Information about Amiga

This article is about the family of home computers. For other uses, see Amiga (disambiguation).

The Amiga 500 (1987) was the most popular variant of the Amiga.

The Amiga is a family of personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. Development on the Amiga began in 1982 with Jay Miner (1932-1994) as the principal hardware designer. Commodore International introduced the machine to the market in 1985, after having bought Amiga Corporation. The name Amiga was selected by the developers specifically from the Spanish word for a female friend.^[1]

Based on the Motorola 68k series of microprocessors, the machine sported a custom chipset with advanced graphics and sound capabilities, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system (now known as AmigaOS). While the M68k was a 32-bit processor, the version originally used in the Amiga had a 16-bit external data bus, and the machine (along with its contemporary, the Atari Sixteen-Thirtytwo (ST)) was generally referred to in the press as a 16-bit computer. Later models sported fully 32-bit designs based on 68020, 68030, 68040, or PowerPC processors. The Amiga provided a significant upgrade from 8-bit computers such as the Commodore 64, and the Amiga quickly grew in popularity among computer enthusiasts, especially in Europe. It also found a prominent role in the video production and show control business, and was a less-expensive alternative to the Apple Macintosh and IBM-PC. The Amiga was most commercially successful as a home computer, although early Commodore advertisements attempted to place the Amiga into several different markets at the same time.^[2]^[3]

Since the demise of Commodore, various groups have marketed successors to the original Amiga line. As of 2007, Eyetech sells Amiga hardware under the AmigaOne brand.

History

Main article: History of the Amiga

The Amiga was originally designed by a small company called Amiga Corporation, and initially intended to be a next generation video game machine, but was later redesigned into a general purpose computer ^[4]^[5]. Before the machine was released into the market the company was purchased by Commodore. The first model, later known as the Amiga 1000, was released in 1985 as a successor to the Commodore 64 and as a rival to the Atari ST. Commodore later released several new Amiga models, both for low-end gaming use and high-end productivity use. Throughout the 1980s, the Amiga's combination of hardware and operating system software offered great value, but by the mid-nineties other platforms, most of all the PC, reduced or eliminated this advantage.

In 1994, Commodore filed for bankruptcy and its assets were purchased by Escom, a German PC manufacturer, who created the subsidiary company Amiga Technologies. They re-released the A1200 and A4000T, and introduced a new 68060 version of the A4000T.

However, Escom in turn went bankrupt in 1997. The Amiga brand was then sold to another PC manufacturer, Gateway 2000, which had announced grand plans for it. However, in 2000, Gateway sold the Amiga brand.

The current owner of the trademark, Amiga, Inc., has licensed the rights to make hardware using the Amiga brand to a UK computer vendor, Eyetech Group, Ltd, which was founded by some former UK employees of Commodore International. They are currently selling the AmigaOne via an international dealer network. The AmigaOne is a PowerPC computer designed to run the latest version of AmigaOS, which was itself licensed to a Belgian-German company, Hyperion Entertainment.

Hardware

At its core, the Amiga featured custom designed coprocessors, useful for handling tasks such as audio, video, encoding and animation. This freed up the Amiga's central processor for other tasks (given that the coprocessors could keep up with the central processor's demands) and gave the Amiga an edge on its competitors in many situations.

The platform also introduced other innovations. For example, the Amiga CDTV was the first computer to feature a CD-ROM drive as standard, as well as being one of the earlier computers to no longer include a floppy drive in the standard configuration. The Amiga was also one of the first computers for which inexpensive sound sampling and video digitization accessories were available.

Since around 2000, hardware has developed to a point where many different platforms have Amiga emulation programs available that reproduce the Amiga's hardware functions in software. This allows users to run Amiga software without the need for an actual Amiga computer.

Central processing unit

All Commodore Amiga models make use of Motorola Central Processing Units (CPUs) based on the Motorola 68k architecture. In desktop style Amiga models the CPU was fitted on a daughterboard (except the A2000) called a CPU card. Low cost Amiga models came with CPUs either socketed or embedded on the motherboard. On all Amiga models the CPU could be upgraded through an expansion card or direct CPU replacement. CPU cards were provided by both Commodore and third party manufacturers. These cards often came with onboard memory slots and hard drive interfaces, alleviating those tasks from the base Amiga.

The Amiga was not limited to solely the 68k CPU architecture; it was also possible to install a PowerPC coprocessor that could be used by PowerPC aware software and libraries,^[6] and later the AmigaOne used a PowerPC CPU instead of a 68k CPU.

Custom chipset

The Amiga's custom chipset, as the name implies, consists of a number of chips.

There are three generations of chipsets used in the various Amiga models. The first was OCS, followed by ECS and finally AGA. What all these chipsets have in common is that they handle raster graphics, digital audio and communication between various peripherals (e.g. CPU, memory and floppy disks) in the Amiga.

Graphics

All Amigas can display full screen and animated color graphics. All Amigas can display graphics with 32, 64 (EHB Mode) or 4096 colors (HAM Mode). Models with the AGA chipset (A1200 and A4000) also have 128, 256 and 262,144 color modes and a palette expanded from 4096 to 16.8 million colors.

The Amiga chipset could genlock — adjust its own screen refresh timing to match an NTSC or PAL video signal. When combined with setting transparency, this allowed an Amiga to overlay an external video source with graphics. This ability made the Amiga popular for many applications, and provided the ability to do character generation and CGI effects far more cheaply than earlier systems. Some frequent users of this ability included wedding videographers, TV stations and their weather forecasting divisions (for weather graphics and radar), advertising channels, music video production, and 'desktop video'. The NewTek Video Toaster was made possible by the genlock ability of the Amiga.

Sound

The sound chip, named Paula, supports four sound channels (2 for the left speaker and 2 for the right) with 8 bit resolution for each channel and a 6 bit volume control per channel. The analog output is connected to a low-pass filter, which filters out high-frequency aliases when the Amiga is using a lower sampling rate (see Nyquist limit). The brightness of the Amiga's power LED is used to indicate the status of the Amiga’s low-pass filter. The filter is active when the LED is at normal brightness, and deactivated when dimmed. Older Amiga 500's and 1000's simply turned off the power LED. Paula can read directly from the system's chip ram memory, using direct memory access (DMA), making sound playback without CPU intervention possible.

Although the hardware is limited to 4 separate sound channels, software such as Octamed uses software mixing to allow 8 or more virtual channels, and it was possible for software to mix two hardware channels to achieve a single 14-bit resolution channel by playing with the volumes of the channels in such a way that one of the source channels contributes the most significant bits and the other the least ones.

It is also possible to use interrupts to control the sound chip and get 14 bits for all four channels. It should also be possible to mix the two channels on each side and get 15 bit sound. Because of the interrupts, this will require a lot of CPU time.

The quality of the Amiga's sound output, and the fact that the hardware is ubiquitous and easily addressed by software, were standout features of Amiga hardware unavailable on PC platforms for years. Third party sound cards exist that provide DSP functions, multi-track direct to disk recording, multiple hardware sound channels and 16 bit and beyond resolutions. A retargetable sound API called AHI was developed allowing these cards to be used transparently by the OS and software.

ROM

The classic Amiga Operating System consisted of Kickstart (Including System API) and Workbench. In the Amiga 1000 model, Kickstart was first loaded from a floppy disk, followed by Workbench, or other bootable disc. Later models held Kickstart (and system API) on a ROM, improving start up times. Models could be upgraded by changing the ROM.

The early ROMs were generally known as "Kickstart" and started with version 1.0 (A1000 floppy) and ending with Kickstart 3.1. There are hardware and software packages that can "shadow" Kickstart into memory. This resulted in faster operation for functions dependant on the ROM, at the cost of system memory to store the ROM data.

Three finger salute

The Amiga's three-finger salute (CTRL plus the two "Amiga" keys), which reboots the system (but does not erase or reload the Kickstart software), is actually implemented in hardware, unlike the software-based forms in many OSs. If the OS software fails to acknowledge the key sequence in a short time (due to a hung OS) the keyboard hardware will forcibly reset the CPU. Another kind of three-finger salute (CTRL plus the two "Alt" keys) was introduced with AmigaOS 4.0 which resets the machine entirely, forcing a reload of the Kickstart.

Third party hardware

Many expansion boards were produced for Amigas to improve the performance and capability of the hardware, such as memory expansions, SCSI controllers, CPU boards, and graphics boards. Other upgrades included genlocks, ethernet cards, modems, sound cards and samplers, video digitizers, USB cards, extra serial ports, and IDE controllers.

The most popular upgrades were memory, SCSI controllers and CPU accelerator cards. These were sometimes combined into the one device, particularly on big box Amigas like the A2000, A3000 and A4000.

Early CPU accelerator cards featured full 32bit CPUs of the 68000 family such as the Motorola 68020 and Motorola 68030, almost always with 32bit memory and usually with FPUs and MMUs or the facility to add them. Later designs featured the Motorola 68040 and Motorola 68060. Both CPUs featured integrated FPUs and MMUs. Many CPU accelerator cards also had integrated SCSI controllers.

Phase5 designed the PowerUp boards (BlizzardPPC and CyberstormPPC) featuring both a 68k (a 68040 or 68060) and a PPC (603 or 604) CPU, which are able to run the two CPUs at the same time (and share the system memory). The PPC CPU on PowerUp boards is usually used as a coprocessor for heavy computations (a powerful CPU is needed to run for example MAME, but even decoding JPEG pictures and MP3 audio was considered heavy computation in those years). It is also possible to ignore the 68k CPU and run Linux on the PPC (project Linux APUS), but a PPC native Amiga OS was not available when the PPC boards first appeared.

24 bit graphics cards and video cards were also available. Graphics cards are designed primarily for 2D artwork production, workstation use, and later, gaming. Video cards are designed for inputting and outputting video signals, and processing and manipulating video.

Perhaps the most famous video card in the North American market was the NewTek Video Toaster. This was a powerful video effects board which turned the Amiga into an affordable video processing computer which found its way into many professional video environments. Due to its NTSC-only design it did not find a market in countries that used the PAL standard, such as in Europe. In PAL countries the OpalVision card was popular, although less featured and supported than the Video Toaster. Low-cost time base correctors (TBCs) specifically designed to work with the Toaster quickly came to market, most of which were designed as standard Amiga bus cards.

Various manufacturers started producing PCI busboards for the A1200 and A4000, allowing standard Amigas to use PCI cards such as Voodoo graphic cards, Soundblaster sound cards, 10/100 ethernet and TV tuners.

PowerPC upgrades with Wide SCSI controllers, PCI busboards with ethernet, sound and 3D graphics cards, and towerized cases allowed the A1200 and A4000 to survive well into the late nineties.

Expansion boards were made by Richmond Sound Design that allowed their show control and sound design software to communicate with their custom hardware frames either by ribbon cable or fiber optic cable for long distances, allowing the Amiga to control up to 8 million digitally controlled external audio, lighting, automation, relay and voltage control channels spread around a large theme park, for example. See Amiga software for more information on these applications.

Models and variants

Main article: Amiga models and variants

The "classic Amiga" models^[7] were produced from 1985 to 1996. They are, in order of appearance: 1000, 2000, 500, 1500, 2500, 3000, 3000UX, 500+, 3000T, CDTV, 600, 4000, 1200, CD32, and 4000T. The PowerPC based AmigaOne was later produced from 2002 to 2005. Some companies have also released Amiga clones.

The Amiga 500 was Commodore’s best-selling Amiga model. Early units, at least, had the words "B52/ROCK LOBSTER"^[8] silk-screen printed onto their printed circuit board, a reference to the popular song by the rock band the B-52's.

The Amiga 500+ was the shortest lived model, replacing the Amiga 500 and lasting only six months until it was phased out by the Amiga 600.

Commodore released three significant upgrades: the Amiga 2000 in 1987, the Amiga 3000 in 1990, and the Amiga 4000 in 1992. These upgrades improved the platform's graphical abilities, allowing for more colors and different display modes, and added expansion slots and ports. The best selling models, however, were the much cheaper but still versatile console models -- the Amiga 500 (1987) and the Amiga 1200 (1992).

In 2006, PC World rated the Amiga 1000 as the seventh greatest PC of all time, stating "Years ahead of its time, the Amiga was the world's first multimedia, multitasking personal computer". ^[9].

AmigaOS 4 systems

AmigaOS 4 and beyond runs on both Amigas equipped with CyberstormPPC or BlizzardPPC accelerator boards, and on the PPC Teron series based AmigaOne computers built by Eyetech upon license by Amiga Inc. AmigaOS 4.0 for accelerator boards is available only to AmigaOS 4.0 developers. Due to the nature of some provisions of the contract between Amiga Inc. and Hyperion Entertainment the Belgian-German firm which is developing the OS, the commercial AmigaOS has been licensed only to buyers of AmigaOne motherboards. AmigaOS 4.0 had been available only in developer pre-releases for numerous years until the final update was 'released' in December 2006. Its sale being bound to hardware by license agreement but lacking availability of such, AmigaOS 4.0 is waiting for the release of new motherboards from ACK Software Controls announced for mid-2007.

Amiga hardware clones

Long time Amiga developer MacroSystems entered the Amiga-clone market with their DraCo nonlinear video edit system. It appeared in two versions, initially a tower model and later a cube. DraCo expanded upon and combined a number of earlier expansion cards developed for Amiga (VLabMotion, Toccata, WarpEngine, RetinaIII) into a true Amiga clone powered by Motorola's 68060 processor. The DraCo can run AmigaOS 3.1 up through AmigaOS 3.9. It is the only Amiga based system to support FireWire for video I/O. DraCo also offers an Amiga compatible ZORRO-II expansion bus and introduced a faster custom DraCoBus, capable of 30 MB/sec transfer rates (faster than Commodore's ZORRO-III). The technology was later used in the Casablanca system, a set-top-box also designed for nonlinear video editing.

In 1998, Index Information released the Access, an Amiga clone similar to the A1200, but on a motherboard which could fit into a standard 5 1/4" drive bay. It featured either a 68020 or 68030 CPU, with a redesigned AGA chipset, and ran AmigaOS 3.1.

In 2006, two new Amiga clones were announced. The Minimig is a personal project of Dutch engineer Dennis van Weeren. Minimig replicates the Amiga OCS custom chip set inside an FPGA. The original model was built on a Xilinx Spartan 3 development board, but now a dedicated board has been demonstrated. The design for Minimig was released as Open Source on July 25, 2007.

Individual Computers has announced development of the Clone-A system. As of mid 2007 it has been shown in it's prototype form, with FPGA based boards replacing the custom chips in an Amiga 500.

Operating systems

AmigaOS

Main articles: AmigaOS and Amiga history guide

Amiga OS 3.9

At the time of release AmigaOS gave the average consumer the experience of an OS quite ahead of its time. It was one of the first commercially available consumer operating systems to implement preemptive multitasking [1] Other features included combining a graphical user interface with a command line interface, allowing long filenames permitting whitespace and not requiring a file extension and the use of information files associated with other files to store icon, launch and other desktop data.

John C. Dvorak stated in 1996 that AmigaOS "remains one of the great operating systems of the past 20 years, incorporating a small kernel and tremendous multitasking capabilities the likes of which have only recently been developed in OS/2 and Windows NT. The biggest difference is that the AmigaOS could operate fully and multitask in as little as 250 K of address space." ^[10]

Like other operating systems of the time, the OS lacked memory protection. This was necessary also because the 68000 CPU of the first Amiga computers did not include a memory management unit, and because there was no way of enforcing use of flags indicating memory to be shared.^[11] The lack of memory protection made the Amiga OS more vulnerable to crashes from badly behaving programs, and fundamentally incapable of enforcing any form of security model since any program had full access to the system. Later this memory protection feature was implemented in Amiga OS 4.

The problem was somewhat exacerbated by Commodore's initial decision to release documentation relating not only to the OS's underlying software routines, but also to the hardware itself, enabling intrepid programmers to POKE the hardware directly. While the decision to release this documentation was a popular one and allowed the creation of sophisticated sound and graphics routines in games and demos, it also contributed to system instability as some programmers lacked the expertise to program at this level. For this reason, when the new AGA chipset was released, Commodore declined to release documentation for it, forcing most programmers to adopt the approved software routines.

Following Commodore's bankruptcy, two main clones of AmigaOS were developed: MorphOS, which runs on Amiga and Pegasos machines, and the free software AROS project.

Unix and Unix-like systems

Commodore-Amiga produced Amiga Unix, informally known as Amix, based on AT&T SVR4. It supported the Amiga 2500 and Amiga 3000 and was included with the Amiga 3000UX. Among other unusual features of Amix was a hardware-accelerated windowing system which could scroll windows without copying data. Amix was not supported on the later Amiga systems based on 68040 or 68060 processors.

Other, still maintained, operating systems are available for the classic Amiga platform, including Linux and NetBSD. Both require a CPU with MMU such as the 68020 with 68851 or full versions of the 68030, 68040 or 68060. There is a version of Linux for PPC accelerator cards. Debian and Yellow Dog Linux can run on the AmigaOne.

There is an official, older version of OpenBSD. The last Amiga release is 3.2. Minix 1.5.10 also runs on Amiga.^[12]

Emulating other systems

Main article: Emulation on the Amiga

The Amiga is able to emulate other computer platforms ranging from many 8 bit systems such as the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Nintendo Gameboy, Nintendo Entertainment System, Apple II and the TRS-80, to platforms such as the Atari ST, IBM PC and Apple Macintosh. MAME (the arcade machine emulator) is also available for Amigas with PPC accelerator card upgrades.

Amiga software

Main article: Amiga software

The Amiga was a primary target for productivity and game development during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Software was often developed for the Amiga and the Atari ST simultaneously, since the ST shared a similar architecture.

Much of the freely available software was available on Aminet. Until around 1996, Aminet was the largest public archive of software for any platform.

Bootblock

If an Amiga 500 is rebooted or powered without a floppy this screen is displayed. The displayed OS is Kickstart 34.5 (AmigaOS 1.3), included in the Amiga 500 ROM.

When an Amiga is reset, the Kickstart code selects a boot device (floppy or HD), loads the first two sectors of the disk or partition (the bootblock), and passes control to it. Normally this code passes control back to the OS, continuing to boot from the device or partition it was loaded from. The first production Amiga, the Amiga 1000, needed to load Kickstart from floppy disk into 256 kilobytes of RAM reserved for this purpose, but subsequent Amigas held Kickstart in ROM. Some games and demos for the A1000 (notably Dragon's Lair) provided an alternative codebase to install, in order to use the extra 256 kilobytes of RAM for data.

A floppy disk or HD partition bootblock normally contains code to load the dos.library (AmigaDOS) and then exit to it, invoking the GUI. Any such disk, no matter what the other contents of the disk, was referred to as a "Boot disk", "bootable disk" or "Workbench disk". (A bootblock could be added to a disk by use of the "install" command). Some entertainment software contains custom bootblocks. The game or demo then takes control of memory and resources to suit itself, effectively disabling AmigaOS and the Amiga GUI.

The bootblock became an obvious target for virus writers. Some games or demos that used a custom bootblock would not work if infected with a bootblock virus, as the virus's code replaced the original. Anti-virus attempts included custom bootblocks. These amended bootblock advertised the presence of the virus checker while checking the system for tell-tale signs of memory resident viruses and then passed control back to the system. Unfortunately these could not be used on disks that already relied on a custom bootblock, but did alert users of potential trouble. Several of them also replicated themselves across other disks, becoming little more than viruses in their own right.

Boing Ball

The Boing Ball has been synonymous with Amiga since their public release in 1985. It has been a popular theme in computer demo effects since the 1950s, when a bouncing ball demo was released for Whirlwind computers. Commodore released a bouncing ball demo at the 1978 Consumer Electronics Show, to illustrate the capabilities of the VIC chip. A similar theme was used to demonstrate the capabilities of the Amiga computer at the 1984 Consumer Electronics Show. It was a real-time animation showing a red-and-white balloon bouncing forth and back off the edges of the screen, as a deep 'boing!' sound played on each impact. Since then, the Boing Ball became one of the most well-known symbols for Amiga and compatible computers. Within the context of this tradition of bouncing ball demos at the Consumer Electronics Show, CBS Electronics also showed a Bouncing Ball demo for the Atari VCS/2600, with a spinning and bouncing ball, at the same event.

The 1984 Boing Ball demo was one of the very first demos shown on the Amiga. It was specifically designed to take advantage of the Amiga's custom graphics and sound hardware, achieving a level of speed and smoothness not previously seen on a home computer. This demo operated in an Intuition Screen, allowing the higher resolution Amiga Workbench screen to be dragged down to make the Boing Ball visible from behind, bouncing up above the Workbench while the Workbench remained fully active. Since the Boing Ball used almost no CPU time, this made a particularly impressive demonstration of multitasking at the time.

Despite its popularity in the Amiga community, the Boing Ball itself was never officially adopted as a trademark by Commodore. The official Amiga trademark was a rainbow-colored doubled tick mark. After the bankruptcy of Commodore, the Boing Ball remained in use as one of the symbols for Amiga-related systems on hundreds of web sites and products by different companies and individuals.

The demo was once ported to the Atari 2600 under the title Boing^[13]. The porter impressed himself so much that he added a little Easter Egg, which he refereed to as lame (When you hold down the game reset switch, the checkered ball turns into a message that says HAPPY XMAS 1999!
FROM ROB KUDLA and Jingle Bells starts playing. You also won't hear the bounce sound effect. Releasing the switch stops the music, turns the message back into the checkered ball, and the boing sound effect is played again when the ball bounces.).

Amiga community

When Commodore went bankrupt in 1994, there was still a very active Amiga community, and it continued to support the platform long after mainstream commercial vendors abandoned it. The most popular Amiga magazine, Amiga Format, continued to publish editions until 2000, some six years after Commodore filed for bankruptcy. Another magazine, Amiga Active, was launched in 1999 and was published until 2001. Interest in the platform is high enough to sustain a specialist column in the UK weekly magazine Micro Mart.

As of mid-2006, enough demand for the system remained for such expansion hardware to keep some small scale manufacturers in business.

Notable historic uses

Amiga graphics as seen on The Chart Show in 1987

The Amiga series of computers found a place in early computer graphic design and television presentation. Below are some examples of notable uses and users.

Early episodes of the television series Babylon 5 were rendered on Amigas running Video Toasters ^[14]. Other television series using Amigas for special effects included SeaQuest DSV ^[15] and Max Headroom ^[16].
Director Steven Spielberg used Amigas in Jurassic Park for pre-visualization, in the seaQuest DSV TV series for special fx and rendering of underwater craft, and in the TV cartoon Animaniacs.

In addition, many other celebrities and notable individuals have made use of the Amiga:^[17]

Andy Warhol, the famous pop artist, was an early user of the Amiga and appeared at the launch.^[18] Warhol used the Amiga to create a new style of art made with computers, and he was the author of a multimedia opera called "you are the one" which represents an animated sequence featuring images of actress Marilyn Monroe assembled in a short movie with soundtrack. The video was discovered on two old Amiga floppies in a drawer in Warhol's studio and repaired in 2006 by the Detroit Museum Of New Art.^[19] The pop artist also stated: "The thing I like most about doing this kind of work on the Amiga is that it looks like my work in other media."^[20]^[21]
Laurence Gartel who is unanimously considered the "father" of the Digital Art movement, was the artist who physically taught Andy Warhol how to use Amiga^[22] at its best, due to the fact he was one of the pioneers using and enjoying Amiga.
Actor Dick Van Dyke is a self-described "rabid" user of the Amiga.^[23]^[24]
Amigas were used in various NASA laboratories to keep track of multiple low orbiting satellites, and were still used up to 2003/04 (dismissed and sold in 2006). This is another example of long lifetime reliability of Amiga hardware, as well as professional use. Amigas were also used at Kennedy Space Center to run strip-chart recorders, to format and display data, and control stations of platforms for Delta rocket launches. ^[25]
Tom Fulp is noted as saying he used the Amiga as his first computer for creating cartoons and animations.^[26]
Eric W. Schwartz, the creator of Sabrina-online, has an Amiga which he uses to create the web site and manage it and even has the main character Sabrina use and promote it over the PC and other systems.
London Transport Museum developed their own interactive multi-media software for the CD32. The software included a walkthrough of various exhibits and a virtual tour of the museum. ^[27]
The "Weird Al" Yankovic film UHF contains a spoof of the computer-animated video of the Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing." According to the DVD commentary track, this spoof was created on an Amiga home computer.^[28]

References

1. ^ Amiga History The Amiga History Guide
2. ^ [2] Youtube video Commodore advert 1987 - Celebrities
3. ^ [3] Youtube video Commodore advert 1987 - TV spot version of 20 minute presentation
4. ^ [4]
5. ^ [5]
6. ^ The Big Book of Amiga Hardware [6] [7]
7. ^ Knight, Gareth, Amiga history guide, <[8] (retrieved on 2007-09-29)
8. ^ [9]
9. ^ [10]PC World, The 25 Greatest PCs of All Time
10. ^ From PC Magazine, October 22, 1996 Inside Track By John C. Dvorak
11. ^ Adding Memory Protection (MP) to the Amiga. groups.google.com. Retrieved on December 30, 2006.
12. ^ Minix Comp Wisdon
13. ^ [11]
14. ^ The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5
15. ^ Interview with Matt Gorner
16. ^ 'Max Headroom' on TechTV
17. ^ For other notable users see Famous Amiga Users at AmigaHistory.
18. ^ Amiga Andy article. Artnode online.
19. ^ Artdaily article about the discover and repair of "you are the one". Artdaily. Retrieved on 2007-01-07.
20. ^ Interview with Andy Warhol. Amiga World Magazine. Retrieved on 2007-01-07.
21. ^ Cynthia Goodman. Art Journal, Vol 49 No 3, Computers and Art: Issues of Content (Autumn, 1990) pp. 248-252. Retrieved on 2007-01-07.
22. ^ [12]
23. ^ Dick van Dyke at SIGGRAPH. Retrieved on 2007-01-07.
24. ^ Katie Hafner. "The Return of a Desktop Cult Classic (No, Not the Mac) | publisher=New York Times | date=June 22 2000 | accessdate=2007-01-07]".
25. ^
26. ^ Tol Fulp interview
27. ^ [13]
28. ^ UHF DVD commentary track

Amiga Corporation

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video game is a game that involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device.

The word video in video game traditionally refers to a raster display device.
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Type Personal computer
Released 24 July 1985
Discontinued 1987
Processor Motorola 68000 @ 7.16 MHz 7.09 MHz (PAL)
Memory 256–512 KB (8 MB Maximum)
OS Amiga OS 1.
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