The Amiga turns 30

[Thebobo]

Seriously good article very thorough,

The Amiga turns 30 —“Nobody had ever designed a personal computer this way”
Our epic, eight-part series on the history of the Amiga.

 

[NuclearNed]

I never could afford an Amiga. I was in high school at the time. A buddy of mine got one. All I could do was lust over it, then go home and despise my previously much-beloved C64.

 

[Clemenza]

So many memories from my Amiga.

 

[brainhulk]

Female friend...riiiiight

 

[Schmide]

All HAM Amiga.

 

[Scarpozzi]

My dad had an Amiga 500 in his Commodore authorized repair shop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_500

The 1000 was like vaporware. I never saw one in-person. I grew up around stacks of Vic20s and C64s. I was typing 'Load "*",8,1' at the age of 3.

When I got a Nintendo in 1987, I plugged it into my Commodore-branded monitor.

 

[Andy22]

Bought my Amiga 500 on my first credit card. So many fun games and memories playing with my friends.

 

[Exophase]

I wish I had one of these as a young kid. I mean, back then I badly wished I had any kind of computer (didn't get anything until a Pentium 75 late 1995). But Amiga was just crazy impressive for 1985. Compare it with NES which had a limited release in America the same year, and was itself way ahead of all other game consoles. The kinds of games you could do on it were far ahead of the curve, and that's before you got to all the other stuff it was good at.

 

[Thump553]

And in related news Bruce Springsteen's "Born To Run" LP album (remember them?) was released this Tuesday, forty years ago.

 

[Oyeve]

The Amiga had superior audio. It blew away everything at the time.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

My dad had an Amiga 500 in his Commodore authorized repair shop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_500

The 1000 was like vaporware. I never saw one in-person. I grew up around stacks of Vic20s and C64s. I was typing 'Load "*",8,1' at the age of 3.

When I got a Nintendo in 1987, I plugged it into my Commodore-branded monitor.

I think I still have that monitor in my garage. Also still have my Vic 20, Commodore 64, Commodore 128, Amiga 2000, and Amiga 3000 along with most of their accessories. I just completely rebuilt the 2000 from the ground up a couple of years ago.

 

[Exophase]

The Amiga had superior audio. It blew away everything at the time.

It's amazing how effective such a simple solution can be. It's basically just a few timer-based DMA channels with low resolution volume multipliers and a couple adders. It's arguably no more or even less complex than the PSG and certainly the FM synthesis based solutions. Particularly the ones that included envelopes, pitch sweeps, filters, etc. Amiga's solution was a really straightforward and elegant way to take advantage of its large RAM.

On that note, even wavetable solutions with tiny sample RAMs sound better than more complex PSG solutions, like PC-Engine vs NES.

EDIT: It looks like Amiga's Paula did have period/amplitude modulation capabilities that I wasn't aware of, but it was rarely used and may as well have been left out.

 

[Homerboy]

Repost: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2440368

I so dearly loved my Amiga. I probably could have gotten WAY better grades in college if I didn't have one.

 

[DigDog]

the Amiga would have turned 30 this year had it not died 20 years ago.

 

[rudder]

Bought my Amiga 500 on my first credit card. So many fun games and memories playing with my friends.

Turrican... One of many greats. Still fire up my Amiga every once I a while.

 

[NoTine42]

From the chapter 8 Demo Scene

Not too shabby of a live rendering from a 7.6mhz computer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDrICN4UJoA#action=share