What things do you miss from the Amiga?

[meynaf]

If we had an Amiga at 1.2GHz it would be more than just "usable"

[EugeneNine]

Originally Posted by TroyWilkins

Ahh, perhaps Ubuntu was the wrong choice for me to try then?

I haven't tried Ubuntu in a long time. Mid 90's I tried out Slackware but then worked as a windows admin for a while and put linux aside. Wasn't until XP flopped that I started trying Linux distros again and tried a few and settled back with Slackware ever since. I'll try out another distro here and there but nothing really stands out.
I did try AROS on that old laptop but can't get video drivers right.

I do have one other board, a mini-itx via 500MHz that I used to run Slackware 9 read only from a 128M CF card. Was thinking of doing a very minimal install again on it and running fs-uae on top but a Raspberry Pi is faster. But under an efficient distro those old boxes are still useable.

[Anakirob]

Originally Posted by TroyWilkins

Ahh, perhaps Ubuntu was the wrong choice for me to try then?

Definitely, I was using Ubuntu version 13.x a few years ago and was happy with it. But I recently installed the latest Ubuntu version 15 and it was terrible, worse than the Windows 10 OS it was replacing. Buggy, slow, and seems to use a ridiculous amount of system resources.

I am now using the latest version of Linux Mint and am pretty pleased with its performance.

[Daedalus]

I'm the same, was using Ubuntu on several machines for many years in various guises (since 8.04 I think), and always stuck to the LTS releases. It always had a few niggles but nothing too serious. But in recent years updates have gone awry and either broken things, left me with an unusable machine, or simply introduces lots of errors on boot. I switched my main machine to Mint about 3 years ago and it was glorious - faster, simpler, didn't break on updates. Been using it ever since.

[SquawkBox]

I miss going at fellow amigan's flats carrying a bag full of "nouveautés", meaning floppies bearing cracked games issued within a month or two. e. q. it was fun discussing the price of blank formatted floppy disk by 50 or 100 units. I miss using one of these sturdy microswitch joysticks to play action oriented games, and never or barely getting bored at it, stage after stage. Also, I miss colorful digitized graphics from demos and such, whether 3D or processed from an actual picture.

I miss knowing what ever folder (and most of the files) in my system drawer was for (and yes, if I wanted to keep that feeling, the next natural progression was probably Linux, but at the time, I was like "ain't nobody got time for dat!"

I miss buying mags and loading up the coverdisks/tapes (I still used my C64 at the time.)

I don't miss not having the Internet at home, but I DO miss getting my quarterly Aminet CD in the mail. It was just like the internet, only lamer!

[nobody]

1. Looking for new games in magazines and then searching in computer shops to buy them. Sadly the Amiga disappeared from computer shops around 1994. When PSone came the Amiga vanished completely. I bet most Amiga owners switched to Playstation 1.
2. Since there were no Amiga games in the shops, buying games from pirates and then waiting to see if they work. Lots of them didn't even load :P

It was obvious from 1993 that the Amiga market was dying, no any new great games. I had some hope on the A1200 but then Commodore died and it was all over. I had to buy a PC or a Playstation, PS1 was much more convenient and had the best games so that's what i did (that or play Amiga PD games when everyone was playing Resident Evil). The last great Amiga 500 game i played was Cannon Fodder around 1994 or 1995.

[markpjd]

Hi,

Man, where do I start:

- Waiting to receive my package of PD games that I just ordered, and the excitement of the postman delivering them.

- Going to the shop and buying a game with my pocket money. A shrink wrapped box, when opened, and the smell of a freshly printed manual

- Swapping disks at school *cough* Stag disks *cough*.

- Actually sitting there with a buddy playing a game, as opposed to all this network multiplayer crap

[snoopy77]

I miss the crazy hardware addons, accelerators, add-on ram boards, external disk drives. These days you usually just buy a new machine stead of upgrading the old.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by snoopy77

I miss the crazy hardware addons, accelerators, add-on ram boards, external disk drives. These days you usually just buy a new machine stead of upgrading the old.

Same here. The amount of expansion hardware available for the Amiga (and C64) was just unbelievable.

They were designed to be upgradable unlike the current computers which are just designed to be disposed of after a few years.

[TenLeftFingers]

I miss the overall simplicity of the OS aand filesystem as well as the frequency of new creative developments bith artistically and engineering-wise.

I also miss how you could get by with *just* your machine. These days computers are so interdependent on other devices and networking etc to be of much use.

I also miss how I knew more than most about computers than my peers and didn't have to compete with classmates and colleagues far more clever than me

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by meynaf

If we had an Amiga at 1.2GHz it would be more than just "usable"

Indeed. Everything would be sickeningly fast.

[TroyWilkins]

Originally Posted by meynaf

If we had an Amiga at 1.2GHz it would be more than just "usable"

That was my point too.

I miss how the Amiga had the potential to be so very productive. Sure, it's possible to run as many tasks as I want on a "modern" PC, but somehow it just doesn't seem as fluid, if that makes sense?

I mean, it's possible on a "modern" machine for the mouse pointer to jump around instead of being tracked smoothly, and for the keyboard input to lag significantly, I don't remember these being issues on the Amiga unless there was a visit from the guru about to occur...

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by TroyWilkins

I miss how the Amiga had the potential to be so very productive. Sure, it's possible to run as many tasks as I want on a "modern" PC, but somehow it just doesn't seem as fluid, if that makes sense?

I mean, it's possible on a "modern" machine for the mouse pointer to jump around instead of being tracked smoothly, and for the keyboard input to lag significantly, I don't remember these being issues on the Amiga unless there was a visit from the guru about to occur...

Yes this is something i don't like about the PC. Quite often it will work just fine, fast and reactive, but all of a sudden we experiment some unexpected lags and slowdowns. Something that is usually instant takes several seconds once in a row, without any visible reason.

The Amiga may be slow in comparison, but at least it has stable timings...

[EugeneNine]

Originally Posted by TroyWilkins

That was my point too.

I miss how the Amiga had the potential to be so very productive. Sure, it's possible to run as many tasks as I want on a "modern" PC, but somehow it just doesn't seem as fluid, if that makes sense?

I mean, it's possible on a "modern" machine for the mouse pointer to jump around instead of being tracked smoothly, and for the keyboard input to lag significantly, I don't remember these being issues on the Amiga unless there was a visit from the guru about to occur...

Thats not a fault of the modern PC, that is the Microsoft OS. A decent OS on a modern PC works better.

[TroyWilkins]

Originally Posted by EugeneNine

Thats not a fault of the modern PC, that is the Microsoft OS. A decent OS on a modern PC works better.

I feel we're moving a fair bit away from the topic here, but while I understand and realise that more modern operating systems have more features when compared to Workbench, and thus will consume more resources, my point is that we don't see the huge improvement in speed that we would have expected back in the early 90s.

I realise some of this is due to extra layers of code, to provide things like a full TCP/IP stack and file sharing, as well as security measures, and as such, a direct apples vs apples comparison (sorry, couldn't resist the bad pun) isn't possible, as while it may be technically possible to run a Unix or Linux on an Amiga, even running it on a 68040 or 060 with lots of RAM would probably not be such an enjoyable experience.

But I can't help but wonder, how much of that is because of the extra features, and how much of it is because it's not coded to be as efficient - when storage is cheap and we have literally gigabytes of RAM and terabytes of storage, when even a "slow" CPU is measured in GHz, do people unroll the loops, do people do the optimisation that was so important back when CPU speed was measured in MHz? People used to program in assembler for speed, and while yes, that's not easy, far from it, and yes, modern compilers can do a great job (I'm particularly impressed with the improvements made on Android in this regard), my point is that for at least some people, the attitude seems to be "get it working and it's done" and the optimisation of the code doesn't seem to be considered as important. And yes, I know, commodity hardware, different CPU, GPU, storage media, chipsets etc all complicate matters.

Of course, I say this as someone who is admittedly only learning C now, and who only did VERY basic asm back in the day on 6502 and x86, mainly playing with BASIC (Atari basic on the 8-bits, AMOS on the Amiga, QuickBASIC on the PC), but given the limited resources back then, I almost always got the code working the way I wanted it to, and then spent ages trying to get it to be more efficient, and trading off where applicable, such as unrolling the loops where execution speed was more important than RAM usage. And I was NEVER a good programmer, nothing I programmed was seen by anyone outside of my immediate family, I did it for fun, and never did anything that was worth releasing to the world.

While I don't doubt that there may be some programmers who do optimise their code within an inch of it's life, I also think that it shouldn't be the case that I have to try out different distros to find one that works acceptably on a 1.2GHz machine with 2Gb of RAM.

You say a decent OS. That's what I miss from the Amiga most of all. While it wasn't a perfect OS, I consider it to be decent. Sure it's got problems, some were problems back in the day, and some are only problems now that our expectations of computers have changed. But it was a fantastic foundation that could have been a great competitor to Linux and Windows if it had been continued to be developed. And yes, I know, Amiga OS 4.x, MorphOS, AROS, fragmentation is the issue there. The way I see it is that the death of Commodore effectively killed a fantastic operating environment which had so much potential when compared to the alternatives of the time. Windows 3.1 was an absolute joke, and Mac system 7, while it looked pretty and had some good user interface elements, most certainly didn't have the power the Amiga offered.

Even my partner, who isn't much of a computer person, sees how my Amiga 600 works, sees how well an emulated Amiga 1200 works in WinUAE (running at emulated 14MHz) and laments that we're not all using the Amiga OS these days. I think that speaks volumes.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by nobody

It was obvious from 1993 that the Amiga market was dying, no any new great games.

I tried to but i couldn't ignore this part of the quote! The Amiga market itself continued to grow to until obviously Commodore went until in 1994, in hindsight it may be easier to see, but most people with an Amiga had loads going for it, magazine sales were healthy, plenty of shops sold Amiga games inc major retailers in the UK at least, as for games, so from 93-96 there was 'no new great games' sorry but that is one crazy statement! And something that really bugs me, i would expect it from someone from the outside not knowing about the Amiga, but here's just a 100 top games from 1994-1996 alone, i could probably name 100 in 1993 alone.

1994 - 60

Aladdin
Alien Breed: Tower Assault
Apocalypse
Arcade Pool
Armour-Geddon II: Codename Hellfire
Assassin: Special Edition
Banshee
Beneath A Steel Sky
Benefactor
Bubba 'n' Stix
Bubble and Squeak
Burntime
Cannon Fodder 2
Chaos Engine, The cd32
Civilization aga
Clockwiser
Clue!, The
Detroit
Dragonstone
DreamWeb
Fields of Glory
Fire and Ice CD32
Fury of the Furries
Guardian
Gunship 2000 CD32
Heimdall 2: Into the Hall of Worlds
HeroQuest II: Legacy of Sorasil
Holiday Lemmings 1994
Innocent Until Caught
Ishar 3: The Seven Gates of Infinity
Jungle Strike
K240
Kid Chaos
Lamborghini American Challenge
Liberation
Lords of the Realm
Marvin's Marvellous Adventure
Mortal Kombat
Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad
Naughty Ones
Nick Faldo's Championship Golf CD32
On the Ball
Pierre Le Chef is... Out to Lunch
Pirates! Gold CD32
Premier Manager 3
Puggsy
Reunion
Ruff 'n' Tumble
Sensible Soccer v1.2 - International Edition
Sim City 2000
Simon the Sorcerer CD32
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary
Super Methane Bros
Theme Park
UFO: Enemy Unknown
Universe
Wembley International Soccer
Zeewolf
Zool 2


1995 - 30
Alien Breed 3D
ATR: All Terrain Racing
Colonization
Dungeon Master II: The Legend of Skullkeep
Gloom
Exile
Flight of the Amazon Queen
Inherit the Earth
Kingpin: Arcade Sports Series Bowling
Lion King, The
Misadventures of Flink, The
Mortal Kombat II
Obsession
Odyssey
PGA European Tour
Pinball Illusions
Player Manager 2
Roadkill
Sensible Golf
Sensible World of Soccer '95/'96
Shadow Fighter
Subwar 2050
Super Skidmarks
Super Stardust
Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers
Virocop
Worms
X-It
XTreme Racing
Zeewolf 2: Wild Justice


1996 - 10
Speris Legacy, The
Total Football
Slamtilt
Sensible World of Soccer '96/'97
Minskies ... The Abduction
Mega Typhoon
Legends
Humans III
Gloom Deluxe
Fightin' Spirit


People forget the Megadrive and Snes were still selling until 96-97, the 16-bit market lasted alot longer than people tend to think it did, the Amiga had plenty of games as i have listed until 1996, i personally got a PS1 in 1995 but i was still picking up great Amiga games until late 1995, even then i missed out a few gems in 96!

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by TroyWilkins

I realise some of this is due to extra layers of code, to provide things like a full TCP/IP stack and file sharing, as well as security measures

An Amiga can run both TCP/IP and file sharing without any slowdowns, albeit without many security measures. That would also have turned out to be a major show stopper had Commodore lived on to develop the OS.

[TroyWilkins]

Originally Posted by idrougge

An Amiga can run both TCP/IP and file sharing without any slowdowns, albeit without many security measures. That would also have turned out to be a major show stopper had Commodore lived on to develop the OS.

Agreed. I do think this would have been something that would have needed to be addressed, but if anything it goes to prove my point.

[EugeneNine]

Originally Posted by TroyWilkins

I feel we're moving a fair bit away from the topic here, but while I understand and realise that more modern operating systems have more features when compared to Workbench, and thus will consume more resources, my point is that we don't see the huge improvement in speed that we would have expected back in the early 90s.

The reason I bring it up is the over generalization of the modern PC when in reality the faults are with the close sources OS the majority is running.

The biggest plus of the Amiga was it openness both in hardware and OS. The modern Linux is at least in the same open spirit even if a lot of the popular 'look like windows' distros pile a bunch of crap on top of it. This is why I switched over to Slackware over a decade ago, its the most Amiga like I could find. The main reason I've not moved over to aros is I'd need to convert all my documents again and I don't see any of the Amiga/AROS word/processors/spreadsheets having a very open format yet. If we could get opendocument supported on either/both then I could use either 100%.
many years ago I converted all my GOES documents to Amiga (can't recall the word processor I used then) and then converted those to word perfect, later to ms word and finally over a decade ago to opendocument. Each step along the way lost a little bit here and there and I had to redo and reformat a bit but I don't want to convert to a convert to a closed format and risk having to convert again down the road.