The Almost Forgotten Story of the Amiga 2000

It was pretty cool in its day by drinkypoo · 2014-07-20 15:07 · Score: 3, Interesting

But unless it comes packed with a video card and an accelerator, there's not much point to even messing with it today. What you really want if you don't actually care about Amigas is a CDTV and/or CD32, which takes up minimal space, looks minimally crappy, and runs most of the respective software library depending on whether you want the old or newer chipset.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"

Re:It was pretty cool in its day by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 15:36 · Score: 2, Interesting

I'll just stick with FS-UAE. That's why I love my laptop. With all of the great, accurate emulators, it's multiple computers and consoles all in one compact unit.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 17:25 · Score: 0

Accurate if you only want to emulate the 68000-based versions. Anything with cache (020 or higher) and timings are off.
There is also the issue of incorrect pipeline emulation for 68000, but that only has an impact on self-modifying code and the pipeline is short enough for that to not matter unless the code is specifically written to break down on emulators.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2014-07-20 18:25 · Score: 4, Insightful

Accurate if you only want to emulate the 68000-based versions. Anything with cache (020 or higher) and timings are off.
But is that even important? Caches themselves introduce execution trace non-determinism (certainly in the presence of interrupts and multitasking) because you don't know in advance if the memory reference is going to hit or miss. The program can't rely on timings in those cases (it's my understanding that this is why Cortex-M for real-time control doesn't have any caches at all - if you really have to care about worst-case behavior, trying to improve the average case may be pointless for many applications).

--
Ezekiel 23:20
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 20:37 · Score: 3, Informative

For most applications it is completely unimportant.
To my knowledge this only matters for demos. Among those it is very common to turn off the system and make assumptions of how the cache works.
A trick that sometimes is used on 060 is to assume 16-byte cache-lines on 16-byte boundaries and use a tst.l from a long-address that spans two cache-lines.
As long as the condition codes aren't used the execution won't be halted by the fetch. That way you can make sure that the CPU reads in data ahead of time so that it already is loaded to the cache when you use it.
Interrupts and task switching doesn't really happen often enough to make tricks like that useless even if they are enabled.
For the 020 there is no data cache to worry about. Instead there is a 256-byte instruction cache. This means that it is common for situations to occur where you can split a loop into several sections where each section fits in the cache.
Anyway, the point is that since the CPU was more or less fixed the Amiga demoscene were able to make assumptions on how the cache and pipeline works and would optimize accordingly. This means that if you want the emulator to run everything at the right speed you have to emulate the cache.
For regular applications you just want to run things at the fastest speed possible and games written according to Commores guidelines will work regardless of speed but might suffer from more or less stutter depending on the emulator.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 23:24 · Score: 0

But is that even important?
Important is subjective.
For gaming, why not just run the PC-versions of Dune, Monkey Island and Settlers? They aren't exactly the same but is the difference really that important?
Sure there is a lot that differs between Superfrog and Mario, but if you just are looking for entertainment then you can hardly call the difference important.
I've seen stuff break down completely on really good emulators just because the timing was a bit off. Not because a game used some odd tricks but probably just because of a regular racing condition bug that didn't occur on real hardware.
Who knows what the problem was? Perhaps some DMA forced extra waitstates when accessing some hardware register or perhaps they were emulated but insurted at the wrong time. The important thing was that the code didn't work.
Yes, the code might have been buggy but that doesn't mean that the emulator did as it was supposed to either.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by RabidReindeer · 2014-07-20 23:46 · Score: 2

Actually, timing-dependent code is a gross violation of Commodore's published Amiga programming standards.
They spent a lot of effort on creating specialized circuitry for the Amigas to do time-critical things in a safe and reliable way and not depend on the CPU timing to do it. Partly because it was already apparent how that had ended up on the IBM PC clone models of the day and partly because the machine was designed to a higher standard when it came to real-time processing and multi-media in particular.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by drinkypoo · 2014-07-20 23:58 · Score: 1

Actually, timing-dependent code is a gross violation of Commodore's published Amiga programming standards.
When you give people the schematics to your computer you're implying comfort with a high level of hackery. A friend added his own Zorro II slot to an Amiga 500. He always wanted to add a Video Toaster to a 500, all the signals were there, but nobody ever wanted it done for obvious reasons :)

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by Goose+In+Orbit · 2014-07-21 00:31 · Score: 2

Actually, timing-dependent code is a gross violation of Commodore's published Amiga programming standards.
For commercial-level code... fair enough
The demo-coders, though, would have taken one look (if that many) and said "screw that - look what we can do!"
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by DrXym · 2014-07-21 00:57 · Score: 2

Most demos and games would use vsync as their timer so theoretically they would cycle at 25/30hz regardless of CPU. Probably the biggest compatibility issue were demos and games that made bad assumptions about the memory architecture (e.g. the amount of fast/slow memory), or the addressable space (e.g. using the top 8 bits of registers for something else), or use self modifying code or some other trick which would consequently fail hard on a later CPU.
The bigger failing IMO was that all the software hitting the custom hardware made it increasingly difficult for the platform to support higher resolutions, pixel bit depths and stuff like virtual memory. It was left to 3rd parties to provide a solution but by that point it was already too late.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by amiga3D · 2014-07-21 01:03 · Score: 1

The funny thing though is that the really shit hot coders banged the hell out of the hardware and got unbelievable performance. I had things running on my 1 megabyte A500 that amazed my PC owning friends. When I finally got an Amiga 3000 it really got interesting.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by AmiMoJo · 2014-07-21 01:13 · Score: 1

Most games used the video vertical blank for synchronization, so ended up running too fast on NTSC displays. Rarely it created problems on faster CPUs but mostly an 060 Amiga will run games just fine.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 03:22 · Score: 0

From what I remember, the problem was that self-modifying code (and its related evil cousin, "move [sr],ea") blew up on chips beyond the 68000 unless the program explicitly disabled it (or you ran a cracked version that sidestepped the problematic bootloader code & disabled the 680x0's cache). I spent AT LEAST two Christmases running up expensive long-distance phone calls to pirate boards in Germany trying to find a crack for some game I BOUGHT just so I could run it. It's things like this that remind me vividly that "the good old days" weren't always *that* good...
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by ardor · 2014-07-21 04:01 · Score: 2

For gaming, why not just run the PC-versions of Dune, Monkey Island and Settlers? They aren't exactly the same but is the difference really that important?
One reason is that back then, many DOS versions of games only had AdLib or even just PC speaker support, while the Amiga version came with fully digitized audio.
Compare https://www.youtube.com/watch?... to https://www.youtube.com/watch?... , https://www.youtube.com/watch?... . (The sound is actually in stereo, but the Youtube videos are downmixed for some reason.) The difference can be jarring thanks to the inferior music.
As a matter of fact, the Amiga was famous for its sound (and graphics) capabilities back then, *especially* compared to DOS. (Well, until 256-color VGA became common..)
Some DOS games had digitized audio as well, but Amiga could mix 4 channels in hardware. Mixing had to be done in software in DOS, unless you had something like a GUS or an AWE32 sound card.

--
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by ackthpt · 2014-07-21 06:18 · Score: 1

I still like mine. It's got some cool stuff on it, available on no other platform and one of the biggest pluses is I don't go on the internet with it, so that distraction and annoyance isn't an issue. :)

--

A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by RabidReindeer · 2014-07-21 07:46 · Score: 1

Actually, timing-dependent code is a gross violation of Commodore's published Amiga programming standards.
For commercial-level code... fair enough
The demo-coders, though, would have taken one look (if that many) and said "screw that - look what we can do!"
Well, I could go thtrough my correspondence from the developer program, but I'm pretty sure it was worded as in "if you don't want to look like an idiot when we released newer and cooler hardware, don't make assumptions about hardware that's certain to change." They weren't the pompous jerks that other big-name companies were.
Another reason you didn't do CPU timing loops was that there were 25 DMA channels running in that box on a totally real-time interrupt-driven operating system. If you used the CPU for brute-force timing, the only way to keep the system from going totally eplilectic would have been to spend much of your time in an interrupt-disabled state, thus dragging the overall system down. Besides, the whole point of all those DMA/interrupt driven devices was to offload CPU functions onto hardware specifically optimized for the tasks they did.
I can't recall a single Amiga program of any popularity that played CPU timing games. As far as that goes, I'm not even sure about the NTSC/PAL concerns. Commodore's hardware was designed and documented to serve both standards.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by cheesybagel · 2014-07-21 08:26 · Score: 0

For example when Monkey Island came out there was no VGA version. The best you could get was 4 color CGA graphics while the Amiga had more colors than that. Same deal with the sound when the PC version had FM synthesis in Adlib while the Amiga had 4-channel PCM digital audio.
The best experience for Monkey Island is installing the much later VGA version with Roland MT-32 audio. But for some games a VGA version never came out and the Amiga version of the game is still superior to the PC version in some way.
Once VGA and SVGA became commonplace the PC had better graphics. But the Amiga had better graphics than PC CGA or EGA.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by adisakp · 2014-07-21 08:37 · Score: 1

I wrote a bunch of software for the Amiga back in the day and they all tend to run really well on a emulator on any decent modern PC - actually often better than on the original systems when I designed the game. Sometimes I get nostalgic and play them in an emulator.

The Amiga 500 had 512K of RAM and even expanded to 1MB, it's still less than the cache on a modern PC so you can emulate the entire machine in cached memory - combined with instruction througputs and current clock cycles, a current PC is something like 10,000+ times faster for 32-bit integer operations involving memory.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by kriston · 2014-07-21 08:38 · Score: 1

We experienced timing-related problems in early demos when running them on a more modern Amiga.
However, the worst was running software written for PAL mode. The chief complaint about these PAL games was that the audio played at the wrong speed. Major offenders were games that play lots and lots of sound clips, like Llamatron. PAL mode always messed up the length of the sound clips so they get cut off or played at the wrong pitch.
I had an Amiga 2500 which was the one that came with a 68020+MMU accelerator. I later upgraded it with the 68030 accelerator and Univ. of Lowell A2410 workstation graphics. I also still own an Amiga 3000T with a QIC tape drive with Amiga UNIX and an Amiga 3000 with a floptical drive. Playing old demos is a pain in the neck on these new machines.

--
Kriston
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 11:50 · Score: 0

Monkey Island had MT-32 support and Dune had that awesome Cryo FM synthesis that put the Amiga version to shame.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 11:54 · Score: 1

BS. The Secret of Monkey Island had VGA support which looked better than the Amiga version. I know, because I played it back then and even still have my original disks.
The Secret of Monkey Island (PC)
The Secret of Monkey Island (Amiga)
In addition, the PC version also supported the Roland MT-32, so it also sounded better.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by Skuld-Chan · 2014-07-22 00:44 · Score: 1

There's a app call degrader that I used to use to make all kinds of demos work on my A4000 no problem. By the the time the A1200 came along - most demo coders fixed a lot of these timing assumptions and I had no problem running a lot of this software on a more modern machine.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by cheesybagel · 2014-07-23 02:15 · Score: 0

You just aren't old enough to remember the EGA version came out before the VGA version.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by Goose+In+Orbit · 2014-07-23 08:38 · Score: 1

*whoosh*
Read this part again: "For commercial-level code... fair enough" - I agree with you entirely on that score.
I wasn't talking about that though - the whole point of demos WAS to use as many tricks as possible, to show off to your mates (and the wider world) for a few weeks, until the next bare-metal coder found a way to do something that blew yours away... If it ran on one specific variant only - so be it.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by kriston · 2014-07-23 08:57 · Score: 1

Wow I remember Degrader, too.
There was a compatibility problem I had with my original Amiga 2500. It was supposed to be sold with 1 MB chip memory but for some reason it had 512 KB instead, and this caused so many problems until I discovered why.
We figured it was probably from a dealer swap or manufacturing line error, even though the Wikipedia article discusses that the A2000 could have 1 MB or 512 KB, the A2500 line was always supposed to have 1 MB of chip memory. Mine came with a real Amiga 2500HD sticker. *shrug*

--
Kriston
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-23 14:36 · Score: 0

Considering my first PC was an 8086 with CGA, yes I do. I just happened to have a VGA display and adapter before Monkey Island even came out in 1990.

Go check out the PC VGA vs Amiga version and you'll clearly see the PC version looked better. It had less banding and less dithering.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-24 08:53 · Score: 0

No, it wasn't because I fucking have it, it's VGA and it says "1990" right on it, you fucking noob little kid who wasn't even alive at the time.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by cheesybagel · 2014-07-24 12:34 · Score: 1

You can downmod other people and ignore facts you want you little pseudoanonymous shit. It seems you prefer to keep to your idea of what happened instead of reading the link the other guy gave you which clearly shows the EGA version of The Secret of Monkey Island came before the VGA version but the reality is still the same. Here have a quote from Ron Gilbert himself:

2) I was playing the VGA version that was released after the original EGA version. The original original version used 16 colors and the inventory was text only.
http://grumpygamer.com/stuff_a...
Idiot.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-24 13:00 · Score: 0

Dumbass. I gave you a LINK to a page that SHOWS you the EGA version! and I quote: "This is the original version of The Secret of Monkey Island. It only uses 16 colors."
Nobody is denying you had the VGA version. You're just wrong about it supporting VGA on first release. It didn't, and the Amiga version looked far better.
Re:It was pretty cool in its day by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-24 13:25 · Score: 0

> ...you fucking noob little kid who wasn't even alive at the time.
Oh, forgot to mention, I'm 48 and my first PC was an 8086 with CGA, so shove your Dunning-Krueger-Assburger condescension up your ass!

Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by SuperBanana · 2014-07-20 15:14 · Score: 1

the seller has no clue about what Zorro cards are inside

I can understand the display cards and SCSI cards - those have function - but everything else (framegrabber cards and such) seems like rather hopelessly outclassed stuff?

--
Please help metamoderate.

Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by drinkypoo · 2014-07-20 15:20 · Score: 4, Interesting

Actually, the accelerator and the genlock slot are both special-purpose slots.
What you really want to find inside of your Amiga 2000 is an '030 accelerator and an Emplant board with some Mac IIci roms on it, as well as a boatload of RAM (1 or 2+4MB, maybe?) with a fat or fatter Agnus, and some 2.1 ROMs. If you don't have all of those things, then you will always be tempted to blow more money.
All of this has made me wonder if I can score an accelerator or at least RAM expansion for the A1200 for a reasonable amount of money, though. That would be a fun casemod (separating the keyboard and the rest of the machine) and I've got one lying around. I was supposed to give it away but crap happened.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by William+Baric · 2014-07-20 16:37 · Score: 1

Why would I really want a Mac emulator in an old Amiga? What would be the point?
Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by chuckugly · 2014-07-20 16:46 · Score: 1

Yeah mine has 3mb and a couple SCSI drives, and fat aggie.
Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 17:21 · Score: 2, Funny

To make a Hackmiga of course. More hipster cred.
Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by Opportunist · 2014-07-20 17:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

To run a C64 emulator on a PC emulator on a Mac emulation on an Amiga of course. Duh.
Hand in your geek card on your way out.

--
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by drinkypoo · 2014-07-20 23:25 · Score: 1

Why would I really want a Mac emulator in an old Amiga? What would be the point?
What would be the point of owning an old Amiga?

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by PopeRatzo · 2014-07-20 23:47 · Score: 1

I'm afraid to google "fat aggie".

--
You are welcome on my lawn.
Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by Nimey · 2014-07-20 23:58 · Score: 2

There must be lots of Texas A&M sorority girls. :P

--
Hail Eris, full of mischief...

E pluribus sanguinem
Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by William+Baric · 2014-07-21 00:56 · Score: 1

Playing with old games using "vintage" joysticks? Seeing old programs we created in assembly run on a real hardware? Playing with old pieces of hardware toys that we created and which were using one of the amiga port? Basically, reliving old memories?
I can certainly understand why someone would want an old Amiga or an old Atari ST. I can even understand why someone would want an old Macintosh. But a Macintosh emulator in an Amiga? No, I can't see any reasons.
Since you're the one telling people they really want that Mac emulation board, can I ask you again why?
Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by RealRav · 2014-07-21 01:12 · Score: 2

It was actually "Fat Angus" but for the love of God don't forget the g when googling!
Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 02:19 · Score: 0

Megachip 2000
Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by drinkypoo · 2014-07-21 03:02 · Score: 1

Since you're the one telling people they really want that Mac emulation board, can I ask you again why?
Because it was the thing to have, not just for the coolness factor or the utility of being able to run MacOS (and faster than it would run on the Mac, too) but because it added more I/O including some highly credible serial ports. You're going to use your serial port for a MIDI interface, right? Given that nearly all you need is some level-shifting hardware, since it has a 31,250bps mode? And if you have two Amigas, which is not unlikely since you might well want one with the old chipset and one with the new, your parallel port is likely to be used for PLIP. It's actually fairly speedy. Then you only need one egregiously expensive ethernet card.
I mean, if you're not messing with the Amiga to recapture the past, then what are you doing? Most of the classic games run in emulators, and there's really no point to using the hardware any more except as an affectation. It would be fun perhaps to use the Amiga in a nerdy stage show, but there's no point to trying to do "real work" with it. It's an amusement.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by chuckugly · 2014-07-21 03:49 · Score: 1

"The MOS Technology "Agnus", usually called Agnus is an integrated circuit in the custom chipset of the Commodore Amiga computer. The Agnus, Denise and Paula chips collectively formed the OCS and ECS chipsets." - source

It's the chip that does memory access, fat agnus allows 1mb to be used for video and so forth, original agnus allowed access to 512k. I actually had to pull the old agnus out and insert the upgrade part in the 1980s.
Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by chill · 2014-07-21 04:55 · Score: 1

"Fat AGnus", not "Fat ANgus", like you typed. Googling that will get you, I suspect, pictures of large cattle instead of BBW porn and custom silicon.

--
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by William+Baric · 2014-07-21 08:22 · Score: 1

Nice try, and I'm sure you can impress a few kids who never experienced the Amiga era, but to me you only look like a fool. You know what was really cool at the time? Not a lame Macinstosh emulator board, but having four transputer boards.
Anyway, you just don't get it. Playing Speedball 1 with a joypad in an emulator is completely different than playing the same Speedball 1 with a Speedking on a real machine. Editing a program on a PC keyboard and having it run in an emulator is completely different than editing the same program with an A1000 keyboard and having it run in on a real machine.
It's a bit like the difference between seeing a picture of the Mona Lisa in a book and going to the Louvre to see the real painting.
Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by drinkypoo · 2014-07-21 10:51 · Score: 1

Nice try, and I'm sure you can impress a few kids who never experienced the Amiga era, but to me you only look like a fool. You know what was really cool at the time?
Yeah. Having an Emplant board. I've owned several Amigas, and hung out with several other Amiga owners. Blow it out your arse sideways.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by Skuld-Chan · 2014-07-22 00:58 · Score: 1

I'd have to agree with the parent - most of what your talking about is nonsense.
I had an emplant board too - all it did is provide Mac serial (for appletalk) and a place to put roms, but I've never seen anyone use the sockets for that (admittedly we just downloaded them - and the software had full support for just using soft roms). It also had a slow speed scsi interface that no-one used.
Otherwise it was a stupid waste of money - shapeshifter was just as fast.
I really honestly can't think of any Zorro cards I wish I had still. The Rentina was buggy, the Fastlane was buggy and the VLAB was buggy. The DPS PAR was awesome, but you don't need one of those anymore. The Toaster/Flyer was awesome too - but likewise - you don't need one of those anymore - and getting it to work with a more modern workflow is a lot of work.
Oh we also tried out the Centaur Opalvision - because we hoped to use the never released roaster chip (to replace the video toaster). It was hacky, but colorful :).
Re:Why are Zorro cards worth anything at all? by drinkypoo · 2014-07-22 01:10 · Score: 1

It also had a slow speed scsi interface that no-one used.
It was a good place to hang a scanner, of course.

I really honestly can't think of any Zorro cards I wish I had still.
If your goal is to play games, the obvious answer is a better disk interface with some non-resetting RAM on it that you could use for a RRAD:. That's a lovely thing to have in your system.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"

Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by 0xdeaddead · 2014-07-20 15:15 · Score: 4, Informative

which is the primary reason why not to buy one. The zoro cards, especially ethernet can be hard to come by, so unless you get a loaded one... well it's pointless.

I've also had issues with bus noise by maxing out a 2000 with a bridge board, 2065, 68038 upgrade, and ram card. It really was incredibly unstable.

The 2000 has the same CPU as the 500, and 1000. It really was a pointless model. The 3000 and 3000T's are much nicer. And I should add the even a bare 3000 is far more stabler than a loaded 2000.

The other issue now is WinUAE is so good, it can run BSD, AMIX, along with all the software from the Amiga heyday. Considering how funky old machines can be, why even bother?

Re:Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by Nyder · 2014-07-20 15:34 · Score: 4, Insightful

which is the primary reason why not to buy one. The zoro cards, especially ethernet can be hard to come by, so unless you get a loaded one... well it's pointless.
I've also had issues with bus noise by maxing out a 2000 with a bridge board, 2065, 68038 upgrade, and ram card. It really was incredibly unstable.
The 2000 has the same CPU as the 500, and 1000. It really was a pointless model. The 3000 and 3000T's are much nicer. And I should add the even a bare 3000 is far more stabler than a loaded 2000.
The other issue now is WinUAE is so good, it can run BSD, AMIX, along with all the software from the Amiga heyday. Considering how funky old machines can be, why even bother?
Lots of old computers are plagued with battery leakage. Got macs like that also.
Sure, WinUAE rocks, I like it. You know what else I and others like to do? Tinker around on the original hardware. It's why I still have an Amiga 1000, 1200, 4x3000 (they need work though). I enjoy using my Amiga 1200. I enjoy using it's mouse, it's OS, on it's hardware. Listening to the floppy drive.
Maybe it's reliving the past, maybe it's a waste of time, but it's how I enjoy wasting my time. I'm sorry you had bad issue with some Amiga hardware. I've had funky machines in the past (and still today, got a nonworking liquid cooler the other day), and yes, we understand you don't like it, bad experiences, you are very glad computing has moved on. Cool.
But we bother because we enjoy the computers.

--
Be seeing you...
Re:Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by cerebis · 2014-07-20 17:27 · Score: 2

Amiga models all had their quirks and to say the A2000 was pointless is looking back a little simplistically. I'll agree that the A2000 wasn't sexy, even at the time.
The A1000 was the first offering, followed about 2 years later by the A2000 and A500. Being the first iteration, the A1000 had many quirks and suffered from a stylish but impractically slim case size (for the era). The A2000 addressed the lack of expandability, while the A500 answered the low end of the market. Though the CPU did not change, there were a lot of changes in the overall chipset -- one large one being that the A2000 came with 1MB of chipset (dedicated) memory to the A1000s initial 256kB.
The A3000 came another ~2 years later -- was a little late to the party -- and delivered in a number of areas, but perhaps tellingly, many professionals would stick with the A2000 + 68030 accelerator boards. Accelerators from the leading company GVP were stable and much faster than initial A3000s, beyond which many video/CGI orientated cards would not initially fit in the A3000. That people moved the A3000 hardware to third-party cases is perhaps saying a lot about expandibility vs sexy cases.
The models that were pretty pointless were the half-way (or less) upgrades -- the A2500 and A1500.
If it wasn't for the third-party hardware developers, the Amiga would have died much sooner and the A2000 was the workhorse for these companies.
Re:Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 19:45 · Score: 1

What you want to find is an Original Video Toaster card (goes into the video slot) and the software that goes with it. That makes it extremely cool.
Anything else you find is only moderately cool, and more of a "cool it works" rather than useful.
It has dawned on me that there is a market (now that a lot of the patents have expired) to copy the entire Amiga 500/2000 hardware and stick it on a single chip and load the firmware from flash memory, then have various FPGA's to duplicate the functionality of the various zorro cards. The Amiga hardware was far ahead of it's time and was arguably more geek-worthy than the PC, Mac or Atari (think Atari Falcon 030/040, not the 2600)
This machine http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-Vintage-Commodore-Amiga-2000-HD-With-Keyboard-Monitor-Working-/261246855270?pt=US_Vintage_Computers_Mainframes&hash=item3cd386a866 has a Video Toaster. It doesn't appear to have the 68020 board however. (That's that empty slot in the middle.) If you see 7 BNC connectors, it's a Video Toaster.
Basically in the early 32-bit era you had:
IBM PC/Clones, which ran 16-bit Windows, primary used for office software, and required a pile of expansion boards and headaches to work. PC's required an expansion board (Adlib, Sound Blaster) to put cheap sound in, and only if paired with a MT-32 did you get the music the games were designed to have.
Amiga 500/2000, the 500 was a games machine while the 2000 was known for the Video Toaster. Between the two you had much better games when they were released for all systems but like the IBM PC, the expansion boards were often not supported by anything. Amiga's are known for their tracker-style music.
The Atari Falcon was primarily used by MIDI music authors, because it came with MIDI ports on it and had 16-bit audio out of the box.
Personally, I'd love to have a Video Toaster A2000 just for the sake of having it, but I know I shouldn't collect any hardware, no matter how cool the thing was in it's heyday.
Re:Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by toejam13 · 2014-07-20 20:27 · Score: 1

Though the CPU did not change, there were a lot of changes in the overall chipset
My largest complaint about the A2000 is that it included the same 68000-8 processor clocked at 7.1MHz as the A500 and A1000. It would have been advantageous to have included a 68000-16 processor clocked at 14.2MHz for the more strenuous workloads that A2000 users tended to perform. It might have also discouraged programming that relied on a 7.1MHz clock.
I had a friend with an AdSpeed accelerator module (68000@14) for his A2000 and it made a significant difference. After spending considerably more for an A3000-16, I ended up regretting the decision given the costs versus the benefits.
Re: Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by jfanning · 2014-07-20 21:17 · Score: 1

I should get around to doing something with the A3000T sitting under my desk, even if it is just to suck my old emails off it. Wonder if it still boots?
Re:Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 21:32 · Score: 1

Minor nitpick - there where actually two different A2000 models. The first A2000s had only 512KB chip RAM, and 512KB fast RAM on a separate card (which you could expand to 1MB by just inserting the chips). And as far as I remember, the A2500 was simply a 2000 with an 68020 or 68030 accelerator card factory installed.
Re:Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 22:33 · Score: 0

I had a friend with an AdSpeed accelerator module (68000@14) for his A2000 and it made a significant difference. After spending considerably more for an A3000-16, I ended up regretting the decision given the costs versus the benefits.
I had an A2000 with an A2630 card (mine had a 68030 and a 68882 running at 25 mhz) along with 4 meg of fast ram and it made the AdSpeed look like dog food. I remember the (at the time) exorbitant price for the A3000; maybe more people should have gone the accelerated A2k route.
One interesting variation that I saw while stationed in Europe that we here in the states didn't see many of was the Amiga 2500, which was an Amiga 2000 pre fitted with an A2620 (68020 along with 68881 fpu both @ 14 mhz).
Re:Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by ArcadeMan · 2014-07-21 00:33 · Score: 1

Here's a link to tracker-style music.

--
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Re:Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by NJRoadfan · 2014-07-21 01:39 · Score: 1

The A3000 came another ~2 years later -- was a little late to the party -- and delivered in a number of areas, but perhaps tellingly, many professionals would stick with the A2000 + 68030 accelerator boards. Accelerators from the leading company GVP were stable and much faster than initial A3000s, beyond which many video/CGI orientated cards would not initially fit in the A3000. That people moved the A3000 hardware to third-party cases is perhaps saying a lot about expandibility vs sexy cases.
Newtek didn't seem to ship any turnkey Toaster workstations based on the Amiga 3000. They kept building systems based on A2500 machines until the Toaster 4000 card was released. The lack of slots in the 3000 was a problem, since they were usually crammed full of TBC cards. There was nothing great about the A3000 case, but it was way nicer than the joke of a case that the Amiga 4000 desktop came in. Taking that thing apart is.... ugh.
Re:Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by NJRoadfan · 2014-07-21 01:52 · Score: 1

The A2000 was built to be an upgradable platform in Commodore's eyes. It was pretty clear that their R&D was limited, so they created an expandable base machine that could be kept on the market for a long time (1987 to at least 1991ish). Hence the creation of the Amiga 2500 (A2000 with CPU cards) late in the machine's life.
Re:Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 04:32 · Score: 0

All I want to know is where I can get an Explorer or Explorer II board set for my TI S1505. For cheap, as in $0. Or 3 or 4 68040 boards. It's a NuBus machine, but Apple boards won't work because Apple did some kind of proprietary mods to the NuBus hardware spec and form factor. Oh, yeah, and an S1520 chassis, some storage and tape bricks, an ethernet card, and an Explorer graphics terminal, mouse, etc. What the heck, a fully kitted Explorer II. I'll give it a good home, I promise.
Alternatively, if I could find a NuBus Mac with a MicroExplorer card, that might do but you know, I still think I rather have one of those DNOS emulator boards for thte PC, with a real 99000 chip, and just use one of the available x86 Explorer simulations. (ducking from all the M68K and Mac partisans) Or a /12 or /10A cpu to go in this 13-slot 990 chassis that's limping along with a /10. At least TTL is easy to fix with a simple soldering iron, though I have better now. The 9995-based 9640 is nice, but I want to play with that writeable control store on the side bus, there.
I did use to spend a lot of time on a C-Net Amiga board in Port Wentworth, GA that started out on an Amiga 2000. Ended up running on a 3000 and then a 4000, later, by the time all was said and done.
Dunno where it is now. The sysop, a medically retired cop, gave it to some kid in Pooler when he grew tired of it. Or it gave him enough gray hairs.:-)
Wow, just think of all the tales those old bbs capture logs could tell, if they were to show up, somewhere, all of a sudden-like!
Re:Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by drinkypoo · 2014-07-21 05:13 · Score: 1

My largest complaint about the A2000 is that it included the same 68000-8 processor clocked at 7.1MHz as the A500 and A1000. It would have been advantageous to have included a 68000-16 processor clocked at 14.2MHz for the more strenuous workloads that A2000 users tended to perform.
Yeah, for those users, Amiga offered the A2000 with an accelerator, and called it the A2500. You probably recall.

It might have also discouraged programming that relied on a 7.1MHz clock.
That's why they didn't do that. They wanted to maintain the library of software that would run on the A500. Without that, the A500 would have been a sad joke. At $600 as a package with a TV encoder, it was cheaper than most accelerators. You couldn't expect people to ever add anything but a memory upgrade.

I had a friend with an AdSpeed accelerator module (68000@14) for his A2000 and it made a significant difference. After spending considerably more for an A3000-16, I ended up regretting the decision given the costs versus the benefits.

That difference is minuscule compared to having an '020, let alone an '030.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by moogaloonie · 2014-07-21 13:49 · Score: 1

So what can be done about it, and what are the symptoms of mobo damage? I have an A2000, 3MB Zorro card, VXL-30@40MHz with 8MB, and a Live!2000 card. I had heard about the leakage thing maybe 15 years ago, and when I finally opened up the case the damn thing was soldered in place. I opened it up a few years later and sure enough it had leaked, but there was no extensive visible damage (I imagined it would be like an Alien's blood eating through to China). Would I be foolish trying to power it up? Is it a fire hazard, or anything? I'd love to get my Amiga 2000 and 4000 up and running again, but the parts are scarce and I've forgotten so much about the various libs and scripts needed to get them working. I managed to get my 4000 upgraded to a Picasso IV video card and a 200MHz Cyberstorm PPC with 64MB of RAM, but it took finding the magic combination of Picasso and Cyberstorm drivers/libs that played well together and frankly doubt I could do it again at this point in time. It seemed pretty much luck even then that it worked flawlessly.
Re:Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by toejam13 · 2014-07-21 14:10 · Score: 1

Yeah, for those users, Amiga offered the A2000 with an accelerator, and called it the A2500. You probably recall.
The A2620 accelerator card used in the A2500/020 wasn't immediately available at the launch of the A2000. It was released about a year later (1988). It was a very expensive card, supported a maximum of 4MB of DRAM and it took a significant speed hit when it needed to access anything off card.

That's why they didn't do that. They wanted to maintain the library of software that would run on the A500. Without that, the A500 would have been a sad joke.
I didn't suggest that A500 should come with a 68000@14. Designing the A500 as a cost reduced A1000 was a good call.

That difference is minuscule compared to having an '020, let alone an '030.
A stock A2000 can do around 700 dhrystones, an A2000 with an AdSpeed '000@14 can do about 1350 dhrystones and an A2500/020 can do around 2060 dhrystones. I recall the A2620 being several thousand dollars when first released. For most users, the costs of going with an '020 just did not justify the benefits.
Re:Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 14:26 · Score: 0

The video toaster cards (and anything related to circa-1990 NTSC video) are pretty much useless these days.
Re:Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by drinkypoo · 2014-07-22 00:27 · Score: 1

I didn't suggest that A500 should come with a 68000@14. Designing the A500 as a cost reduced A1000 was a good call.
Right, you suggested that the A2000 should have come with a faster chip and crystal. and I'm saying that barring a compatibility mode (e.g. turbo switch) it would have completely shit upon the Amiga software ecosystem. Software on the A2000 would run on the A500. If that weren't the case, the A500 would have withered and died and then C= would have had no chance whatsoever with their platform because it was the cheap end of the spectrum that made it interesting.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Amiga 2000's are plagued with battery leakage by toejam13 · 2014-07-22 05:35 · Score: 1

Right, you suggested that the A2000 should have come with a faster chip and crystal. and I'm saying that barring a compatibility mode (e.g. turbo switch) it would have completely shit upon the Amiga software ecosystem. Software on the A2000 would run on the A500. If that weren't the case, the A500 would have withered and died and then C= would have had no chance whatsoever with their platform because it was the cheap end of the spectrum that made it interesting.
Developers tend to write software for the lowest common denominator of a platform, not the highest. It is especially true regarding games. So the problem wouldn't be that the A500 would become orphaned - the problem would be that the extra abilities of the A2000 would mostly be ignored. Just look at the Commodore 16, Amiga ECS and Amiga AGA platforms as examples.
One problem with introducing a 14MHz processor is that it would break software that requires an exact 7MHz clock. But most software for the time period was actually well behaved on faster processor clocks. Programmers mostly relied on V_Blank and CIA interrupts for their timing, not processor ticks. The reason so many programs failed on '020 and '030 machines wasn't clock speed - it was instruction caches that broke self-modifying code and memory address tricks that weren't 32bit address bus clean.
I'd argue that in 1987, you could release a 14MHz system without a turbo clock and it wouldn't be the end of the world. There really wasn't a lot of software to break since the Amiga didn't explode as a gaming platform until after the A500 was released. Even then, most of the initial buyers of the A2000 wanted it for business software, not gaming. I don't think they'd care if a couple games didn't work. Their productivity apps would run faster and that is what would matter most to them.

I owned one (several) by PhantomHarlock · 2014-07-20 15:25 · Score: 4, Interesting

I owned just about every Amiga model put out in the US, but the A2000 was the workhorse business machine. Coupled with the video toaster card and lightwave it was a video production tool that cost about 1/10th to 1/100th of what it would cost to assemble all of the discreet machines it replaced. With the addition of the Flyer card it also became a non-linear editor, a tough feat in those days. I did a lot of good work with my A2000. I had the SCSI controller and a hard drive (probably 40 - 80 MB in those days)

I was also big into Amiga gaming as it was way ahead of its time compared to PCs and Macs. You would pop in something like Shadow of the Beast and just marvel at the arcade quality parallax scrolling and really nice stereo sampled sound using all those nice custom chips that PCs and Macs did not have.

The linked article is very short on details (there are many) for those of us who lived through it, but even after all this time my own memory of specifics of things is basically gone.

A good book to know why all of this did not last or evolve is "The Rise and Fall of Commodore". For those of us who started with the C=64 era and went out till the end with the Amiga, it's an enlightening and sometimes frustrating read about the politics behind our favorite company.

I think that outside of serious collectors and computer history museums, trying to maintain and fiddle with the hardware today is, well, a dedicated hobby. Best of luck. You're often better off with the emulators out there to get your feet wet.

Within the limitations of technology at the time, the Amiga era was a grand ole time, and we all knew we had the best at the time. Thanks to marketing by other companies who think they invented everything, it will indeed likely be relegated to a forgotten footnote of personal computing history. For those of us who lived it, it was a way of life.

Re:I owned one (several) by greenwow · 2014-07-20 16:02 · Score: 5, Interesting

> Coupled with the video toaster card...
Interestingly, Wil Wheaton worked on the Video Toaster 4000:
http://www.avclub.com/articles...
It was amazingly ahead of its time.
Re:I owned one (several) by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 16:29 · Score: 0

Except for the part where, you know, it WAS a good show and it wasn't his fault what the writers did with him?
Re:I owned one (several) by MindPrison · 2014-07-20 16:32 · Score: 3, Interesting

One of the things I used my Amigas for was Animation. We used it at the Animation studios as a Line Tester (Pencil tester).

We had a camera attached to a digitizer, and pencil-test software that could run a sequence of sampled images in real time, according to a so called "Dope Sheet", as the Amiga wasn't strong enough to decompress video in real time without external hardware - it was just bitmaps stored in the Amigas memory and the "Fatter" the Agnus...the more Blitter memory could be used to display these images in sequence - direct and raw from the memory, this made it possible to show 25/30FPS movie sequences (typically those photos we took of our hand drawn characters) and could thus check upon our own hand drawn animation to see if it worked as it should.

The Amiga was an awesome tool for this purpose. I think some of the schools still use Amiga for this, it wasn't that long ago I serviced a few for them.

--
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Re:I owned one (several) by aliquis · 2014-07-20 17:18 · Score: 1

It may be true that you may be able to get one for "peanuts", what do I know.
But earlier today I actually searched here in Sweden on powermac to find out if an older (603 or something such) had any value.
Turned out PowerMac G4, G5 and dual G5s are rather cheap too.
Now of course that's no Amiga and of course it likely won't run the toaster and so on but MorphOS may run on some of them and of course at least before they wasn't completely useless for video those either. At least the dual G5 likely work somewhat even today.
Also for anyone who need an Amiga kick check out Icaros desktop: http://vmwaros.blogspot.se/
It will run on your PC so same issue as with the PowerMacs there.. But then again your PC can do things the old Amigas couldn't too.
All three ways is one way of getting the Amiga experience today. Depending on what Amiga experience you want to have :)
Also PCs aren't all that bad / useless by themselves:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Over and out - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... :)
Re:I owned one (several) by aliquis · 2014-07-20 17:24 · Score: 1

This to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Also btw for those who don't know, MorphOS for mac: http://www.morphos-team.net/in...
What's MorphOS anyway?
http://www.morphos-team.net/in...
http://www.morphos-team.net/re...
Icaros Desktop is an AROS environment with more things, like DOpus 5. The coolest feature in it is that actual AROS has been ported to m68k so now they can run emulate an m68k running their own open-source version of AmigaOS and run m68k AmigaOS software that way without requireing copies of the Kickstart ROM and AmigaOS.
Re:I owned one (several) by Opportunist · 2014-07-20 17:44 · Score: 1

Well, to his credit, he was a pretty good actor. It's not his fault that the writers turned his character into an annoying little self-righteous, one dimensional sphincter.

--
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Re:I owned one (several) by Kuroji · 2014-07-20 18:02 · Score: 1

Because his delivery of lines in Stand By Me was so good? Honestly? Ugh.
Re:I owned one (several) by ArcadeMan · 2014-07-21 00:35 · Score: 1

Maybe the moderators don't like Hwil Hweaton.

--
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Re:I owned one (several) by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 00:57 · Score: 0

Shut up, Wesley!
http://www.theforce.net/jedicouncil/interview/enemy_wheaton.shtml
Re:I owned one (several) by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 07:08 · Score: 0

*Shrug* Reminds me of the way you Amiga ( and even Commie 64) guys and gals looked down you noses dismissively at us orphaned 99'ers, obsessively bucking the tide, nursing our grudge that TI canceled the 99/8 "Amadillo", which would have showed you up, big time, so there, back in the day, no, wait, some months *before* the day. /*shrug*
But, as we all know, IBM invented the personal computer, as you point out. Karma's a bitch, after all, but we had a grand ole time, too, despite it.
Re:I owned one (several) by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-22 15:11 · Score: 0

> Also btw for those who don't know, MorphOS for mac
When I saw the words "time-limited demo," I stopped reading. Fuck that control freak shit.
Re:I owned one (several) by aliquis · 2014-07-24 11:35 · Score: 1

Sorry. I had no idea about that.
I don't know why I expected it was free. Old MorphOS did cost money and so did the Pegasos boards.
Bummer.
Oh well. You can at least use Icaros for free AFAIK.

As an ex. Commodore Service tech by MindPrison · 2014-07-20 15:27 · Score: 4, Interesting

I can tell you I absolutely LOVED the Amiga 2000, this is my most re-purchased Amiga ever. I've had the A1500 (sort of a scaled down 2000) and it's bigger sister (Amiga 3000), A500, and even the A1000 with it's signatures inside, but the Amiga 2000 was exciting to me because I could expand it into oblivion.

Unfortunately cool stuff like the Video Toaster...never made it to Europe (AFAIK, I never saw one except in promos on American TV), but I remember I always wanted one, instead I had to make do with the lame VLAB that bugged out most of the time.

I remember paying $$$ for even the A2091 harddisk controller, and even a small fortune for any xx-mb harddisk back then. The Amiga 2000 was a reliable work horse, I ran my BBS with several modems on that one back in my Demo-Heydays. I loved it for its external keyboard, it felt so much better to code on when I had my Amiga keyboard in my lap instead of that HUGE oversized A500.

Ah, the demoscene, fond memories!

--
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.

Re:As an ex. Commodore Service tech by PhantomHarlock · 2014-07-20 15:34 · Score: 1

There were some great demos coming out of Europe. I remember trading them at swap parties.
I'm guessing Newtek did not want to make an entirely different hardware rev for PAL on the toaster. Wasn't as easy back then to just handle both with a software switch. :) Would be a huge investment for both software and hardware departments.
I did also have the A3000 which was my last big Amiga build. there was also an A1200 which was a later version of a 500-type layout. I don't remember if that was US only.
Re:As an ex. Commodore Service tech by TWX · 2014-07-20 16:52 · Score: 2

Unfortunately cool stuff like the Video Toaster...never made it to Europe (AFAIK, I never saw one except in promos on American TV)
Yeah, you had a thing for Kiki Stockhammer didn't you?

Last I saw her was in 2004 or 2005, she was the female lead for Warp 11, a Star Trek themed punk band out of San Francisco. The band was headlining at Enigma Con at UCLA, which greatly expanded after the Boxing Day Tsunami as probably 60 actors came out to support the con for its charity fundraiser for the relief efforts.

It's kind if amazing to think that Babylon 5 was created in large part on this era of Amiga and that while a little dated, has held up pretty well compared to some of its contemporaries. Foundation Imaging went on to work on Star Trek DS9 and Voyager, likely using Amigas at least for some of DS9 at least.

Obviously at this point the computer is probably worth more as a teaching tool and curio than as a production machine, but it definitely paved the way.

--
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Re:As an ex. Commodore Service tech by PhantomHarlock · 2014-07-20 17:29 · Score: 1

I saw her still doing stuff for Newtek at NAB shows until more recently, she still looked good. Yup we all loved her back in the day. :)
Also, by the time Voyager came around LW was being used on windows machines. I turned down a job doing the 'anomaly of the week' for Voyager at Foundation to go work at Digital Domain instead. Large unix-driven renderfarms for LW and their other tools. Pretty spoiled for gettin your frames done...also never worked with more talented people in my life. They had just come off doing Titanic and The 5th Element. Lots of Lightwave digital ship shots in Titanic by Frank Alber, he went on to become a big guy at Pixar. The stuff still holds up today.
Re:As an ex. Commodore Service tech by TWX · 2014-07-20 17:57 · Score: 1

Never saw Titanic (I think I'm one of three people on the planet over the age of eighteen that can claim this) but I liked how that New York police chase scene in The Fifth Element turned out. I've heard it argued that it's how that Stallone version of Judge Dredd should have looked, had they actually put the urban density in to Mega City 1 that it should have gotten.

Alas, I never got past using 3d Studio R4 in a very rudimentary way. Probably didn't help that my computer at the time lacked the horsepower to render anything meaningful quickly enough to be usable for any other function, so it just wasn't feasible to get into it. Oh well.

--
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Re:As an ex. Commodore Service tech by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 22:49 · Score: 1

Yeah, you had a thing for Kiki Stockhammer didn't you?

A lot of us did.. she was pretty easy on the eyes.. then there's Paula Lieberman forever bitching about her.
Re:As an ex. Commodore Service tech by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 01:26 · Score: 1

The thing is, she's absolutely right about Kiki and the way NewTek used her to promote their stuff. She's right about the reasons for it, and why it works... at least for men if not for women. As long as the men like it, though, it continues to sell product.
I've always been amazed by male geeks' myopia when it comes to booth babes and female celebrities. Of course, women get starstruck too but geeks pride themselves on being able to see through appearances to the substance and merits underneath, which is why they reject fashion as silly and superficial... I mean, why should it matter whether I wear a suit or jeans? It's just clothing; putting on different clothes doesn't make you a different person.
Likewise, men are suckers for beauty even though it tells you absolutely nothing about how healthy or intelligent the woman is, or whether she'd be a good mate or lover. All it does is tickle the funny bone of your genes, saying "this person has physical traits that have been beneficial to propagate for your ancestors." Even then, it's unreliable - look at the huge variance in attractiveness between members of the same family. But when it comes to sex, religion, politics, and money, we're just not rational. The cerebral cortex gets bypassed somehow.
Whenever I see an otherwise intelligent male geek comment on a video with Jeri Ellsworth or Kari Byron saying "yeah, I'd fuck her!" I'm like, "way to go, reptile brain!!"
Re:As an ex. Commodore Service tech by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 01:48 · Score: 0

Well, there's a reason there's 7 billion of us and 200,000 more every day, and it ain't because diapers smell good.
Re:As an ex. Commodore Service tech by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 02:10 · Score: 1

Whenever I see an otherwise intelligent male geek comment on a video with Jeri Ellsworth or Kari Byron saying "yeah, I'd fuck her!" I'm like, "way to go, reptile brain!!"
Your mistake is thinking that's a negative thing. The 'reptile brain' keeps us alive, and it's harmful to think there's something innately wrong with the natural desires it gives us.
Re:As an ex. Commodore Service tech by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 05:55 · Score: 0

The thing is, she's absolutely right about Kiki and the way NewTek used her to promote their stuff.
Agreed, but if you were there back in the day Paula would look for anything to bitch about with regard to feminism and geekiness. She was always spoiling for a fight, and was generally an unpleasant person online.

I've always been amazed by male geeks' myopia when it comes to booth babes and female celebrities.

Speak for yourself. Those types of idiots (and they do NOT represent all male geeks) are the same people who would date a stripper.

Whenever I see an otherwise intelligent male geek comment on a video with Jeri Ellsworth or Kari Byron saying "yeah, I'd fuck her!" I'm like, "way to go, reptile brain!!"
Oh give me a break. Jeri is pedestrian at best, and Kari is about a 6.5/10. I've sport fucked sales reps hotter than either. Guys like them because their geeky brains add to their attractiveness, which contradicts what you were stating in your post.
Re:As an ex. Commodore Service tech by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 06:44 · Score: 0

Speaking as a world-famous authority on women, I'm going to risk the opinion that it's not natural desires that are at issue here, but that "R.E.S.P.E.C.T." thing. Otherwise I would be forced to conclude that feminism is just Victorian repression reinvented, and that's just too horrible to consider.
Re:As an ex. Commodore Service tech by steg0 · 2014-07-21 07:03 · Score: 1

A lot of us did.. she was pretty easy on the eyes.. then there's Paula Lieberman forever bitching about her.
What treasures there to be found in the Usenet archives. What's the .gif they're talking about?
Re:As an ex. Commodore Service tech by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-22 00:39 · Score: 0

Oh give me a break. Jeri is pedestrian at best, and Kari is about a 6.5/10. I've sport fucked sales reps hotter than either. Guys like them because their geeky brains add to their attractiveness, which contradicts what you were stating in your post.
You misunderstand, it's not that geeks find them attractive but the "reptile brain" attitude that makes us express it in sexual terms. You yourself are doing it here by comparing them to other women you've fucked.
Re:As an ex. Commodore Service tech by Bambi+Dee · 2014-07-23 02:23 · Score: 1

there was also an A1200 which was a later version of a 500-type layout. I don't remember if that was US only.
I've got a mildly souped up German A1200HD next to me right now, built by a German company after the demise of Commodore. They also sold a tower version of the A4000. The A1200 is something like the keyboard-case counterpart to the A4000. OS 3.0/3.1, internal IDE connector, 68020, early PCMCIA slot, AGA graphics with 16.8 colours (not at the same time) and various crazy resolutions like 1024x1024 or 1280x512.

Wish they sold for cheap by Nyder · 2014-07-20 15:28 · Score: 2

Amiga 2000 is my favorite Amiga computer, but they aren't that cheap on Ebay.

I'd love to get one, mainly if it had the 8088 PC board in it also. Used to love running MS-Dos and Amiga OS at the same time.

But cheap is around $100. $250+ isn't cheap, that is the same price they were selling in the 90's.

--
Be seeing you...

Re:Wish they sold for cheap by 50000BTU_barbecue · 2014-07-20 16:39 · Score: 1

I had the 386SX BridgeBoard. It was pretty cool to run OrCad on the Bridge with its virtual hard drive, while still having the Amiga free.
I think that BridgeBoard must be quite expensive today!

--
Mostly random stuff.
Re: Wish they sold for cheap by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 18:16 · Score: 0

Actually they sold for far more than $250 in the 90's. I recall they were about $500-$600 in the late 90's.

Not Forgotten by bearded_yak · 2014-07-20 15:31 · Score: 2

Many don't realize the impact the much forgotten Amiga 2000

Forgotten? Not by anyone who was in broadcasting in the early 90's. It was quite a machine for us, even though it took all night to render an animated flame-effect title overlay.

Re:Not Forgotten by Art3x · 2014-07-20 15:42 · Score: 1

Forgotten? Not by anyone who was in broadcasting in the early 90's. It was quite a machine for us, even though it took all night to render an animated flame-effect title overlay.
I also will always remember it. In my formative junior high years, I took a video class that had among its gear an Amiga 2500, and I tried to make something like a live-action take on Animator's Revenge with Daffy Duck. From the article:

With the Video Toaster card, it was now possible to do with video editing and special effects what before took literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to do.
In the hands of an imaginative seventh grader, the Amiga Toaster was a ton of fun. For the same reason, the execution severely lacking, my videos were hard to watch for anyone but family and friends.
Re:Not Forgotten by PhantomHarlock · 2014-07-20 15:46 · Score: 1

Here here....a lot of show title sequences rendered on the one we had at the station. That eventually led to my vfx career. Got in when lightwave was the hot thing and rode it all the way to its peak down in LA. Good times. Eventually got tired of staring at a monitor for 10 hours a day though and switched careers. Still do a little photoreal FX rendering as part of my job, but only about 10% of it now.
Re:Not Forgotten by FPhlyer · 2014-07-20 21:20 · Score: 1

I was a military journalist working at the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service detachment in Iceland when I got my Amiga 500. Partly because I was already loyal to Commodore (I had a C64 and later a C128 as a kid). I also partly bought it because of the influence of many of my coworkers who were hyped about Amiga and NewTek. Another big contributor was the fact that the only computer you could buy at the Naval Exchange was the Amiga 500. Sadly, the only software you could buy was the the PC. Can you tell that the government was running things?

--
Brought to you by Frobozz Magic Penguin Fodder.

SCSI madness by Zobeid · 2014-07-20 15:31 · Score: 3, Interesting

I had an A2000 which I soon put a used A2620 card into -- that was the 68020 accelerator which effectively quadrupled the speed of the system. (When was the last time you saw an upgrade card do that??) It was the same card Commodore used in the A2500. It was an amazing machine for its day, not only in terms of graphics and audio, but for sheer processing power.

The thing that always drove me up the wall was SCSI adaptors. They were always tricky to get working -- fiddling with dip switches and jumper pins on the drives, and terminating resistor packs -- and I never had one that worked for a long time. It seemed like there was a steady churn of companies putting an Amiga SCSI card on the market, then going out of business, then another company would take a whack at it. I think I burned through half a dozen completely different SCSI adapters.

Re:SCSI madness by PhantomHarlock · 2014-07-20 15:38 · Score: 2

As much as people fawn over computer nostalgia, they forget how much the pre-plug-and-play era actaully kind of sucked on a day to day basis. Sure, it got you job security, but today I enjoy unboxing my SATA drive, plugging it in and moving on to whatever it is I wanted to do with the new drive.
Re:SCSI madness by fermion · 2014-07-20 16:02 · Score: 1

I never had a problem with SCSI. As a matter of fact, it was as plug and play as you could get a the time. For instance, the IOmega tape drives came in SCSI and parallel. Installing the parallel PC option was very difficult, even following instructions. On a Macintosh with SCSI, it was plug and play. The biggest issue I saw was just getting it plugged in and either using a setting a terminator. In other words, following instructions.

--
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Re:SCSI madness by Anaerin · 2014-07-20 16:33 · Score: 1

The thing is, that was SCSI's fault, not the Amiga's. Dealing with DIP switches and termination was a problem no matter what OS you ran, or who made your hardware. Amigas had AutoConfig, which would (for Zorro I/II/III cards) allocate DMA, Interrupts and IRQs automatically at boot-time, along with auto-loading firmware and drivers. It was so good, in fact, that Intel copied it and called it "Plug 'n Play".
Re:SCSI madness by MindPrison · 2014-07-20 17:02 · Score: 2

As much as people fawn over computer nostalgia, they forget how much the pre-plug-and-play era actaully kind of sucked on a day to day basis. Sure, it got you job security, but today I enjoy unboxing my SATA drive, plugging it in and moving on to whatever it is I wanted to do with the new drive.
HA! You have a good point here.

I remember finding a 300 mb harddisk at the local flea market back in the Commodore heydays, at the time when most people had a 20 or 40 mb HD, spending hours and hours trying to make a script to mount it properly. I didn't have the specs, we didn't have the internet (I had a BBS...but...no one knew the specs on that thing), so it was all trial and error based. Man that sucked, but it felt good to finally make that sucker work. Imagine the collection of SoundTracker / .mod files I could fit in there :)

--
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Re:SCSI madness by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 17:34 · Score: 0

That is one of the reasons to get an A1200 instead of an A2000.
I bought a fairly new SSD to mine. (Standard 2.5" IDE-interface.)
Since I installed compactflash.device and fat95-filesystem I can easily transfer stuff to it using a standard CF-card in a PCMCIA-CF-adapter.
Haven't gotten around installing the network stuff on it. Got a wireless card but haven't gotten around to it yet.
Re:SCSI madness by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 18:07 · Score: 1

As much as people fawn over computer nostalgia, they forget how much the pre-plug-and-play era actaully kind of sucked on a day to day basis. Sure, it got you job security, but today I enjoy unboxing my SATA drive, plugging it in and moving on to whatever it is I wanted to do with the new drive.
HA! You have a good point here.
I remember finding a 300 mb harddisk at the local flea market back in the Commodore heydays, at the time when most people had a 20 or 40 mb HD, spending hours and hours trying to make a script to mount it properly. I didn't have the specs, we didn't have the internet (I had a BBS...but...no one knew the specs on that thing), so it was all trial and error based. Man that sucked, but it felt good to finally make that sucker work. Imagine the collection of SoundTracker / .mod files I could fit in there :)
What you descibes sounds a lot like early IDE/PATA when the HD didn't provide the specs. SCSI was as simple as choosing a free ID, making sure the bus has only terminators at the end and go. The controller usually did the translation from linear addressing to CHS which could be turned off for people not using DOS. (And some headaches came from different translations to CHS from different companies).
Re:SCSI madness by swb · 2014-07-20 23:38 · Score: 1

It was and it wasn't. One or two devices on a Mac SCSI bus was pretty PnP but beyond that, especially when adding non-disk devices like scanners, the Mac SCSI bus quickly could get into voodoo territory -- devices that disappeared from the chain, drives that wouldn't mount and general unreliability.
Usually over time you could get it stable, but that often meant "over time" -- re-ordering the chain physically, numerically and swapping expensive cables in and out to try to find a stable setup.
I often wonder if the 25 pin connector, which IIRC was non-standard, didn't contribute to the problem. SCSI seemed to work better on PCs which used the standard 50 pin connector.
Re:SCSI madness by RabidReindeer · 2014-07-21 00:08 · Score: 2

As much as people fawn over computer nostalgia, they forget how much the pre-plug-and-play era actaully kind of sucked on a day to day basis. Sure, it got you job security, but today I enjoy unboxing my SATA drive, plugging it in and moving on to whatever it is I wanted to do with the new drive.
Well, you can thank the Amiga as much as anything for that. The Amiga's Zorro bus was the first PC plug-and-play computer bus, coming ahead of the IBM Micro-Channel and EISA busses.
Re:SCSI madness by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 03:50 · Score: 0

I remember seeing at least one allegedly-SCSI Amiga hard drive that was REALLY a MFM or RLL hard drive (the PC standard before IDE) that only PRETENDED to be SCSI via some adapter board. About 20 years later, when I saw the pics online of an alleged "SSD" from China with a microSD card soldered to a SD-to-ATA bridge chip, it instantly brought back the memories of disgust I felt upon cracking open that hard drive and learning the truth.
Re:SCSI madness by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 04:01 · Score: 0

From what I remember, the problem wasn't with SCSI per se, so much as shitty, incomplete and broken implementations of SCSI that LITTERED the Amiga hardware ecosystem. For example, at one point, I bought a SyQuest 44mb removable-cartridge drive... then went through almost two years of hell & misery getting it to work because a proper external enclosure for a quarter-height 5.25" SCSI device cost something like $400... for a badly-machined steel box with power supply and id-select switches. And the goddamn CABLE was another $50-100 ON TOP of that. So instead, I kind of rigged it to leech power from one of the A3000's internal hard drive power connectors, stuck the drive in a $29 enclosure made for floppy drives, and ran the (expensive) ribbon cable from the back of the drive through one of the Zorro backplane external openings and connected it directly to the motherboard. Looking back, I'm utterly *horrified* by some of the awful hardware things I did back in high school :-D
Re:SCSI madness by petermgreen · 2014-07-21 04:58 · Score: 1

Until you have to deal with an old machine that has one of the buggy SATA1 controllers that falls over if you plug in a SATA2 drive.
Some drives had a jumper to force SATA1 mode but that has dissappeared on more modern drives.

--
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Re:SCSI madness by drinkypoo · 2014-07-21 05:16 · Score: 1

As much as people fawn over computer nostalgia, they forget how much the pre-plug-and-play era actaully kind of sucked on a day to day basis. Sure, it got you job security, but today I enjoy unboxing my SATA drive, plugging it in and moving on to whatever it is I wanted to do with the new drive.
I had very few problems with termination on my Amiga. It seemed to work fine with any termination I used. Macs were where I had problems. And the Amiga was in fact the first computer that really had great plug and play. It had a microkernel-based OS and the drivers could be loaded from option ROM on the cards automatically, and then later they could be replaced in memory with a newer driver loaded from storage. In spite of this, Amiga themselves actually released at least one storage controller (MFM+SCSI) with no autoconfiguration; I had one in my first A2000 running a ST225 and later, a SQ135.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"

Oh just give it up by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 15:36 · Score: 0, Troll

I don't really understand this nostalgic computer stuff. A car from the 1960s at least functions more or less the same as a car today, it'll get you and your passenger and your luggage from point A to point B using mostly the same fuel, tires and roads.

An old computer won't do anything that's useful today and besides using the same electricity, everything you'll need is either no longer made or too expensive.

Just let it die, you don't fit in your 28 inch waistline jeans anymore, high school is over, and that girl you liked in college is a 300 pound sweaty hambeast with 5 kids.

Leave the past in the past.

That goes for Space Nutters too.

Re:Oh just give it up by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 17:36 · Score: 0

Oh, it's you! Of course the guy that gets upset and defensive whenever any accomplishments are made in space is also virulently anti-amiga. You just live to be the only guy on your side of the argument, don't you?
Well, it's working.
Re:Oh just give it up by FPhlyer · 2014-07-20 21:29 · Score: 1

It's called a hobby. Maybe you should get one.

--
Brought to you by Frobozz Magic Penguin Fodder.
Re:Oh just give it up by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 01:43 · Score: 0

Hey, it's you! That person I'll be having 3D printed coffees with on Mars !!!
Re:Oh just give it up by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 01:55 · Score: 0

It's called trolling. You might think it pretty sad for a hobby but some people get a kick out of people like you, who rise to the bait instead of scrolling on past and not giving them the attention they so desperately crave.
Re:Oh just give it up by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-22 08:01 · Score: 0

Oh, it's you! Of course the guy that gets upset and defensive whenever any accomplishments are made in space is also virulently anti-amiga. You just live to be the only guy on your side of the argument, don't you?
Well, it's working.
What does that even mean you fucking nerd?

Uh, they're not cheap. Not really. by realmolo · 2014-07-20 15:42 · Score: 1, Insightful

Yeah, you can find a bare-bones Amiga 2000 for not much money. But it's pointless- a bare-bones Amiga 2000 is essentially the same thing as an Amiga 500.

Unless you can get one that has accelerator cards and video cards and hard drives and all that stuff, it's not worth bothering with. Unfortunately, "loaded" Amiga 2000s are EXPENSIVE. All of those expansion cards are hard to come by, and sell for a ridiculous amount of money. Why? I have no idea. I assume it's because of the lunatic Amiga fans that still exist. The poor bastards.

Honestly, UAE (Ultimate Amiga Emulator) is so good, that there simply isn't a reason to own actual Amiga hardware. The emulator is faster, and more flexible, and more stable. And at this point, the only real reason to even mess around with an Amiga is to play the games.

As a general-purpose computer, it sucks. It sucks less than you might think for a nearly 30-year-old system, but it still sucks. Even the latest version of AmigaOS (which is only a couple of years old, I think) is a joke. There are some neat things that the AmigaOS can do, for sure, but most of it is irrelevant nowadays.

A500+, A600, A1200 by rvalles · 2014-07-20 15:45 · Score: 3, Insightful

Because they're way too big, plain and simple.

The collectible ones are IMO the keyboard models: A500+, A600, A1200.

A500+ is the good ECS one. With 1MB chip and kickstart 37 pretty much guaranteed. I don't own one, but I have an older A500 with the little mod to get 1MB chip, which is almost as good.

A600 is the "bring along" one as it's smaller. Supporting IDE HDs is obviously very convenient. Kickstart 37. Real problems include hardware tending to break more than A500+ and software requiring numpad, which the A600 lacks. Lack of expansion options used to be an issue, but there's some interesting hardware now, such as a crazy fast (relatively) FPGA based accel board.

A1200 is the option with AGA. I own one paired with a 68030 accel board. Together with whdload it's godly for playing Amiga games on the real hardware.

Re:A500+, A600, A1200 by PhantomHarlock · 2014-07-20 15:50 · Score: 1

I'd take this guy's advice if you just want some Amiga hardware to fiddle about with. The A1200 is a good late model choice. I remember owning one as a general purpose machine to replace the 500 I had.
Re:A500+, A600, A1200 by Anaerin · 2014-07-20 17:02 · Score: 1

And if you can still find them, the A1200 has expansion options up the wazoo, including RTG graphics, 16-bit soundcards, Ethernet adapters, dual-channel PIO Mode 4 IDE interfaces (To augment/replace the single-channel on-board IDE), Keyboard converters, even full PCI Backplanes or Zorro II/Zorro III/ISA/PCI backplanes which support many modern graphics cards, among other things.
Re:A500+, A600, A1200 by Dr.Saeuerlich · 2014-07-20 22:27 · Score: 1

They're probably the most user friendly Amigas which run most of the software around, and IDE and PCMCIA make them easily expandable. I'm not sure if they're collectibles though, other for the fact that they run the latest games.
But if you enjoy having something rare, like an oldtimer, get one of the big box Amigas. They're truly like an old car. You'll spend a lot of time hunting down those rare Zorro cards, ZIP RAMs, turbo cards and the latest revisions of the custom chips. It's a time and money sink - like an old car - but oddly satisfying when you turn it on and it all works :)
I really like playing games on my A1200 (I got an A600 somewhere too), but the most fun is just the A3000, which over the time I decked out with an 68040 warp engine accelerator, a Cybervision 64 video card, a hydra ethernet card and recently a Buddha IDE controller. I really want to replace those mechanical drives, especially the aging floppy worries me.
Re:A500+, A600, A1200 by amiga3D · 2014-07-21 00:59 · Score: 1

The A1200 probably had more hardware options than anything else. I've seen a lot of those towerized with zorro backplanes and all kinds of goodies. It wasn't uncommon for people to spend a couple of thousand dollars on hardware add ons.

Prevue Guide channel used to use them by Joe_Dragon · 2014-07-20 16:01 · Score: 1

It used to crash from time but still it was cool up till about 1999

cool looking local ad's as well

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

the weather channle used it own hardware.

Re:Prevue Guide channel used to use them by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 20:03 · Score: 0

Our high school ran the announcement system off a A500 till it went kaput. It then wound up in my possession one year because I didn't want thrown in the trash. I would have wound up with the A2000 Video Toaster as well if I was 2 years younger.
A lot of things "walked" unfortunately at that school. I'm pretty sure the A2000 didn't end up on eBay but probably wound up being smashed and used for electronic "art" projects, because that was the fate of a few of the IBM XT's.

In other words by fermion · 2014-07-20 16:06 · Score: 0

The person who is submitting this has cornered the market on Amiga machines, step two is to shill the products to increase the price. I don't think people are going to buy computers just for nostalgia. If so, I have a stash of Apple /// computers.

--
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black

Re:In other words by MindPrison · 2014-07-20 16:49 · Score: 3, Informative

Well, Used Amigas are in fact notoriously expensive, as much as I love Amiga...I've never truly understood why Amiga lovers wants so much for their old beloved computers, for example - Amiga 4000 sells in Scandinavia (err...they TRY to sell them...) for around 600-2000$...I kid you not! You can pick up an Amiga 500 for around 100$ so that's still affordable if you want to play SuperFrog or watch some cool demos from the glory days of the DemoScene. The action is found on the AGA platform though (A1200 - A4000)

--
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Re:In other words by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 17:41 · Score: 0

I've never truly understood why Amiga lovers wants so much for their old beloved computers, for example - Amiga 4000 sells in Scandinavia (err...they TRY to sell them...) for around 600-2000$...
People are getting old. Their wives tells them that they need the space for whatever useless trinkets that are "more important".
The solution to make everyone happy is to "try to sell it" for way more than anyone is willing to buy it for.
Re:In other words by NJRoadfan · 2014-07-21 01:48 · Score: 1

Amiga 4000s are being killed off by leaking batteries and capacitors. Finding a working one is very difficult, particularly here in the US. A working A4000 (ex: it boots to kickstart screen) goes for about $300 minimum here and will require some work to get to 100% functionality.
Re:In other words by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 02:04 · Score: 0

Buy a FUBAR'd one on the cheap, replace the caps and battery, and you have a proper Amiga for the same price you'd pay on an A2000 :-)
Re:In other words by NJRoadfan · 2014-07-21 02:26 · Score: 1

That is basically what I landed up doing. I got one that was free of battery acid, but badly needed a recap (had weak audio output).

Initial delivery: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

All fixed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

It took a while for the right machine to come up for sale, but it was worth it. I have been wanting a Video Toaster setup for a good 15 years at that point! One thing potential buyers should be mindful of, get the machine with a mouse and keyboard! Both sell for quite a bit more than the average PS/2 equivalent and the adapters to use USB or PS/2 devices aren't much cheaper.
Re:In other words by petermgreen · 2014-07-21 05:09 · Score: 1

I don't know about the amiga specifically but some computers have a memory backup battery mounted on the main PCB. If they leak and the leakage is not noticed and dealt with quickly it can cause severe damage to PCB traces which can be a nightmare to repair.

--
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Re:In other words by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 14:55 · Score: 0

How about a thousand bucks for a PPC/060 accelerator combo so you can show off your Amiga's amazing power by playing... Quake 1... Yes, the same game you could use a dumpster-PC to play at a better frame rate, and for free.

Great content. Writing quality, not so much. by fruitbane · 2014-07-20 16:19 · Score: 1

I learned quite a bit about the Amiga 2000 from this article, but what on earth was going on with the writing? Using apostrophes with plurals, needlessly enclosing terms in double quotes, random capital letters; it was a mess. It was very hard to read because of this craziness.

Re:Great content. Writing quality, not so much. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 17:17 · Score: 0

perhaps you should rewrite it so it is to your standard and reread it?
Re:Great content. Writing quality, not so much. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 07:32 · Score: 0

Heh. 'miga/C64 sub-dialectic of 'leet speek, D0NCH4 K-N0? Whaddya want, good grammer or good taste? :-)
Cue another Ellison "Glass Teat" installment here. Dangling participles' and consonant transpostions' are extra.
"Wow. Sorta feel like Troublemaker";-)

I disagree with you... by MindPrison · 2014-07-20 16:43 · Score: 2

Yeah, you can find a bare-bones Amiga 2000 for not much money. But it's pointless- a bare-bones Amiga 2000 is essentially the same thing as an Amiga 500.

Unless you can get one that has accelerator cards and video cards and hard drives and all that stuff, it's not worth bothering with. Unfortunately, "loaded" Amiga 2000s are EXPENSIVE. All of those expansion cards are hard to come by, and sell for a ridiculous amount of money. Why? I have no idea. I assume it's because of the lunatic Amiga fans that still exist. The poor bastards.

Honestly, UAE (Ultimate Amiga Emulator) is so good, that there simply isn't a reason to own actual Amiga hardware. The emulator is faster, and more flexible, and more stable. And at this point, the only real reason to even mess around with an Amiga is to play the games.

As a general-purpose computer, it sucks. It sucks less than you might think for a nearly 30-year-old system, but it still sucks. Even the latest version of AmigaOS (which is only a couple of years old, I think) is a joke. There are some neat things that the AmigaOS can do, for sure, but most of it is irrelevant nowadays.

There are so many things wrong with your statements here I hardly know where to begin, but I'll bring up a few:

Emulating hardware isn't perfect, there are things you can do to the original hardware that would literally be impossible to do with an Emulator. There are also numerous timing issues with emulated hardware that would make it very hard to achieve a 100% perfect emulation, especially as you are running under another OS as the host of the emulator (just a program anyway). If you've never coded on a Commodore 64 or an Amiga, you can't possibly know or appreciate this.

A basic Amiga or even a Commodore 64, provides programmers with several challenges. I find it stimulating to code on old school computers simply because we don't have to waste years on classes, libraries and being "nice" to the OS. On C64 this is even easier, but you're limited to a 8 bit system, on the Amiga you're starting out with 16 bit numbers, and this makes coding in Assembly a little bit easier (also compiling with C compilers if that is your taste, I'm an Assembly coder myself).

The good thing with simple basic computers like C64 and Amiga, Atari etc...is that they have relatively known hardware, and you can pretty much ensure that your code will work on 99% of the computers as long as you stick to the basic specs. Try to do that with a PC. There is also a challenge to overcome, the systems limitations makes it very challenging to make your software run faster, 3D routines to work faster, new effects, more colors etc. This may sound trivial to those who have NO understanding why we'd do this, or challenge ourselves to this - but just like coding for an Atari 2600...this can be so much fun, you can only appreciate this...kind of like a good game of chess...albeit chess is a little more predictable than hardware from the 80s :) Sure it's old, but it's fun, and that's what it's all about.

--
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.

Re:I disagree with you... by toejam13 · 2014-07-20 20:00 · Score: 1

Emulating hardware isn't perfect, there are things you can do to the original hardware that would literally be impossible to do with an Emulator.
When it comes to running software packages and demos for those old computer systems, I disagree. Most modern emulators include cycle exact modes and include known quirks, so just about everything works. But if you're talking about the hardware side, wanting to use your C64 user port for IO control of external devices, then you have a point. Most people don't do that, though. They'd get a Raspberry Pi or some other modern tinkerer system.

I have an A2000 by chuckugly · 2014-07-20 16:44 · Score: 1

I have an A2000 from back in the day, before the clones won the clone wars. Also a floppy based version of Dragons Lair for it. The Amiga was a wonderful machine.

Amiga - what a joke! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 17:01 · Score: 2, Funny

Everybody knows the Atari ST was superior! /tongueincheek

Amiga sucks, Atari rules! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 17:02 · Score: 0

Enough said.

The B2000 was a great machine by rossdee · 2014-07-20 17:10 · Score: 1

The early A2000 had bugs, but the B2000 was a great machine. Very upgradable.

I had one from early 88 until I left the country in july 2002

eventually I had a GVP '030 board in the CPU slot, with 12 megs of RAM, running the SCSI hard drives (biggest was 1 gig) and a CDROM, a flicker fixer in the video slot, and a GVP I/O card with faster serial ports (to run the BBS) and an extra printer port. THe original parallel port was used to PARNET to the A1200

Re:The B2000 was a great machine by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 08:58 · Score: 0

Wow! Would it still run BTOS/CTOS? ;-)

Amiga rulz! by mariano.clinica · 2014-07-20 17:22 · Score: 1

Amiga rulz!

Amiga 2000 in East German nuclear research by Sique · 2014-07-20 17:58 · Score: 3, Insightful

In the late 1980ies, the Nuclear Research Facility at Rossendorf near Dresden, Germany had two Amigas 2000 as central processing units for their accelerator experiments. It was fascinating, because Rossendorf was in communist East Germany, and the Amigas probably were bought half-legally for obscene amounts of (east german) money. But appearently they urgently needed the 32bit processing capability and were using selfdeveloped Zorro cards for the signal reception and processing.

--
.sig: Sique *sigh*

Re:Amiga 2000 in East German nuclear research by drinkypoo · 2014-07-20 23:23 · Score: 1

But appearently they urgently needed the 32bit processing capability and were using selfdeveloped Zorro cards for the signal reception and processing.
Makes sense. Amigas were some of the last well-documented computers, down to schematics.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Amiga 2000 in East German nuclear research by derinax · 2014-07-21 06:26 · Score: 1

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) also extensively used the Amiga for data visualization (Hippograph), capture, and documention (TeX) in the late 80s and just into the early 90s. A few great (mythical?) Amiga applications are hosted there, still:
https://www.slac.stanford.edu/...
http://science.slashdot.org/co...

sold box, still have cards by dltaylor · 2014-07-20 18:13 · Score: 1

I sold my A2000, stripped, for $300 way back when. I still have the card set (RAM, '030, 7-port serial, two SCSI adapters, 8088 bridge board, video sync; even the two SCSI hard drives still work). Maybe I should buy one and put it back together to support 32-bit Linux. I have the CD32 and A500 for the games, I s'pose. Tricky bit is converting the old output to VGA, much less HDMI.

First cards were for a homebrew ZorroII expansion I built for the A1000. 2 additional Megabytes of RAM and the Amiga's yet-to-be-equaled ramdisk gave me a really usable system.

Re:The Jurassic Park part... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 19:23 · Score: 0

In 1990, the Video Toaster suite was released, incorporating LightWave 3D, and running on the Commodore Amiga computer.
The last known standalone revision for the Amiga was Lightwave 5.0, released in 1995. Shortly after the release of the first PC version, NewTek discontinued the Amiga version, citing the platform's uncertain future.

Movies that used Lightwave
Jurassic Park (1993 Visual Effects Academy Award)

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

So a production in 1993 couldn't have been using anything else than the Amiga version.

Now GTFO, cocksucking troll.

Re:The Jurassic Park part... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-20 20:00 · Score: 0

While I'm a big amiga fun, it is known that the amigas were used only for internal testing and preview footage, the actual movie effects were done using silicon graphics hardware and software.

I also quite well remember interviews, perhaps in the dvd special contents about this.

Some of the SGI hardware used to make the movie is also used as a prop in the movie's park control center room.

At least an SGI indigo2 and an onyx are visible there. The amigas did not get any screen time unluckily...But commodore was already bankrupt and the time so I can understand them.

Ah the memories. by Bender+Unit+22 · 2014-07-20 21:09 · Score: 1

I had the 500 and got a 2000 later on. Installed a SCSI controller with 40 megabytes of disk space and a 8 megabyte RAM expansion card. Took forever to install all the memory chips in the card(62 or 72, cant remember if it had a parity bit).
Also had a vt200 terminal from work which i connected to the serial port so I could access the cmdline while someone was playing games. I guess it was most for show. :)

Amigas aren't very Amiga compatible. by damnbunni · 2014-07-20 22:15 · Score: 1

They really aren't. Trying to get Amiga software working on an Amiga is often a pain in the ass.

Got a different revision Kickstart chip? No game for you. Got the right Kickstart but any RAM config other than 512K Chip / 512K Trapdoor FAST? No game for you. Got an Amiga that's not a 500? No game. Got an aftermarket video card? Sorry. Sound card? Well, it won't crash, but the game won't use it.

'System legal' Amiga software was pretty solid on different models, but any game written for an A500 or A1200, you were shooting craps if it'd run or not.

I had an Amiga 3000 Tower/040 with 29 megs of RAM (yes, 29), a Cybervision3D video card, Quicknet ethernet, and a 386 BridgeBoard, and frankly I had an easier time getting MS-DOS and Mac games (using Shapeshifter) running than Amiga games.

For that matter, it's easier running them now on my Sam440ep/flex based Amiga by right-clicking them and picking 'Run In UAE' from the menu.

On the other hand, I could easily have supplemented my income by renting the A3000T's case out as an efficiency apartment for a family of four, so it did have that going for it.

And it was a hell of a machine for Pagestream and Photogenics. (Both of which I still use, actually. But on the PPC Amiga, or in WinUAE.)

Re:Amigas aren't very Amiga compatible. by 50000BTU_barbecue · 2014-07-20 23:17 · Score: 2

Well neither were PCs of the era. Try to get EMS memory programs to run with EMM? No luck. Maybe install a driver in your config.sys? But then it would break other programs. Want to get a CD-ROM? Which type would it be, the kind that hung off your special sound card's bus, a stand-alone CD controller or IDE?
What about your mouse? Think you can bring your mouse over to your friend's house? Hmm, was that a serial mouse or a bus mouse? Which bus?
Got a new sound card? Think that program that only supported the old Soundblaster would work with your new Turtle Beach card? Wait, how many hours of trial and error config.sysing is that going to be?

--
Mostly random stuff.
Re:Amigas aren't very Amiga compatible. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 00:57 · Score: 0

How could you neglect to mention NTSC vs PAL? For the record, my father bought or pirated just about every Amiga game ever made, but only a few early titles (Artic Fox) ever had a problem with 1 meg of chip ram or extra fast memory.
Re:Amigas aren't very Amiga compatible. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 15:00 · Score: 0

Many times the incompatibilities with different configs was caused by overzealous copy protection where the programmer tried every trick in the book to make the code difficult to debug and crack. As a result, these tricks ruined compatibility. As such cracked copies tend to be more compatible than the originals.
This isn't always true though. Sometimes crackers made poor assumptions about memory configs which caused other incompatibilities.
Re:Amigas aren't very Amiga compatible. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-22 20:10 · Score: 0

That was trivial to solve. At least Dos 6 had support for boot menus, where you could have options such as "EMS", "No EMS", "No EMS + CD", etc.
And for older version of Dos you could always use boot diskettes with different versions of config.sys and autoexec.bat.
The problem with Amiga was that the hardware itself wasn't compatible, fixing hardware is often impossible while fixing boot scripts just takes some tweaking.

Memories by jtownatpunk.net · 2014-07-20 22:58 · Score: 1

The talk of needing to find a loaded A2000 to make it worth buying reminds me of the old Iris 3130 I picked up for a couple hundred way way back in the day. When I popped the cover, it was absolutely loaded. Every slot filled. Ribbon cables strung everywhere,blinkenlites flashing. If there was an expensive card for the 3130, it was in there. What a beast. It was named bigiron.sgi.com. :)

Learning from old machines by sjbe · 2014-07-20 23:59 · Score: 1

Maybe it's reliving the past, maybe it's a waste of time, but it's how I enjoy wasting my time.

It's not a waste of time if you are doing it to learn something. Some of the old engineering that went into these early PCs was quite remarkable and there are some extremely useful lessons to be learned. A lot of the best engineering happens when people have severely constrained resources. Engineering tends to get sloppy without constraints.

That said if you are doing it frequently purely for nostalgia then you should probably worry about whether you are wasting time. Nothing wrong with playing with an old machine for a while out of nostalgia just like there is nothing wrong with watching a favorite old movie once again. But after a certain point it ceases to become nostalgia and becomes an inability to move on. Living the past over and over isn't (likely) going to result in anything new or creative. It might be fun but unless you do something with it beyond just playing old games and solving old problems (again) then it runs the risk of being pointless.

Re:Learning from old machines by Ol+Olsoc · 2014-07-21 01:21 · Score: 1, Insightful

There is something just awesome in any slashdotter telling another they are wasting their time.
After all, we all do put Slashdot use on our resume don't we?
After all, we could be checking out our Facebook pages, or maybe playing Angry Birds.
You know - important stuff that shows our amazing productivity, focus on what counts in life, and wise use of our time instead of screwing around with an old Amiga.

--
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Re:Learning from old machines by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 06:00 · Score: 0

I just happened to re-watch Terminator 3 this morning. Yeah, yeah, plot needs and cinematic "verisimilitude" (thanks and tip o' the hat to Harlan here, from somewhere in the "Glass Teat" archives) take precedence, but I still find the scene where John Connor and Kate Brewster enter the 30-year old Crystal Peak bunker wildly unrealistic in that all that ancient equipment fires up and operates with no problems, no string of exploding power supply caps and fried circuitry, and so forth. Not so much as a dead blinkenlight. (I'll beg the question of how they survive on similiarly ancient stored food. Maybe it was freeze-dried or something.)
Now, I have seen old computers start up just fine. Other times, well, not so much. YMMV. Newer machines may fare better at similar vintage, at least the power supplies and support circuitry, but I'm thinking nanoscale processes are going to be much more subject to bit rot, gamma-rays, diffusion, etc. than older architectures. Something to think about in your Doomsday or sustainable tech, not made in China planning, anyway. Reforming or replacing capacitors is well within reach of even a sorcerer's apprentice and simple tools. Even making new ones. Reballing BGA chips, less so. Chip engineering and production, well, you figure the odds.
I'm just wondering why you're chopping the legs out from you own argument above, though. It's not just whole avenues of engineering that are being forgotten, sometimes, but entire design concepts and architectures, that may or may not be relevant to future needs. Sometimes they live on, for a while, under another name, or implemented in some obscure processor or microcontroller or other, for a while, maybe longer for a small and seemingly shrinking pool of engineers and computer architects, who nevertheless have enough to do keeping up on current practice, and do not have the luxury of being historians, or even hobbyists/enthusiasts or, dare I say it, *ack* collectors or *puke* speculators.
If you're just being self-deprecating, you are singularly lacking in charm. Buck up, sonny; this shit is fun!
Re:Learning from old machines by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 17:14 · Score: 0

I still find the scene where John Connor and Kate Brewster enter the 30-year old Crystal Peak bunker wildly unrealistic in that all that ancient equipment fires up and operates with no problems, no string of exploding power supply caps and fried circuitry, and so forth. Not so much as a dead blinkenlight.
One word: milspec. :)

The biggest thing I took from this article ... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 00:01 · Score: 0

... is that the author badly needs to employ the services of a proof-reader.

remember... by davethomask · 2014-07-21 00:13 · Score: 0

remember those amiga 500/1200 demo sceners? well, they're back and their hungry for more.. cowabunga! t34m p4r4d0x.

Re:Play for blood, remember? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 01:02 · Score: 0

Don't you understand that posting a wall of irrelevant verbiage in an online forum is rude, because it gets in the way of people reading what they want to read, and it makes people hate you? You don't really want to be hated, do you?

OCD alert by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 01:08 · Score: 0

WTF? "bazaar" is a place to buy things. "bizarre" is when people use it to mean "strange".

Lame article by Sloppy · 2014-07-21 02:27 · Score: 1

Clicked (thought submitter screwed up the link and linked to a page that links to the article, rather than linking to the article), expecting to find a story about a forgotten A2000: maybe someone walked into an office in 2014 and saw that one was in use. Or someone knocked down a wall in 2014 and found one bricked up but still powered up. Instead, found a page telling everyone what A2000s are. Duh. Where's the "forgotten" part? All that I can tell that was forgotten, is that the writer forgot his elementary school spelling and punctuation lessons.

--
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.

Re:Lame article by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 09:36 · Score: 0

You didn't see the part about how the A2000 and the Video Toaster, changed the way video titling, digital effects, and TV ad production were done, down to the local network afilliate level? Granted this is to my view somewhat chauvinistic hyperbole (there was similar gear for other platforms, and the narrow field of video production is not quite "the world"), but this combo did rule wildcat and even a lot of pro video production for a good while and upset an number of apple carts (couldn't resist), as well as high-end professional video production gear, in the process. "Changing the world" is pushing it, but it did lower the entry bar for a lot of people.
Yeah, advertising. Oh, the irony.

Network card by touringsedan · 2014-07-21 03:15 · Score: 1

I recently purchased a new network card, the 'X-Surf 100' from Individual Computing for an expensive $150 dollars. It has a Zorro II and III compatible design, allowing it to work in all Amiga desktop models and a very recent TCP stack. The card is awesome and it is great that some groups are still making tech for these old machines. This works great in my A2000. You also don't need mac emulating hardware, as I have been using MacOS 7 with the Amiga app 'ShapeShifter' with great success. I would recommend a 68040/060 and a RTG video card. My systems all have RTG video cards and ethernet, allowing me to use modern monitors in 1024x768 resolution as minimum. No one is making new RTG video cards that I can find, and that is a shame, as the best ones (Picasso IV) can easily go for over $500 US. For DOS, I find I can't beat DOSBox for emulation, but did have some success with a GoldenGate bridge board, again pretty hard to find.

I still use mine by Tempest_2084 · 2014-07-21 04:00 · Score: 1

I still have an Amiga 2000 hooked up, but I only use it to play games. A vanilla 2000 is really the same thing as a 500, but it has a nice detachable keyboard and the ability to take expansion cards which is nice. I have a HD and memory card inside mine along with a VGA board so I don't have to rely on hard to find Amiga monitors. AGA graphics and accelerators are nice, but the best games don't need them (in my opinion anyway). I tried using a 1200 for a while, but I could never shake the feeling that it was an over glorified keyboard with some computer innards. I need my giant boxy computers. :)

Love my Amiga 2000 by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 04:17 · Score: 0

My 2000 has a Blizzard 060, SCSI drive (though I am about to go SCSI-to-SATA conversion), DVD-RW, a HD and DD floppy (like anyone uses floppies these days, amiright?) 24-bit VGA card, an a new X-Surf 10/100 network card with on-board USB 2.0 (sadly, I don't have a USB stack for it, yet.) Works a treat. Love this machine.

Learning is never a waste of time by sjbe · 2014-07-21 04:38 · Score: 1

There is something just awesome in any slashdotter telling another they are wasting their time.

If you learn things that is (almost) never a waste of time. I learn things here despite the signal to noise ratio at times. I see perspectives and debate about topics I do not find elsewhere. If you think slashdot is nothing but useless noise I would have to ask why you bother coming here unless you are trolling.

Personally I don't grok the appeal of playing around with loooong obsolete computer gear out of nostalgia but to each their own.

Re:Learning is never a waste of time by Ol+Olsoc · 2014-07-21 05:04 · Score: 1

If you learn things that is (almost) never a waste of time. I learn things here despite the signal to noise ratio at times. I see perspectives and debate about topics I do not find elsewhere. If you think slashdot is nothing but useless noise I would have to ask why you bother coming here unless you are trolling.
Umm, entertainment? Like going to a party and chatting with friends, I learn something everywhere, but mostly here, I just discuss, sometimes argue. But seriously, most of it is just entertainment.

Personally I don't grok the appeal of playing around with loooong obsolete computer gear out of nostalgia but to each their own.
There is a whole world out there of people playing with obsolete technology. It's not always nostalgia either.
How about hit and miss engines? Now there's some obsolete tech. But people are still messing with them
Home made engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And since hoomins always take things to the semi - insane level, a Fairbanks Morse monster that someone is restoring for viewing pleasure and/or horror.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
There is more to life than Windows 8 and smartphones. All we wanna do, is have some fun, I got the feeling, I'm not the only one.

--
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.

This is missing a good chunk of the real story by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 04:39 · Score: 0

As I understood it, after the A1000 there were TWO teams competing on the design for what would eventually become the A2000. One team was located in Germany, the other in Los Gatos...and that team consisted of the original minds behind the original Amiga.

Two designs were made. The German team made the B2000 which "won" the contest. This would be the machine Haynie worked on. And the story goes that the Los Gatos team, the original Amiga people, created a machine that was so out there and so much of a "dream machine" that it made the idiots at Commodork choose the more practical B2000 design instead.

Who knows what the Los Gatos 2000 would have been like? There's a good reason why RJ Mical put the immortal hidden message in Workbench 1.2: "We made Amiga, they fucked it up."

My god by azav · 2014-07-21 04:49 · Score: 1

The author's grammar is terrible. He doesn't know that the plural of Amiga is Amigas. Such a painful read.

--
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...

Re:My god by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 09:11 · Score: 0

Amigae? Amigen? The latter makes some sense, actually.
Cut him some slack, or offer to proof the page. I'm going to try to buy something from him, or at least Paypal a donation, if I can. It beats feeding the whole click-pay scamverse robbing your wetware CPU cycles. The guy is providing useful content without the advertising bullshit, the way this web thing is *supposed* to be.

Not a Texas Company. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-21 05:11 · Score: 0

At the time NewTek as in Topeka Kansas. They moved to Texas long after Commodore went Bankrupt.

Learning and education can go together by sjbe · 2014-07-21 05:13 · Score: 1

Umm, entertainment? Like going to a party and chatting with friends, I learn something everywhere, but mostly here, I just discuss, sometimes argue. But seriously, most of it is just entertainment.

Learning and entertainment are not exclusive to each other. Not everything has to be a firehose of education. I come to slashdot for entertainment as well but if I never learned anything the entertainment value would vanish rapidly.

There is a whole world out there of people playing with obsolete technology. It's not always nostalgia either.

Exactly my point. There are lessons to be learned from obsolete tech and sometimes it turns out to be not as obsolete as we think. You can even have fun while you do it. But I don't really understand pointless nostalgia. Learn from the past but live in the present.

Forgotten by whom? by Lord+Kano · 2014-07-21 05:22 · Score: 1

I talk about retrocomputing with several people and most of those who are both over 30 and a long time computer users remember the Amiga.

LK

--
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano

A whole lot of Aggie by styrotech · 2014-07-21 12:10 · Score: 1

ba de ba de ba de dah

Wanna tell you story
About woman I know
When it comes to blittin'
She steals the show
She ain't exactly pretty
Ain't exactly small
Eighty Three Seventy Two A B
You could say she's got it all

Re:A whole lot of Aggie by PopeRatzo · 2014-07-22 00:13 · Score: 1

When it comes to blittin'
Do I have to go to the Urban Dictionary to find out what "blittin'" means? My guess is it's something dirty.

--
You are welcome on my lawn.
Re:A whole lot of Aggie by styrotech · 2014-07-22 09:35 · Score: 1

Do I have to go to the Urban Dictionary to find out what "blittin'" means? My guess is it's something dirty.
You got it. It's a bit like peeking and poking but much faster and involves extra hardware.

Slashdot Mirror

The Almost Forgotten Story of the Amiga 2000

192 comments