What things do you miss from the Amiga?

TroyWilkins · 27 August 2016, 09:35

I'm sure I can't be the only one who has things they miss that they got used to on the Amiga that are not as simple, or don't exist, on 'modern' computing devices...

I personally use Windows 10 and an Android phone, and while they both have their quirks, they get the job done. But...

I miss assigns. While there may be a solution that I'm not aware of, I miss being able to make an assign and then use that to quickly and easily get to a specific location when loading, saving or navigating the file system.

Window depth gadgets. I miss being able to have windows overlap, and having one have the current focus without it being forced to be the 'top' window. Sure, it's not something I miss as often as assigns, but it's still something that would be nice to have.

Also, the whole Devs: system, it would be nice if the graphics card in my PC could be more like that, instead of the mess that is the current windows graphics card driver system.

For many people, such as kids these days, they don't miss these things, because they never knew of such things. But for those of us, who not only knew of a better way, but used it, it's sad, I think anyway...

Amigajay · 27 August 2016, 09:43

I miss things working! i miss days without a million updates, i miss true plug and play - they still don't have this even though they say they do, still needs drivers and i still buy mouse they dont work on Windows.... argh i said it now.....must not compute, destroy!

meynaf · 27 August 2016, 10:29

I miss quite a lot of things. From the back of my head :
- the keyboard layout
- the level of control we can have on what's happening in the machine
- every application can open its own screen
- easy cut n paste between windows that overlap
- you can easily migrate all your OS/application settings from one machine to another
- you can install stuff manually instead of having to trust that the installer won't trash your system
- apps don't "update" themselves without asking, replacing a working version by a buggy one (and especially not the OS itself)
- dynamic ram disk that is always present (no more temp files all over the place)
- easy to use ASM

Predseda · 27 August 2016, 11:06

Fullscreen multitasking

jPV · 27 August 2016, 11:49

I don't actually miss, because I still use Amiga compatibles as my main machines, but when I have to use other systems for other things... well.. there are too many things to remember now, but they come up all the time in those situations.

But what I miss every time doing something is to shift-del to remove all characters right to cursor and shift-backspace to remove all characters left to cursor (and similarly with the alt key for words), which works everywhere from shell to browsers and other programs/situations. It's so clumsy to start marking with mouse or just erase characters million times.

And of course those window depth arrangement things, and that even today you get some (parent) windows stuck on Windows so that you can't move them if you'd need to see underneath.

A quick way to switch between fullscreen apps, like amiga-m on amiga switches immediately without any graphical (eyecandy) menu or press/press/release combination. Typcal alt-tab hater here

ransom1122 · 27 August 2016, 12:43

The excitement we got over 1 new game. We could spend days, months...

Nowdays, its like Me'h another game, ill give it a look, Oh I finished already? wtf?

Frog · 27 August 2016, 13:17

I'm agree with meynaf

When i was on my Amiga, i knew what happen most of the time, and i take care of keeping a clean and fully working operating system (quite easy regarding how the OS is done DEVS, LIBS...)
On Windows, i don't know how things works, i have the impression that sometimes a simple application use plenty of libs and memory for doing a minor things !
I guess that it depend on how a tool is programmed.
Oh and i forget, it miss a good shell interpreter !

s2325 · 27 August 2016, 13:47

- instant power off, no system closing
- one disk with game - fun for weeks
- music good or awesome, crap was rare

Predseda · 27 August 2016, 14:22

Personalities. Amiga games (and 8bits before) brought up many memorable artists - coders, graphicians and especially musicians. We remember their names and faces till today, their style was easily recognisable.

Todays games with teams of tens or hundred people - does anyone of you remember who created artwork for your modern favourite game?

EugeneNine · 27 August 2016, 16:58

You guys realize most of the things you miss are present in any Linux distro :P

Get off of windows and you'll be much happier.

I used to have an Amiga workbench theme on KDE, maybe I'll set it up again.

Leffmann · 27 August 2016, 17:04

Volume assigns come to mind. Windows gets somewhat close, but the single letter and required '\' to indicate the root is annoying.

I feel that newer systems are better in pretty much everything else, which is expected after 20 years of development I guess.

ransom1122 · 27 August 2016, 17:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by EugeneNine

You guys realize most of the things you miss are present in any Linux distro :P

Get off of windows and you'll be much happier.

I used to have an Amiga workbench theme on KDE, maybe I'll set it up again.

To understand linux you need a law degree. With Amiga I could understand it when I was 10 yrs old.

eXeler0 · 27 August 2016, 20:48

Predictability...
On Amiga if I was to do thing XYZ repeatedly I would know exactly when I'd be done.
On Windows, it works 9 times out of 10 but the 10th time It would suddenly take 45 seconds to open a requester that previously only took 2 secs. And Windows would be doing something annoying in the background that slows everything down.. stuff you didn't ask it to do...And you wouldn't know why it is doing it or for how long.. (indexing shit etc). (This is less evident now than it was in thé Win95-XP era)

Despite all the multicore CPUs, GPUs that to Teraflops, 32GB RAM, Windows is still crap att proper multitasking. Especially in a Network Environment. You cant create a folder in a explorer window because the process is busy or it takes Windows ages to detect that a file is locked by another application (and it can never tell which one).
So all in all, I miss a user experience that's on par with the hardware I'm running it on.
On PC's I always feel that 80% of the power available is there to push around the bloat. The last 20% actually do something useful..
On the Amiga the CPU cycles were motivated ;-)

dirkies · 27 August 2016, 22:36

Magazines announcing new hardware/games/etc

EugeneNine · 28 August 2016, 02:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by ransom1122

To understand linux you need a law degree. With Amiga I could understand it when I was 10 yrs old.

Nah, if I can understand it then anyone can, I'm a slow learner. Its surprisingly a lot like the Amiga.

TroyWilkins · 28 August 2016, 05:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Predictability...
- snip -

Despite all the multicore CPUs, GPUs that to Teraflops, 32GB RAM, Windows is still crap att proper multitasking.
- snip -
On the Amiga the CPU cycles were motivated ;-)

Ahh, yes, I couldn't agree more. As I'm sure we all know, the Amiga had multi-tasking from the very start, was designed with it in mind when Kickstart was being designed. The same cannot be said about Windows, as it was basically a visual interface for MS-DOS (first version of Windows I ever used was Windows 2), and it was hopeless for multitasking until at least W95, although I'd say personally XP was the first where it could multi-task in any really acceptable manner. And even then, it required how much CPU power, RAM and storage, just to be able to use the machine while you printed?!? Piss poor garbage IMHO.

While my current machine isn't exactly state-of-the-art, it works, but I really feel it could be so much faster. AMD Phenom II x4 955 CPU @ 3.6GHz, 8GB RAM, Lots of storage, Windows 10... And yet, I can still be typing something like this, and have a requester come up and steal the keyboard focus while I'm in the middle of typing something, and before I've seen what it said, it's gone, because it took part of the word I was typing as a response. What sort of a person thinks that is a good idea in a multi-tasking environment?!?

Maybe I was just lucky, but I don't remember that ever being an issue on the Amiga when I used it on a daily basis...

Quote:

Originally Posted by EugeneNine

Nah, if I can understand it then anyone can, I'm a slow learner. Its surprisingly a lot like the Amiga.

I read recently a quote that was supposedly from Linus Torvalds, where he praised the Amiga Workbench.

I've tried out Linux a few times, I've currently got Ubuntu installed on my Netbook. But I can't seem to get the hang of it. Maybe I'm just old and set in my ways. But I have great trouble getting used to it. I mean, I don't know how much space I've still got free on my netbooks hard drive. I don't know where everything is. It may very well be much better than Windows, I don't doubt that for a second, but it does have a much steeper learning curve. I don't remember the Amiga being anywhere near that hard to get the hang of.

spud · 28 August 2016, 15:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by TroyWilkins

I miss assigns. While there may be a solution that I'm not aware of, I miss being able to make an assign and then use that to quickly and easily get to a specific location when loading, saving or navigating the file system.

Not as good as assigns on the Amiga as you're limited to drive letters, but have a go with the "subst" command.

Code:

D:\profiles\spud>subst  /?
Associates a path with a drive letter.
SUBST [drive1: [drive2:]path]
SUBST drive1: /D
  drive1:        Specifies a virtual drive to which you want to assign a path.
  [drive2:]path  Specifies a physical drive and path you want to assign to
                 a virtual drive.
  /D             Deletes a substituted (virtual) drive.
Type SUBST with no parameters to display a list of current virtual drives.

gimbal · 28 August 2016, 17:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by dirkies

Magazines announcing new hardware/games/etc

Yeah good one. That and the Arcade Joystick. And also games just being successful for being good, and not because they survived hype.

And actually fun hot-seat coop games :/

s2325 · 28 August 2016, 17:13

Yes - Chaos Engine, Silkworm, Swiv.

EugeneNine · 28 August 2016, 18:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by TroyWilkins

I read recently a quote that was supposedly from Linus Torvalds, where he praised the Amiga Workbench.

I've tried out Linux a few times, I've currently got Ubuntu installed on my Netbook. But I can't seem to get the hang of it. Maybe I'm just old and set in my ways. But I have great trouble getting used to it. I mean, I don't know how much space I've still got free on my netbooks hard drive. I don't know where everything is. It may very well be much better than Windows, I don't doubt that for a second, but it does have a much steeper learning curve. I don't remember the Amiga being anywhere near that hard to get the hang of.

I find that most of the popular distros for me have a harder learning curve. I think its because they are trying to hide things to make it 'easier'.

I tried several of the fancy distros and ended up going back to Slackware where nothing is done for you or hidden from you. Its probably the most pure Linux as it doesn't have other distro specific stuff piled on top of it. In Slackware you have to (get to) partition the drive yourself, format the drive your self, install software yourself, etc.
I found the learning curve was no harder (actually less) than windows. I think it was the similarities to Amiga that helped.

27 August 2016, 09:35	#1
TroyWilkins Registered User Join Date: Jan 2015 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 548	What things do you miss from the Amiga? I'm sure I can't be the only one who has things they miss that they got used to on the Amiga that are not as simple, or don't exist, on 'modern' computing devices... I personally use Windows 10 and an Android phone, and while they both have their quirks, they get the job done. But... I miss assigns. While there may be a solution that I'm not aware of, I miss being able to make an assign and then use that to quickly and easily get to a specific location when loading, saving or navigating the file system. Window depth gadgets. I miss being able to have windows overlap, and having one have the current focus without it being forced to be the 'top' window. Sure, it's not something I miss as often as assigns, but it's still something that would be nice to have. Also, the whole Devs: system, it would be nice if the graphics card in my PC could be more like that, instead of the mess that is the current windows graphics card driver system. For many people, such as kids these days, they don't miss these things, because they never knew of such things. But for those of us, who not only knew of a better way, but used it, it's sad, I think anyway...

27 August 2016, 20:48	#13
eXeler0 Registered User Join Date: Feb 2015 Location: Sweden Age: 50 Posts: 2,948	Predictability... On Amiga if I was to do thing XYZ repeatedly I would know exactly when I'd be done. On Windows, it works 9 times out of 10 but the 10th time It would suddenly take 45 seconds to open a requester that previously only took 2 secs. And Windows would be doing something annoying in the background that slows everything down.. stuff you didn't ask it to do...And you wouldn't know why it is doing it or for how long.. (indexing shit etc). (This is less evident now than it was in thé Win95-XP era) Despite all the multicore CPUs, GPUs that to Teraflops, 32GB RAM, Windows is still crap att proper multitasking. Especially in a Network Environment. You cant create a folder in a explorer window because the process is busy or it takes Windows ages to detect that a file is locked by another application (and it can never tell which one). So all in all, I miss a user experience that's on par with the hardware I'm running it on. On PC's I always feel that 80% of the power available is there to push around the bloat. The last 20% actually do something useful.. On the Amiga the CPU cycles were motivated ;-) Last edited by prowler; 27 August 2016 at 23:18. Reason: Direct signatures unnecessarily bloat posts.

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27 August 2016, 09:43	#2
Amigajay Registered User Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: > Posts: 2,884	I miss things working! i miss days without a million updates, i miss true plug and play - they still don't have this even though they say they do, still needs drivers and i still buy mouse they dont work on Windows.... argh i said it now.....must not compute, destroy!

27 August 2016, 10:29	#3
meynaf son of 68k Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Lyon / France Age: 51 Posts: 5,323	I miss quite a lot of things. From the back of my head : - the keyboard layout - the level of control we can have on what's happening in the machine - every application can open its own screen - easy cut n paste between windows that overlap - you can easily migrate all your OS/application settings from one machine to another - you can install stuff manually instead of having to trust that the installer won't trash your system - apps don't "update" themselves without asking, replacing a working version by a buggy one (and especially not the OS itself) - dynamic ram disk that is always present (no more temp files all over the place) - easy to use ASM

27 August 2016, 11:06	#4
Predseda Puttymoon inhabitant Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Tromaville Age: 46 Posts: 7,540	Fullscreen multitasking

27 August 2016, 11:49	#5
jPV Registered User Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: RNO Posts: 1,006	I don't actually miss, because I still use Amiga compatibles as my main machines, but when I have to use other systems for other things... well.. there are too many things to remember now, but they come up all the time in those situations. But what I miss every time doing something is to shift-del to remove all characters right to cursor and shift-backspace to remove all characters left to cursor (and similarly with the alt key for words), which works everywhere from shell to browsers and other programs/situations. It's so clumsy to start marking with mouse or just erase characters million times. And of course those window depth arrangement things, and that even today you get some (parent) windows stuck on Windows so that you can't move them if you'd need to see underneath. A quick way to switch between fullscreen apps, like amiga-m on amiga switches immediately without any graphical (eyecandy) menu or press/press/release combination. Typcal alt-tab hater here

27 August 2016, 12:43	#6
ransom1122 Registered User Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: Omnicorp Age: 45 Posts: 5,813	The excitement we got over 1 new game. We could spend days, months... Nowdays, its like Me'h another game, ill give it a look, Oh I finished already? wtf?

27 August 2016, 13:17	#7
Frog Junior Member Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: France Posts: 1,385	I'm agree with meynaf When i was on my Amiga, i knew what happen most of the time, and i take care of keeping a clean and fully working operating system (quite easy regarding how the OS is done DEVS, LIBS...) On Windows, i don't know how things works, i have the impression that sometimes a simple application use plenty of libs and memory for doing a minor things ! I guess that it depend on how a tool is programmed. Oh and i forget, it miss a good shell interpreter !

27 August 2016, 13:47	#8
s2325 Zone Friend Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Gargore Age: 43 Posts: 17,789	- instant power off, no system closing - one disk with game - fun for weeks - music good or awesome, crap was rare

27 August 2016, 14:22	#9
Predseda Puttymoon inhabitant Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Tromaville Age: 46 Posts: 7,540	Personalities. Amiga games (and 8bits before) brought up many memorable artists - coders, graphicians and especially musicians. We remember their names and faces till today, their style was easily recognisable. Todays games with teams of tens or hundred people - does anyone of you remember who created artwork for your modern favourite game?

27 August 2016, 16:58	#10
EugeneNine Registered User Join Date: Aug 2016 Location: Ohio Posts: 185	You guys realize most of the things you miss are present in any Linux distro :P Get off of windows and you'll be much happier. I used to have an Amiga workbench theme on KDE, maybe I'll set it up again.

27 August 2016, 17:04	#11
Leffmann Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Sweden Posts: 2,269	Volume assigns come to mind. Windows gets somewhat close, but the single letter and required '\' to indicate the root is annoying. I feel that newer systems are better in pretty much everything else, which is expected after 20 years of development I guess.

27 August 2016, 22:36	#14
dirkies Zone Friend Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Belgium Age: 51 Posts: 1,296	Magazines announcing new hardware/games/etc

28 August 2016, 17:13	#19
s2325 Zone Friend Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Gargore Age: 43 Posts: 17,789	Yes - Chaos Engine, Silkworm, Swiv.

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