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The Amiga Portal

The 1987 Amiga 500 was the best-selling model.
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Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 16/32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. These systems include the Atari ST—released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, the Amiga differs from its contemporaries through the inclusion of custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprites and a blitter, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS.

The Amiga 1000 was released in July 1985, but production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986, though a "few" were sold before Christmas 1985. The best-selling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 along with the more expandable Amiga 2000. The Amiga 3000 was introduced in 1990, followed by the Amiga 500 Plus, and Amiga 600 in March 1992. Finally, the Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000 were released in late 1992. Estimates of Amiga sales figures vary, with several older sources presenting values between 4.85 (purely Commodore Amiga sales) and 5.29 million (including Escom sales).

While early advertisements cast the computer as an all-purpose business machine, especially when outfitted with the Sidecar IBM PC compatibility add-on, the Amiga was most commercially successful as a home computer, with a wide range of games and creative software. It also found a niche in video production with the Video Toaster hardware and software, and Amiga's audio hardware made it a popular platform for music tracker software. The processor and memory capacity enabled 3D rendering packages, including LightWave 3D, Imagine, and Traces, a predecessor to Blender.

Poor marketing and the failure of later models to repeat the technological advances of the first systems resulted in Commodore quickly losing market share to the rapidly dropping prices of IBM PC compatibles (which gained 256 color graphics in 1987), as well as the fourth generation of video game consoles. Commodore ultimately went bankrupt in April 1994 after a version of the Amiga packaged as a game console, the Amiga CD32, failed in the marketplace. Escom of Germany, who acquired Commodore properties, continued developing the Amiga line for just under two more years until itself went bankrupt. Since the demise of Commodore and Escom, various groups have marketed successors to the original Amiga line, including Eyetech, ACube Systems Srl and A-EON Technology who have produced AmigaOne computers since the 2000s. AmigaOS has influenced replacements, clones, and compatible systems such as MorphOS and AROS. Currently Belgian company Hyperion Entertainment maintains and develops AmigaOS 4, which is an official and direct descendant of AmigaOS 3.1 – the last system made by Commodore for the original Amiga computers. (Full article...)

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Amiga E, or very often simply E, is a programming language created by Wouter van Oortmerssen on the Amiga. He has since moved on to develop the SHEEP programming language for the new AmigaDE platform and the CryScript language (also known as DOG) used during the development of the video game Far Cry.

Amiga E is a combination of many features from a number of languages, but follows the original C programming language most closely in terms of basic concepts. Amiga E's main benefits are fast compilation (allowing it to be used in place of a scripting language), very readable source code, flexible type system, powerful module system, exception handling (not C++ variant) and Object oriented programming.

A "hello world" program in Amiga E looks like: 

  PROC main()
     WriteF('Hello, World!')
  ENDPROC

Amiga E was used to create the core of the popular Amiga graphics software Photogenics. (Full article...)

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Selected biography

Richard Joseph
Richard Joseph
Richard Joseph (23 April 1953 – 4 March 2007) was a British computer game composer, musician and sound specialist. He had a career spanning 20 years starting in the early days of gaming on the C64 and the Amiga and onto succeeding formats.

Richard was noted in game audio for bringing "real" voice actors into a game for the first time (Mega Lo Mania), the earliest use of interactive music (Chaos Engine), working with established recording artists (Betty Boo on Magic Pockets, Captain Sensible on Sensible Soccer, Brian May on Rise of the Robots and John Foxx on Gods and Speedball 2), and featuring vocals in title tunes, which was revolutionary for the time. (Full article...)

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Motherboard of the Amiga CD32
Motherboard of the Amiga CD32
Credit: Bill Bertram
Motherboard of the Amiga CD32.
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Did you know...

... that Joe Pillow was the name given on the ticket for the extra airline seat purchased to hold the first Amiga prototype while on the way to the January 1984 Consumer Electronics Show?
Other "Did you know" facts... Read more...
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