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Amiga Community Collaborates On Restorative Gel To Brighten Your Old Plastic
jamie pointed out an Amiga community that took a discovery of how to restore old computer plastic, super-charged it, and then opened the process to the public domain. Time to spruce up those old dusty TRS-80s in the basement. "All of the initial tests were done with a liquid and we realized that for large parts this was getting expensive, so the next stage was to make a paintable 'gel' version that could be brushed onto larger surfaces. This was tried in Arizona in the sun and the UK under a UV lamp and was found to be just as effective as the liquid. We have now released this to the public domain for anyone to use as we can't patent it and we coined the nickname 'Retr0brite' for it, as it summed up what we were actually doing with it."
I've always dreamed of what the world would be like if modern computing had gone this route. Imagine your OS as a bank of roms, and your PC as a fully integrated machine rather than a patchwork of PCI cards and third party drivers.
But in many ways, I'd argue that modern computing has gone the Amiga way: consider how most motherboards now have everying on board, and it's only the graphics card that people might optionally have as an extra for performance. (Whilst drivers can be a pain, they have the advantage of allowing standardisation through an API - the Amiga was moving towards a driver model for graphics and so on, and I'd have thought it a great advantage for any modern machine taking advantage of 3D hardware, so chances are that a hypothetical modern Amiga would have drivers too. Chances are they would've dropped the ROMs too - AmigaOS 3.5 onwards came entirely on CD.)
Consider: today I run a multitasking OS, with combined GUI and command line. The machine I use has dedicated graphics and sound chips, and everything's integrated on the motherboard. Finally, I'd argue that today's machines are modern Amigas. Compare that to the DOS based PCs, or single-tasking non-command-line and no-chipsets on the classic Macs. Looking back, it's laughable how people back then tried to justify their expensive primitive purchases (e.g., claiming that it was better not to have a GUI), when we see how computers are designed today. The Amiga was written off as a games machine, but what is it that now drives the 3D graphics industry, and arguably the personal computer industry as a whole? Yes, I like having a fast machine with decent graphics in front of me, rather than a boring command line operated piece of business furniture, or a black and white interface that doesn't let me do things the way I want it. The only thing stopping it being a modern Amiga is the trademark.