Any old Amiga users among us?

[zridling]

Heck, I didn't even see this ars technica series on the history of the Amiga, up to Part 5 now!

[Ralf Maximus]

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.

[Perry Mowbray]

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 was as sudden as it was quick when things did go wrong.

[Ralf Maximus]

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. :-)

[kartal]

I am an oldie as well.

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

[Shades]

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.   

[4wd]

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.

[MerleOne]

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.

[Perry Mowbray]

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.

[4wd]

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?

[kartal]

I have been trying different Amiga packs like Amigasys, Amikit etc. All are very nice actually, they come with decent apps.

[Crush]

Oh, I missed this important thread from 2007  
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.  

[cranioscopical]

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 on the PC?

[4wd]

Tried ooRexx 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 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.

[cranioscopical]

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.