4 ms·

The reason for that is interesting, IMO. The Amiga was intended as a home computer. And in 1985, a home computer might have a TV for display, or a very fuzzy

by retrac 3y ago

The reason for that is interesting, IMO. The Amiga was intended as a home computer. And in 1985, a home computer might have a TV for display, or a very fuzzy low-quality colour monitor. For some reason, yellow/orange/red/white on blue is particularly legible on poor-quality monitors and TVs. (Many DOS applications of the era were white or yellow on blue, for the same reason. And early Windows had similarly horrible schemes.) By the late 1980s, colour monitors were nearly as good as a B&W one for showing crisp text and lines, and so grey/black on white.

nradov 3y ago
The way that the Amiga engineers used interlaced video modes to support CRT displays with low refresh rates was also not a good look. In the early models that was the only way to get VGA equivalent screen resolution, but the flickering was so bad that some people literally wore sunglasses and configured the desktop with low-contrast colors in order to reduce eye strain. It was one of several design decisions that probably seemed like a good idea at the time but made the product look shoddy and held it back from mainstream adoption.
- vidarh 3y ago
  Nobody I know used interlace other than very occasionally for still images. VGA resolutions were not common at that time, so they were not what my circle compared against anyway. When I visited one of my dads business associates who ran a software company, for example, the vast majority of PC's in their offices had monochrome text screens. A handful had EGA graphics cards and colour screens. I remember playing Zaxxon on one of them and finding it hysterical that the graphics and sound on their most expensive machines was worse even than on my C64. The Amiga looked like sci-fi technology in comparison with what most people actually had in their offices or homes until several years in. Ironically if anything the significantly better graphics contributed to it being pigeonholed as a game machine despite the original Amiga looking like an office machine and being way too expensive for games. The problem was not so much the original or enhanced graphics chips, which were groundbreaking in 85 and maybe even until ~'88 or so, but that AGA in 92 was way too little, several years too late as an upgrade to still justify the price premium on the Amiga. 7 years at that time was an eternity for the graphics capabilities to stand still. Had AGA started a couple of years earlier, maybe Commodore would have lived long enough to complete their next two upgrade projects (AAA[1] and Hombre[2]), but with the chaos of Commodore at that time it's no surprise they didn't pull that off. I feel like Commodore was still in the 8-bit mindset of thinking they had time to milk their existing designs for much longer than they actually could. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Amiga_Architecture_chipset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Amiga_Architecture_ch... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Hombre_chipset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Hombre_chipset
  - stormking 3y ago
    They never understood how to build a product line or a roadmap. To them, the Amiga was a on/off kind of thing, a product they acquired once and planned to sell for some years. They would have happily sold some new, completely incompatible home computer, afterwards.
    - vidarh 3y ago
      The fascinating thing is that they were sort-of understanding they couldn't really do that anymore towards the end, but too late. Hombre, their last attempt, was one one hand meant to provide a clean break by moving to a PA-RISC core (chosen to allow for Windows NT compatibility but in retrospect might just have deferred their death) in a dual-chip pair that'd combine the CPU, DMA, an upgraded blitter that was closer to a basic GPU (transforms, texture mapping, gouraud shading, z-buffering), a 64-bit RISC-like copper replacement, 16-bit sound, with a display controller on the other chip. But to avoid breaking backwards compatibility, they also planned putting an entire AGA Amiga on a chip, and recompile AmigaOS, so they could end up with sort-of reverse of what we got with the PowerPC expansion boards or the older Janus Bridgeboards (putting an x86 CPU straddling both a Zorro and ISA buses, letting you run PC software at full speed in a window on the Amiga), of having the new CPU run the OS, and using the embedded 68k Amiga-on-a-chip to run legacy software. A valiant attempt, but of course way too late - Commodore ran out of money before completing even the chipset before Hombre in their pipeline. Hombre would've been a big break, though, with what looks like they had something resembling an actual plan for a very broad range of uses from the start instead of their usual haphazard Darwinist "survival of whatever nearly ready design still happens to please the right executives" Commodore usually practices. It ranged from putting it on a high end graphics card, to set-top boxes, CD32 like entertainment systems, all the way up to high-end machines running AmigaOS and WindowsNT and based around a machine concept from David Haynie (Acutiator, going back to '91) that planned for exchangable modules for everything including the CPU, with the ability to even adapt the bus control account for different CPU requirements. It's an agonisingly fascinating "what if" of alternative hardware, while at the same time in retrospect having some serious flaws (PA-RISC...) and probably being way too ambitious for Commodore even at its peak given the amount of discipline shepherding a project that ambitious over the line without some executive ego trip derailing it would've taken...
api 3y ago
Side note: I feel like dark mode has taken hold in part because of really good LCD screens with great contrast. Dark mode would look horrible on CRTs or even first-generation LCDs.
- retrac 3y ago
  Dark mode is fine on CRTs. They have excellent contrast; they are like OLED displays in that regard where the unlighted regions are truly not lit. CRTs have a harder time with black on white. The Mac's choice of black on white was unusual for the time, it was usually only seen on high end systems like workstations, with really good monitors with high refresh rates. (White on black was standard with computer displays thru the 70s into the 90s -- think of serial terminals and DOS PCs.)

by retrac 3y ago

nradov 3y ago

The way that the Amiga engineers used interlaced video modes to support CRT displays with low refresh rates was also not a good look. In the early models that was the only way to get VGA equivalent screen resolution, but the flickering was so bad that some people literally wore sunglasses and configured the desktop with low-contrast colors in order to reduce eye strain. It was one of several design decisions that probably seemed like a good idea at the time but made the product look shoddy and held it back from mainstream adoption.

vidarh 3y ago
Nobody I know used interlace other than very occasionally for still images. VGA resolutions were not common at that time, so they were not what my circle compared against anyway. When I visited one of my dads business associates who ran a software company, for example, the vast majority of PC's in their offices had monochrome text screens. A handful had EGA graphics cards and colour screens. I remember playing Zaxxon on one of them and finding it hysterical that the graphics and sound on their most expensive machines was worse even than on my C64. The Amiga looked like sci-fi technology in comparison with what most people actually had in their offices or homes until several years in. Ironically if anything the significantly better graphics contributed to it being pigeonholed as a game machine despite the original Amiga looking like an office machine and being way too expensive for games. The problem was not so much the original or enhanced graphics chips, which were groundbreaking in 85 and maybe even until ~'88 or so, but that AGA in 92 was way too little, several years too late as an upgrade to still justify the price premium on the Amiga. 7 years at that time was an eternity for the graphics capabilities to stand still. Had AGA started a couple of years earlier, maybe Commodore would have lived long enough to complete their next two upgrade projects (AAA[1] and Hombre[2]), but with the chaos of Commodore at that time it's no surprise they didn't pull that off. I feel like Commodore was still in the 8-bit mindset of thinking they had time to milk their existing designs for much longer than they actually could. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Amiga_Architecture_chipset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Amiga_Architecture_ch... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Hombre_chipset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Hombre_chipset
- stormking 3y ago
  They never understood how to build a product line or a roadmap. To them, the Amiga was a on/off kind of thing, a product they acquired once and planned to sell for some years. They would have happily sold some new, completely incompatible home computer, afterwards.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    The fascinating thing is that they were sort-of understanding they couldn't really do that anymore towards the end, but too late. Hombre, their last attempt, was one one hand meant to provide a clean break by moving to a PA-RISC core (chosen to allow for Windows NT compatibility but in retrospect might just have deferred their death) in a dual-chip pair that'd combine the CPU, DMA, an upgraded blitter that was closer to a basic GPU (transforms, texture mapping, gouraud shading, z-buffering), a 64-bit RISC-like copper replacement, 16-bit sound, with a display controller on the other chip. But to avoid breaking backwards compatibility, they also planned putting an entire AGA Amiga on a chip, and recompile AmigaOS, so they could end up with sort-of reverse of what we got with the PowerPC expansion boards or the older Janus Bridgeboards (putting an x86 CPU straddling both a Zorro and ISA buses, letting you run PC software at full speed in a window on the Amiga), of having the new CPU run the OS, and using the embedded 68k Amiga-on-a-chip to run legacy software. A valiant attempt, but of course way too late - Commodore ran out of money before completing even the chipset before Hombre in their pipeline. Hombre would've been a big break, though, with what looks like they had something resembling an actual plan for a very broad range of uses from the start instead of their usual haphazard Darwinist "survival of whatever nearly ready design still happens to please the right executives" Commodore usually practices. It ranged from putting it on a high end graphics card, to set-top boxes, CD32 like entertainment systems, all the way up to high-end machines running AmigaOS and WindowsNT and based around a machine concept from David Haynie (Acutiator, going back to '91) that planned for exchangable modules for everything including the CPU, with the ability to even adapt the bus control account for different CPU requirements. It's an agonisingly fascinating "what if" of alternative hardware, while at the same time in retrospect having some serious flaws (PA-RISC...) and probably being way too ambitious for Commodore even at its peak given the amount of discipline shepherding a project that ambitious over the line without some executive ego trip derailing it would've taken...

api 3y ago

Side note: I feel like dark mode has taken hold in part because of really good LCD screens with great contrast. Dark mode would look horrible on CRTs or even first-generation LCDs.

retrac 3y ago
Dark mode is fine on CRTs. They have excellent contrast; they are like OLED displays in that regard where the unlighted regions are truly not lit. CRTs have a harder time with black on white. The Mac's choice of black on white was unusual for the time, it was usually only seen on high end systems like workstations, with really good monitors with high refresh rates. (White on black was standard with computer displays thru the 70s into the 90s -- think of serial terminals and DOS PCs.)