Why no one knows

blade002 · 30 September 2006, 04:06

If you talk to alot of people in todays world, or even way back in the early 90's, you will find that none have heard of the Amiga or what influence it had on the market. Its always Apple & Microsoft.

I know of only one Amiga documentary that has been made such as Death Bed Vigil, but nothing more than that.

So why is it after all these years that no body has tried to bring to the public just what the Amiga was and that it ever existed at all !??..

Im starting to think its time that some of us on here pooled our resources together and made an Amiga documentary and then find in some way try to make it VERY public. Rather than a documentary that sits by the sidelines on some obscure TV network.

So what can we do, and is anyone interested ??

aldo · 30 September 2006, 04:17

Noone had heard of Amiga in the early nineties?!!!?
You sure?

blade002 · 30 September 2006, 04:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by aldo

Noone had heard of Amiga in the early nineties?!!!?
You sure?

I didnt mean no one, since i know in Europe it was very big, but here in Australia and im sure also in America, if you mention the Amiga, only about 1 in 50 know what your talking about.

To me the Amiga deserves alot more credit than just being a games machine, and like i said, people tend to believe that the only influential companies that have ever existed are Microsoft & Apple and thats pretty sad that a machine as amazing as the Amiga is forgotten and remembered only by us.

boing_1000 · 30 September 2006, 05:28

I'm totally with you on that one. It's annoying to talk about it and have people kind of give you this confused look as if you've got three eyes. Ugh. It's so unfair.

Fred the Fop · 30 September 2006, 05:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by blade002

I didnt mean no one, since i know in Europe it was very big, but here in Australia and im sure also in America, if you mention the Amiga, only about 1 in 50 know what your talking about.

America made Amiga, but th market was dominated by Apple or IBM. The Amiga is nearly unknown here.
Sad thing is, the C64 was incredibly popular here, a hell of a lot of folks knows what a great computer it is. And it is a great computer. But Commodore dropped the ball on the Amiga.

shillard · 30 September 2006, 05:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by blade002

If you talk to alot of people in todays world, or even way back in the early 90's, you will find that none have heard of the Amiga or what influence it had on the market. Its always Apple & Microsoft.

Dude, are you sure you're in Australia?

Back in the late 80s/ early 90s the Amiga was plugged to death here by John bloody Laws. "Are you keeping up with the Commodore....?"

C= Dominated home computing in this market, and at one stage there were even a couple of competing, locally produced C= & Amiga magazines. In a market of (then) 16 million people, it takes a lot of readers to make even one magazine viable - let alone a couple.

spiff · 30 September 2006, 13:42

Quote:

If you talk to alot of people in todays world, or even way back in the early 90's, you will find that none have heard of the Amiga or what influence it had on the market. Its always Apple &
Microsoft.”

I’ve been thinking about the same thing. Especially now since im reading “on the edge, The spectacular rise and fall of Commodore” Two things comes to mind

1, It didn’t really.
2, The winner (re)wrights history.

1, The Vic-20 or C64 where really the influential, powerful and way cheaper then other computers.

2, In the games area Consoles beat the Amiga, with a good margin. Both on profiling and games. In the buissness arena the amiga was a good video tool and OK for other things. Once the 486:es where out PCs did pretty much everything better then amiga.

So basically seen from two major influential perspectives, games and business the amiga at best had some mediocre ports to other systems (ie Gods, lemmings) and then a niche market as a cheap video tool.

alkis21 · 30 September 2006, 14:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiff

In the games area Consoles beat the Amiga, with a good margin. Both on profiling and games. In the buissness arena the amiga was a good video tool and OK for other things. Once the 486:es where out PCs did pretty much everything better then amiga.

You realize that the Amiga had been alive for a good 7-8 years before "consoles and 486s" did what you claim, right?
In IT terms, that's like two centuries we're talking about.
Even if I agree that what you say is true (certainly a long discussions and not that black & white), don't you think the Amiga deserves more credit?

spiff · 30 September 2006, 16:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by alkis21

...don't you think the Amiga deserves more credit?

Yes and no.
I like my Amiga and I’d love it to have been more influential today… how ever the post is written from how I perceive the general opinion. Ok, it’s a bit presumptive to say that I know how everyone feels. But the fact that the first post touched upon, that the amiga legacy is pretty much unknown outside of us amiga devotees, is something I agree with.

So Yes I would personally have loved the amiga to be more influential. And yes it ruled the late 80s for games

No, in the way that I don’t feel that the amiga really did anything to really influence todays PC market in a decisive way. There are of course several perspectives, gameplay, hardware, Internet overall … but even seen in this light the amiga is hard to put in context. 3d FPS rules the market, PCs are essentially “build what you prefer” from parts and install your fav OS.

Note that I use the phrase “really influence” It’s not that C= didn’t do anything.. It’s just that I feel that factors like for example "internet Pcs", IBM vs PC clones, apple VS MS, 3dfx VS nvidia, intel VS AMD are way more what paved the way. Going further back the business PC market didn't really compete with the amiga

blade002 · 01 October 2006, 07:12

Ok instead of all the negativity about what the Amiga "didnt" do, is there any positivity about what the Amiga "did" do and do we wish to do something about it?

Im not here to find a reason not to do it, im here to find a reason to do it.

The Amiga was one of the first machines to be truly a multimedia machine and as such helped pave the way. Lets just look at what can be worked with hey, and not jump to far into the future with PC technology, because its not the PC im talking about, its the Amiga.

spiff · 01 October 2006, 19:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by blade002

...So what can we do, and is anyone interested ??

Sorry, missed that last part when the discussion started..

hmm, the demo scene, especially artwork that HAM made possible.. It's hard to see it as a pure amiga aspect though, more of an evolving procedure.

redblade · 02 October 2006, 01:47

Yeah It sux, you pick up old computer books, or books that look at the computers in the past and they don't mention Amiga. Hell I look in the index and their is no amiga

, only that shitty C=64

guru64 · 02 October 2006, 04:34

* the C64 was not shitty, it just ruled!
* everybody who *knows* IT history and hasn't only been a PC fanboy knows that Amiga was by far superior to all PCs from '85 to something like '93.

unfortunately many PC users kept saying "Amiga is only for games". Even my IT schoolteacher kept saying that. He was just a dumb tunnel-vision moron of course who didn't have a clue at all. I had been coding the C64 in Assembler, done 3d anim stuff and graphics on Amiga, and knew every config.sys line by heart. Then you get in school and have a 6-months-course teacher talking bullshit to you

Amiga HAD great games, but at the same time could do anything a lame PC could do, and much more. People just were too dumb to aknowledge that.

here's what Amiga stood for, and PCs just sucked:
* put a disk in, and voila: in 1 second you had something great on screen.
* preemptive multitasking
* better filesystem with .long.filenames etc.
* great Workbench funktionality (Windows 3.11 (1992) surely inspired by Amiga)
* every Program you got just worked right away, with PCs it was always a pain in the ass to reconfig your system, some things wouldn't run at all (eg. Gravis Sound)
* systemwide datatypes (something like windows registry which came much later)
* great stereo sound while PCs could just beep for a very long time.
* totally resource friendly - show me a PC with 512kb that you can work with as good !

I could go on with that list, but as said - people who know history know that things.

redblade · 02 October 2006, 23:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guru64

* totally resource friendly - show me a PC with 512kb that you can work with as good !

Didn't the japs release a PC which ran on x86 architecture and had a standard Sound and Graphics card. (the FM??)

I'm pretty sure that machine would kick ass with 512kb as that would be the closest x86 architecture would have gotten to a amiga

blade002 · 03 October 2006, 02:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by redblade

Didn't the japs release a PC which ran on x86 architecture and had a standard Sound and Graphics card. (the FM??)

I think your trying to think of the FM Towns. It was a great machine

DamienD · 03 October 2006, 13:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by blade002

I think your trying to think of the FM Towns. It was a great machine

Awesome

There are FM Towns (PC) and the FM Marty (console). See some specs fo the Marty here:

http://assembler.roarvgm.com/fmtowns/fmtowns.html
http://www.vgmuseum.com/systems/marty/

30 September 2006, 04:06	#1
blade002 Zone Friend Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Australia Age: 50 Posts: 2,616	Why no one knows If you talk to alot of people in todays world, or even way back in the early 90's, you will find that none have heard of the Amiga or what influence it had on the market. Its always Apple & Microsoft. I know of only one Amiga documentary that has been made such as Death Bed Vigil, but nothing more than that. So why is it after all these years that no body has tried to bring to the public just what the Amiga was and that it ever existed at all !??.. Im starting to think its time that some of us on here pooled our resources together and made an Amiga documentary and then find in some way try to make it VERY public. Rather than a documentary that sits by the sidelines on some obscure TV network. So what can we do, and is anyone interested ??

01 October 2006, 07:12	#10
blade002 Zone Friend Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Australia Age: 50 Posts: 2,616	Ok instead of all the negativity about what the Amiga "didnt" do, is there any positivity about what the Amiga "did" do and do we wish to do something about it? Im not here to find a reason not to do it, im here to find a reason to do it. The Amiga was one of the first machines to be truly a multimedia machine and as such helped pave the way. Lets just look at what can be worked with hey, and not jump to far into the future with PC technology, because its not the PC im talking about, its the Amiga. Last edited by blade002; 01 October 2006 at 12:30.

30 September 2006, 04:17	#2
aldo Registered User Join Date: May 2006 Location: Scotland Posts: 125	Noone had heard of Amiga in the early nineties?!!!? You sure?

30 September 2006, 05:28	#4
boing_1000 A1000 Addict Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Eastern USA Age: 37 Posts: 567	I'm totally with you on that one. It's annoying to talk about it and have people kind of give you this confused look as if you've got three eyes. Ugh. It's so unfair.

02 October 2006, 01:47	#12
redblade Zone Friend Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Middle Earth Age: 40 Posts: 2,127	Yeah It sux, you pick up old computer books, or books that look at the computers in the past and they don't mention Amiga. Hell I look in the index and their is no amiga , only that shitty C=64

02 October 2006, 04:34	#13
guru64 Oldskool God Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: europe Posts: 28	* the C64 was not shitty, it just ruled! * everybody who knows IT history and hasn't only been a PC fanboy knows that Amiga was by far superior to all PCs from '85 to something like '93. unfortunately many PC users kept saying "Amiga is only for games". Even my IT schoolteacher kept saying that. He was just a dumb tunnel-vision moron of course who didn't have a clue at all. I had been coding the C64 in Assembler, done 3d anim stuff and graphics on Amiga, and knew every config.sys line by heart. Then you get in school and have a 6-months-course teacher talking bullshit to you Amiga HAD great games, but at the same time could do anything a lame PC could do, and much more. People just were too dumb to aknowledge that. here's what Amiga stood for, and PCs just sucked: * put a disk in, and voila: in 1 second you had something great on screen. * preemptive multitasking * better filesystem with .long.filenames etc. * great Workbench funktionality (Windows 3.11 (1992) surely inspired by Amiga) * every Program you got just worked right away, with PCs it was always a pain in the ass to reconfig your system, some things wouldn't run at all (eg. Gravis Sound) * systemwide datatypes (something like windows registry which came much later) * great stereo sound while PCs could just beep for a very long time. * totally resource friendly - show me a PC with 512kb that you can work with as good ! I could go on with that list, but as said - people who know history know that things.

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