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What the Amiga Pioneers Are Doing Now
The_Borg writes "Nice little piece in the OttawaCitizen about the pioneers of Amiga and what they are doing now, as well as a few details of how Microsoft tried to sink them.
"
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I don't know if we can lay all the blame on MS, but they've been sunk for a long time. Why are we still seeing such articles?
I remember playing old classics like Lazer Chess and the like on my friend's old Amiga.. now they're incredibly powerful.. the fact that MS tried to shaft them just makes it worse.
,-----.----...---..--..-....-
' CitizenC
' "Bug? That's Not A Bug, That's A Feature!"
`-----.----...---..--..-....-
Nice to see that he's gone on to bigger and better things, and learned his lesson. Marketing is more than half of a successful product. We have Microsoft (and Intel, to a lesser extent) to thank for that.
The Blurb at the end about "the amiga will rise again" or something like that, is, like has been discussed here before, unlikely.
Everyone knows why.
The Amiga Loraine wasn't a Commodore product. It was an Atari product, before the Tramiel brothers came in. It was sold off to Commodore, because Atari was in trouble and the Tramiel Brothers had the ST.
More seriously, was this really slashdot material? If we wanted to talk about every sunken company that didn't make the cut, we'd be posting 50x stories a day for the next 2 years about the "coulda been" companies. For whatever reason, marketing, bad product, microsoft, will of god, however it happened - their product didn't make it.
As much as I hate to say it, the Amiga is well and truly dead. All we have had for the last few years is bickering and incompetence, and the world has just moved on. I don't honestly expect to see a new Amiga machine, and if I do I feel it will be under specified, new 2 years ago stuff that only the die hards will even look at and few of them will part with cash for it. Graphic design work is done with Mac or PC, and pretty much anything else is done with a PC. Sure you could have some kind of open standards machine that can live with whatever it's put with but I can't see it happening. the community and it's network have all but gone. There will be no-one to spread the word, and the machine will be poor. But then, I was an Atari ST user :)
J-aims
--
Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
Alas... i wish i hadn't sold my Amiga. Those are nifty little things. You'll have to excuse me. Maybe i should've went to bed about 14 hours ago.
"And these Web appliances could yet break Microsoft and Intel's domination of the desktop computer market."
What a strong revelation. AOL _is_ a major company, but isn't that stretching it a bit? Sure, I could see a resurgance(is that a word?) with Amiga.. especially with AOL involved.. maybe Gateway will make up for where Mr. Chowaniec lacked in marketing ability. But breaking through the strong 20 foot high diamond shard encrusted walls of the bigwigs like M$ and Intel would require a lot of firepower. I'm no business whiz, but it would probably take years to get to that point. If they're lucky enough to get that far. Maybe if they pick up a giant stuffed loveable aardvark name Freddie as their mascot they can win over the kiddies!
I don't know how many /.ers are from the GTO (Greater Ottawa Area!) but nobody I know holds the Citizen in very high regard. It's an OK paper but it's run by a fascist. And indeed there is a nickname for it. hint: what rhymes with the first syllable of citizen??
anyhow, has anyone else noticed how many slashdot stories actually come from the citizen? it's pretty suprising. perhaps it's because more people from ottawa read slashdot than one would think...
pdubroy AT yahoo DOT com
I do not see "details" in this article of Microsoft practices.
Slashdot people *need* to start reading your links. It's only fair that we see the real information
And I know your gonna moderate this down because why is that k1dd13 d1ss1ng the slashdot poeple theyresoooo cool.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
Marketing? Okay, so marketing is important, to be sure. But how important? The Amiga, while one would debate wether or not it was 'better' than the competition at hand, certainly was powerful enough. It was a wonder to use, and (although it's more of a collector's item nowadays) I still play with my old one every now and again. It's truly fun. Hard to get over the fact that when I turn it on, 9 seconds later I'm able to work.
Back to marketing... Did Microsoft kill Amiga? I think possibly. At that time in history, not (really) so way back when, the market, above all else, was crying for standardization. I don't think marketing killed Amiga, I think it was that.
Microsoft, hate them as you may, was able to deliver one thing to a lot of people. Compatability. Yes, marketing had a LOT to do with that, but not solely.
There was a clear demand for the ability to be able to share files with others. Sometimes, you wanted to share files with someone who didn't have the same hardware you did.
By making software that filled THAT void, I think Microsoft was able to conquor. The Amiga was a fascinating product, and still is, to a certain extent, but I don't believe that Marketing (at least not solely) was its death...
At least that's what the logo on my ol' Amiga 500 says. Who is Amiga today?
Slashdot material is whatever Rob, Jeff, etc. want to post.
Seems all the new people forget that when Slashdot displays stuff, people who are interested in the same sort of thing come here, not the other way around.
Finkployd
I can smell that from here!! anyways, sure the Amiga is dead, it coul dmake a come back, if does does, that'ld rock! all theyld need to do it have all of the latest hardware, and tweak it into one nice system, and who knows, it could very well be the same a when I used and Amiga 500, it was alot more powerfull then the crappy 386's at that time, damn cloneing, grrr!
This is really a puff piece, nothing to get excited over. The stuff that was exciting for me was tracking down the people who worked at Mark Williams on Coherent... anyone remember Coherent? It was a Unix for 286 clone, done in assembler. Woof, it was fast!
Another thing: What is this online service I keep reading about, American Online? Geez Louise man, that's twice in a week that error has made it to my notice.
And one more thing: How about a registry of stuff like this? You know, like Ex-MSFT for other projects.
--
I used to be a large Amiga fan, starting out with my 500 and then getting a 3000. I loved DPaint VI and my various ray tracing programs.
But then Doom came out. And it didn't come out on the Amiga. Plus the built in graphics chip on my 3000 was pretty lame compared to the SVGA cards on the market. That pretty much did it for me. Faster core processor was nicer for ray tracing (although I don't do as much anymore), the higher resolutions are a necessity for me, and the lack of Doom was a real problem. The technology was great in the past but a PC with a 3D card has a lot more tricks under the hood.
I am curious about the internet devices the article talks about. After playing around with some Sunrays, I can see these taking off big time (although not the Sunray incarnation of it. Sun servers and switched networks are too expensive). Since the Amiga had linux ported to it, these IDs might be able to run linux. A $200 linux machine would be a big consumer draw.
-no broken link
Of course,
it was Mrs. Denise Bond of Waller!
This machine was pushed as a Gaming machine, a Graphics machine, Video Production (Ah, the days of the Video Toaster) Programming, and desktop. Unfortunately, as the article states, Commodore was not exactly a Marketing Wizard. Sure, they put out a hell of a good product (almost everything from Commodore rocked), but when it came to actually pushing the product, they failed.
It's unfortunate that companies which make viable products get stomped out like this, but it's a hard lesson. It's also pretty sad that making a good product just isn't good enough to survive in business anymore.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
and what they are doing now, as well as a few details of how Microsoft tried to sink them. Can anyone show me where these details in the article are? I read the article several times, but could not find them. Looking at the pictures carefully did not help much either. I don't want to join the discussion of whether Amiga is dead or not. But now that people started attaching anti-Microsoft remarks to completely irrelevant articles , I wonder what will come next.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
Zigbee Central: A Zigbee weblog
I dont like to see Boing balls bounced around for attention; Amiga wont disappear, and does not need any fluffers to stay firmly rooted. ;^)
Its bizarre that a non-technical would dare mention a past stint at Commodore...With its greedy, horrible, money management, let alone the profoundly slim marketing push.
I dont recall seeing his signature on the inside of the A1000, or any of the Patents either.
Perhaps the name was in an easter-egg I missed.
Some errors in the article:
Gateway bought Amiga well over 2 years ago.
The AOL prediction is pure conjecture.
Calmos made some neat DES and key management processor hardware, along with the gambit of
intel 82Cxx peripherial chips.
I was strongly advised not to use Tundras 1st
gen PCI bridge chips by someone who did. Regretfully he had.
His saving these two IS something to tout, but
with the limited "bean-flow" into all things Amiga
(Like the CBM-PC compatibles) while at Commodore
puts one in the bad company of Gould, Haige, and the LBM. Whos next to join THEM?
Onward!
Joe Torre - X - HardwareEngineer @ Amiga Inc & ZapMedia Amiga, AmigaDE, BeOS, Linuxz, QNX, Rebol, Windoze, ZME: So
If you have a title about "Amiga Pioneers", I expect to find something about Jay Miner there, not some Commodore vice-prez. It's not like Commodore did the pioneering with Amiga, they just bought Jay's company when it would have died otherwise.
It's worth pointing out that Commodore did not invent that Amiga; they bought the Amiga company, which almost completely developed the Amiga 1000. Lorraine (the prototype) was done by the time C= got on the scene.
It was at Amiga, and not at Commodore, that the phrase "Guru Meditation" was born. Commodore later elided the phrase from KickStart (version 2.00, I believe).
Let's hook up a Beowulf cluster of Amiga Pioneers!
The true father of the Amiga was Jay Miner, who architected the system. Other names from the inner circle include Dale Luck, RJ Mical, and Dave Needle, but Mr. Miner (RIP) was the soul of the machine.
hint: what rhymes with the first syllable of citizen??
OK, English is not my first language, but I don't get it. What is the nickname anyway? Ottawa Citosine? Am I missing something?
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Today the trademark "Amiga" is owned by PC manufacturer Gateway.
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
Amiga was developed by a company that thought they were making the next great console. Their engineers, probably the finest design team that had ever been assembled to that point, had other ideas: they were going to make it the ultimate personal computer. Most of their development was done semi-secretly -- the people bankrolling the initial project didn't realize the feature set had expanded so enormously.
.8 or .9 or thereabouts) the same way that I had done on the Amiga. Linux was, in many respects, a bit like coming home again. Linux didn't really do graphics well (in a way it still doesn't: SVGALib just isn't that hot), and X was slower than dirt on the 386-16 I was running. It wasn't an Amiga replacement quite yet, but it was sure closer than Win 3.1.
:-)
Obviously, I'm not up on all the details here, but that original seed company ran into financial trouble. Atari lent them money, knowing that they probably wouldn't be able to pay it back and they would get this incredible technology very cheaply when the little company defaulted. (I don't know if the little company was called Amiga or not.)
Well, sure enough, they hadn't quite completed their design and the loan was due -- Atari was about to move in and shut them down. Commodore rode in as a white knight and bought the company lock, stock, and barrel. They repaid Atari and took the technology for themselves. This infuriated Jack Tramiel of Atari.
To get revenge, Atari slapped together what was essentially a cheap piece of shit that, on paper, appeared to have many of the same technical merits the Amiga did. In actual fact, it was a 68000 with some RAM, I/O ports, and very simple graphic and sound chips. TOS was their single-tasking operating system. The desktop was called GEM, and was ugly and sluggish. But it had a 68000, like the Amiga, and it actually clocked the CPU faster (8Mhz) instead of the Amiga's 7.14Mhz. It also included a built-in MIDI port, which is probably the only really cool thing about it.
The Atari STs had three big advantages over the Amiga. They were cheaper, were easier to program, and were backed by a big, sleazy advertising campaign. They ran 'comparison' ads all the time which were horribly slanted. They actually did pretty well with it for quite some time. The infighting between the Amiga and ST weakened both computers, and eventually destroyed both: the PC juggernaut overwhelmed them, though the Amiga lasted a lot longer. The Amiga/Atari wars were worse than any of the distro wars you see now. But ultimately, while the Atari died a lot sooner, they both still died.
It took ten years, however, for the PC to catch up to the Amiga completely. Out of the box, it could do 4,096 colors (32 at once in low res, 4096 at once in a special HAM mode that was really hard to program for). It had sprites, four-channel digital sound, and an array of (for the time) incredibly powerful custom chips that offloaded almost all of the graphic and sound work from the CPU.
The operating system multitasked with an incredibly light overhead. You could seriously expect to run several smaller programs in 256K. 512K was quite usable, and when you expanded the machine to 2.5MB of RAM you had a really kick-butt machine.
It didn't have the concept of memory-to-disk paging, but that's probably just as well. Disk I/O was always bad on the Amigas; their filesystem really wasn't very good, and their floppies weren't especially reliable. It wasn't until you added a hard drive that they really started to sing, and most consumers couldn't afford hard drives back then.
It wasn't until 1994 that I could really multitask on my PC (with an early Linux,
My personal PC didn't rival my original Amiga for actual useful power until about 1996: considering our family bought our Amiga 1000 in Christmas of 1985, I think that's just amazing legs. I have a friend who is still using an A2000 (1987 or so) and absolutely swears by it.
At this point the original technology is hopelessly primitive and probably not worth saving, IMO. There are just too many features missing that we are all used to. The BeOS is, at present, the closest you can get to the Amiga. If you want to get back into that type of technology again, I'd suggest BeOS on a dual-CPU PC instead.
They did finally emulate the Amiga in software. There is a commercial package with ready-to-run binaries that will allow you to do almost anything you could do with a real Amiga. Check Cloanto for details. You can also, if you wish, download and assemble the pieces separately without paying for them, a la Linux.
It's worth a look. There were some cool ideas back then. The Amiga was the most technologically brilliant personal computer ever created. There are a lot of us older geeks out there who have very fond memories indeed.
"as well as a few details of how Microsoft tried to sink them." Where does it talk about this? Bert Hill talks about Microsoft all of twice, first saying that the Amiga was "a quaint early personal computer that fell under the juggernaut of Microsoft and Intel." The second is in reference to Amiga's "web appliances [which] could yet break Microsoft and Intel's domination of the desktop computer market." According to Mr. Chowaniec, "We had a brilliant piece of technology, but we did a lousy job of marketing and that proved to be the Achilles heel." Jeez. They also mention Philadelphia. Why don't you also mention that details of how Philadelphia was responsible for crushing Amiga are revealed.
Well, unlikely, maybe, but not prohibitively so. Systems other than MS-Windows, Linux included, are gaining ground. There's no reason Amiga can't be a player if their approach is good.
---GEC
Bow-ties are cool.
Bullshit. It's not there. Read the article. It just says that the Amiga fell by the wayside. Yet certain posters like everything to sound like a Microsoft conspiracy.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
But 2 things we should not forget:
In 1994 a 368-16 was not a hot (Intel)-machine anymore
and
with a 68000 you have no real
memory protection.
So multitasking with AmigaOS is not
the same as with Linux.
Or?
Frank
Not getting in to the Amiga is the best every debate, I reckon that it was/is the coolest machine ever.
Things like the Guru Meditation. While other computers had ther lx234I chips, the Amiga had Paula and Denise chips. PC's had Very Large intergrated chips, Amiga had Fat chips (Fat Agnus for example).
It was like they were computers built by real people for real people, not machines built by tech heads for accountants!.
Still, Linux could take the coolest crown yet...
Tokyo Joe
as far as I know, there's no way to do something like this. Let's face it: it's fricking hard to make Windows do anything other than what it was supposed to--it's simply not flexible enough. Considering all of crap it does--swap files, fscking, logs, blah blah blah... I'm pretty sure it's impossible.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
In their heyday, I don't question that they were good machines. But let's be realistic. I really don't think they'd be able to get back into the market this late in the game. Do you really think they'd be able to make a comeback, and somehow win out against Winblows, Linux, and even the entire x86 architecture? Truth is, x86 has been around so long that it can be very cheaply made, and if I'm gonna go through the trouble of switching architectures, it'd better be pretty damn cool. I wouldn't switch to anything under 64-bit.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
...they wrote 'American Online' in that article. It used to bug the hell out of me when, many moons ago, I worked in a computer retail store and had to put up with endless hordes of people inevitably putting that extra 'n' in 'America Online.' Eghads.
Make affiliate bucks
Just to double-check, and because it was lying around, I just checked the August, 1985 issue of Byte, which was the first in-depth look at the Amiga. Let's see who they mention: the late Jay Miner. (It's a shame they don't mention the guys behind the software, too. Although they describe the software components, no one else is mentioned by name. It's been so long now that the only names I can think of off-hand are Carl Sassenrath and RJ Mical.)
The real definition of an Amiga "pioneer" would be someone with his signature on the inside top cover of an Amiga 1000. Is there a list of these somewhere?
The old A500 2Mb and 20 Mb HDD. bought at Xmas '88, and I still play the odd game on it. It was an absolute masterpiece of design and engineering, and it only cost around £300.
The designers were gurus. Massive respect, espscially for by-passing all the Corporate mess, and still producing a superb product.
Anyway, it seems to me that the two most revolutionary computers ever built were the Apple II and the Amiga (hell, throw the original Mac in there, too). Both died because of improper marketing and, if Microsoft had been eliminated early on, I think the war would be between Apple and Amiga. Both were amazing machines that nothing before (or after) can compare to--it's a shame the wintel market took so many years to come up with equivelent technology.
Jay Miner died back in 1994.
go to www.jms.org to find out more
I remember when AmigaDOS v2.04 came out, and how it was trumpeted that the Guru Meditation error had finally been eliminated.
:)
:(
Guru meditation errors were obnoxious because it locked up your whole machine with this pile of useless numbers staring you in the face. Much like the BSOD on NT machines, or kernel panics on Unix machines except Guru's happened much much more often.
Anyway so it was funny when the marketing claimed that AmigaDOS v2.04 was much more reliable because they'd eliminated the Guru meditation problem.
Well, they hadn't eliminated it, just renamed it. Not quite the same thing.
Actually my Amiga 500 started guruing far more often with v2.04, it would even guru when I turned off my external 2400 baud modem. That's how unstable the platform was...
is refreshing compared to people like 'kitsune sushi', who puts such faith in moderation that his sig informs us all that 'If you have something intelligent to say, log in and get moderated up. Otherwise, you're wasting your time'.
I told him the sig was lame and got 2 paragraphs of psychotic insults. Yours I find humorous becasue it is the exact opposite!
Juln
Who???
:o)
It would have been for more useful to see what the various Big Name Amigoids are doing now. Far example, Carl Sassenrath who wrote chunks of the OS, Dave Haynie their senior engineer (and maker of the hilarious C= Deathbed Vigil video) Fred Fish even. On a tangent, I notice that Jeff Minter is working for/with 3DO.
Ever noticed how Amiga desktop like GNOME can be? Suspiciously so IMHO.
X
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
I've never heard of this guy either.
Dave Haynie was one of the main engineers with the Amiga.
And some of the guys who supported the Amiga through freeware/shareware...
Fred Fish... long before there was the internet, there was the Fred Fish collection of software.
And Matt Dillon contributed a lot. Dmouse was one of my favorite tools, and he also had a C compiler, etc.
The only thing Microsoft ever did to damage the Amiga was writing the AmigaBASIC interpreter. It was essentially a very early version of what would later become QuickBASIC.
That is, it no longer required line numbers, and supported functions and subroutines and such.
However it was slow as hell.
Actually one of the things which hurt the Amiga was the lack of good development tools and information.
I think it's funny that slashdot always uses 'Microsoft' to get people interested in an article.
Hard to read some since the're signatures so many errors are possibe.
Jo?? Ca?ill
Dan Beitman
Scribble
Risle Geiger
Robert J. Mical (very arty too)
327002-01 REV A
Ali??en E. Co?????
Dave Moun
Jay Miner
Bel Pavireau
Dave Dean
Paw Print
Darlaine Mc Donell
E?levin Chu (Three non-acii chars follow)
Carl Sassenrath
Dave Nee?lle
Ronald H. Nicholson j
Se??n Dic?n
Scribble
Can't even tell which way is up.
Mary McCoy
Ste?? Shepard
Neil Ma?in
Bob "Kodiak" Burns
Cheryl ?ill?ois
Bill Kobb
Mik? Di Fapp
Mitchell ?ass
Aki T_L
Ca??? Neeues
Bruce Thompson
Don L??k
??ep M??t?
Lau?i? jan Rusch
Dale Due?
Anne Mo?oles
Jesn Belle?
Joe Pillow
Mike Slifeak
Jeff L Tayler
Lee Ho
Dan R?i???qus
Dave Doineman
Something Lee
Tall Scribble '85
Scribble
Cris R
Martin P??y?ybl??i
Three chars (Angly lookin face, T hugging a square, and A guy looking at space panic)
Another Scribble.
-- That which does not kill us has made its last mistake.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I'm more interested in what RJ Mical, Carl Sassenrath, Dale Luck, Dave Haynie etc than any of these guys. Let's face it: Microsoft didn't kill the Amiga. Commodore did. Piracy did. Gateway did.
---
Not quite. QuickBASIC started life as "Ruby" and was written by Cooper Software....who ceased to exist after Microsoft bought them.
ESR lives near Philly, for at least 20 years now
The stats for the display are correct. 320X400 at 64 colors (32 colors + 32 "half-bright" colors) and
640X400 with 16 colors. Half-bright mode was new in the ECS chipset, the first Amigas had only 32 colors
in low res. The palette was 12bit allowing for 4096 "Possible" colors. There was a special mode called
"Hold And Modify" (HAM) that worked under 320X400. I'm not sure of the math involved, but a pixel could
be modified by an adjacent pixel, causing gradations or modifications of some sort. This mode could
display all 4096 colors. This true hack done by Jay Miner almost didn't make it into the final production of
the Agnes chip. It was left IN because it either would have left a hole of unused space on the chip die, or it
would set back the production of the Amiga to redesign the chip. Jay Miner had said in retrospect that he
was glad that he left it in. I'm glad he did as it allowed the Amiga to be the first personal computer to do
photo realism in 3D programs. Anyone remember Sculpt 3D?
BTW I have about $15K of Amiga equipment that I would like to find a home for. (Scary when you start
adding up all the money you've spent!)
It's mandatory to wash your hands before returning to the land of Dairy Queen.
Amiga Lives ! and will never die they even have an icq based client for ami
The relevancy of putting a Microsoft bash in the article could be debated heavily, but the truth is that although the Amiga didn't fit in with Gates's plan for all home computers to resemble miniature mainframes (The Amiga was small, fast and comparitively reliable, anathema to DOS and Windoze-heads in the early '90s), I don't believe M$ considered them a real threat due to the fact that their main user base was based in Europe, which, he probably reasoned, could be swung by a heavy advertising campaign from a 'new' product. People from the UK will agree that we were hit by a MONSTROUS ad campaign for Win95 in an attempt to switch us. Adults bought PC's because of the heavy advertising and didn't know any better, and the kids bought them because of DOOM, which didn't have a serious contender on the Amiga for another year. (Although it said a lot for the machine that AB3D, Gloom, Fears and the like ran playably on a CPU less powerful than a 286!). Rumours abound in the Amiga community that Medhi Ali was paid by Gates to wind up CBM, however my BS detector quivers strongly on that one, as I believe that CBM, especially in the US, was a badly mismanaged company whose shareholders wanted to be in bed with Gates and 'the big boys' as they probably saw it. This shows in the fact that Commodore PC clones were, in the public eye at least, given marketing priority over Amigas in the US (source : Eric Schwartz). What the shareholders saw as a 'minority machine' due to the Amiga's notable foothold in Europe as opposed to the US, just simply wasn't generating enough capital for them. This is an aspect of the computer world that I really, really hate.
I don't know if or how the Amiga can have a future, or at any rate didn't until I heard of the plan to Open-Source the Amiga OS. This can only be a good thing. Pushing up the spec of computers is also a Good Thing. Filling up these computers with BloatWare that takes up space that could be used better elsewhere is categorically NOT A GOOD THING. That is what keeps the Amiga alive in the minds and hearts of those who used one on a regular basis, because they remember a time when the OS was designed with efficiency and intuitiveness in mind, rather than these pretty, but slow and cumbersome monstrosities that M$ has been churning out for years.
Perhaps my nostalgia is dissolving my thoughts into a rant, but the damage that Microsoft did, and continues to do with all it's competitors, simply by using marketing and advertising to convice a sometimes sheep-like public that THERE IS NO REAL ALTERNATIVE TO OUR PRODUCT is very palpable indeed to all who try to pick up the computer baton and run ahead of the game that M$ would like to think it controls.
Yes, Commodore had wonderful ways of shooting itself in the foot, even when it had superior product, but the fact that a bunch of Californinan dentists with a couple of million dollars to burn, plus a team of dedicated engineers could steal a jump on Big Blue and M$ in the 80's when they hadn't got to thinking about the home market yet, at least should give us hope.
What made the Amiga for me was the fact that it was a computer that a simpleton could at first use, and then grow to understand how it worked at their own pace (Thanks to an inspired OS), and then play arcade quality games on when they got bored. This was the route that really got me into computer-related things, and I have been slightly disillusioned with them ever since the M$/corporate mentality took over circa 1994.
Only the Linux way of thinking gives me hope that computers could be more than just another way of getting revenue these days, and the open-sourcing of Amiga OS can only teach the lesson of a well-written OS to a new generation.
+++ RANT MODE OFF +++
Anyway those that really want to know about Amiga, what it did and who was involved, there is a list of them here There are more lists which mention more people, for those who wish to look. The most widely known of former CBM-Amiga engineers, Dave Haynie, occasionally posts here, and can be seen occasionally throughout the 'Net. A list of amiga specs that Haynie rescued from the CBM vaults is here.
As for the other engineers, I just hope that they're still being nuts somewhere, and haven't been sucked into the corporate tangle that is the dark side of computing today. Jay Miner, as most Amigans know, tragically died in 1994, after many years of illness, but his mark on the technological world is indelible, and the love he and the other engineers had for their little lump of silicon and PCB is echoed in the fact that the Amiga will never be forgotten by those who used them, and some who still use them today.
Well, please forgive the incoherence, and I hope that I talk a bit of sense to some of you here and there.
Don't let the b*stards get you down,
Tc.
- "How do we do it? Volume!" - The Bursar of Unseen University.
<WARNING TYPE=OFFTOPIC>
Really? Like what?
I collect used Amiga stuff like a refrigerator collects dust bunnies. Much to the chagrin of my wife. :)
</WARNING>
Later...
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
Due to the fact that the Amiga is dead, we may change that word's meaning to the most technologically advanced machine of the time. For example, the next "Amiga" would be Playstation II based computers. "Amiga" now stands for innovation and high technology; that is what the Amiga symbolizes for me. A true Amiga nowadays should be 64-bit, doing 2000x1500 32-bit graphics with 1 bilion polygons and 1024 digital sound channels, all orchestrated by the hardware in a steady 60 fps or more. Please bear in mind that big corporations of 1984 (IBM, Intel etc) could also produce a computer 20 years ahead of their time. But how much profitable that would be? Nowadays we are getting a little bit of new technology every semester from the big corporations and we run like crazy to buy it! If the Pentium III has been out at 1990, who would care to upgrade in the 90s?
The Tramiel family owned Atari from 1985 onwards, IIRC. Jack Tramiel ran CBM in the days of the C64, but was forced out for various reasons around 1984/5 He set things up so that by the time he quit CBM, he owned and ran Atari, who actually tried to buy the Amiga. However Tramiel refused to play fair, and CBM steamed in at the 11th hour and bailed Amiga out.
The Amiga still lives mainly because of the attachment of those who use them, not because of Gateway IMHO.
Anyway, I've posted a rant below summing up my feelings on this.
Have fun,
Tc.
- "How do we do it? Volume!" - The Bursar of Unseen University.
The Atari of the late '70s and early '80s was cool.
The monstrosity of Atari under the Tramiels was certainly not
I have a feeling that the Hasbro Atari is trading on it's association with pioneering video games, as opposed to the cut-throat money grabbing behemoth of the 80's who held back games development for 6 years with the ST.
Besides, only Tramiel's Atari could make an OS and call it TOS! (A very appropriate name, I feel.)
- "How do we do it? Volume!" - The Bursar of Unseen University.
As for the Amiga, it wasn't because of Microsoft that it died (yes, I'm considering it dead - see below) - and neither was it because the platform wasn't good enough. No, it was Commodore's horrible management that killed it.
Now, let's return to the issue of death. What does it mean when you say that a computer platform is dead ? As it has been pointed, Amigas do exist in some form and software for it is being actively developed. Yes, this is true. But still, for most people, it's only a reason for nostalgy.
Amiga, as a phenomenon, is gone. It was a great computer, years ahead of its time - and in the mainstream computing world, with millions of users and lots of software. The days of glory are gone, and no matter how much the Amiga enthusiasts would want it, those days will not return. Amiga is, and will remain, a niche computer, with no significance to the majority of the user base.
So - as a former Amiga user - for me, as I used to know it, Amiga is dead. Period.
> You can also, if you wish, download and assemble the pieces separately without paying for them, a la Linux. Every person who uses Amiga ROM images and OS without buying them should be hanged! If the SW is not bought, then Amiga could die. And in the other hand, emulated Amiga is a far cry from the real one. Buy the HW also and get the feel of the real thing. -bbuilder (Amiga user since 1985, also PC user from 3/96 till 19/96, now 100% (or 99%, maybe) pure Amigan)
Linux is slow & sluggish in multitasking, when compared to Amiga.
If you need stability, get Linux (without X).
If you want SPEED with BALLS, then buy Amiga!
As VP of technology, Chowaniec was probably as responsible for the Amiga's demise as anyone. Funny how he now looks back with pride at the Amiga, I don't recall ever hearing him show much support for Amiga when he was with Commodore.
Actually, though, the reason the Amiga didn't have Doom was due to marketing. Commodore killed the Amiga market enough that Id had no reason to release an Amiga port. Apparently there just wasn't high enough expected sales. Can't say I blame them.
After Doom got ported to the Mac, though, Amiga users were able to run Doom using Mac emulators, and it wasn't bad. And of course, within a day or two of Id releasing the Doom source, native Amiga ports started showing up as well, and these are actually quite good -- better than the original in some ways. (But so is the DosDoom port.)
We didn't get Quake either, until the Linux source got leaked and some pirate ported it. Once there were a few thousand people playing Quake on their Amigas, someone (Clickboom) took advantage of this .. ahem .. marketing reasearch .. and got a license from Id for a legitimate port.
Similar thing happened with Myst also. Some pirate had to do the marketing research before we could get a legit port. With a situation like that, it's no wonder that game developers have stayed away from the Amiga in the 90s, but it's not the machine's fault -- it is quite capable of playing the games. You can play any game you want on an Amiga if you can just get source code. I sure wish Bungee would accidently leak some of their stuff some time... ;-)
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At the time of the Amiga's heyday, Microsoft wasn't really a juggernaut, and neither they nor the PC world in general took the Amiga seriously.
The company that did take them seriously was Apple.
The Amiga wasn't as friendly as the Macintosh--in terms of usability, Intuition never caught up to Finder--but in most other respects, it kicked the Macintosh's butt. Remember, this was 1985: Macs didn't even do color at that point, and there was nothing on the Apple drawing board that could come close to the Amiga's capabilities.
This is the real reason the Apple IIgs came into being--Apple needed something right then that could compete with the Amiga, and the in-development Macintosh II wasn't going to do it: its price was just far too prohibitive for home use.
Apple insiders said that while Apple dismissed Commodore in public, that wasn't the case inside--they were seen as the real threat. I still remember persistent rumors that Commodore's one "big money" TV campaign for the Amiga (high special-effects budget and the Pointer Sisters) failed to get much, if any, network time because Apple threatened to pull their advertising if Commodore was given time--although as far as I know those rumors have never been substantiated.
Amiga is dead - tough!!! Long Line Intel/FreeBSD
Interesting tidbit about the AtariTramielC= games: people claimed that effectively the Amiga is a descendant of the Atari 400/800 series, while the ST is a descendent of the C64.
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