I was one of the folks who wanted to migrate from the 8-bit Atari world to the brave new 16-bit world. Initially, I'd have likely gone Atari ST because of costs. Don't get me wrong - I wanted the Amiga 1000, but just soooo expensive. The Amiga 500 changed that path and I got my 500 and 1080 color monitor in 1987.
Deluxe Paint, Dynamic Drums and so many other creative programs would follow. And the games - lordy the Amiga was meant to game on.
I left the Amiga as my daily computing platform in 1992, moving to a 486 machine with VGA and a sound blaster and Windows 3.0 initially with an upgrade to 3.1 later that same year. College saw me choosing to use the Macintosh lab as my preference and I'd eventually switch to the Macintosh full time with the iMac.
I still use Windows/PC for work, but for my "personal computing" I'm a Mac guy, with a Mini M4 and a MBA with an M3.
And even today, I'll fire up my Amiga 500 mini for a few game sessions - and if RetroGames ever releases one, I'll get the Amiga maxi model they've promised. But all about the games - wouldn't dream of using it for anything else.
The mid to late 80s were a great time to be involved in home computing.
The Amiga was light years ahead of its time hardware-wise compared to other "home" computers at the time and was always a kick-a game machine. Looking back the 68000 chip was vastly underpowered compared to the custom chips which gave the machine its real audio-visual mojo and handled a lot of the heavy lifting. If the right money or investment were ever put into a viable modern iteration of the platform, it'd be a real sight to see. Despite the considerable graphical capabilities of the system at the time, its four color orange white blue and black default desktop color scheme was pretty awful aesthetically. However, "AmigaDOS" was quite powerful and flexible and even shared similarities to UNIX with its "CLI" (Command Line Interface) alongside the "Workbench" desktop GUI. I've used Macs and Windows and Linux but the AmigaOS despite its issues was still a joy to use by comparison to the other OS's of that vintage (looking at you, Windows 3.1) A lot of what the Amiga was doing back then still exists in modern OS's.
The https://amiga.resource.cx/exp/a2320 board converted from interlace to progressive for use with standard VGA monitor. But I never bothered to get one.
American perceptions of the Amiga as a niche, boutique computer are at odds with the European experience, where the Amiga 500 and its successors became the dominant home computer platform between roughly 1989 and 1993.
Unfortunately, Commodore failed to advance the Amiga to keep up with the competition, preferring to repackage 1985 technology in different formats like the disastrous CDTV and A600 - a story of technological stagnation and business ineptitude told in detail in Brian Bagnall's books.
In the US, the PC was really a juggernaught and prevented other niche platforms from getting anywhere near mainstream. I did read "The Amiga Years" by Brian Bagnall a few years ago, although I ought to also read his other books in the series.
Saw your year end recap and how you don't own an Amiga. Would suggest picking up an A500 mini or even getting in on the A1200 preorder (for a full-sized Amiga 1200) if you're looking to gain a bit more Amiga in your life. The A500 combined with Amiga Game Selector is a rousing way to play all the classic Amiga games and I suspect the upcoming A1200 will continue this path, albeit with a full-sized version with working keyboard.
I worked at the Goddard Space flight center for the group responsible for ensuring that Nasa's video uplinks met broadcast standards which were at the time NTSC. Most computers at the time, had something that would fool TV's enough to make a picture, but the signal coming out of the rca jack of the Amiga 1000 was real honest to goodness NTSC video. Since we we on limited budget, we wanted a cheap way to implement a character generator. Commode must have realized the potential of their computer for low end video production since they introduced the Genlock Module, making it easy to integrate the Amiga's video into a video production studio. Other companies like Newtek jumped on board and introduced products that helped the Amiga dominate desktop video for years. The management of Commodore killed a great machine through neglect so perplexing that enthusiastic fans of the machine suspected conspiracy.
I've had my hands on every Amiga made. The multi tasking OS comes into its own as accelerator boards and add ons become popular. I loved the colors, I loved the CLI. It was a great machine. I used 8088 and 8086 emulators for my computer science class. Allowed me to run their compiler and the Amiga could read and write both Mac and PC formats. Yes, I said emulate. These were software emulators but you could get much faster hardware emulators. A flicker-fixer allowed use of VGA monitors although I primarily used the 640x400 C=1084. This was not an interlaced mode. Even had a 1024 x 768 that was handled by overscsan, 800x600 if you had less chip ram. I can see the authors lack of hands on experience really mutes the article. This was an amazing machine that literally crushed all others during its reign.
My CS professor didn't understand until I brought it to class one day. By then they could be had used for $300. I had 2 floppies, 1MB CHIP RAM and the ECS chipset. I also had 1.5MB w/RTC in the trapdoor. This gave the machine all it needed to work with and play with. This was an A500. The A2500 came with a 68020 accelerator card, more memory and an HDD. Scsi of course although IDE came later. They even released IDE hard drive interfaces with laptop sized drives that fit in the A500. 20 to 40MB which was enough for every game you had that could install to hdd and plenty of room for projects. I also took Computer art and animation, which used b&w Macs. I did not like them. Slow and plodding. The Amiga did with color what the Mac did with b&w. The palette was 4096 colors with up to 16 in normal modes, 32 in EHB modes and 4096 in HAM (Hold and Modify) mode. I spent years creating Amiga art with the packages of the time. I'd often recreate the art challenges in Amga World. First time I texture mapped a reflection to a water bubble was in Deluxe Paint. Later, more powerful programs would appear that allowed full use of HAM and at one point, if you had the memory, HAM in 640x400.
Beyond this, powerful, 24 bit, high res, 4MB RTG (Retargettable Graphics) cards came out for all older models. Between that and a new Kickstart ROM (Yes, Kickstart made it to ROM by 1986). The only disk you needed if you didn't have an HDD was the Workbench floppies. Workbench is the name of the OS. Kickstart is the name of the kernel that allowed the OS to access the hardware. But I digress, RTG, 2MB CHIP RAM, and an 020 or better accelerator with the newest Kickstart had you running an A1200 or faster machine in an A500.
That leads me to expansion options. Commodore made so many in house they lost track. Ask Dave Haynie. Then 3rd parties like GVP and Seagate made expansions as well. All Amigas (Except A600) came with an expansion adapter that allowed access to all functions, with the desktop variants having Zorro slots. You could put an A500 in a tower that had Zorro slots (PCI like and ISA like slots depending on the revision) as well. You were no longer limited by the case if you wanted full size cards instead of the more expensive mini models designed for A500 expansion.
The best 3D rendering software on the planet at the time happened to be on the Amiga. It became ambiguous by the 90s. TV studios used them for genlocked video, teleprompting, special effects and weather overlays. The entire pilot episodes of Babylon 5 were made on Video Toaster equipped Amigas. Industrial Light and Magic used them for CG, FX and 3D rendering. They had an entire render farm of them prior to Silicon Graphics. They used them for minor rendering and storyboarding for the Jurassic Park movies, Terminator 2 and The Abyss. James Cameron was an Amiga fan, but he's always been cutting edge.
8-Bit digitizers and some amazing music came out of the Amiga sound and music scene. I sampled and looped everything I had to make beats. This was before beat making was a thing, too.
You could do all this plus play games. Games were made for the lowest common denominator which was a bog stock A500 with 1MB chip ram. Although for a while they targeted 512MB chip RAM machines.
Some of the best games made for 16 bit machines were Amiga games. Some of the largest publishers and game makers started on or exploded on the Amiga. From the Bit Map Brothers to Psygnosis (They are now part of Sony Studios) were Amiga firsts. Sure, the games would make it to ST and sometimes Mac but they always looked better on the Amiga with a good monitor. Some people compare ST titles to Amiga and a few ST games were ported to Amiga but were better on the ST, however that was rare. The Amiga had an arcade perfect port of Ninja Gaiden that was never replicated. Only the intro was smaller and lower res and color, the gameplay was amazing.
The Amiga fell when Commodore released the AGA chipset Amigas as a knee jerk reaction to superior VGA games on the PC. There were few at the time but the number of quality titles was exploding. Commodore had two teams working on the new chipsets. In the end they cobbled the two together to release something not quite finished. And although it had so much to offer, VGA colors and resolutions, it was not an add in board and it had limitations, like the lack of a chunky pixel mode that killed it. Once Wolfenstein 3D hit home it redefined video games. The chunky to planar programming was too slow and inefficient to keep up. Remember, Virtua Fighter and other Virtua games hit the arcades and 3D was the new standard. The side scrolling 2D adventures of the past were slowing down. By the end of the 90s there was a Video Toaster for the PC and everything the Amiga could do could now be done on the PC, which included a multitasking GUI called Windows 95 (It wasnt as seamless as the Amiga until Windows XP). And if for some reason no one ported your favorite program or game? You could now run an Amiga emulator on your PC.
It all came full circle and even NewTek released a stand alone version of Lightwave 3D, it's 3D modeling and animation software originally developed for the Video Toaster, for Windows PCs.
The ride was fun. From Shadow of the Beast to Ninja Gaiden Arcade, from Deluxe Paint to Digi-Paint, from Kickstart on a disk to Kickstart ROMs. It was all over. I sold my last Amiga, a 500 and took a box of PC parts from a family member, hodgepodged one together and had something faster and more colorful than an Amiga 4000 from a box of used PC parts in 1997. That was the beginning of the PC as we know it today, too. With x86 on the ropes globally and ARM/RISC V on the horizon for consumer desktop, I'm seeing it all over again.
I had exposure to the initial PC's in the 80's and 90's because my mother had a degree in programming and had a Mac at home that her employer had purchased (and I was not allowed to touch). I learned BASIC on a TRS-80 and Apple 2's in schools. But when it came time for me to purchase, the Amiga 500 was the price point and capabilities (still advanced) that worked for me. IBM clones were so far behind and Gates was not good, and Mac's were way to expensive, and Jobs demeanor was off putting. I learned as I played the various games I ordered from European and Amiga specific magazines. I also had exposure to another computer while in Australia that also didn't take off, I think it was called an Osprey? While I dreamed of being able to afford a 1000 or 2000 and the capabilities; I always read (cover to cover) my free Computer Shopper, so I eventually joined the clone army with a 486 in the 90's, but I still fondly remember my 500 years and the still astounding capabilities, including access to the BBS's I learned so much from, so much more than AOL or Compuserve. I hope the new company does well.
I was one of the folks who wanted to migrate from the 8-bit Atari world to the brave new 16-bit world. Initially, I'd have likely gone Atari ST because of costs. Don't get me wrong - I wanted the Amiga 1000, but just soooo expensive. The Amiga 500 changed that path and I got my 500 and 1080 color monitor in 1987.
Deluxe Paint, Dynamic Drums and so many other creative programs would follow. And the games - lordy the Amiga was meant to game on.
I left the Amiga as my daily computing platform in 1992, moving to a 486 machine with VGA and a sound blaster and Windows 3.0 initially with an upgrade to 3.1 later that same year. College saw me choosing to use the Macintosh lab as my preference and I'd eventually switch to the Macintosh full time with the iMac.
I still use Windows/PC for work, but for my "personal computing" I'm a Mac guy, with a Mini M4 and a MBA with an M3.
And even today, I'll fire up my Amiga 500 mini for a few game sessions - and if RetroGames ever releases one, I'll get the Amiga maxi model they've promised. But all about the games - wouldn't dream of using it for anything else.
The mid to late 80s were a great time to be involved in home computing.
The Amiga was light years ahead of its time hardware-wise compared to other "home" computers at the time and was always a kick-a game machine. Looking back the 68000 chip was vastly underpowered compared to the custom chips which gave the machine its real audio-visual mojo and handled a lot of the heavy lifting. If the right money or investment were ever put into a viable modern iteration of the platform, it'd be a real sight to see. Despite the considerable graphical capabilities of the system at the time, its four color orange white blue and black default desktop color scheme was pretty awful aesthetically. However, "AmigaDOS" was quite powerful and flexible and even shared similarities to UNIX with its "CLI" (Command Line Interface) alongside the "Workbench" desktop GUI. I've used Macs and Windows and Linux but the AmigaOS despite its issues was still a joy to use by comparison to the other OS's of that vintage (looking at you, Windows 3.1) A lot of what the Amiga was doing back then still exists in modern OS's.
The https://amiga.resource.cx/exp/a2320 board converted from interlace to progressive for use with standard VGA monitor. But I never bothered to get one.
Yes, I too felt that the Amiga desktop was ugly. That's why when I wrote my own OS/GUI for scientific/embedded computing, I modeled it after GEM (both the look and the API) instead. https://www.semitracks.com/reference-material/failure-and-yield-analysis/failure-analysis-package-level/figures/acoustic-microscopy-figure-9.gif
American perceptions of the Amiga as a niche, boutique computer are at odds with the European experience, where the Amiga 500 and its successors became the dominant home computer platform between roughly 1989 and 1993.
Unfortunately, Commodore failed to advance the Amiga to keep up with the competition, preferring to repackage 1985 technology in different formats like the disastrous CDTV and A600 - a story of technological stagnation and business ineptitude told in detail in Brian Bagnall's books.
In the US, the PC was really a juggernaught and prevented other niche platforms from getting anywhere near mainstream. I did read "The Amiga Years" by Brian Bagnall a few years ago, although I ought to also read his other books in the series.
If you are looking for a more detailed story, get the books by Bagnall about the Commodore Years, the Amiga Years and the Final Years.
Saw your year end recap and how you don't own an Amiga. Would suggest picking up an A500 mini or even getting in on the A1200 preorder (for a full-sized Amiga 1200) if you're looking to gain a bit more Amiga in your life. The A500 combined with Amiga Game Selector is a rousing way to play all the classic Amiga games and I suspect the upcoming A1200 will continue this path, albeit with a full-sized version with working keyboard.
I worked at the Goddard Space flight center for the group responsible for ensuring that Nasa's video uplinks met broadcast standards which were at the time NTSC. Most computers at the time, had something that would fool TV's enough to make a picture, but the signal coming out of the rca jack of the Amiga 1000 was real honest to goodness NTSC video. Since we we on limited budget, we wanted a cheap way to implement a character generator. Commode must have realized the potential of their computer for low end video production since they introduced the Genlock Module, making it easy to integrate the Amiga's video into a video production studio. Other companies like Newtek jumped on board and introduced products that helped the Amiga dominate desktop video for years. The management of Commodore killed a great machine through neglect so perplexing that enthusiastic fans of the machine suspected conspiracy.
I've had my hands on every Amiga made. The multi tasking OS comes into its own as accelerator boards and add ons become popular. I loved the colors, I loved the CLI. It was a great machine. I used 8088 and 8086 emulators for my computer science class. Allowed me to run their compiler and the Amiga could read and write both Mac and PC formats. Yes, I said emulate. These were software emulators but you could get much faster hardware emulators. A flicker-fixer allowed use of VGA monitors although I primarily used the 640x400 C=1084. This was not an interlaced mode. Even had a 1024 x 768 that was handled by overscsan, 800x600 if you had less chip ram. I can see the authors lack of hands on experience really mutes the article. This was an amazing machine that literally crushed all others during its reign.
My CS professor didn't understand until I brought it to class one day. By then they could be had used for $300. I had 2 floppies, 1MB CHIP RAM and the ECS chipset. I also had 1.5MB w/RTC in the trapdoor. This gave the machine all it needed to work with and play with. This was an A500. The A2500 came with a 68020 accelerator card, more memory and an HDD. Scsi of course although IDE came later. They even released IDE hard drive interfaces with laptop sized drives that fit in the A500. 20 to 40MB which was enough for every game you had that could install to hdd and plenty of room for projects. I also took Computer art and animation, which used b&w Macs. I did not like them. Slow and plodding. The Amiga did with color what the Mac did with b&w. The palette was 4096 colors with up to 16 in normal modes, 32 in EHB modes and 4096 in HAM (Hold and Modify) mode. I spent years creating Amiga art with the packages of the time. I'd often recreate the art challenges in Amga World. First time I texture mapped a reflection to a water bubble was in Deluxe Paint. Later, more powerful programs would appear that allowed full use of HAM and at one point, if you had the memory, HAM in 640x400.
Beyond this, powerful, 24 bit, high res, 4MB RTG (Retargettable Graphics) cards came out for all older models. Between that and a new Kickstart ROM (Yes, Kickstart made it to ROM by 1986). The only disk you needed if you didn't have an HDD was the Workbench floppies. Workbench is the name of the OS. Kickstart is the name of the kernel that allowed the OS to access the hardware. But I digress, RTG, 2MB CHIP RAM, and an 020 or better accelerator with the newest Kickstart had you running an A1200 or faster machine in an A500.
That leads me to expansion options. Commodore made so many in house they lost track. Ask Dave Haynie. Then 3rd parties like GVP and Seagate made expansions as well. All Amigas (Except A600) came with an expansion adapter that allowed access to all functions, with the desktop variants having Zorro slots. You could put an A500 in a tower that had Zorro slots (PCI like and ISA like slots depending on the revision) as well. You were no longer limited by the case if you wanted full size cards instead of the more expensive mini models designed for A500 expansion.
The best 3D rendering software on the planet at the time happened to be on the Amiga. It became ambiguous by the 90s. TV studios used them for genlocked video, teleprompting, special effects and weather overlays. The entire pilot episodes of Babylon 5 were made on Video Toaster equipped Amigas. Industrial Light and Magic used them for CG, FX and 3D rendering. They had an entire render farm of them prior to Silicon Graphics. They used them for minor rendering and storyboarding for the Jurassic Park movies, Terminator 2 and The Abyss. James Cameron was an Amiga fan, but he's always been cutting edge.
8-Bit digitizers and some amazing music came out of the Amiga sound and music scene. I sampled and looped everything I had to make beats. This was before beat making was a thing, too.
You could do all this plus play games. Games were made for the lowest common denominator which was a bog stock A500 with 1MB chip ram. Although for a while they targeted 512MB chip RAM machines.
Some of the best games made for 16 bit machines were Amiga games. Some of the largest publishers and game makers started on or exploded on the Amiga. From the Bit Map Brothers to Psygnosis (They are now part of Sony Studios) were Amiga firsts. Sure, the games would make it to ST and sometimes Mac but they always looked better on the Amiga with a good monitor. Some people compare ST titles to Amiga and a few ST games were ported to Amiga but were better on the ST, however that was rare. The Amiga had an arcade perfect port of Ninja Gaiden that was never replicated. Only the intro was smaller and lower res and color, the gameplay was amazing.
The Amiga fell when Commodore released the AGA chipset Amigas as a knee jerk reaction to superior VGA games on the PC. There were few at the time but the number of quality titles was exploding. Commodore had two teams working on the new chipsets. In the end they cobbled the two together to release something not quite finished. And although it had so much to offer, VGA colors and resolutions, it was not an add in board and it had limitations, like the lack of a chunky pixel mode that killed it. Once Wolfenstein 3D hit home it redefined video games. The chunky to planar programming was too slow and inefficient to keep up. Remember, Virtua Fighter and other Virtua games hit the arcades and 3D was the new standard. The side scrolling 2D adventures of the past were slowing down. By the end of the 90s there was a Video Toaster for the PC and everything the Amiga could do could now be done on the PC, which included a multitasking GUI called Windows 95 (It wasnt as seamless as the Amiga until Windows XP). And if for some reason no one ported your favorite program or game? You could now run an Amiga emulator on your PC.
It all came full circle and even NewTek released a stand alone version of Lightwave 3D, it's 3D modeling and animation software originally developed for the Video Toaster, for Windows PCs.
The ride was fun. From Shadow of the Beast to Ninja Gaiden Arcade, from Deluxe Paint to Digi-Paint, from Kickstart on a disk to Kickstart ROMs. It was all over. I sold my last Amiga, a 500 and took a box of PC parts from a family member, hodgepodged one together and had something faster and more colorful than an Amiga 4000 from a box of used PC parts in 1997. That was the beginning of the PC as we know it today, too. With x86 on the ropes globally and ARM/RISC V on the horizon for consumer desktop, I'm seeing it all over again.
I had exposure to the initial PC's in the 80's and 90's because my mother had a degree in programming and had a Mac at home that her employer had purchased (and I was not allowed to touch). I learned BASIC on a TRS-80 and Apple 2's in schools. But when it came time for me to purchase, the Amiga 500 was the price point and capabilities (still advanced) that worked for me. IBM clones were so far behind and Gates was not good, and Mac's were way to expensive, and Jobs demeanor was off putting. I learned as I played the various games I ordered from European and Amiga specific magazines. I also had exposure to another computer while in Australia that also didn't take off, I think it was called an Osprey? While I dreamed of being able to afford a 1000 or 2000 and the capabilities; I always read (cover to cover) my free Computer Shopper, so I eventually joined the clone army with a 486 in the 90's, but I still fondly remember my 500 years and the still astounding capabilities, including access to the BBS's I learned so much from, so much more than AOL or Compuserve. I hope the new company does well.