Damn you, Brits!;-)
It was never sold in Germany!! I wanted one so bad! Because it had an interpreter that allowed mixing of BASIC and assembly code!
On the VIC-20, I only had a printout of the 6502 instruction set, and manually assembled DATA lines to POKE into memory!;-)
Ah yes, you're right!! Now I remember!:o)
Never tried it with UAE!! LOL!
I have AmigaForever lying around a Windoze drive somewhere. Currently, I'm using Linux, however. Shame there's no AmigaForever for Linux. As soon as I get UAE set up again on my box, I'll give it a go!:-)
Yup, that's exactly what was in store for our generation of programmers. I also started programming on a VIC-20, when I was 12. I understood the concept immediately (because, before that, I had a small computer that was programmable in machine code to blink lights and make sounds), and began programming in BASIC within a couple of days. At first, I didn't even have a cassette drive, and I had to write my programs on paper and re-type them everytime. About a month later, I had a cassette drive and a memory expansion, and the real adventure began. I was writing mostly games in BASIC and assembly language (actually, machine code, I had to hand-assemble).
When I got an Amiga in 1986, I learnt systems programming, hardware programming, C and M68K assembly language, and, most importantly, writing 32-bit, multithreaded GUI applications, because it was a necessity on AmigaOS.
I still include AmigaOS in the "easy to program" category (albeit things were much harder than on the VIC-20, for instance). I wish anything like that was available nowadays. Perhaps, the only things remotely going in this direction are Java and perhaps.NET.
But computers like the VIC-20 had one major advantage over any more complex system: You simply turned it on and were able to program it, right away. The "READY." prompt was always staring in your face, right after turning the damn thing on!;-)
Actually, it's "We made Amiga, Commodore f***ed it up!". Also included were the OS credits.
It was in AmigaOS 1.2, if I remember correctly, and was generated by triggering one of every input event there was. Hold down all Ctrl-Alt-Amiga keys, press F10, and eject a disk at the same time! (or something, I remember because it was hard to do and either involved a second person or ejecting the disk with your nose!)
The message was in one line, though! (not two as the guy in the article said)
I've seen it myself back in the days, on my Amiga 1000!:-) (I had one from 1996! And still have one!)
Back then there was the rumor that the whole development crew had been fired because of the message! Incentive for me to read the book, to get the real story!
R.J. Mical was apparently the only one from the original crew who still worked for Commodore, at least until AmigaOS 1.3 was finished.
I wasn't too pleased with AmigaOS 2.x and 3.x, because they introduced some ghastly design errors, which wouldn't have happened, had the original crew still been around.
For example, the graphics library could've been made retargetable by introducing an underlying device and/or resource system (like there was in AmigaOS for any other hardware component). The Bitmap structure could've been extended in an upward compatible manner, Tripos should've been kept as the dos library, the mutual exclusive gadgets support should've been increased instead of removed (radio buttons!), the same with the library autoload feature in the executable file format, etc. etc.
The Amiga 3000 UX was canned too early IMO, we in Europe learned about that it existed only after it was canned. I would've loved to run UNIX on my A-3000.
Oh, and the graphics system supported only raster graphics, and not vector graphics. It would've made visuals and printing much less memory intensive had they introduced such a feature in time before releasing the A-500 and 2000 computers.
I still think that the underlying OS kernel was ace, tho. We can thank Carl Sassenrath for that, who has invented REBOL years later.
Instead of fighting over whether global warming will kill our children or grandchildren, why not focus on the possibilities of new technology?
Not only from an ecological point of view, but also from an economical point of view, old technologies like burning fossil fuels (incl. brown coal power plants and nuclear power plants) are a dead end. Nuclear power plants have the problem of where to put the depleted radioactive material (making it an economical risk), and brown coal, oil, and gas power plants have the disadvantage of limited availability, which also make them economically unfeasable, despite all the efforts to filter their emissions (which makes them have less impact on the environment, but that still doesn't solve the availability issue). Some national governments have decreed laws on pollution long ago that makes polluters liable for their impact on environment. Hence, all these technologies are economically becoming extinct, especially in those countries (I think we can give a hand to the Green party here).
Renewable energy resources have become large markets; not just for the recycling industry which saves the manufacturing industry billions annually; but also for solar energy, wind energy and the like which are very widespread now. The currently emerging hydrogen engine market will solve the CO2 problem for good -- and hydrogen can be generated in solar power plants as well. The only emission of a hydrogen engine is water.
Energy corporations worldwide are undergoing a paradigm shift away from fossil fuels towards the more profitable renewable energy sources market.
A new solar panel type was recently developed that is dirt cheap and can provide electricity to homes and communities at a low price. And this is just one example.
If you thought, the whole "Web 2.0" was just a marketing ploy, check out this item:
http://www.ekkehardmorgenstern.de/web3.0.txt
What if there was an all-integrating OS that would allow seamless interoperability across networks?
Slashdot Mirror
Damn you, Brits! ;-)
It was never sold in Germany!! I wanted one so bad! Because it had an interpreter that allowed mixing of BASIC and assembly code!
On the VIC-20, I only had a printout of the 6502 instruction set, and manually assembled DATA lines to POKE into memory! ;-)
Ah yes, you're right!! Now I remember! :o)
Never tried it with UAE!! LOL!
I have AmigaForever lying around a Windoze drive somewhere. Currently, I'm using Linux, however. Shame there's no AmigaForever for Linux. As soon as I get UAE set up again on my box, I'll give it a go! :-)
Yup, that's exactly what was in store for our generation of programmers. I also started programming on a VIC-20, when I was 12. I understood the concept immediately (because, before that, I had a small computer that was programmable in machine code to blink lights and make sounds), and began programming in BASIC within a couple of days. At first, I didn't even have a cassette drive, and I had to write my programs on paper and re-type them everytime. About a month later, I had a cassette drive and a memory expansion, and the real adventure began. I was writing mostly games in BASIC and assembly language (actually, machine code, I had to hand-assemble). When I got an Amiga in 1986, I learnt systems programming, hardware programming, C and M68K assembly language, and, most importantly, writing 32-bit, multithreaded GUI applications, because it was a necessity on AmigaOS. I still include AmigaOS in the "easy to program" category (albeit things were much harder than on the VIC-20, for instance). I wish anything like that was available nowadays. Perhaps, the only things remotely going in this direction are Java and perhaps .NET.
But computers like the VIC-20 had one major advantage over any more complex system: You simply turned it on and were able to program it, right away. The "READY." prompt was always staring in your face, right after turning the damn thing on! ;-)
Actually, it's "We made Amiga, Commodore f***ed it up!". Also included were the OS credits.
:-)
It was in AmigaOS 1.2, if I remember correctly, and was generated by triggering one of every input event there was. Hold down all Ctrl-Alt-Amiga keys, press F10, and eject a disk at the same time! (or something, I remember because it was hard to do and either involved a second person or ejecting the disk with your nose!)
The message was in one line, though! (not two as the guy in the article said)
I've seen it myself back in the days, on my Amiga 1000!
(I had one from 1996! And still have one!)
Back then there was the rumor that the whole development crew had been fired because of the message! Incentive for me to read the book, to get the real story!
R.J. Mical was apparently the only one from the original crew who still worked for Commodore, at least until AmigaOS 1.3 was finished.
I wasn't too pleased with AmigaOS 2.x and 3.x, because they introduced some ghastly design errors, which wouldn't have happened, had the original crew still been around.
For example, the graphics library could've been made retargetable by introducing an underlying device and/or resource system (like there was in AmigaOS for any other hardware component). The Bitmap structure could've been extended in an upward compatible manner, Tripos should've been kept as the dos library, the mutual exclusive gadgets support should've been increased instead of removed (radio buttons!), the same with the library autoload feature in the executable file format, etc. etc.
The Amiga 3000 UX was canned too early IMO, we in Europe learned about that it existed only after it was canned. I would've loved to run UNIX on my A-3000.
Oh, and the graphics system supported only raster graphics, and not vector graphics. It would've made visuals and printing much less memory intensive had they introduced such a feature in time before releasing the A-500 and 2000 computers.
I still think that the underlying OS kernel was ace, tho. We can thank Carl Sassenrath for that, who has invented REBOL years later.
Instead of fighting over whether global warming will kill our children or grandchildren, why not focus on the possibilities of new technology?
Not only from an ecological point of view, but also from an economical point of view, old technologies like burning fossil fuels (incl. brown coal power plants and nuclear power plants) are a dead end. Nuclear power plants have the problem of where to put the depleted radioactive material (making it an economical risk), and brown coal, oil, and gas power plants have the disadvantage of limited availability, which also make them economically unfeasable, despite all the efforts to filter their emissions (which makes them have less impact on the environment, but that still doesn't solve the availability issue). Some national governments have decreed laws on pollution long ago that makes polluters liable for their impact on environment. Hence, all these technologies are economically becoming extinct, especially in those countries (I think we can give a hand to the Green party here).
Renewable energy resources have become large markets; not just for the recycling industry which saves the manufacturing industry billions annually; but also for solar energy, wind energy and the like which are very widespread now. The currently emerging hydrogen engine market will solve the CO2 problem for good -- and hydrogen can be generated in solar power plants as well. The only emission of a hydrogen engine is water.
Energy corporations worldwide are undergoing a paradigm shift away from fossil fuels towards the more profitable renewable energy sources market.
A new solar panel type was recently developed that is dirt cheap and can provide electricity to homes and communities at a low price. And this is just one example.
So, I think, there's still room for optimism.
If you thought, the whole "Web 2.0" was just a marketing ploy, check out this item: http://www.ekkehardmorgenstern.de/web3.0.txt What if there was an all-integrating OS that would allow seamless interoperability across networks?