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As the comments below observe, I think the types and number of experiences built on the back of new (to mainstream audiences anyway) technology were transformat

As the comments below observe, I think the types and number of experiences built on the back of new (to mainstream audiences anyway) technology were transformative. In 92 the Amiga 1200 came out, a wonderful computer with great hardware but unfortunately it never made it big. Four years later in 1996 mass market PCs were coming out with Pentium processors, 3dfx accelerators, high resolution bitmap displays, internet connections and powerful general purpose sound adapters. Today we have orders of magnitude more computing power, but essentially they are powering the same experiences, albeit far more polished. If we look back four years, 2014, not much has really changed. The big game releases indeed are the same games (in the 90s they'd have been called mission packs). The magic of experiencing something completely brand new, completely alien and magical, has gone away. Though, I am hopeful VR/AR is going to deliver that again. I don't know how far off it is, but it would be fitting if it's Carmack and Abrash behind it. Again.

wowtip 8y ago
I wonder sometimes, what could be built using today's tech if it was focused like Amigas back in the day with a single hardware spec and a dedicated OS just for that platform. Without regard to backwards compability in OS, like BeOS at the time. What would a revolutionary Amiga 1000 look like in 2018? With modern hardware and latest OS/system ideas. Gaming consoles could be considered examples of this, but they are kind of single purpose. Maybe a topic for an AskHN, for a rainy day.
- pjc50 8y ago
  The three distinctive features of the Amiga: - revolutionary custom graphics hardware - better sound hardware than competitors - pre-emptive multitasking Therefore, if I was attempting something like this today, I would: - make the graphics preeminent in the system. In other words, keep the graphics card and throw away the legacy CPU. Let it drive PCI devices. - on its own, doing that makes it much harder to program, so put considerable work into making the instruction set and programmer's model open and well documented - find a DAW engineer and let them build the audio subsystem with an obsessive focus on low latency. Let's aim for no more than 10 samples latency between input and output processing and see where that gets us. - full multitasking in which nothing is ever allowed to block anything else unrelated, through resource reservation (qv the Nemesis research operating system). Having an Electron app on the system should not impair anything else, and the system's default editor should also be focused on low-latency. - apps are by default fully security partitioned from each other. The operating system would maintain a CRDT-based record-orientated personal data storage system, incorporating lessons from PalmOS. This gives both native sync and automatic persistence across power-off. - low latency non-USB keyboard and mouse. PS/2 would actually work but we could go for something really surprising like gigabit Ethernet or optical TOSLINK. (Low latency is a good example of a feature which is extremely hard to retrofit and you end up redesigning the system around it).
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    And you left out the way libraries worked, GUI modes, pro-tracker and AMOS?!? :)
  - the_af 8y ago
    > keep the graphics card and throw away the legacy CPU If you throw away the CPU, how do you run general purpose programs (of which games are one type)? If the graphics card can run them, why are you not calling it a CPU? The Amiga had a CPU :) Never owned one, but I understand a key feature was that graphics were very easy to program (mapped to main memory, or so a friend who owned one told me).
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Some ideas come to mind like Surface Pro and Surface Hub.
- jcalabro 8y ago
  This talk from Casey Muratory of handmade hero might be of interest https://youtu.be/kZRE7HIO3vk https://youtu.be/kZRE7HIO3vk
- lsadam0 8y ago
  > ...a single hardware spec and a dedicated OS just for that platform. Without regard to backwards compability in OS, like BeOS at the time. I would argue the closest mainstream machines currently available that meet this requirement are Macs and iOS devices. Sure, there's a handful-ish amount of different configurations, but they do not vary greatly. Backwards compatibility certainly isn't much of a concern in macOS.
- digi_owl 8y ago
  Given that outside of the Switch the consoles are x86 AMD made socs, even consoles have bowed to the PC. In hindsight i feel the Amiga's custom chips was actual an Achilles heel. Yes it allowed each model to sprint out of the gate, but it also limited how far the user could upgrade them. In contrast the only thing on the motherboard of a PC of the era (once we hit the 386 and later) was the CPU and RAM. Everything else lived on replaceable boards hooked to a bus. And as the Pentium era showed, even the bus could be "replaced" by placing a new one (PCI) side by side with the old one (ISA). All this allowed a continuation of sorts, where a humble DOS box could live on into the Win9x era in some way or other.
cubano 8y ago
I always dislike it when the Amiga 1200 is mentioned as a forerunner to modern computing and the wonderful, albeit buggy, Atari 1040ST, released in 1985, is totally forgotten about Using the Motorola 680000 with 32 bit internal/16 bit external buses and color bit-mapped graphics, my ST, hardware wise, totally blew away all other PCs from a technical POV and it just annoys me when the Amiga gets all this love the and the ST gets none whatsoever.
- superflyguy 8y ago
  The ST was not as good as the Amiga, that's why. The only advantage it had over the Amiga was the slightly higher CPU speed, because the Amiga's was reduced to keep in sync with the hardware it had. The hardware being what it needed to trounce the ST. You only have to look at the range and quality of games for each to see what I mean. ST ports always had that muddy look to them.
  - snarfy 8y ago
    Ah, the nostalgia. I haven't heard a good AtariST vs Amiga fight in years.
- kar1181 8y ago
  I still own and love both :) I mentioned the A1200 because it was basically the apex of that line of computers (and indeed that entire approach to computing). There's some great videos on Youtube (particularly the Computerphile ones) on the Tramiel era Atari computers. They are a great little machine to help learn computer organization on. They were powerful yet still relatively simple machines that you could fit in your head. E.g. I love this one on linked lists where they write some 68k assembly and run it on a STE and Falcon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyG9S9nAlUM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyG9S9nAlUM
- bluedino 8y ago
  The Amiga had a hardware blitter - this made the difference in games. If you play the same game on both systems, the Atari port seems like a slideshow in comparison.
- 8y ago

wowtip 8y ago

I wonder sometimes, what could be built using today's tech if it was focused like Amigas back in the day with a single hardware spec and a dedicated OS just for that platform. Without regard to backwards compability in OS, like BeOS at the time. What would a revolutionary Amiga 1000 look like in 2018? With modern hardware and latest OS/system ideas. Gaming consoles could be considered examples of this, but they are kind of single purpose. Maybe a topic for an AskHN, for a rainy day.

pjc50 8y ago
The three distinctive features of the Amiga: - revolutionary custom graphics hardware - better sound hardware than competitors - pre-emptive multitasking Therefore, if I was attempting something like this today, I would: - make the graphics preeminent in the system. In other words, keep the graphics card and throw away the legacy CPU. Let it drive PCI devices. - on its own, doing that makes it much harder to program, so put considerable work into making the instruction set and programmer's model open and well documented - find a DAW engineer and let them build the audio subsystem with an obsessive focus on low latency. Let's aim for no more than 10 samples latency between input and output processing and see where that gets us. - full multitasking in which nothing is ever allowed to block anything else unrelated, through resource reservation (qv the Nemesis research operating system). Having an Electron app on the system should not impair anything else, and the system's default editor should also be focused on low-latency. - apps are by default fully security partitioned from each other. The operating system would maintain a CRDT-based record-orientated personal data storage system, incorporating lessons from PalmOS. This gives both native sync and automatic persistence across power-off. - low latency non-USB keyboard and mouse. PS/2 would actually work but we could go for something really surprising like gigabit Ethernet or optical TOSLINK. (Low latency is a good example of a feature which is extremely hard to retrofit and you end up redesigning the system around it).
- pjmlp 8y ago
  And you left out the way libraries worked, GUI modes, pro-tracker and AMOS?!? :)
- the_af 8y ago
  > keep the graphics card and throw away the legacy CPU If you throw away the CPU, how do you run general purpose programs (of which games are one type)? If the graphics card can run them, why are you not calling it a CPU? The Amiga had a CPU :) Never owned one, but I understand a key feature was that graphics were very easy to program (mapped to main memory, or so a friend who owned one told me).
pjmlp 8y ago
Some ideas come to mind like Surface Pro and Surface Hub.
jcalabro 8y ago
This talk from Casey Muratory of handmade hero might be of interest https://youtu.be/kZRE7HIO3vk https://youtu.be/kZRE7HIO3vk
lsadam0 8y ago
> ...a single hardware spec and a dedicated OS just for that platform. Without regard to backwards compability in OS, like BeOS at the time. I would argue the closest mainstream machines currently available that meet this requirement are Macs and iOS devices. Sure, there's a handful-ish amount of different configurations, but they do not vary greatly. Backwards compatibility certainly isn't much of a concern in macOS.
digi_owl 8y ago
Given that outside of the Switch the consoles are x86 AMD made socs, even consoles have bowed to the PC. In hindsight i feel the Amiga's custom chips was actual an Achilles heel. Yes it allowed each model to sprint out of the gate, but it also limited how far the user could upgrade them. In contrast the only thing on the motherboard of a PC of the era (once we hit the 386 and later) was the CPU and RAM. Everything else lived on replaceable boards hooked to a bus. And as the Pentium era showed, even the bus could be "replaced" by placing a new one (PCI) side by side with the old one (ISA). All this allowed a continuation of sorts, where a humble DOS box could live on into the Win9x era in some way or other.

cubano 8y ago

I always dislike it when the Amiga 1200 is mentioned as a forerunner to modern computing and the wonderful, albeit buggy, Atari 1040ST, released in 1985, is totally forgotten about Using the Motorola 680000 with 32 bit internal/16 bit external buses and color bit-mapped graphics, my ST, hardware wise, totally blew away all other PCs from a technical POV and it just annoys me when the Amiga gets all this love the and the ST gets none whatsoever.

superflyguy 8y ago
The ST was not as good as the Amiga, that's why. The only advantage it had over the Amiga was the slightly higher CPU speed, because the Amiga's was reduced to keep in sync with the hardware it had. The hardware being what it needed to trounce the ST. You only have to look at the range and quality of games for each to see what I mean. ST ports always had that muddy look to them.
- snarfy 8y ago
  Ah, the nostalgia. I haven't heard a good AtariST vs Amiga fight in years.
kar1181 8y ago
I still own and love both :) I mentioned the A1200 because it was basically the apex of that line of computers (and indeed that entire approach to computing). There's some great videos on Youtube (particularly the Computerphile ones) on the Tramiel era Atari computers. They are a great little machine to help learn computer organization on. They were powerful yet still relatively simple machines that you could fit in your head. E.g. I love this one on linked lists where they write some 68k assembly and run it on a STE and Falcon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyG9S9nAlUM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyG9S9nAlUM
bluedino 8y ago
The Amiga had a hardware blitter - this made the difference in games. If you play the same game on both systems, the Atari port seems like a slideshow in comparison.
8y ago