4 ms·

interesting. i remember the 1000, 2000 and 3000 being "look, but don't touch" and i have vague memories of the 500 but i remember some good reason to dismiss it

by a-dub 5y ago

interesting. i remember the 1000, 2000 and 3000 being "look, but don't touch" and i have vague memories of the 500 but i remember some good reason to dismiss it beyond "it's not what i have." i wish i could remember what it was. i want to say high peripheral costs- or it was missing something big... but i can't remember now. was it that the os was designed for more powerful machines and there wasn't much space left for user programs maybe?

pavlov 5y ago
I never had an Amiga, but I don’t think the 500 owners necessarily interacted with the OS very much beyond launching programs. That kind of usage was commonplace since other popular computers (C-64, MS-DOS PCs) barely had an OS anyway. I think it was fairly common to use TV output on the Amiga 500, since it was much more affordable than buying a proper computer monitor. You’re not going to do much GUI productivity multitasking on a PAL TV because of interlacing, but it worked fine for games and low-res text mode. So really the Amiga 500 was directly for the Commodore 64 market, while the 2000/3000 were more like oddball low-end workstations — and didn’t have a clear market.
- nradov 5y ago
  Some of the early Amiga models did support TV output but the display quality was so terrible as to be effectively unusable. I and all the other Amiga owners I knew used actual monitors.
- snvzz 5y ago
  >You’re not going to do much GUI productivity multitasking on a PAL TV because of interlacing As long as you had a good PAL TV, such as a Sony Trinitron with SCART (RGB) input, it was VERY feasible. On a composite-only TV, for actual work, you'd be better off with the Mono "composite without color" output A500 had than the horror which is actual composite. 720x256 (overscan and no interlace) & virtual desktops (screens) enabled effective multitasking. 720x512 (interlaced) was of course better, but with great care taken on selecting screen colors to minimize interlaced-related annoyance. This is true even with an A500 with 512KB CHIP + 512KB SLOW RAM and single floppy drive, on AmigaOS 1.3. I know for a fact, because A500+A501+Trinitron was my setup for several years.
- emrah 5y ago
  > A500+A501+SonyTrinitron I had this combo as well. Not as crisp as a 1084S but still quite decent
nradov 5y ago
The Amiga 500 had almost identical hardware specifications to the 1000. The OS ran fine. They just packed everything into a smaller, cheaper case with reduced expandability. Peripherals such as hard drives were expensive because it used a proprietary model-specific expansion port.

by a-dub 5y ago

pavlov 5y ago

I never had an Amiga, but I don’t think the 500 owners necessarily interacted with the OS very much beyond launching programs. That kind of usage was commonplace since other popular computers (C-64, MS-DOS PCs) barely had an OS anyway. I think it was fairly common to use TV output on the Amiga 500, since it was much more affordable than buying a proper computer monitor. You’re not going to do much GUI productivity multitasking on a PAL TV because of interlacing, but it worked fine for games and low-res text mode. So really the Amiga 500 was directly for the Commodore 64 market, while the 2000/3000 were more like oddball low-end workstations — and didn’t have a clear market.

nradov 5y ago
Some of the early Amiga models did support TV output but the display quality was so terrible as to be effectively unusable. I and all the other Amiga owners I knew used actual monitors.
snvzz 5y ago
>You’re not going to do much GUI productivity multitasking on a PAL TV because of interlacing As long as you had a good PAL TV, such as a Sony Trinitron with SCART (RGB) input, it was VERY feasible. On a composite-only TV, for actual work, you'd be better off with the Mono "composite without color" output A500 had than the horror which is actual composite. 720x256 (overscan and no interlace) & virtual desktops (screens) enabled effective multitasking. 720x512 (interlaced) was of course better, but with great care taken on selecting screen colors to minimize interlaced-related annoyance. This is true even with an A500 with 512KB CHIP + 512KB SLOW RAM and single floppy drive, on AmigaOS 1.3. I know for a fact, because A500+A501+Trinitron was my setup for several years.
emrah 5y ago
> A500+A501+SonyTrinitron I had this combo as well. Not as crisp as a 1084S but still quite decent

nradov 5y ago

The Amiga 500 had almost identical hardware specifications to the 1000. The OS ran fine. They just packed everything into a smaller, cheaper case with reduced expandability. Peripherals such as hard drives were expensive because it used a proprietary model-specific expansion port.