7 ms·

Does anyone here still use Amiga for actual work? I ask for two reasons: 1. I'm always interested when very old systems are still in production for one reason

Does anyone here still use Amiga for actual work? I ask for two reasons: 1. I'm always interested when very old systems are still in production for one reason or another and how you are doing it. 2. I wonder what motivated Hyperion to release this bug fix or, indeed, how they even managed to muster resources to do so. I can't quite figure out how they stay running. My story is that in a small cable access TV station, they had an Amiga for Video Toaster and I think some automated PSA type announcements at certain hours. Fun to see it there, though it's been some time since I visited. I can't imagine with the shift to HD that it's running any more. I also know a small local radio station that uses Tune Tracker on BeOS for radio automation, which reminds me that I should check on Haiku's progress.

Mithaldu 10y ago
Depends on what you count as real work. This was written for the Amiga Demo Comp at Revision 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvKAq3tq_LE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvKAq3tq_LE It got first place: http://www.pouet.net/party.php?which=1550&when=2016 http://www.pouet.net/party.php?which=1550&when=2016
- david-given 10y ago
  That's very cool (although I did spot some of their tricks --- you can hide a multitude of rendering sins behind a nice noise filter!) --- thanks. Do you know what that was written with? i.e. was it developed on an Amiga, or cross-compiled from a PC? Edit: I'm mainly interested in knowing in whether people are still using the Amiga as a first-class development platform, or else treating it solely as a development target. I'd also be interested to know whether Amiga emulation technology is good enough to allow this kind of thing to be developed using emulation, rather than having to refer to the hardware all the time. (I actually have a PowerPC code generator in the window over here... <---- ...currently producing largely broken PowerPC code as I type; I'm familiar with cross development. Also, also I think my liveness calculator is broken, and I have a horrible cold, but that's not very relevant.)
  - khanan 10y ago
    Are you kidding me? How the hell would you "cross-compile" copper- and blitter effects from a PC that has none of it, to a computer that entirely rely on it? No, this is a computer with 7 address registers and 7 data registers, where as your puny computers have one and two of the same. Don't compare crappy PC to the sublime Amiga, please :)
    - jpitz 10y ago
      A computer need not be able to execute machine instructions in order to emit them.
    - nikanj 10y ago
      The same way you write code for a 64-bit machine on an 32-bit operating system, or target any other hardware feature not present on your development box. Your box doesn't have to support the feature, it's enough to have a compiler that does. I'm not sure if you're joking, or if you need to learn more about cross-compilation.
    - ciroduran 10y ago
      It's perfectly possible to cross-compile code. There is a point, though, where demoscene coding requires running the result in the real hardware for testing, as it usually takes advantage of tricks that get lost in emulation.
    - to3m 10y ago
      You can use something like this: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=65625 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=65625 Works pretty well... I managed to use it to write a couple of stupid demo-type effects a couple of years ago, even though I have no Amiga, and no real idea how to use one for day-to-day stuff anyway. I wrote the copper effects as a sequence of macro-driven dc.w lines ;) 68000 wasn't as much fun as I remembered, though it was an enjoyable nostalgia trip I suppose. The separate address and data registers (and actually you have 8 of each - though 1 address register is the stack pointer, and on the Amiga you often lose a6, because that holds the address of the module jump table) are annoying, all the instructions are really... damn... slow, and the addressing mode selection is a bit crap. It was also funny to think how far technology has come on. My PC can write to disk - USB disk, I mean - 5400rpm, NTFS - using fwrite - more quickly than the Amiga's video scanout hardware can read pixel data :-|
jfoutz 10y ago
A lot of TV stations used them, but i think you're right. They probably all got replaced with the shift to HD. I'm pretty sure Fatboy Slim still uses an Atari ST as part of his setup.
- protomyth 10y ago
  If its an Atari Falcon then it could have been made by C-Lab. The Falcon had the same 56001 DSP that the NeXT hardware had but with MIDI ports.
  - rasz_pl 10y ago
    That DSP is good enough for running Quake 2 on Falcon, no joke: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNs6Jw4V4vlvafSs0H3Ww_M5nMm10m0UM https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNs6Jw4V4vlvafSs0H3Ww... there is also writeup here http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=26775 http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=26775
- simonthorntonN1 10y ago
  We (Norman & I) stopped using the Atari in the studio about 10 years ago (it sits in the corner unloved). Ableton & Protools these days. Simon.
  - opsunit 10y ago
    I've always wondered what guys like you did for a backup strategy. Is the "master" for Renegade Master or I'm Alive only on some shitty DD floppy somewhere? What about Liam Howlett? Aphex Twin?
    - JonnieCache 10y ago
      Tracks got bounced (ie. rendered/recorded/exported) to DAT tapes. The record wasn't just stored in the sampler and computer, it was in the state of the whole studio, at a minimum the mixing desk the sampler was plugged into but also likely various external effects units. Digging out the floppy wouldn't recreate the record as it was released.
space_ghost 10y ago
A friend of mine deployed a small FM radio station in Bethlehem ~10 years ago using a commercial radio product that was built around yellowTAB ZETA. I thought it was great, since I've always had a soft spot for the BeOS, but I did find it odd that they were building a commercial product around an OS that was basically unsupportable.
- stinkytaco 10y ago
  I assume it was Tune Tracker. The thing with Tune Tracker is that it was really good, really cheap ($200 as of right now, but I recall seeing it for $99 when I was managing a college station) and how often do you need to update something that's not online? It actually runs on Haiku now, according to their website, which makes is more supportable in the long term.
  - asveikau 10y ago
    That's a really fascinating niche. Seems like because it is so specialized and falls under "equipment", people will put up with what most computer users would not. It looks like they also sell a preconfigured hardware/software bundle so you don't need to mess around with installing an OS.
Someone 10y ago
In 2015, someone did: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a16010/30-year-old-computer-runs-school-heat/ http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a1...
jsight 10y ago
I have often wondered this as well. How can they possibly be generating enough revenue to stay in business?
- ekianjo 10y ago
  I think they have other revenue streams.
Torgo 10y ago
It's not an amiga but I know of a person still using an NTSC character generator for a public access station. They just threw an analog to digital converter in front of it and moved on to different tasks.
Esau 10y ago
I find that kind of stuff interesting as well. I thought about creating an Ask:HN thread to bring the subject up but I have the feeling that most HN readers probably keep up to date on their hardware and software.
mastazi 10y ago
Amiga still powering school district heating system (2015): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9707420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9707420 Commodore 64 (Amiga's daddy) still used in auto shop in Poland (2016): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12604414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12604414 Also, the top comment in the C64 thread is priceless ;-)
vidarh 10y ago
People who still use AmigaOS day to day are today more likely to either run it emulated or use AmigaOS 4.x on an AmigaOne (PPC) rather than run a "classic" M68k Amiga. It's mostly a hobby either way, and an expensive one. The PPC AmigaOne's can mostly (all?) run Linux as well. > 2. I wonder what motivated Hyperion to release this bug fix or, indeed, how they even managed to muster resources to do so. I can't quite figure out how they stay running. While they're a company, most of their "employees" are unpaid or paid very little, and are pretty much volunteers.
- gaius 10y ago
  Why expensive? The best Amiga, the 500+, is still very cheap on eBay.
  - baldfat 10y ago
    I loved the 500+ but the A2000, A3000 and A4000 were legendary.
    - gaius 10y ago
      I got my A500+ suped up with a 68010. That'll get you 5% in a tight loop.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    You say that. But then you start on the slippery slope to this: http://obligement.free.fr/gfx/trevordickinson_amiga_collection_3.jpg http://obligement.free.fr/gfx/trevordickinson_amiga_collecti... That's part of Trevor Dickinson's collecton. The guy then went on to start a company to produce new PPC Amiga(One)'s: http://a-eon.com/ http://a-eon.com/ Which from all accounts is also more of an expensive hobby than a majorly profitable business, at least when factoring in his time. (The image is from an interview: http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwdickinson_en.php http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwdickinson_e... )
- ekianjo 10y ago
  Are you sure about Hyperion employees being unpaid or paid very little?

Mithaldu 10y ago

Depends on what you count as real work. This was written for the Amiga Demo Comp at Revision 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvKAq3tq_LE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvKAq3tq_LE It got first place: http://www.pouet.net/party.php?which=1550&when=2016 http://www.pouet.net/party.php?which=1550&when=2016

david-given 10y ago
That's very cool (although I did spot some of their tricks --- you can hide a multitude of rendering sins behind a nice noise filter!) --- thanks. Do you know what that was written with? i.e. was it developed on an Amiga, or cross-compiled from a PC? Edit: I'm mainly interested in knowing in whether people are still using the Amiga as a first-class development platform, or else treating it solely as a development target. I'd also be interested to know whether Amiga emulation technology is good enough to allow this kind of thing to be developed using emulation, rather than having to refer to the hardware all the time. (I actually have a PowerPC code generator in the window over here... <---- ...currently producing largely broken PowerPC code as I type; I'm familiar with cross development. Also, also I think my liveness calculator is broken, and I have a horrible cold, but that's not very relevant.)
- khanan 10y ago
  Are you kidding me? How the hell would you "cross-compile" copper- and blitter effects from a PC that has none of it, to a computer that entirely rely on it? No, this is a computer with 7 address registers and 7 data registers, where as your puny computers have one and two of the same. Don't compare crappy PC to the sublime Amiga, please :)
  - jpitz 10y ago
    A computer need not be able to execute machine instructions in order to emit them.
  - nikanj 10y ago
    The same way you write code for a 64-bit machine on an 32-bit operating system, or target any other hardware feature not present on your development box. Your box doesn't have to support the feature, it's enough to have a compiler that does. I'm not sure if you're joking, or if you need to learn more about cross-compilation.
  - ciroduran 10y ago
    It's perfectly possible to cross-compile code. There is a point, though, where demoscene coding requires running the result in the real hardware for testing, as it usually takes advantage of tricks that get lost in emulation.
  - to3m 10y ago
    You can use something like this: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=65625 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=65625 Works pretty well... I managed to use it to write a couple of stupid demo-type effects a couple of years ago, even though I have no Amiga, and no real idea how to use one for day-to-day stuff anyway. I wrote the copper effects as a sequence of macro-driven dc.w lines ;) 68000 wasn't as much fun as I remembered, though it was an enjoyable nostalgia trip I suppose. The separate address and data registers (and actually you have 8 of each - though 1 address register is the stack pointer, and on the Amiga you often lose a6, because that holds the address of the module jump table) are annoying, all the instructions are really... damn... slow, and the addressing mode selection is a bit crap. It was also funny to think how far technology has come on. My PC can write to disk - USB disk, I mean - 5400rpm, NTFS - using fwrite - more quickly than the Amiga's video scanout hardware can read pixel data :-|

jfoutz 10y ago

A lot of TV stations used them, but i think you're right. They probably all got replaced with the shift to HD. I'm pretty sure Fatboy Slim still uses an Atari ST as part of his setup.

protomyth 10y ago
If its an Atari Falcon then it could have been made by C-Lab. The Falcon had the same 56001 DSP that the NeXT hardware had but with MIDI ports.
- rasz_pl 10y ago
  That DSP is good enough for running Quake 2 on Falcon, no joke: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNs6Jw4V4vlvafSs0H3Ww_M5nMm10m0UM https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNs6Jw4V4vlvafSs0H3Ww... there is also writeup here http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=26775 http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=26775
simonthorntonN1 10y ago
We (Norman & I) stopped using the Atari in the studio about 10 years ago (it sits in the corner unloved). Ableton & Protools these days. Simon.
- opsunit 10y ago
  I've always wondered what guys like you did for a backup strategy. Is the "master" for Renegade Master or I'm Alive only on some shitty DD floppy somewhere? What about Liam Howlett? Aphex Twin?
  - JonnieCache 10y ago
    Tracks got bounced (ie. rendered/recorded/exported) to DAT tapes. The record wasn't just stored in the sampler and computer, it was in the state of the whole studio, at a minimum the mixing desk the sampler was plugged into but also likely various external effects units. Digging out the floppy wouldn't recreate the record as it was released.

space_ghost 10y ago

A friend of mine deployed a small FM radio station in Bethlehem ~10 years ago using a commercial radio product that was built around yellowTAB ZETA. I thought it was great, since I've always had a soft spot for the BeOS, but I did find it odd that they were building a commercial product around an OS that was basically unsupportable.

stinkytaco 10y ago
I assume it was Tune Tracker. The thing with Tune Tracker is that it was really good, really cheap ($200 as of right now, but I recall seeing it for $99 when I was managing a college station) and how often do you need to update something that's not online? It actually runs on Haiku now, according to their website, which makes is more supportable in the long term.
- asveikau 10y ago
  That's a really fascinating niche. Seems like because it is so specialized and falls under "equipment", people will put up with what most computer users would not. It looks like they also sell a preconfigured hardware/software bundle so you don't need to mess around with installing an OS.

Someone 10y ago

In 2015, someone did: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a16010/30-year-old-computer-runs-school-heat/ http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a1...

jsight 10y ago

I have often wondered this as well. How can they possibly be generating enough revenue to stay in business?

ekianjo 10y ago
I think they have other revenue streams.

Torgo 10y ago

It's not an amiga but I know of a person still using an NTSC character generator for a public access station. They just threw an analog to digital converter in front of it and moved on to different tasks.

Esau 10y ago

I find that kind of stuff interesting as well. I thought about creating an Ask:HN thread to bring the subject up but I have the feeling that most HN readers probably keep up to date on their hardware and software.

mastazi 10y ago

Amiga still powering school district heating system (2015): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9707420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9707420 Commodore 64 (Amiga's daddy) still used in auto shop in Poland (2016): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12604414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12604414 Also, the top comment in the C64 thread is priceless ;-)

vidarh 10y ago

People who still use AmigaOS day to day are today more likely to either run it emulated or use AmigaOS 4.x on an AmigaOne (PPC) rather than run a "classic" M68k Amiga. It's mostly a hobby either way, and an expensive one. The PPC AmigaOne's can mostly (all?) run Linux as well. > 2. I wonder what motivated Hyperion to release this bug fix or, indeed, how they even managed to muster resources to do so. I can't quite figure out how they stay running. While they're a company, most of their "employees" are unpaid or paid very little, and are pretty much volunteers.

gaius 10y ago
Why expensive? The best Amiga, the 500+, is still very cheap on eBay.
- baldfat 10y ago
  I loved the 500+ but the A2000, A3000 and A4000 were legendary.
  - gaius 10y ago
    I got my A500+ suped up with a 68010. That'll get you 5% in a tight loop.
- vidarh 10y ago
  You say that. But then you start on the slippery slope to this: http://obligement.free.fr/gfx/trevordickinson_amiga_collection_3.jpg http://obligement.free.fr/gfx/trevordickinson_amiga_collecti... That's part of Trevor Dickinson's collecton. The guy then went on to start a company to produce new PPC Amiga(One)'s: http://a-eon.com/ http://a-eon.com/ Which from all accounts is also more of an expensive hobby than a majorly profitable business, at least when factoring in his time. (The image is from an interview: http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwdickinson_en.php http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwdickinson_e... )
ekianjo 10y ago
Are you sure about Hyperion employees being unpaid or paid very little?