CompuServe Thread

#Love my Amiga!!

17 messages in this thread
#189903From: david W. mennenohSep 9, 1995 12:18 AM
>Some people clint to their Amigas until the very end.< Hey there – I've still got an Amiga 1000! I still think Shadow of the Beast is one of the best games ever made. The thing still runs though – it was ahead of it's time really. Anyone remember Sculpt 3D raytracing a sphere in about 3 hours? Ha Ha (sounding like Martin from the Simpsons) Oh the Memories…. DM
#189914From: Terry MillerSep 9, 1995 1:17 AM
Dave, >> I've still got an Amiga 1000! << So do I! It's still functioning quite well as the braincenter of my 8 trk MIDI studio. I even have the original Timex/Sinclair (I believe this was the first widely sold home computer?) I bought that came with a whopping 2K! of RAM. For graphics and music, the Amiga 1000 really WAS way ahead of it's time. Terry
#189918From: ALAN IGLESIASSep 9, 1995 1:31 AM
Dave, I *started* learning about 3D with Sculpt on an Amiga 500 in 1986. That Sphere-dude juggling the globes on TV was just too much for me. I HAD to learn about it. Many great memories of those days… -Alan
#190284From: Mike KelleySep 11, 1995 12:27 PM
I wonder how many 3Dser's started with the Amiga — I bought the second Amiga sold in Nevada (had to wait two months for it!). I finally sold my last Amiga to a TV station when it became possible for me to chromakey better using my PC. My first introduction to 3D graphics was Hash's Animation Studio, or something like that. Took me about 24 hours to generate the head of a dinosaur, and when the jaw moved the @#$% thing pivoted at the middle so it went up into the head!
#190319From: ALAN IGLESIASSep 11, 1995 3:43 PM
Probably quite a few… My dual-floppy Amiga 500 had 1Mb of RAM and my biggest dream was a 20Mb hard drive that also came with 3 more Mb's of RAM! 1200$!! Never got it, though. Had a lot of fun modeling (didn't have enough RAM to render!) with Sculpt 3D. I'll never forget those days… -Alan
#190406From: Greg WoznicaSep 12, 1995 4:45 AM
I started with a Vic 20, and its paint package, can't rember what it was called when I was eight, a little latter I got a expansion thing for it which boosted it to 16K ROFL, Then with the amiga it was animating frame by farm with D' Paint 2, I could make aboput 30 frame with that memory and was stuck with 256 Pallettes, Now I have a P133 with 28 megs of Ram and loads of other stuff (Thank God), the amiga limits used to drive me crazy, anyone remember how it use to destroy floppy disks for the hell of, and life without a harddrive! Praise the stars for invetion of 3D's and big PC's and the Big G fro 3D Studio, imagine if we all had to go back to the dark ages!, e.g. the C64 and Sinclair Spectrum LOL, Mind you my Modem sounds like a C64 tape drive when it talks to CIS!
#190426From: ALAN IGLESIASSep 12, 1995 9:22 AM
No more dark ages, please!<g> -Alan
#190435From: MARTIN G FOSTERSep 12, 1995 10:30 AM
Greg, I had an Acorn Electron for my student computer in 1984-1985 — it was the low cost version of the BBC computer sold only in the British Commonwealth. It had pretty cool graphics which you mainly had to program in Basic/Assembler, although there were software for games and possibly painting (I didn't have any for paint). Maximum 16 colours, but you could right dithering programs to fake more. The most annoying thing was loading/saving on audio cassette – I don't think it had a floppy controller, even if I could've afforded the drive.
#190470From: Grahame NaylorSep 12, 1995 1:45 PM
Eeek! An Electron owner, I produced the launch(video, slides stage show etc.) for the Electron and as a result ended up working for Acorn full-time. It didn't have a drive controller but you could plug a complete expansion chassis in the back which contained a 3.5 drive and 2 slots for ROMs. As far as I can remember the cost of this gubbins was more than any sane person would pay for a 1gig HD now! As an employee I had a double disc drive for the BBC micros I used the retail of this 800kbyte monster was 750 ukp!!! I even had a 3D program for the BBC wire frame only I did the shading in a paint package afterwards. The Acorn range was available stateside but aimed purely at the educational market, bases in Boston and Palo Alto. However we were just getting going when Apple and IBM decided to have a price-fight in education… Acorn Inc. got caught in the cross fire ! If we are going into the dark-ages I have pinned to the wall by my desk my first computer – an MK14. This was produced by the precursor company for both Sinclair and Acorn. If I could have afforded another 1/4 k of ram I would have doubled the memory ! I'll stop this know or everybody will start reminiscing and we'll be back to the Analytical Engine before we know it. Grahame
#190477From: MARTIN G FOSTERSep 12, 1995 2:50 PM
Grahame, ah …., nostagia isn't what it used to be, eh? <g>. >> As an [Acorn] employee I had a double disc drive for the BBC micros << bloody luxury! You were lucky. My first computer was an abecas made out of 18 lumps of gravel and some rusty old barbed wire. Them were the days …. <G>. Seriously, thanks for the memories. I wondered what had happened to Acorn. They had a great procedural basic that was much better than any other micro's. I wrote some cool apps with that. I did a lot of work with ICL (1900's, 2900's etc) mainframes. They seem to be in the PC clone business now. >> I'll stop this know or everybody will start reminiscing and we'll be back to the Analytical Engine before we know it. << too late <g>.
#190563From: Greg WoznicaSep 12, 1995 10:47 PM
Don't Acorn make the Archemidis now, I read in a magazine that theres big plans for that machine and that you can mulity process loads of chips on the same board and that it was going to take on SGI! Or perhaps I was dreaming, I really should take some time off! "the Dark ages" was when we would spend 5 mins loading software of the tape drive and there was only a 50/50 chance of it working, you had to make sure no one plugged anything in while it was loading, and the graphics!!!! Any one remeber Manic Miner? Matt:0
#190572From: MARTIN G FOSTERSep 13, 1995 12:15 AM
Matt, >> Don't Acorn make the Archemidis now… and that it was going to take on SGI! << you've got me there. I dunno. >> Any one remeber Manic Miner? << vaguely. "Frogger" was a lot of fun on the Electron and Beeb !
#190585From: Greg WoznicaSep 13, 1995 5:07 AM
As a BBC man, remember the original Elite!, thats still one of the best games of all time, probaly the first 3D experince I had. Kind of a Star Wars revolution in the Games Industry, Matt 🙂 (go to Elite Level)
#189925From: William A. TriffetSep 9, 1995 1:38 AM
>> Oh the Memories….<< Memories I wish! My partner who is the video end of my business still insists on his Toaster setup for editing. I just sent him some flics to use on a project. He converts them to Anim format to use on the Amiga. I took him to siggraph to look at Razor Pro. "Well maybe the PC is the way to go…" he says. It seems Amiga users are loyalists to the end.<BG> BIll -Triffet Animation Co.
#189998From: James Coulter[Mindscape]Sep 9, 1995 1:09 PM
> I took him to siggraph to look at Razor Pro. "Well maybe the PC is the way to go…" he says. < How cruel! <g> You may have shattered his whole perception of reality. Oh well, adapt or die. — James — Choreo Motion —
#190017From: William A. TriffetSep 9, 1995 2:32 PM
>>How cruel! <g> You may have shattered his whole perception of reality. Oh well, adapt or die.<< Just today I saw a Computer Shopper Magazine on his coffee table… There is hope! <BG>
#189928From: Tim Krego, [pro.image]Sep 9, 1995 3:11 AM
>Hey there – I've still got an Amiga 1000! I still think Shadow of the Beast is one of the best games ever made. The thing still runs though – it was ahead of it's time really. Anyone remember Sculpt 3D raytracing a sphere in about 3 hours?< I still have my A1000 with 1080 and 1010 in the basement. Probably still works. I started with Eric Grahms PD raytrace program that did robot juggler, imagine having to model everything with spheres using text files for coordinate input. Sorta like a metaballs modeler without the skinning ability. I also spent some time with Sculpt 3D and Silver before it became Turbo Silver. Sculpt always looked plasticy like most ray tracers.