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I remember when everyone suddenly got excited about virtual reality in the early 1990s. Of course, back then it was more the concept and the possibilities that triggered peoples' imaginations- actual VR systems and games did exist at that time, but were never really widespread, probably due to the limitations and cost of the then-current technology and the fact it was essentially a novelty.

One commentator, however, said something that has stuck with me ever since. I can't remember the exact wording, but it was along the lines of...

"Eventually the current fad for Virtual Reality will pass, and everyone will forget about it. Then one day you'll look around you and realise that it's everywhere."


(*) If you remember it too, then yes- it really *was* that long ago :-O

It's genuine and in Workbench 1.2.

LShift-RShift-LAlt-RAlt-ejectdisk-F1 prints "The Amiga, Born a Champion"

LShift-RShift-LAlt-RAlt-insertdisk-F1 prints "We made Amiga, They fucked it up"

In Workbench 1.3, Commodore changed the latter message to "Still a Champion"

It was Commodore mismanagement which killed the Amiga. In the end days, not improving their hardware was just a symptom of that mismanagement.

An examples that quickly comes to mind is the A3000+ with the AGA chipset http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/prototypes/a3000plus.html where they had the technology ready but put off releasing it for 2-3 years.

I found a couple of very nice write-ups on the history of the Amiga out there:

The History of the Amiga
AmigaOS - Wikipedia

The Amiga 500 was released to the public at the January 1987 Consumer Electronics Show. The Macintosh 128K was released to the public January 1984. Just in case anyone thought I wouldn't give credit to the first commercialization of Xerox PARC's research.

I guess it's time to update the Amiga Portables page.

you are seriously confused, and don't know how an Amiga worked. The Workbench was a full blown GUI, not a mostly-there gui. Having a shell window without a desktop is *not* Workbench. The A1000 (and later the A3000) differed in that they had some of the information on a kickstart floppy rather than in ROM which *did* require a floppy to boot (I think the A3000 was able to read its kickstart from a hard drive, but to be honest I don't remember).

But, hey, I'm sure I can't convince you. One thing the Amiga always had going for it were users who were blind to anything they didn't want to believe. But if you care to read you might try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOS#Kickstart The wikipedia entry says "full windowing environment" which is a bit of an exaggeration (it allowed close, move, resize and front back window operations and redrew window contents). Then there's http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/earlystart.html which shows the initial screen. Sure, you have to hold down both mouse buttons on boot to access it or you get the "insert disk" message -- but you already knew that, right?

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc.

the wiki even points out that the mac had crappy sales in the 80s, and well into the 90s.

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/sales.html

The Amiga had functionality we wouldnt see again until windows 95.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Amiga “ "[AmigaOS] remains one of the great operating systems of the past 20 years, incorporating a small kernel and tremendous multitasking capabilities the likes of which have only recently been developed in OS/2 and Windows NT. The biggest difference is that the AmigaOS could operate fully and multitask in as little as 250 K of address space. --John C. Dvorak, PC Magazine, October 1996.[38]

Compared to the Amiga, the Mac of the 80s was nothing more than an over priced door step that few really paid any attention to.

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/sales.html I knew lots of people with Amigas. No one had a mac. The Amiga was also released in 85, and had real multitasking. Mac didnt get that until OSX.

Are they hosting the website on an A500?

That I don't know.

But if they where (not on an A500 I suppose ...), what OS would they had used?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Unix
http://www.amigaunix.com/tiki-index.php

But of course it would had worked with more common stuff aswell:
http://www.debian.org/ports/m68k/
http://www.netbsd.org/ports/amiga/
http://www.openbsd.org/amiga.html

Oh, and this Google hit reminds of the days of doom:
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/linuxchoice.html

Escom (when they brought brought Commodore in 1994) announced the PowerAmiga and AmigaOS 4 in 95, which was based on the PPC 604:
    * http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/pamiga97.html

I remember seeing loads of mock up in magazines etc, but they never actually mass produced it (maybe prototypes floating about).

The new AmigaOne X1000 has just entered beta testing and contains a PowerISA 204:
    * http://a-eon.com/index.html (requires JavaScript enabled and click on the red checkered ball in the bottom right corner, then X1000 button).

Was the Amiga really that rare in the United States?

      Yes, however their owners are very vocal. The "Apple" phenomenon was vastly multiplied in the case of the Amiga user, who was convinced it was the "most amazing computer in the world" and never failed to let everyone know about it in online communities (BBS, GEnie, CIS). However the most generous sales estimates have a total number of 3.8-4.8 million Amiga owners worldwide. A drop in the bucket compared to PC's. In fact the best Amiga ever did was garner just over 5% market share one year, in 1991. However it was usually never more than 3% of the market.

      I'm not criticizing the machine (Amiga owners tend to be a bit fanatical and I would hate to receive death threats). It had some extremely innovative features for its time, including a decent sound chip when PC's still went "beep". But the PC's main features as always were expandability and compatibility - both of hardware and software. You were guaranteed that your stuff would work if you had a decent XT/AT clone.

Just like the first Amiga prototype. Basically just wirewrapped boards cabled together. Actually used at a trade-show, but hidden under a table.

Prior to the Amiga 1000 being officially launched, I worked at a game company that was coding for it (all hush hush and that.) We had some of their original pre-release prototypes: just a motherboard in a black-painted plywood box with holes cut in it for the connectors. The thing had no development tools whatsoever: all the software was written on Sparcstations. I didn't get to hack any code for them, alas ... just Apple ][ and PC stuff.

Kinda cool, actually ... wish I still had one of those prototypes. Probably put it up on EBay for a few bucks.

Just like the first Amiga prototype. Basically just wirewrapped boards cabled together. Actually used at a trade-show, but hidden under a table.

Ticking sound was meant as a reminder to prevent damage that could occur if hardware / cables were removed while Amiga was powered on.

No, it was to detect when a floppy disk was inserted. Read about it here

There was an Amiga utility called NoClick that could stop the clicking but it looks like it had some risks with 3rd party disk drives. It worked well on my Amiga A1200's internal drive though.

how could you use a monopoly on advertising to keep other advertising companies from effectively advertising?

A big advert saying that the other advertising company sucks?

Stranger things have happened

Here is a reference to that but Microsoft made sure the original articles got scrubbed off the Internet. There were things Microsoft did to GEOS, GEM, the Amiga, the Atari ST, Vision, Desqview, etc to discourage OEMS and hardware and software makers from supporting them and only supporting Microsoft products like MS-DOS and Windows instead. Microsoft did the same thing to IBM over OS/2. But most of the articles about that Microsoft had scrubbed off the Internet.

The history of the Amiga clearly shows its 8-bits roots with the Atari 2600 and Atari 400/800 series that evolved into the Amiga eventually, parallel to the Macintosh.

In the 1990's PC OEMS were fighting over the Amiga, but were loyal to Microsoft. But Microsoft used the same tactics against the Amiga that they used against DR-DOS, and killed the Amiga by leveraging what OEMS could and could not do and then Gateway had to sell the Amiga division to make Microsoft happy.

"The press attention to the Microsoft case reveals their relationship with Gateway. Jim Von Holle, a former Gateway employee, describes how the company tried to punish Gateway for the type of software they shipped. Although largely in the background, it became increasingly clear why Gateway chose to develop an alternative to the Windows market. Unfortunately, just a few months later Gateway's relationship with Microsoft regarding their set-top box would have a dramatic effect upon Amiga's plans. Who could have guessed Microsoft would play a major role in the Amigas downfall?"

I have said it before, but my comments got rated down as troll, by rapid Apple and Microsoft fanboys who hate the Amiga. This time I found the links that prove it.

It was not just DR-DOS that Microsoft murdered, but the Amiga as well. Apple had a hand in it by forcing Apple dealers to lose their license if they sold Amiga computers as well as Macintoshes. Then later Apple killed the Apple Dealers and did the store within a store and web store to sell Macintoshes as revenge on Apple dealers that still tried to sell Amiga One and Classic Amiga computers along with Macs.

The Amiga history clearly shows the Amiga was based on Atari technology way before the Macintosh was even developed.

Nice try, but someone who used to work at Commodore Amiga knows the history of the Amiga better than most.

I belive my Amiga booted in 8 seconds before I added all the patches, tools and accessories you wanted .. If you aborted the shell before loading Workbench you would probably shave off two-three seconds more ...

Had some miniemacs with the OS, and it seems it can use fat32:
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/fat32.html

You can get USB aswell:
http://www.amigau.com/c-amiga/hardware.htm

I realise it's not a viable alternative today, but it's kind of sad how bad things develop considering how much faster todays machines is.

Reminds me of a youtube video with a Mac Classic running Claris Works (or something similar) and a more modern PC running Office Word or whatever, boot systems booting up, running the word processor and then writing something (and eventually saving and turning the machine of as well.)
Of course the new software is much more advanced, but the old mac did it faster .. And sometimes people don't need much more than that application offered.

Exactly. WiiFit is not a new or innovative idea. It is an idea that was executed better than any previous version. In fact, if I was the suspicious type, I could call WiiFit a total ripoff. The XBox had Yourself!Fitness. Only the most hard core of fanboys are going to be able to claim that WiiFit isn't the same kind of game as Yourself!Fitness. And the WiiFit controller is just a supped up version of the Amiga JoyBoard. It was well reported that the JoyBoard had a meditation game, which is not far off from Yoga, and the skiing game IS Mogul Maniac. Puzzle games are just not something new. I haven't tried we music, so I cannot comment on it, but it seems clear that there these cames are not innovative. They are just very well implemented.

sounds familiar - http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/c64web.html , and was desegned for browsing etc using a crt which as others have pointed out were perfectly achievable even on the original c64s etc.

Gee, upgradeable by just replacing the chip? Reminds me of the old Amigas!

Not really.

Have a look at the WB1.2 easter egg messages to get an idea of how the Amiga developers felt about Commodore http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/messages.html

No. Commodore didn't create the Amiga. The original Amiga was created by a small group of people, and Atari attempted to screw them out of the technology. After a weird and bitter struggle, Commodore purchased Amiga. Read the full story here. It's an interesting article.

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/sales.html

You know, the infamous ones like "We made Amiga, they fucked it up", referring to Commodore management. All too true...

When I were a lad we used to have to build our own laptops.

(RiscPC one)
http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact1255.html

(Amiga A600 one)
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/suzanne.html

It was iirc a combination of Workbench 1.2 and an early version of kickstart, the firmware. The instructions for displaying it can be found at http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/messages.html/

Best joystick I ever had was an Amiga Power Stick (Atari variety) -- the ones they sold to finance the development of the chipset which eventually became the heart of the Commodore Amiga. They were the best.