The Amiga Museum

[TroyWilkins]

Hi everyone. I hope I've put this in the right place, if not, I apologise and I'd appreciate it if the moderators here moved it to a more correct location.

I've been working on my own web site for a few days now, and while much of it still has placeholder text (if anything) and there are many errors and outright incorrect things, I would appreciate any and all feedback, particularly on one of the few pages which I'd consider at alpha testing stage: http://theamigamuseum.com/amiga-kick...-os/workbench/

As I say, the rest of the site is still subject to much in the way of changes, I have a lot more work to do, and even that page isn't finished yet, but feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Troy.

[emufan]

cool website, i like that. just bookmarked.
one thing - the amiga was more than just about games and demos,
there were also Applications - Software section

#1) just added, it seems

[TroyWilkins]

Originally Posted by emufan

cool website, i like that. just bookmarked.
one thing - the amiga was more than just about games and demos,
there were also Applications - Software section

Thank you!

Whoops, I thought I'd added that placeholder, but you're right, I had not added a page for Applications. Thank you! I have fixed that, I still have to write proper content for that page - along with many other pages, such as all the hardware pages, most of the timeline pages, and lots more. But I'm getting there, even if more slowly than I'd like.

The hardest part I've found is finding accurate information, and some of it seems to be lost to time, which is a big part of why I'm doing this. I want it to be an accurate reference site anyone can go to.

[emufan]

just saw you added the new section
obligement website is a good source. lotsa amiga related articles/information.
it may help to verify what you found yourself.

[TroyWilkins]

Originally Posted by emufan

just saw you added the new section
obligement website is a good source. lotsa amiga related articles/information.
it may help to verify what you found yourself.

Fantastic, thank you so very much!

While working on this, it's hard sometimes to not just sit and watch the videos I'm finding of some of the key people, or to get carried away reading. To me, the whole story of the Amiga is fascinating and so full of character, same goes for the people. To me, that is a big part of what makes the Amiga special - there isn't that same character in the Mac or IBM PC story.

[idrougge]

"it's"

[TroyWilkins]

Originally Posted by idrougge

"it's"

Is that one my site, and if so, which page, so I can fix it please? I shouldn't work on it when I'm tired...

EDIT: Nevermind, found it, thanks!

[voyager_1701e]

Nice start

The many of the models (CDTV / A500+ / A600 / A1200 / A3000t) seem to their specs mixed up with the A1000 .....


"Amiga 1200 with 2 external drives
Amiga 1200 with 2 external drives

Power for the masses!

CPU: Motorola 68000 @ 7.16MHz (NTSC)
Motorola 68000 @ 7.09MHz (PAL)
Chip RAM: Standard 256K
Expandable to 512K with the A1050 memory expansion (link opens in new tab)
Maximum resolution: 640×400 (NTSC)
640×512 (PAL)
(32 colour maximum in 640x resolutions)
Kickstart versions: Kickstart Disk
1.0
1.1
1.2
1.3
Workbench version: 1.0
1.1
1.2
1.3
Total RAM: 256K (expandable to 8.5MB with the addition of 256K Chip and 8Mb FAST)
Price in 1985:
(US Dollars) $1,285 not including monitor"

[TroyWilkins]

Originally Posted by voyager_1701e

Nice start

The many of the models (CDTV / A500+ / A600 / A1200 / A3000t) seem to their specs mixed up with the A1000 .....

Thank you!

Yes, I've still got a lot of work to do, and that's part of it that I still have to sort out, I'm slowly going through and changing the pages for the various models to have the correct information. Right now I'm working on the Kickstart 2 page, and will probably go back to editing those pages after I've got a bit more about Kickstart 2 on its page.

[TroyWilkins]

Now all the pages that had the specs from the A1000 should be fixed, often left blank for now until I go back and revise that page properly.

[TroyWilkins]

I'm still working on this page - http://theamigamuseum.com/amiga-kick...kickstart-2-0/ but any feedback would be very much appreciated.

[idrougge]

Windows with capital W.

[TroyWilkins]

Originally Posted by idrougge

Windows with capital W.

Thank you, I wasn't sure about that, changed now, along with the latest edits to that page.

[idrougge]

No, the other way around. Windows with a capital W is copyright of Microsoft.

[emufan]

Originally Posted by idrougge

No, the other way around. Windows with a capital W is copyright of Microsoft.

trademark, but it is the same disgrace:

Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual FoxPro, Win32, Windows, Windows 2000, Windows Media, Windows NT, Windows XP, and Wingdings are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S.A. and/or other regions and/or countries.

so all lowercase, then you should be fine, I hope - they dont mention a planet, so it means throughout the universe - lawyers ....

[frank_b]

Originally Posted by TroyWilkins

I'm still working on this page - http://theamigamuseum.com/amiga-kick...kickstart-2-0/ but any feedback would be very much appreciated.

That demonstrates quite nicely how Commodore fscked up the title font spacing on every OS > 1.3

Look at the pixel gaps at the top and bottom from 1.3 and compare.
1.3 looks a lot nicer with equal spacing. I don't know what Commodore were smoking when they designed 2.x - 3.x. It looks very unprofessional

[emufan]

I once read, Apple hired real designer for creating the GUI of their macintosh machines,
not just creative coder/engineers - I think commodore should have done that too

@TroyWilkins: whenever you search for kickstart, you always read 1.x / 1.0 / 2.0 / 2.04 and so on, never just "Kickstart 1" / "Kickstart 2"

[TroyWilkins]

Originally Posted by idrougge

No, the other way around. Windows with a capital W is copyright of Microsoft.

That's what I thought too. Changed back to lowercase w now, hahaha.

Originally Posted by emufan

so all lowercase, then you should be fine, I hope - they dont mention a planet, so it means throughout the universe - lawyers ....

Yeah, lawyers... I'm trying to have this all as legal as possible, but I have to admit, I am a little worried in that regard. That's one of the reasons it's still rather bare-bones, as I'm attempting to write out as much of it as I can in my own words, although a few of the placeholder texts are yet to be replaced with my own words at the moment.

Originally Posted by frank_b

That demonstrates quite nicely how Commodore fscked up the title font spacing on every OS > 1.3

Look at the pixel gaps at the top and bottom from 1.3 and compare.
1.3 looks a lot nicer with equal spacing. I don't know what Commodore were smoking when they designed 2.x - 3.x. It looks very unprofessional

Do you mean in the window titlebars?

Originally Posted by emufan

I once read, Apple hired real designer for creating the GUI of their macintosh machines,
not just creative coder/engineers - I think commodore should have done that too

I agree, but I think the issue there may have been a cash flow problem, my understanding is that from 1985 to 1987 they were really struggling financially, things improved in 1988, then went back to bad until the end. Of course, if Irving Gould and Mehdi Ali hadn't have been paying themselves the sort of money they were, and if Irving Gould hadn't interfered like he did, well... All things considered, I personally think the people that worked on the Amiga did a great job, sure there was room for improvement, but they did well for the size of their team, when compared to the number of people working for say Apple at the time.

Originally Posted by emufan

@TroyWilkins: whenever you search for kickstart, you always read 1.x / 1.0 / 2.0 / 2.04 and so on, never just "Kickstart 1" / "Kickstart 2"

I'm not sure I understand, do you mean using the search function on my web site, or in general? My understanding is that the search function finds all references to pages and offers them as results, as well as the pages that have titles that fit the search. It's running on Wordpress, and this is my first real experience using Wordpress.

If you mean people referring to Kickstart in particular versions, such as 1.3.1, to keep the page count somewhat manageable, I decided to group together all minor version numbers, so for example all the different Kickstart 2 versions (2.04, 2.05, v37.299, v37.300, 37.350, and so forth) will all be on the Kickstart 2.0 page, whereas Kickstart 3.0 (v39.106 etc) and Kickstart 3.1 (v40.x) get separate pages.

[emufan]

I allways felt just fine with the look & feel of the workbench; but a real designer could have made some tiny changes/additions to attract more people on using the amiga.
One thing for sure they should have changed, a standard filerequester

about "Kickstart 1" : generally spoken - this you can find in your texts - but,
if you look into other documents/websites, they allways write "Kickstart 1.0" or "Kickstart 2.x".

[TroyWilkins]

Originally Posted by emufan

I allways felt just fine with the look & feel of the workbench; but a real designer could have made some tiny changes/additions to attract more people on using the amiga.
One thing for sure they should have changed, a standard filerequester

about "Kickstart 1" : generally spoken - this you can find in your texts - but,
if you look into other documents/websites, they allways write "Kickstart 1.0" or "Kickstart 2.x".

Agreed on the first part. Regarding file requesters, Gadtools in Kickstart 2 onwards was certainly a step in the right direction, but far far too late, particularly as by then, other libraries had gained acceptance and use. I see it much like the Android fragmentation problem, if you're coding for Android devices, do you use some of the features that are only in say Android 6 and 7 and thus won't work on the majority of Android devices, or do you go with an older feature set that means it should work on something like 99% of all Android devices?

And yeah, while the standard icons were serviceable, they certainly left plenty of room for improvement, and a good graphic artist could have made a world of difference there I think.

On the second, I'll have to have a look and consider changing it to 1.x, or perhaps a more general "1st generation of kickstart versions" or something. I think for the most part, I've tried to stick to the general naming of kickstart 1.0/1.1/1.2/1.3/2.0/3.0/3.1 but I will have a good look and try to make it 100% consistant, thanks for the feedback!