, and with an OS that had a built in voice synthesis software, and a very well written and fun cmyk user manual, and... ok ok, back to work, sigh.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: MerleOne on December 08, 2007, 01:34 PM: Hi All,

I also have been a die-hard Amiga Fan. I still have an A1200 with an external HDD and a ton of floppies, alas all has been flooded in my basement some years ago and I am pretty sure everything is ruined. Anyway, I found a very supporting company, Cloanto, which has apparently has bought the Amiga rights (Kickstart and OS). They have issued over the time a set of CD/DVD, very well done, which incorporate recent versions of emulators and even video from within the company, including the "death bed vigil", that is the party marking the end of the company. Also interviews by the late Jay Miner. I strongly recommend it. More details at :

http://www.amigaforever.com/
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Darwin on December 08, 2007, 06:08 PM: You guys make me feel like I really missed out. I have always felt the same about NextStep computers. I actually had a chance to play with one while I was doing my masters degree - my supervisor actually built his own NextStep machine to replace his original one. I used to sit and drool over the things he could do with it... Then I'd wander back to my notebook running Windows for Workgroups 3.11...

Anyway, I understand what App was talking about earlier - I regret not having used one "in the day". I don't really recall Amiga being a "player" after about 1991/2 - certainly, I don't recall ever having seen one for sale in a shop anywhere in the sleepy little hamlet that I lived in (and still live in!).

The silver lining is that I never had to go through "falling in love" with the system and watching it effectively disappear.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Tinman57 on December 08, 2007, 07:47 PM: The Agnes, Denise, Paula, Gary?, and 3 others, 7 co-processors in all (and I think 8 in the 1200 and up. They were all named after the person that designed that chip. Agnes therefore obviously designed the Agnes chip.
Also, on the Amiga 500 (and perhaps others) motherboard was a paw print which represented one of the engineers dogs that was in the office with them all the time. lol.
The Amiga OS had all kinds of easter eggs hidden in the system, one of them poking fun at the Apple. Somewhere around here I have a CD with all kinds of Amiga faqs and the history of the Amiga.....

There was/is a fix for the slow directory access on a disk full of small files. I have it installed on mine and it makes all the difference in the world. I can't even remember the name of the program though..... I even have it on one of my many Amiga floppy disk....
I was planning on getting a Weasel PCI card and plugging it into my pc so I could read my Amiga floppy's, but I packed my puter with all kinds of goodies and don't have room for it now.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Lashiec on December 09, 2007, 12:12 PM: Not really (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_Amiga_chipset)

Also, it seems they used female names for familiarity and to avoid industrial espionage (Atari ST?)
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Tinman57 on December 09, 2007, 07:27 PM: Please, don't go by what Wikipedia says. I can add my own definition in there saying crapola is a delicious dessert. The AmigaForever website may have the faqs, I haven't visited it in a while.

I can't remember exactly how many co-processors there were, but I think I remember the ECS chipset was supposed to have added another chip, possibly the Gary? It's just all been soooooo long ago for me to remember it all. I used to be able to spout off just about anything you wanted to know about them...... Getting old....... :(
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: jscott on December 09, 2007, 10:16 PM: Tinman, please don't make things up. Read something like:

http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/lorraine.html

The "Agnus" chip is named for agnus dei ('lamb of God') by Jay Miner (who designed most of the system himself). Similarly, "Paula" was itself named between "Portia" and Paula, and the Lorraine Project was the name for this variant system which Miner had been working on for some time before Commodore came along.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: MerleOne on December 10, 2007, 12:49 AM: ...
There was/is a fix for the slow directory access on a disk full of small files. I have it installed on mine and it makes all the difference in the world. I can't even remember the name of the program though..... I even have it on one of my many Amiga floppy disk....

-Tinman57 (December 08, 2007, 07:47 PM)

SFS ? PFS ? Or B.A.D., like Blitz-A-Disk, a very efficient floppy defragmenter...
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: insert_nick on December 10, 2007, 04:21 AM: I got it down from the loft last year, and it still managed to get from being switched on to Workbench fully loaded and ready to go in ~10 seconds. How long do our PCs take to boot these days?
-beermatt (December 08, 2007, 07:40 AM)

I remember a very nice demo (State of the Art (http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=99) by Spaceballs) which loaded and run from a floppy disk in the very same moment it was inserted into the drive. I mean, you turned the Amiga on, inserted the disk in drive, and after some milliseconds you were staring at a ultrasmooth vector gfx & sound animations dancing on the monitor while still loading stuff... (with Flash you can do something similar now, but still not as smooth, and not without plenty of MHz, RAM, and a full OS loaded!!!)
Which consumer non-Amiga machines allow to do that today, if I want this kind of feature and I have whatever budget? (I'm serious, let me know :)
Turn on -> (no wait) -> custom software running
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Tinman57 on December 10, 2007, 07:30 PM: jscott, re-read my post, then bite me........
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: jscott on December 10, 2007, 10:10 PM: Re-read it. Still wrong.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: zridling on December 11, 2007, 12:17 AM: Heck, I didn't even see this ars technica series (http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/amiga-history-part-5.ars) on the history of the Amiga, up to Part 5 now!
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Ralf Maximus on December 11, 2007, 06:50 AM: Great series, and reignites my frustration with Commodore back then. They really did have a superior product and just failed to capitalize on it.

Memory being a funny thing, I'm certain the article is more accurate than my recollections about crashes & instability:

Because the OS lacked memory protection, a fatal error in the OS or even in an application could lock up the system completely, forcing a reboot. [...] As a result, the Amiga gained a reputation for instability that would stay with the machine for many years to come.

Ouch.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Perry Mowbray on December 11, 2007, 07:11 AM: Memory being a funny thing, I'm certain the article is more accurate than my recollections about crashes & instability:

Because the OS lacked memory protection, a fatal error in the OS or even in an application could lock up the system completely, forcing a reboot. [...] As a result, the Amiga gained a reputation for instability that would stay with the machine for many years to come.

Ouch.
-Ralf Maximus (December 11, 2007, 06:50 AM)

Well, unless my memory has failed too, I seem to remember that the crashes followed poorly written software, like it does on Windows. Endeavoring to keep your system stocked with well written software brought its own rewards. But the old Guru Meditation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru_Meditation) was as sudden as it was quick when things did go wrong.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Ralf Maximus on December 11, 2007, 07:18 AM: That makes a lot of sense. Being a Commodore reseller, I spent most of my time in the officially sanctioned software packages -- I assume the ones with higher build quality. Plus, the demos never crashed. :-)
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: kartal on December 05, 2009, 02:42 PM: I am an oldie as well.

Would you please list any software you use on your Amigas or on Uae nowadays?
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Shades on December 05, 2009, 07:04 PM: Directory Opus and CygnusEd...those were the tools I used most on my Amiga's. Actually, I have switched between all existing models at some point in time (except the A3000 and A4000).

My latest was an A1200 which I stripped out of it original casing and put it into a high tower PC case, together with a hard drive (1GByte!), 68030 (50MHz), 18Mbyte RAM (2MByte internal with a 16MByte SIMM module on my Blizzard expansion) and rewired keyboard controller for a A2000 keyboard.

And I'll bet the thing would still boot if I could turn it on today...but alas, several thousands of miles are between my personae and that Amiga. :(
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: 4wd on December 05, 2009, 10:51 PM: My 132MB A3000 + CyberStorm PPC 180/060, (+ Picasso IV, PabloIV, ConciertoIV), still does boot, (faster than my XP machine), but damn, did the Quantum Trailblazer 850MB run hot until the lube in the bearings finally remelt :)

About the only thing I fire Amiga Forever up for these days is when I really want to do some fast scripting and nothing beats ARexx for just getting the job done.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: MerleOne on December 06, 2009, 12:33 AM: I am an oldie as well.

Would you please list any software you use on your Amigas or on Uae nowadays?

-kartal (December 05, 2009, 02:42 PM)

On UAE (AmigaForever) I mainly use demos and a few games. I sometimes use the wonderful lha. License was incredibly hard to get from its developer, and it's lost now... I also use DirWork, but again, no license any longer and the config I had is gone too.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Perry Mowbray on December 06, 2009, 01:43 AM: About the only thing I fire Amiga Forever up for these days is when I really want to do some fast scripting and nothing beats ARexx for just getting the job done.
-4wd (December 05, 2009, 10:51 PM)

:-* Ah: those were the days... scripting access to every programme in a very easy way.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: 4wd on December 06, 2009, 05:39 AM: The other thing I really miss occasionally is being able to activate a window without it coming to the front.

Is it really so hard to implement and make an option in Windows?
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: kartal on December 06, 2009, 11:50 PM: I have been trying different Amiga packs like Amigasys, Amikit etc. All are very nice actually, they come with decent apps.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: Crush on December 08, 2009, 08:55 AM: Oh, I missed this important thread from 2007 ;D
I also jumped from the C64 to the Amiga and had a lot of fun there as Democoder. The Amiga was the best multitasking-OS with windows and hi-color graphics for a long time. They were with the system itself lightyears away from competitors - but they forgot to step along with the hardware fast enough. My good old Amiga R.I.P. :(
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: cranioscopical on December 08, 2009, 04:18 PM: nothing beats ARexx for just getting the job done
-4wd (December 05, 2009, 10:51 PM)
Good old Bill Hawes... ARexx and WShell.
Tried ooRexx (http://www.oorexx.org/) on the PC?
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: 4wd on December 08, 2009, 05:57 PM: Tried ooRexx (http://www.oorexx.org/) on the PC?
-cranioscopical (December 08, 2009, 04:18 PM)

I have tried various rexx implementations on the PC, I think I settled on regina (http://regina-rexx.sourceforge.net/) because it didn't require installation and with nil programs on the PC, (that I use anyway), providing any sort of standardised IPC there seemed little point so I've kind of lost touch with it.

I should have elaborated about the IPC part of it.
Title: Re: Any old Amiga users among us?
Post by: cranioscopical on December 08, 2009, 07:33 PM: with nil programs on the PC, (that I use anyway), providing any sort of standardised IPC
Yeah the semi-universal ARexx port made for excellent potential to 'roll-your-own' software suite -- I'll take this editor, that spreadsheet, this DTP app. Even so there were too few decent apps from which to choose to make that concept a real winner.