On Wed, 13 Jul 2016, Brad H wrote: > I think the Amiga project is neat, although personally I'm not sure I'd > find a need for one.
I have an Amiga 3000 (my personal favorite), but I have limited space so I can only have about two "classic" systems set up at once (and those are usually SGI machines in the retro-spots-of-active-honor). I'm not one of those types who has a personal warehouse with loads of old gear stacked on huge shelves. So, I find that I spend a lot more time with a MIST FPGA Amiga than my real 3000. The main reason being that since it can use VGA + USB, it's small, and it's super easy to put on a KVM make it attractive in my case. Plus it can emulate so many micros, I get more time with them. > The thing about the Amiga was its wow factor I totally agree. I'm not a huge fan of Workbench, but the Amiga hardware and the way folks exploited it in games, demos, and applications was the thing that impressed me. All those custom chips doing interesting things (music and graphics - there was no bean-counting-co-processor thankfully) while at the time my impression of PeeCees was that they just bottleneck'd everything through one pathetically slow CPU with brain-damaged memory management and then wanted to brag in a dull magazine about mind-numbing things like how fast you could get a spreadsheet done or reconcile accounts payable for your boss... ie, reeeeal inspiring stuff to a 14 year old (*yawn*). I see things a bit differently, now, (I actually think DOS and x86 is cooler now than I did back in the day) but that's how I felt as a teen. Of course the x86 today just feels like it's so complex that the actual microcode you "get" to access & play with isn't really reflecting what's going on inside. It's just some shared fiction while the CPU really does super-complex optimizations way beyond what any one person can really understand anymore. It's also why I haven't curiously disassembled any C code in probably a decade. I realized the compiler could always do a better job and use instructions or features I didn't even know existed. Perhaps, I think that way because I'm not a specialized EE staring at chip lithography all day. However, others have made the point more elegantly before on the list. > I remember walking into Compucentre (Canadian chain) in the mid-80s.. > and there's all the computers from 8 bit heaven and their 16 color > graphics (if you were lucky).. and then there's this one computer on a > pedestal featuring a totally real jungle cat prowling onscreen. It just > blew the doors off everything else there [...] I had nearly the same experience at a chain here in the states called "Electronics Boutique". They'd have a couple of PeeCees running demos and facing out the storefront. Your eyes would always been drawn to the Amiga running a Dragon's Lair or Space Ace demo (or something else awesome). I remember being in the store talking to the staff and people walking in to get a PeeCee and walking out with an Amiga because the kids were so impressed with the games and graphics etc... Also, I've heard versions of this same story from at least three other people. It seems to be a very common experience. It definitely whet my appetite for Amigas, too. However, at the time $$$ was a big problem for me and my family. So, it really wasn't until they were started to become quite obsolete that I finally got to own one. By that time, I was into UNIX and so it was already just a "retro curiosity" but one I still enjoy. I do wish I'd got the chance to use Amigas to do something "real" when they were state of the art. That or I wish I'd had an A500 the day they hit the shelves and had all the cool games. I'm sure that would have been a lot of fun. -Swift
