The Amiga Shrine

Amiga: Multitasking, Midi, Multimedia, Since 1985

Origin: Amiga's parent company Commodore Business Machines (CBM) made the first hand-held portable calculator (not Texas Instruments) and the first pre-assembled computer that you could take out of the box and run it, unlike the Apple. The Apple was a kit and did not include a keyboard or extension slots and other necessary requirements of a true computer. Commodore also bought MOS technology, which made the famous 65XX (6502) cpu which are used in most of the computers of the 80's. Commodore had started the way for the PC and introduced low-cost high-performance systems during the 80's which brought the price of PC's under $3,000. The most famous accomplishment was the Commodore64 there was over 22-25 Million of them sold.

Description: The Amiga is a very cool computer that has almost has it all: a small but very complex and fast GUI( very much like Win95 but only take up 1 MB of RAM!), a handful of coprocessor that run video, music, sound, and math functions extremely fast, and a good percentage of major applications. Most of the programs for the Amiga use minimal memory just like the OS, graphics, and sound. A 14 Mhz Amiga with 4 MB of RAM will run full motion video with sound at 60 FPS and the video will not be jerky or stop, most PCs even the newer ones can't do all this even at 400 Mhz.

Accomplishments: The Amiga pioneered the early advancements in multimedia with 4 channel sound, full motion video, midi interfacing. Amiga has even had true 32-bit pre-emptive multitasking since 1985!
Warcraft, Lemmings, Diablo, Blood, Beast, and Worms were originally made for Amiga then ported to other systems :-) Also, Amigas are used for especially graphics and multimedia programs. Amigas have been used in/on CNN, the StarTrek movies/shows, all the Disney Movies, Flubber, and Jurassic Park

Amiga News:

1.) Sometime this First Quarter 2003 the new AmigaOne machines are due.
2.) Announcement of Amiga OS 4 and 5 are under development.
3.) ***The AmigaOne will not be able to use X86 processors.*** :-( The AmigaOne will use Motorola PPC processors.
4.) Amiga Corp. is teaming up with Tao-Group, Haage & Partner, Hyperion, Corel, Sharp, and Epic Marketing.
5.) Amiga Corp. has announced that it will use Sun's Java technology for it new software platform called the 'Amiga DE' (Digital Environment)
6.) Amiga is finally talking about a new machine. The "Amiga One" computer which will be manufactured by EyeTek and made a new partnership with www.matrox.com a leader in the 3d accelerator market. The Linux kernel will also be used in the new OS. *The AmigaOne DOES NOT have custom chips and is like a PC/Mac*
7.) Amiga OS 3.9 is available.
8.) Bill McEwen President/CEO of Amino Development Corporation was recently bought Amiga from Gateway on January 3, 2000 for $5 million dollars. Amino Development is now being renamed to the Amiga Corporation. Here is what was acquired from Gateway:
"1. All trademarks logo's etc.
2. All existing inventory of Amiga International
3. All existing licenses.
4. License to All Amiga patents (Gateway still owns the patents, but we are able to use them).
5. All web sites, and registered domain names.
6. The Amiga OS and all that is associated with the OS.
7. The Amiga operation as it exists today. " (www.amiga.com, 2000)
Bill McEwen was a former Gateway executive and left during a quarrel about the development of the new Amiga machine. Apparently it was over the OS's future and McEwen has no plans for new custom chip Amiga computers.

The Reasons why the Amiga OS is fast.
1. Multiple coprocessors (They handle graphics, sound, math, and object handling faster than add-on cards.)
2. OS is in ROM (allows great speed to applications over hardware and it allows itself to fit on 1 MB or RAM.)
3. The OS on disk is small (Only patches and applications are on the hard drive.)
4. The OS has been programmed natively in Assembly not in Visual BASIC like the Microsoft Environment.

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This Page Updated on:

01/18/03

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