Back

Portal:Amiga

Portal topics
Activities
Culture
Geography
Health
History
Mathematics
Nature
People
Philosophy
Religion
Society
Technology
Random portal
edit 

The Amiga Portal

The 1987 Amiga 500 was the best-selling model.
Shortcut

Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 16/32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. These systems include the Atari ST—released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, the Amiga differs from its contemporaries through the inclusion of custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprites and a blitter, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS.

The Amiga 1000 was released in July 1985, but production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986. The best-selling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 along with the more expandable Amiga 2000. The Amiga 3000 was introduced in 1990, followed by the Amiga 500 Plus, and Amiga 600 in March 1992. Finally, the Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000 were released in late 1992. The Amiga line sold an estimated 4.85 million units.

Although early advertisements cast the computer as an all-purpose business machine, especially when outfitted with the Sidecar IBM PC compatibility add-on, the Amiga was most commercially successful as a home computer, with a wide range of games and creative software. It also found a niche in video production with the Video Toaster hardware and software, and Amiga's audio hardware made it a popular platform for music tracker software. The processor and memory capacity enabled 3D rendering packages, including LightWave 3D, Imagine, and Traces, a predecessor to Blender.

Poor marketing and the failure of later models to repeat the technological advances of the first systems resulted in Commodore quickly losing market share to the rapidly dropping prices of IBM PC compatibles, which gained 256 color graphics in 1987, as well as the fourth generation of video game consoles.

Commodore ultimately went bankrupt in April 1994 after a version of the Amiga packaged as a game console, the Amiga CD32, failed in the marketplace. Since the demise of Commodore, various groups have marketed successors to the original Amiga line, including Genesi, Eyetech, ACube Systems Srl and A-EON Technology. AmigaOS has influenced replacements, clones, and compatible systems such as MorphOS and AROS. Currently Belgian company Hyperion Entertainment maintains and develops AmigaOS 4, which is an official and direct descendant of AmigaOS 3.1 – the last system made by Commodore for the original Amiga Computers. (Full article...)

edit 

Selected article

The Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) is the second generation of the Amiga computer's chipset, offering minor improvements over the original chipset (OCS) design. ECS was introduced in 1990 with the launch of the Amiga 3000. Amigas produced from 1990 onwards featured a mix of OCS and ECS chips, such as later versions of the Amiga 500 and the Commodore CDTV. Other ECS models were the Amiga 500+ in 1991 and lastly the Amiga 600 in 1992.

Notable improvements were the Super Agnus and the Hires Denise chips. The sound and floppy controller chip, Paula, remained unchanged from the OCS design. Super Agnus supports 2 MB of CHIP RAM, whereas the original Agnus/Fat Agnus and subsequent Fatter Agnus can address 512 KB and 1 MB, respectively. The ECS Denise chip offers Productivity (640×480 non-interlaced) and SuperHires (1280×200 or 1280×256) display modes (also available in interlaced mode), which are however limited to only 4 on-screen colors. Essentially, a 35 ns pixel mode was added plus the ability to run arbitrary horizontal and vertical scan rates. This made other display modes possible, but only the aforementioned modes were supported originally out of the box. For example, the Linux Amiga framebuffer device driver allows the use of several other display modes. Other improvements were the ability of the blitter to copy regions larger than 1024×1024 pixels in one operation and the ability to display sprites in border regions (outside of any display window where bitplanes are shown). ECS also allows software switching between NTSC and PAL video modes. (Full article...)

edit 

Selected biography

Timothy John Follin (born 19 December 1970) is a former video game music composer who has written tracks for a variety of titles and home gaming systems, including the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, Nintendo Entertainment System, Super NES, Game Boy, Dreamcast and PlayStation.

Follin's early 8- and 16-bit pieces were notable for their ambitious and imaginative use of samples, or clever manipulation of limited sound hardware – particularly with his work on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, on which he managed to play up to six channels of audio from one simple, tiny, clickable dynamic speaker.

Among Follin's works are the soundtracks to Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future (Dreamcast), Silver Surfer (NES) and Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge (Super NES). (Full article...)

edit 

Categories

Category puzzle
Category puzzle
Select [►] to view subcategories
Amiga
Amiga chipsets
Amiga computers
AROS software
Amiga companies
Amiga emulators
Amiga magazines
MorphOS
AmigaOS
Amiga people
Amiga software
edit 

Selected picture

Miggybyte magazine
Miggybyte magazine
Credit: Ben Gaunt
Screen shot of Miggybyte Freeware magazine.
edit 

Did you know...

edit 

Related portals

edit 

Topics

Pen & Earth
Pen & Earth


edit 

WikiProjects

edit 

Things to do

  • Create articles: There are many articles that have yet to be started... Pick your favorite and start researching!
  • Find photos for articles: Many Amiga–related articles would be substantially better with the addition of photographs.
  • Expand articles: There are many Amiga stubs which could use extensive updates and development.
  • Find sources: Many poorly sourced articles could use better citations.
  • Wikify: Add {{Portal|Amiga}} to the See also sections of Amiga-related articles.

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Discover Wikipedia using portals


Rich TVX News Network Site

Rich TVX News Network Info

© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search