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I saved up my summer job money and got an Amiga 500 (with an actual monitor!) - ordered in November, so it was on our doorstep when I got home from my afterscho

I saved up my summer job money and got an Amiga 500 (with an actual monitor!) - ordered in November, so it was on our doorstep when I got home from my afterschool (probably senior year of high school) job. My dad warned that I should probably let it warm up overnight, to avoid shorts from condensation. It was torture! I woke up like 2 hours before school to set it up :) It was glorious! It was shocking to be able to "pull down" the main display and see the OS GUI behind it - like magic! I was devastated when my parents moved to a new place when I was around 30 and I discovered they had just tossed out my TRS-80 coco, C-64 (and about 3 shoeboxes of disks), and my Amiga :( So sad.

Someone 9y ago
”to "pull down" the main display and see the OS GUI behind it“ I haven’t ever used an Amiga, but thought its “main display” was its GUI, or that its GUI at least was on par with the command prompt. Am I wrong, or am I reading too much in this statement?
- pkroll 9y ago
  In this context "main display" means "whatever display is in the foreground" as you could have, say, a Deluxe Paint screen. It'd take up, literally the whole screen, and you could drag it down by the top bar and see the OS desktop screen behind it, possibly in a different resolution and number of colors.
  - jacobush 9y ago
    And now fullscreen apps are all the rage, again. In my mind, desktop computing in general has always converged, sometimes in roundabout ways, towards the Amiga experience.
    - gilbetron 9y ago
      I really wish they'd dispatch with the standard "minimize/maximize/close" trio of controls and change them to something more interesting. Close is fine, but I'd rather it be a bit harder to use. I don't need to suddenly close something, and it far more often happens that I accidentally close something. Seeing the Amiga video, a foreground/background button could be cool. Or maybe "make transparent while I hold the mouse button down". Or any number of other things. These days I just maximize my windows, then alt-tab (or equivalent for Mac) through my windows. Only rarely do I do things side-by-side, and would rather have some tiling capabilities rather than having to do it manually.
  - Corrado 9y ago
    I remember have several things running simultaneously, all at different resolutions and bit depth. Talking on a BBS on one layer, playing Tracker files on another, writing a paper on a third, and the Workbench behind them all. It was glorious and very productive. Not that it would be super useful but I don't really think we can replicate the same "layer" thing on todays displays.
- kiksy 9y ago
  This is hard to describe, but easier to show. If you load up: http://www.chiptune.com/ http://www.chiptune.com/ the Workbench emulator, click and drag down the white bar at the top ("where it says Chipbench release) you'll see what is meant.
- ttkari 9y ago
  Here's a video clip showing the feature - too bad there isn't another application running behind the Workbench screen. https://youtu.be/H86miOXXS48?t=8m54s https://youtu.be/H86miOXXS48?t=8m54s
  - gbraad 9y ago
    I grew up with this feature. At the age of 5, that was 1986, I used my father's just bought Amiga. I took all of this for granted... So for a long time I never used a PC seriously. Around the time Commodore blew it, I looked into PCs and linux, 1993 IIRC. PC have looked primitive to me for a long time.
- Annatar 9y ago
  The Amiga’s Intuition library, the core engine of the GUI, can draw graphics primitives on “screens”. Because of the Copper co-processor which displays the screen raster line by raster line, these screens can have different resolutions with different numbers of colors - all of them displayed simultaneously on the monitor.

Someone 9y ago

”to "pull down" the main display and see the OS GUI behind it“ I haven’t ever used an Amiga, but thought its “main display” was its GUI, or that its GUI at least was on par with the command prompt. Am I wrong, or am I reading too much in this statement?

pkroll 9y ago
In this context "main display" means "whatever display is in the foreground" as you could have, say, a Deluxe Paint screen. It'd take up, literally the whole screen, and you could drag it down by the top bar and see the OS desktop screen behind it, possibly in a different resolution and number of colors.
- jacobush 9y ago
  And now fullscreen apps are all the rage, again. In my mind, desktop computing in general has always converged, sometimes in roundabout ways, towards the Amiga experience.
  - gilbetron 9y ago
    I really wish they'd dispatch with the standard "minimize/maximize/close" trio of controls and change them to something more interesting. Close is fine, but I'd rather it be a bit harder to use. I don't need to suddenly close something, and it far more often happens that I accidentally close something. Seeing the Amiga video, a foreground/background button could be cool. Or maybe "make transparent while I hold the mouse button down". Or any number of other things. These days I just maximize my windows, then alt-tab (or equivalent for Mac) through my windows. Only rarely do I do things side-by-side, and would rather have some tiling capabilities rather than having to do it manually.
- Corrado 9y ago
  I remember have several things running simultaneously, all at different resolutions and bit depth. Talking on a BBS on one layer, playing Tracker files on another, writing a paper on a third, and the Workbench behind them all. It was glorious and very productive. Not that it would be super useful but I don't really think we can replicate the same "layer" thing on todays displays.
kiksy 9y ago
This is hard to describe, but easier to show. If you load up: http://www.chiptune.com/ http://www.chiptune.com/ the Workbench emulator, click and drag down the white bar at the top ("where it says Chipbench release) you'll see what is meant.
ttkari 9y ago
Here's a video clip showing the feature - too bad there isn't another application running behind the Workbench screen. https://youtu.be/H86miOXXS48?t=8m54s https://youtu.be/H86miOXXS48?t=8m54s
- gbraad 9y ago
  I grew up with this feature. At the age of 5, that was 1986, I used my father's just bought Amiga. I took all of this for granted... So for a long time I never used a PC seriously. Around the time Commodore blew it, I looked into PCs and linux, 1993 IIRC. PC have looked primitive to me for a long time.
Annatar 9y ago
The Amiga’s Intuition library, the core engine of the GUI, can draw graphics primitives on “screens”. Because of the Copper co-processor which displays the screen raster line by raster line, these screens can have different resolutions with different numbers of colors - all of them displayed simultaneously on the monitor.