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Motorola's 68000 CPU was probably way ahead of its time
- Thread starter BAW
- Start date
Not. It's more technically demanding because the system isn't built for it, but in general I'm pretty sure it's more technically demanding to do a big rotated bitmap than handful of untextured triangles
It's arguably sharper, but smoother usually refers to framerate, so calling a game that goes down to 15 fps smoother than a 60 fps game does seem strange
Not really
Just watch the thousands of Amiga demos with fullscreen rotations doing it effortlessly (adding deformations and so on) while having a hard time with 3D worlds/drawing. Also in MK, the track isn't a fullscreen rotation, it's just a quarter of the screen at any given time.
Edit : case in point, this 2013 version of Lemon's famous Rink a Dink Amiga 500 (OCE chipset) features far more impressive graphical work, on a machine 6 years older than the SNES.
http://youtu.be/5C30HDhoyIA
Freshmaker
I am Korean.
Yeah they did that with Virtual Racing, but it wasn't cost effective which led to the 32x appearing.
I love the Amiga to death!
The Amiga500 was the computer which got me started for real albeit I had a C64
beforehand. The C64 is also piece of an art if you put him in its time and
observe what the competition had to offer.
The downfall of Commodore began as the B in CBM has risen after the C64 has
released its momentum. I remember reading an old article about the development
and construction of the VIC-II, the SID etc. and how everything changed as
businessman now told the engineers what they think was needed.
video accelerator.
What's cool, one can program these systems today as well. Their magic and
breath can be felt up until today, even while using an emulator to get going.
There is perhaps nothing better to program these two systems in assembler.
The Amiga500 was the computer which got me started for real albeit I had a C64
beforehand. The C64 is also piece of an art if you put him in its time and
observe what the competition had to offer.
The downfall of Commodore began as the B in CBM has risen after the C64 has
released its momentum. I remember reading an old article about the development
and construction of the VIC-II, the SID etc. and how everything changed as
businessman now told the engineers what they think was needed.
Count me in! I also need to find an A4000 with either a 680{40 or 60} and a... I really need to find an A4000 and a 68060 card
video accelerator.
What's cool, one can program these systems today as well. Their magic and
breath can be felt up until today, even while using an emulator to get going.
There is perhaps nothing better to program these two systems in assembler.
This. Internally it was a 32 bit processor, so when the real 68k 32bit processor (020 I think it was) came out no real changes had to be done to the software.
The Amiga demo scene was such a great place to be, and a lot of really great game developers, artists and musicians started off there. I don't think GAF really understands how important it was.
Amiga love thread!
I'm not sure the Amiga made the same inroads in North America however, so that may play a part.
This gaffer certainly does, as a primary school child it was undoubtedly one of the single biggest influences on my entire life full stop, including career choice and cementing a passion for games.
I'm not sure the Amiga made the same inroads in North America however, so that may play a part.
In multiplayer Mario Kart, the track is on like 80% of the screen, (and technically I believe the map is still mode 7 in with some perspective scaling in single player even though it's static), and it doesn't really matter anyway since the PPU does everything per scanline, and a non tilted full screen rotation that you see in many other games isn't really any more or less demanding.
And I said nothing about the Amiga 500, and I'm not particularly familiar with the hardware, just the notion that some 10-20 tiny polygons in shitty a framerate are instantly more technically advanced just because it's polygons. That demo also has 3D segments with more geometry than you see in Wacky Racers and running far better so I'm not sure how it proves anything either way.
Edit: tried looking into Amiga hardware a bit. can't really find detailed information about how the Blitter works, but the amiga demos are certainly not just using the CPU. It's stiil custom chips although of a completely different type from snes and megadrive, so there's really no way to compare it either way
The NES, SNES, and N64 were all designed around a passable CPU with multiple coprocessors to carry much of the load. Hence greater effects and polish while not necessarily churning benchmarks. The Sega MD/Genesis had a better CPU, but it couldn't even handle transparency and color addition/subtraction. Pros and cons.
Best named chips on any system ever.
Ryu Hayabusa
Member
Blast Processing!
I remember reading somwhere that Steve Jobs was quite afraid of Amiga at the time because the hardware was so far ahead of Apple, and Amiga OS was amazing, too (real multitasking!). Fortunately for him, Commodore had the worst marketing (including product planning) on the planet, which prevented the Amiga line from becoming as big as it should have been and ultimately lead to its untimely demise.
In the mid 1980s, Amiga's technology was about a decade ahead of the competition. The final Amiga computer, the A 1200 from 1992 was absolutely incredible; so glad I have one (still in working condition).
MrCunningham
Member
It's still kind of impressive though, as its running on a stock Genesis with no additional co-processors like the SuperFX chip. The video even states that it is running on real Genesis hardware and not emulation. It never ceases to amaze me what home brewers are still doing with the Genesis hardware. The3 Pier Solar team did some impressive mode 7 like stuff on the system:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iH_2VXjkS7g#t=37
And there is this homebrew port of Wolfenstein 3D on the Genesis/ Mega Drive that looks really good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjnsNzGzN1U
The enemies have no AI behavior yet, but everything else is there, music, levels, sprites, collision, weapons, and sound effects.
The Amiga was the greatest computer of all time.. Amiga 500 is still my favourite system I ever owned. I loved my AGA systems too but the OCS Amiga's were so far ahead of their time from mid 80 to late 80's.
Yes the scene was brilliant as well, groups like CNCD, The Black Lotus, Silents, Melon and Complex did amazing things on the hardware.
Also Housemarque got their start on the Amiga and they're one of the best studios around nowadays IMO.
Yes the scene was brilliant as well, groups like CNCD, The Black Lotus, Silents, Melon and Complex did amazing things on the hardware.
Also Housemarque got their start on the Amiga and they're one of the best studios around nowadays IMO.
Graphics Horse
Member
It did for anything that wasn't a sidescroller on the Amiga, and especially anything on the Atari ST, which didn't have any kind of extra graphics processor.
But yeah, arcade machines were based on additional custom graphics and audio chips which improved over time. I think the 68k got significant clock speed boosts over time too.
Yeah, things were very different in the UK due to the dominance of home computers in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. The whole industry here grew from it and the low barrier of entry meant anyone could get into it.
Very creative times, such a shame Commodore was run so badly and didn't capitalise on what they had. They had such a headstart on everyone else, multimedia before the word had even been invented.
Man, I pined after an Amiga for years. I got a C64 in 1991 and I loved it, but seeing the game comparisons in Zzap! 64 just blew me away. My cousin got an A600 two years later which made my longing that much worse. Around mid-1993, my mother told me that if I did well in my Junior Cert, she'd get me an Amiga for my birthday that year (which is in July). Summer came around, my results came in, and they were good. When I asked my mother... she couldn't afford it. We'd moved house from an estate near town to a house out in the country five miles away, and all of my parents' money had been put into that and the founding of a riding school. She was really sorry, but since I'd wanted to move out there myself, it wasn't too hard a blow to take.
Still, looking at those Silca adverts in the magazines, my love of the Amiga never diminished, and I promised I'd get myself one, even after Commodore died that year. For some reason, I never did manage to do that; on the other hand, my mother, seeing my disappointment in not getting one, spent years saving up so that on my 21st birthday, she bought me a pc, back in 1999, which was the year I finally stopped using my Commodore hardware (I had amassed a small collection of two C128's, two C64's, two 1541-II's, a 1670 1200bps modem, a 1351 mouse, Final Cartridge III, Currah Speech 64 and a library of some 1,500 games). From then on, I became a pc user, and the dream of getting an Amiga began to fade, though it was always there. I learned to build my own computers, and aside from a Nintendo console always accompanying it, the pc was - and still is - my main gaming machine.
Fast forward to 2010, when after years of happy pc and Nintendo gaming, my mother started clearing everything out of the house, preparing to move. While I'd given most of my stuff to a friend, I still had plenty of boxed C64 games lying around. I intended to give them away to someone on the Lemon64 forum, but the interest was so great, the offers so big, that I eventually sold them to someone there, and with that money I bought a pc case that is still in use today. Aside from that, I also had my box of home discs, and I couldn't dump that as on those discs were years of C64 stuff that I'd written or swapped with that friend I mentioned - we'd pass each other in school and hand each other a 5.25" disc, which would contain a program called a "noter" - something you loaded up that had whatever text you wrote accompanied by snazzy effects and music. Also on those discs were whatever was left of the Public Domain group I'd been involved in.
Torn between sending the discs to someone who could make them in to .d64's and not wanting to due to what would undoubtedly be the personal nature of some of those noters, I caved and bought a 1541-II (the friend I mentioned gave away all of his and my hardware when he moved to Denmark, after we'd had a falling out) and a 1541XM cable. I copied what discs I could on my flatmate's computer, which was the only one in the apartment which had a parallel port. Still, despite having all the working discs copied, I couldn't find it in myself to dump the disc container, and, wanting the feel of Commodore hardware under my fingers again, I bought a C128. I now had a working system through which I could properly test all my discs, which I happily did so. This went on for several months, when I decided to get a 1541 Ultimate II, and turn my C128 into a retro station. Once that was setup, with a C64G I'd bought because I'd always liked the look of them, I began to wonder about the Amiga once more.
I'd never stopped wanting one, and I now had a large desk with only the C64, disk drive and monitor sitting on it. There was plenty of space for an Amiga. So feck it, I thought, registered myself on Amibay and began to look around. I wasn't sure which Amiga to get - I'd wanted an A1200 back in the day, but I knew there weren't many games that took advantage of AGA. I always loved the look of the A500, but that would limit me to OCS stuff only. In the end, I decided on the A1200 - OCS and ECS compatibility with the advantage of AGA for what few software uses it. In 2011, I bought an A1200 with a Blizzard 1230 MKII accelerator with 32MB, and there began my odyssey with getting the damn thing to work. I eventually sent off the Blizzard to the guy I'd bought it from, and while he tried to fix it, I learned all I could about my new Amiga. I learned how to build my own Workbench setup with Scalos, how to unpack .LHA files and install programs.
Coming up to September last year, the guy I'd bought the A1200 from gave up on the Blizzard - he'd keep working on it, and in fact he sent it off to someone else who could do more with it, and promised to send it back to me if he gets it working again - and bought me a new ACA1220 with 128MB from Amigakit, with the promise of upgrading to a faster '020 when the warranty is up. For the last year and a half I'd been pretty much without a workable Amiga, but now I could boot her up and learn all about her again, which I had much fun doing. Now, at long last, my Amiga is happily sitting on the desk next to my C64, and I'm able to boot her up any time I want and play any of those games I'd lusted for throughout all those years.
And here she is, sitting next to her sister
MidgarBlowedUp
Member
It was in quite a few amazing keyboards/samplers that are still amazing today like the Fairlight Series.
I "think" my old Ensoniq has a 68 in it too but not entirely sure.
I "think" my old Ensoniq has a 68 in it too but not entirely sure.
Man, I pined after an Amiga for years. I got a C64 in 1991 and I loved it, but seeing the game comparisons in Zzap! 64 just blew me away. My cousin got an A600 two years later which made my longing that much worse. Around mid-1993, my mother told me that if I did well in my Junior Cert, she'd get me an Amiga for my birthday that year (which is in July). Summer came around, my results came in, and they were good. When I asked my mother... she couldn't afford it. We'd moved house from an estate near town to a house out in the country five miles away, and all of my parents' money had been put into that and the founding of a riding school. She was really sorry, but since I'd wanted to move out there myself, it wasn't too hard a blow to take.
Still, looking at those Silca adverts in the magazines, my love of the Amiga never diminished, and I promised I'd get myself one, even after Commodore died that year. For some reason, I never did manage to do that; on the other hand, my mother, seeing my disappointment in not getting one, spent years saving up so that on my 21st birthday, she bought me a pc, back in 1999, which was the year I finally stopped using my Commodore hardware (I had amassed a small collection of two C128's, two C64's, two 1541-II's, a 1670 1200bps modem, a 1351 mouse, Final Cartridge III, Currah Speech 64 and a library of some 1,500 games). From then on, I became a pc user, and the dream of getting an Amiga began to fade, though it was always there. I learned to build my own computers, and aside from a Nintendo console always accompanying it, the pc was - and still is - my main gaming machine.
Fast forward to 2010, when after years of happy pc and Nintendo gaming, my mother started clearing everything out of the house, preparing to move. While I'd given most of my stuff to a friend, I still had plenty of boxed C64 games lying around. I intended to give them away to someone on the Lemon64 forum, but the interest was so great, the offers so big, that I eventually sold them to someone there, and with that money I bought a pc case that is still in use today. Aside from that, I also had my box of home discs, and I couldn't dump that as on those discs were years of C64 stuff that I'd written or swapped with that friend I mentioned - we'd pass each other in school and hand each other a 5.25" disc, which would contain a program called a "noter" - something you loaded up that had whatever text you wrote accompanied by snazzy effects and music. Also on those discs were whatever was left of the Public Domain group I'd been involved in.
Torn between sending the discs to someone who could make them in to .d64's and not wanting to due to what would undoubtedly be the personal nature of some of those noters, I caved and bought a 1541-II (the friend I mentioned gave away all of his and my hardware when he moved to Denmark, after we'd had a falling out) and a 1541XM cable. I copied what discs I could on my flatmate's computer, which was the only one in the apartment which had a parallel port. Still, despite having all the working discs copied, I couldn't find it in myself to dump the disc container, and, wanting the feel of Commodore hardware under my fingers again, I bought a C128. I now had a working system through which I could properly test all my discs, which I happily did so. This went on for several months, when I decided to get a 1541 Ultimate II, and turn my C128 into a retro station. Once that was setup, with a C64G I'd bought because I'd always liked the look of them, I began to wonder about the Amiga once more.
I'd never stopped wanting one, and I now had a large desk with only the C64, disk drive and monitor sitting on it. There was plenty of space for an Amiga. So feck it, I thought, registered myself on Amibay and began to look around. I wasn't sure which Amiga to get - I'd wanted an A1200 back in the day, but I knew there weren't many games that took advantage of AGA. I always loved the look of the A500, but that would limit me to OCS stuff only. In the end, I decided on the A1200 - OCS and ECS compatibility with the advantage of AGA for what few software uses it. In 2011, I bought an A1200 with a Blizzard 1230 MKII accelerator with 32MB, and there began my odyssey with getting the damn thing to work. I eventually sent off the Blizzard to the guy I'd bought it from, and while he tried to fix it, I learned all I could about my new Amiga. I learned how to build my own Workbench setup with SCALA, how to unpack .LHA files and install programs.
Coming up to September last year, the guy I'd bought the A1200 from gave up on the Blizzard - he'd keep working on it, and in fact he sent it off to someone else who could do more with it, and promised to send it back to me if he gets it working again - and bought me a new ACA1220 with 128MB from Amigakit, with the promise of upgrading to a faster '020 when the warranty is up. For the last year and a half I'd been pretty much without a workable Amiga, but now I could boot her up and learn all about her again, which I had much fun doing. Now, at long last, my Amiga is happily sitting on the desk next to my C64, and I'm able to boot her up any time I want and play any of those games I'd lusted for throughout all those years.
And here she is, sitting next to her sister
Welcome to the family
I remember Silica! Got my Amiga 500 from them when it came out, just blew me away when it arrived with a collection of public domain stuff. The graphics, sampled sound, it really was from the future.
Welcome to the family
I remember Silica! Got my Amiga 500 from them when it came out, just blew me away when it arrived with a collection of public domain stuff. The graphics, sampled sound, it really was from the future.
Cheers! Yeah, those adverts were always around the back of Zzap! 64/Commodore Force and Commodore Format, and every single month I would ogle their Amiga adverts, while also curiously eyeing their Atari stuff - remember them advertising the Falcon '030 as the next big thing?
A friend of mine gave me a pcmcia wifi card, which I know is supported by the Amiga, so at some point I'm going to get that set up, and after that perhaps an Indivision... the cable I got from Amigakit gives an okay image, but it's smaller than the C64's screen, which is not ideal. Brings to mind something someone either here or on Amibay said - you're never really done with your Amiga!
Haven't heard of that one, will give it a look!
I did a scrapbook at the time collecting everything together about the Amiga and ST deciding which I wanted, it wasn't much of a contest though. I remember when the first screens of Defender Of The Crown were released which was mind blowing graphics for the time. The Amiga 1000 launching with a port of Marble Madness was also amazing, arcade ports at the time were not meant to be near identical!
Atari nearly got their hands on the Amiga but Commodore outbid them. The ST was their response but was just a collection of off-the-shelf chips and an existing OS. The Amiga's custom chipset ran rings round it, and Atari had no answer to that.
Slam Tilt is really good, the best pinball game on the Amiga in my opinion. Came out quite late in the day though, so not as well known as Pinball Dreams/Fantasies/Illusions. Those are great as well.
Yeah, I know the story well. Such a strange twist that some of the people who developed the C64 would develop the ST, and Commodore plucked Amiga straight out of Atari's hands...
Here's an ad I found in an early issue of Commodore Force - apparently they'd stopped advertising Atari stuff by then. I remember lusting after the Epic pack, and drooling heavily over the A4000!
Yeah, I know the story well. Such a strange twist that some of the people who developed the C64 would develop the ST, and Commodore plucked Amiga straight out of Atari's hands...
Here's an ad I found in an early issue of Commodore Force - apparently they'd stopped advertising Atari stuff by then. I remember lusting after the Epic pack!
Nostalgia! <3
That's nearing the end of Commodore though
The CD32 was such a desperate last throw of the dice, they were running on empty then.The original Amiga was about a decade ahead of its time all in all, and Commodore coasted on that rather than keep pushing forward with the huge headstart they had. The behind the scenes stuff is tragic, if you haven't seen it watch Dave Haynie's Deathbed Vigil video filmed on a camcorder the day Commodore went bankrupt going round the offices and stuff. Such a talented bunch of people who knew exactly what they wanted to do but management was always making them do stupid things.
The early KickStarts even had a hidden message you could get to display from the WorkBench which said:
"The Amiga, born a champion. The Amiga, still a champion. We built the Amiga, Commodore fucked it up".
The writing was on the wall from the very beginning, but at least we got those years where it really did seem anything was possible from a computer that was totally unlike anything else.
sixteen-bit
Member
It's kinda wild how I'll just be walking around in Eathrbound's overworld and run into cripplling slowdown for seemingly no reason.
Nostalgia! <3
That's nearing the end of Commodore though
The original Amiga was about a decade ahead of its time all in all, and Commodore coasted on that rather than keep pushing forward with the huge headstart they had. The behind the scenes stuff is tragic, if you haven't seen it watch Dave Haynie's Deathbed Vigil video filmed on a camcorder the day Commodore went bankrupt going round the offices and stuff. Such a talented bunch of people who knew exactly what they wanted to do but management was always making them do stupid things.
The early KickStarts even had a hidden message you could get to display from the WorkBench which said:
"The Amiga, born a champion. The Amiga, still a champion. We built the Amiga, Commodore fucked it up".
The writing was on the wall from the very beginning, but at least we got those years where it really did seem anything was possible from a computer that was totally unlike anything else.
I remember shrugging when Commodore went belly-up. Not because I wanted them to die, but because their passing really didn't affect me at all at the time - they hadn't supported the C64 properly in quite some, and had in fact stopped producing them. I had moved onto PD stuff so it wasn't something that I was worried about. I did worry about the Amiga's future, but as I hadn't had one back then, and didn't think I ever would, again it's just something that didn't affect me.
I did see that video, very sad. Dave Haynie seems like a cool guy. It was always the same with Commodore, whether Jack was running it or not. Irving controlling the purse strings, Jack shutting down Moorpark and moving to the east coast, Jack and Chuck's falling out... it's a real shame. But, like you said, at least we got those few years with those amazing computers!
Well the demoscene guys definitely did push AGA but yeah, gamewise there wasn't much that really took advantage of it.
Slam Tilt is a good example of a game that did, Super Stardust as well. Also the FPS games such as Alien Breed 3D, Breathless, Gloom, Fear etc did push the hardware nicely.. a lot of those needed at least 68030 or higher to be playable though.
Dave Haynie was a really talented guy, he did A3000 which was one of the best Amiga designs, and in some ways superior to A4000.
Commodore has some truly talented engineers working there over the years e.g Bob Yannes, Chuck Peddle and Jay miner.. shame about the management.
In a sense, but it took a while before custom graphics chips or dedicated graphics CPUs were doing the heavy lifting, and even then many early customs were purely reducing cost by condensing several standard TTL chips into one, the main CPU was still running the code and controlling everything like a puppeteer.
Sound hardware was farmed out to an actual processing unit sooner, commonly to a Z80.
The fastest 68k chips you tend to see in arcade hardware are 12mhz, but 8 and 10 are more common.
I went to an ex-Commodore employee party at Dave Haynie's house back in the 90s.
I was an IRC friend of a guy who knew Dave, and I drove from MA to NJ to meet up with him and head down to south Jersey for the party.
If someone says, "want to go to a party at Dave Haynie's house," (and you're an Amiga fan), you don't say no!
I saw the famed AA Amiga 3000 there. Dave was already into Be Boxes at the time. He had one hell of a computer room. It was a couple years after Commodore's demise, and the sting was obviously still being felt. These were some passionate guys. I wish I could remember who all was there.
I'm Facebook friends with him now, but I don't think he remembers me being there.
I ended up buying an Amiga 3000 Tower after I got a job out of college. Souped it up with a 68060 processor, a Piccolo SD64 graphics card, 82MB of RAM, >100GB of hard drive space. Probably one of the fastest Amigas ever assembled. Loved that thing. Sold it when I got into cars, though.
Ahhh the Amiga 500! I worked really hard as a teen slinging pizzas to save up money for it! (1MB version with the Fatter Agnus).
I'll never forget the look on my friends faces when they would see/hear things like Shadow of the Beast for the first time! So many amazing moments with that computer!
Using a PC at that time felt like such a downgrade, (Adlib midi music, /shivers).
/Americans with Amigas
I'll never forget the look on my friends faces when they would see/hear things like Shadow of the Beast for the first time! So many amazing moments with that computer!
Using a PC at that time felt like such a downgrade, (Adlib midi music, /shivers).
/Americans with Amigas
SeventhSon
Member
I never used an Amiga, but I associate it in my mind with RPGs because I seemed to remember a lot of game reviews for it in Dragon Magazine (the official D&D magazine) in the late 80s.
I went to an ex-Commodore employee party at Dave Haynie's house back in the 90s.
I was an IRC friend of a guy who knew Dave, and I drove from MA to NJ to meet up with him and head down to south Jersey for the party.
If someone says, "want to go to a party at Dave Haynie's house," (and you're an Amiga fan), you don't say no!
I saw the famed AA Amiga 3000 there. Dave was already into Be Boxes at the time. He had one hell of a computer room. It was a couple years after Commodore's demise, and the sting was obviously still being felt. These were some passionate guys. I wish I could remember who all was there.
I'm Facebook friends with him now, but I don't think he remembers me being there.
I ended up buying an Amiga 3000 Tower after I got a job out of college. Souped it up with a 68060 processor, a Piccolo SD64 graphics card, 82MB of RAM, >100GB of hard drive space. Probably one of the fastest Amigas ever assembled. Loved that thing. Sold it when I got into cars, though.
You lucky, lucky son of a bitch! I'd give my right arm for a chance to meet him! The only Commodore person I've ever spoken to was Bil Herd, and that was only over e-mail where we talked about design decisions of the C128
Unfortunately, I'm in Ireland and my chances of meeting anyone is rather small.
This whole thread makes me so sad. Playing the Amiga 500 when I was younger was one of the highlights of my life. Systems, as they pass, create a very strange nostalgia. Amiga though will always leave a searing imprint on my DNA. When I finally had to concede to PCs with a 386DX I was incredibly sad. I went back to using my Amiga 500 for BBSing but eventually it died and never got replaced. Picked up a 3000 years later and never was able to rekindle that spark.
Always will miss those days... and independent computer stores which were truly a place for hobbyists. We'd drive hours to get to "our store". Then Babbages, EB, came along... killed them all.
Now we have Sony and Microsoft making consoles which makes no sense to any one and the last dedicated gaming company, Nintendo, on the ropes. Le Sigh.
68k forever.
Always will miss those days... and independent computer stores which were truly a place for hobbyists. We'd drive hours to get to "our store". Then Babbages, EB, came along... killed them all.
Now we have Sony and Microsoft making consoles which makes no sense to any one and the last dedicated gaming company, Nintendo, on the ropes. Le Sigh.
68k forever.
AGA was a mess really, crippled by backwards compatibility. They also didn't release the hardware reference manual for it, trying to encourage people to go through the OS which went totally against the mainly European philosophy of taking full control of the system and hitting the metal directly.
Even as a registered developer you couldn't get your hands on it. The hardware reference manual eventually leaked to the demo scene, so people started taking advantage of it but combined with Commodore's financial situation it was all too little too late. AGA should have arrived a lot earlier, or not even been bothered with, it was merely a stop-gap and you had to pull-off all kinds of tricks to get anything good out of it.
If only Commodore had been more focused and less complacent over the years they could have got AAA Amiga's out the door at a time when it would have been as groundbreaking as the original chipset. Seeing a AAA board just lying on a bench in the Deathbed Vigil video was heartbreaking, so close yet so far
Yeah, bloody Commodore. There were some very forward-thinking people, just not in the positions that could call the shots over the years.
AGA was a mess really, crippled by backwards compatibility. They also didn't release the hardware reference manual for it, trying to encourage people to go through the OS which went totally against the mainly European philosophy of taking full control of the system and hitting the metal directly.
Even as a registered developer you couldn't get your hands on it. The hardware reference manual eventually leaked to the demo scene, so people started taking advantage of it but combined with Commodore's financial situation it was all too little too late. AGA should have arrived a lot earlier, or not even been bothered with, it was merely a stop-gap and you had to pull-off all kinds of tricks to get anything good out of it.
If only Commodore had been more focused and less complacent over the years they could have got AAA Amiga's out the door at a time when it would have been as groundbreaking as the original chipset. Seeing a AAA board just lying on a bench in the Deathbed Vigil video was heartbreaking, so close yet so far
Oh I didn't know about Commodore trying to discourage people writing to the metal with the AGA machines. That's interesting..
AGA definitely was a stop-gap.. hell. they didn't even upgrade Paula at all. Though it does speak a lot for the utter brilliance of the original design of the Paula chip that it still held up as well as it did in the 90's.
AAA did sound amazing and its such a shame it never came to fruition.
The whole deathbed Vigil is up on youtube now is anyone is interested btw:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1-Cp-A1ng0
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwnmXHKUpkU
Amiga was not only a great gaming computer but also just a great tool for creativity. I was never much of a programmer so I never mastered assembler code but things like Blitz Basic were pretty powerful and fairly accessibly to learn.. not to mention great software like Protracker or Deluxe Paint.
speculawyer
Member
yeah, im still upset that x86 won the processor war.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
And yet, something else happened while x86 was busy 'winning the processor war' - another sound architecture silently took over the world as we know it : )
francisnobleman
Banned
If amiga was made today, it would be just an expensive and beefy PC.
What's so special about it ?
The Amiga was multimedia before anyone had even invented the word, a custom chipset that was doing things no one had seen before.
Graphics, sound, video capabilities, a multitasking OS, in 1985 it was light years ahead of PC's at the time. You couldn't have built an equivalent PC even if you wanted to, the parts weren't there and would take years and years to catch up.
And when the Amiga 500 was released in 1987 all that power was available in an affordable home computer for everyone that anyone could develop for, not some top-end expensive thing. That changed everything.
You have no clue as to what you're talking about.
In 1984 you couldn't hope to build a PC with the A1000's capabilities. You still couldn't in 1994.
The Workbench's multitasking abilities took Microsoft and Apple more than 15 and 10 years to catch up to, and they're still not quite there.
Indeed, I would also say that the Amiga was sort of the first fully
integrated system like we see them today in terms of 'Graphics, sound, video
capabilities, a[nd] multitasking OS'. It was sort of an transition from
loosely coupled systems (which could only do one or two things at once) to
fully integrated one.
My biggest frustration with my Amiga 1200 was game compatibility. Whether an A500 game worked on it or not was like a roll of the dice. Sometimes you could use a Kickstart 1.3 disk to get them to work, but often it was to no avail unfortunately.
Luckily most if the big guns worked just fine. Chaos Engine was awesome. But I spent a shit load of time playing Lemmings. Only native AGA game I remember was Hoi AGA.
Luckily most if the big guns worked just fine. Chaos Engine was awesome. But I spent a shit load of time playing Lemmings. Only native AGA game I remember was Hoi AGA.