A history of the Amiga Computer - A MultiPart Series When it first arrived, the Amiga was a dream machine... The Amiga computer was a dream given form: an inexpensive, fast, flexible multimedia computer that could do virtually anything. It handled graphics, sound, and video as easily as other computers of its time manipulated plain text. It was easily ten years ahead of its time. It was everything its designers imagined it could be, except for one crucial problem: the world was essentially unaware of its existence. I bought two Commodore machines (a Commodore C64 and an Amiga 500) and loved both of them. They were so ahead of their time, especially the old IBM PC of the day. The story was both a fairy tale and a tragedy. And yes we all know who Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were, but who even headed up Commodore? The Amiga was way way ahead of it's time not only in terms of colour and proper sound, but also a trick that no modern computer yet replicates: This allowed a trick that no other computer has ever reproduced: the ability to view multiple different screens, opened at different resolutions, at the same time. These "pull-down" screens would amaze anyone who saw them. Modern computers can open different screens at different resolutions (say, for example, to open a full-screen game at a lower resolution than the desktop is displaying, in order to play the game faster or at a higher frame rate) but they can only switch between these modes, not display multiple modes at once. The Amiga made the Apple Macintosh look like a kiddies toy. Multitasking too, for personal computers, was virtually unknown at the time. Those in the know will remember the famous fatal error message "Guru Meditation Error." and in Part 2 you'll find out how it came about. Also in Part 2 you'll be introduced to lovely Agnes, Denise, and Paula... Read the story starting at Part 1 at http://ift.tt/2jG5AqL http://bit.ly/2jFOskV
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