Quote:
Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat
Yup, yup, yup.
Which is why I think new FPGA accelerators (despite nice) are overall very harmful because they split the development and user scenes in two populations which are further and further apart with each new accelerator/upgrade/lets-catch-up-to-the-pc-30-years-too-late development.
Half of the scene stays rightfully faithful to the stock-or-close-to machines because these are what the Amiga was. And the other half chases the illusory dream of an alternate reality where the Amiga did not become obsolete.
Developers code for machines with less standards, less users, eventually more fragmentation (which Vampire do you have? Wait until there are several models!), making the Amiga scene a complete mess for any newcomer.
An Amiga, like a C64, like a MegaDrive, like a SNES, is an obsolete machine.
That does not prevent any of them from being absolutely marvellous but for some reason half of the Amiga scene seems to be incapable of loving these machines as they are and want them to be something else.
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The ONLY reason I have a Real Amiga 500 is for the Vampire.
For that matter why add a hardrive or more than 1MB of RAM to an Amiga 500? It didn't come with them. Most of them that were made were third party. The fact is the the Commodore line was designed to be expanded and interface with other things, and the Amiga carried on that lineage.
I remember reading about home brew ATA controllers for the Amiga, and within a month of getting my original 500 I had an 68020 with FPU in there so I could run Animation Journeyman, Caligari, and stuff I can't remember that required better than a 68000. Eventually I had an 030 and then a 1200 with an 030 accelerator, 8MB RAM. and a 200MB HD.
Does anyone make NEW 720/800k floppy disks? If you don't find them, or a way around them then it's the end of your machine "as it is". Because every floppy disk you own is about 10 years past it's life expectancy. Ferrous Oxide falls off tapes and disks after about 20 years.
So the question is not if you can keep machine running, but HOW!
On the commodore 8 bit side, nothing has held the machine back worse than it's entanglement with the 1541! That damn floppy drive is road block to most software improvements on the platform.
Hey. We're all in this for different reasons. The point is to enjoy your platform. For me, that means regaining access to original tools I created content with. Dpaint and Brilliance.
For all the bells and whistles, the modern age has failed to keep up with those apps for simple animation.
I'm taking a stroll down memory lane with my replacement 500, and I'm hoping to see many cores for the Vampire FPGA that will give me a sweet nostalgia machine.
I'm also waiting for the FPGA Arcade to be become available.
I want to see how far I can push that old Amiga Magic into the 21st Century.
But maybe that's not your thing. That's cool.