Happy 30th Birthday Amiga and Atari ST!

[Neil79]

It's a time to light those candles upon that tasty cake, as both the Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST are celebrating their 30th anniversary. That's right, it's 30 years to this day that the Amiga was launched, and last month it was the Atari ST!

Indie Retro News: The latest free games, indie games and retro news: Happy 30th

[||C|-|E||]

Great computers indeed... I was only five but I remember I saw them exposed in one of these huge shopping centers, although maybe this was in 1986. Anyway, I was quite fascinated with them. I also remember that I badly wanted a computer system but my parents thought that I was too little for that. A year after they bought me the 6128, a "not so boring computer made for kids that can display some bright colors on the screen" (at least that is what they were told  ). Later, in 1989, the parents of a friend of mine bought him an Amiga 500 and I fell in love with the machine. I still remember the big shock that was to see Shadow of the Beast in action for the first time and listen to that music.  Back then, owning an Amiga was only a dream for me. I was nine, the Amstrad had been bought two years before and the Amiga was really expensive. My friend was luckier because he was older, about 14, and he tricked his parents saying that he wanted the machine to help him with the studies  .

[seanb]

Back then we all told our parents we needed a computer "to study" 

[Morn]

Back then we all told our parents we needed a computer "to study" 

And as everyone knows, you need at least 4,096 colours on screen to study effectively, so... 

[CraigsBar]

Absolutely. Which is *exactly* why I needed to upgrade from my CPC 464 to a 6128plus when I went from college to uni. Pang had nothing to do with it. Honest, nothing.

[Neil79]

Amstrad CPC 464 -> Atari 2600 -> Amiga 500 -> 386DX 2(DOS) -> PC - > AMIGA 1200 -> Amstrad CPC 6128 -> Sega MegaCD -> C64 -> NES


Was my line up growing up 

[mr_lou]

Amstrad CPC 464 -> Atari 2600 -> Amiga 500 -> 386DX 2(DOS) -> PC - > AMIGA 1200 -> Amstrad CPC 6128 -> Sega MegaCD -> C64 -> NES

Was my line up growing up 

You clearly studied a lot more than most of us....

[Morn]

If we had had a TV with a SCART connector in the 1980s and I could have seen the CPC's gloriously saturated colour palette, maybe the Amiga upgrade would not have felt as necessary. But being stuck with pea soup visuals on a GT-65 as I was, moving from shades of green to Extra Halfbrite and HAM felt monumental.

Too bad AmigaBASIC was so much slower than Locomotive BASIC, despite a faster CPU. The original Macintosh was cursed with the same slow-ass Microsoft Basic.

[Neil79]

You clearly studied a lot more than most of us....

Study... What's that? 

[mr_lou]

Too bad AmigaBASIC was so much slower than Locomotive BASIC, despite a faster CPU. The original Macintosh was cursed with the same slow-ass Microsoft Basic.

I moved onto Amiga long after all my mates had. Made a lot of modules with Protracker.
But I really missed my BASIC programming sessions, so I also took a look at AmigaBasic.
What a pile of disappointment.

It got as little more interesting when Cursor came out (Cursor was a kind of version of AmigaBasic that would compile into an EXE file, making things faster).
But we should probably have tried out Amos or Blitz Basic instead back in those days.

[Morn]

I moved onto Amiga long after all my mates had. Made a lot of modules with Protracker.
But I really missed my BASIC programming sessions, so I also took a look at AmigaBasic.
What a pile of disappointment.

It got as little more interesting when Cursor came out (Cursor was a kind of version of AmigaBasic that would compile into an EXE file, making things faster).
But we should probably have tried out Amos or Blitz Basic instead back in those days.

Amiga E was pretty good (and free!), although I never really did any advanced programs with it because it came out so late (1993) when the Amiga was already kind of dead as a platform. And I had no books about Intuition and AmigaOS system calls which I think more complex programs in E would have required.

It was sort of like a cross of C and Pascal. Also see the code examples at Rosetta Code: Category:AmigaE - Rosetta Code They even have the dragon curve which famously appeared in the Jurassic Park novel.

[mr_lou]

Amiga E was pretty good (and free!)

I was too lazy to start looking into a new language. I wanted BASIC. 
I didn't have a PC, but I coded a bit GWBasic at school, and later on some QBasic.
But years later, when someone uploaded a version of the game "Crazy Eights" coded in Blitz Basic, I remember thinking that's what I should have looked into back then. 

[TFM]

And as everyone knows, you need at least 4,096 colours on screen to study effectively, so... 

That way I go my 6128 Plus! 

[Morn]

I was too lazy to start looking into a new language. I wanted BASIC. 
I didn't have a PC, but I coded a bit GWBasic at school, and later on some QBasic.
But years later, when someone uploaded a version of the game "Crazy Eights" coded in Blitz Basic, I remember thinking that's what I should have looked into back then. 

We programmed in Turbo Pascal on DOS at school, so Amiga E did not look too bad. And it was blazingly fast. But I don't know if it would have been suited for games programming. Blitz Basic is much more geared towards games.

That way I go my 6128 Plus! 

But only the Amiga can freely display all those 4,096 colours in a single frame without palette changes, so the Plus loses. 

[TFM]

But only the Amiga can freely display all those 4,096 colours in a single frame without palette changes, so the Plus loses. 

Well, my crappy old PC at work can freeeely, without palette changes, in a single frame and bla bla bla display 4294967296 colors, so the Amiga bloodily looses!!! 




About the picture you posted: Does this make heavy use of JPEG compression or why is is to block in the left side? That's pretty ugly for 4096 colors IMHO. Sorry, just my opinion. 

[Morn]

Well, my crappy old PC at work can freeeely, without palette changes, in a single frame and bla bla bla display 4294967296 colors, so the Amiga bloodily looses!!! 

I'm pretty sure in 1985 PCs still had EGA at most. But even on a modern PC you cannot pull down a screen with the mouse to reveal a different screen in a different graphics mode the way you could on an Amiga:

About the picture you posted: Does this make heavy use of JPEG compression or why is is to block in the left side? That's pretty ugly for 4096 colors IMHO. Sorry, just my opinion. 

That's a deliberate (and questionable) decision by the artist to make the left side of the image appear blocky and unfinished. (Of course he also has the top left corner come off.) 1980s graphics design at its worst. The program is called Photon Paint by the way.

Here's a better HAM image, and here's a gallery with more (turn on CRT simulation with the button in the top-right corner). However, in practice I mostly recall using HAM for showing ray-traced images, e.g. from Reflections/Imagine/Turbo Silver/etc. Few people probably had a photo scanner at the time.

[andycadley]

I'm not quite sure HAM mode counts as "without palette changes", given the entire mode works by tweaking the R, G or B component of the previous pixel. It wasn't "blocky" per se, but if you weren't careful you'd get odd colour fringes anywhere that there was a drastic change in colour. It looked amazing compared to anything else at the time, but a bit like badly palletized GIF files when you look back now.

Fantastic machines, although probably not quite as revolutionary as many of it's fans would like to remember it.

[TFM]

Excuses, excuses!        

[Morn]

I'm not quite sure HAM mode counts as "without palette changes", given the entire mode works by tweaking the R, G or B component of the previous pixel. It wasn't "blocky" per se, but if you weren't careful you'd get odd colour fringes anywhere that there was a drastic change in colour. It looked amazing compared to anything else at the time, but a bit like badly palletized GIF files when you look back now.

Fantastic machines, although probably not quite as revolutionary as many of it's fans would like to remember it.

I just meant you did not have to change the palette for each scanline as e.g. the Atari 8-bit could do. The Amiga could use the Copper chip to get a similar effect as the Atari, but that was not how HAM worked.

And yes, ugly colour fringes were a problem with HAM, particularly if the 16-colour palette was not well chosen. However, given that this was the first time a home computer could display (more or less) photorealistic graphics, few people complained. 

[TFM]

Sorry buddy, but the CPC could do this already in 1984.

[Morn]

Even Mr Spock loves the Amiga! You are not going to argue with Mr Spock are you? That would be...illogical. 

[Neil79]

 

[VincentGR]

[Morn]

I suppose this is a good opportunity to post Markus' "Amiga Boing Ball" CPC Basic Demo (jump to 3:30):

[MacDeath]

Happy B-Day Amiga 1000...
your A600 picture is invalid. 

Happy b-Day Atari ST.


And Happy B-Day Amstrad CPC 664 & 6128...
AKA the floppy ones...