The Amiga Portal

The 1987 Amiga 500 was the best-selling model.

Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 16/32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. These systems include the Atari ST—released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, the Amiga differs from its contemporaries through the inclusion of custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprites and a blitter, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS.

The Amiga 1000 was released in July 1985, but production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986. The best-selling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 along with the more expandable Amiga 2000. The Amiga 3000 was introduced in 1990, followed by the Amiga 500 Plus, and Amiga 600 in March 1992. Finally, the Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000 were released in late 1992. The Amiga line sold an estimated 4.85 million units.

Although early advertisements cast the computer as an all-purpose business machine, especially when outfitted with the Sidecar IBM PC compatibility add-on, the Amiga was most commercially successful as a home computer, with a wide range of games and creative software. It also found a niche in video production with the Video Toaster hardware and software, and Amiga's audio hardware made it a popular platform for music tracker software. The processor and memory capacity enabled 3D rendering packages, including LightWave 3D, Imagine, and Traces, a predecessor to Blender.

Poor marketing and the failure of later models to repeat the technological advances of the first systems resulted in Commodore quickly losing market share to the rapidly dropping prices of IBM PC compatibles, which gained 256 color graphics in 1987, as well as the fourth generation of video game consoles.

Commodore ultimately went bankrupt in April 1994 after a version of the Amiga packaged as a game console, the Amiga CD32, failed in the marketplace. Since the demise of Commodore, various groups have marketed successors to the original Amiga line, including Genesi, Eyetech, ACube Systems Srl and A-EON Technology. AmigaOS has influenced replacements, clones, and compatible systems such as MorphOS and AROS. Currently Belgian company Hyperion Entertainment maintains and develops AmigaOS 4, which is an official and direct descendant of AmigaOS 3.1 – the last system made by Commodore for the original Amiga Computers. (Full article...)

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ARexx is an implementation of the REXX language for the Amiga, written in 1987 by William S. Hawes, with a number of Amiga-specific features beyond standard REXX facilities. Like most REXX implementations, ARexx is an interpreted language. Programs written for ARexx are called "scripts", or "macros"; several programs offer the ability to run ARexx scripts in their main interface as macros.

ARexx can easily communicate with third-party software that implements an "ARexx port". Any Amiga application or script can define a set of commands and functions for ARexx to address, thus making the capabilities of the software available to the scripts written in ARexx.

ARexx can direct commands and functions to several applications from the same script, thus offering the opportunity to mix and match functions from the different programs. For example, an ARexx script could extract data from a database, insert the data into a spreadsheet to perform calculations on it, then insert tables and charts based on the results into a word processor document. (Full article...)

Selected biography

Circa. 2008
Circa. 2008
Tim Wright (born 31 July 1967), alias CoLD SToRAGE, is a Welsh video game music composer most known for his work in video game soundtracks such as Shadow of the Beast II & III, Agony, Lemmings, Wipeout and Colony Wars.

His first commercial works were created using the Commodore Amiga in the early 1990s and featured in computer games published by Psygnosis / Sony Computer Entertainment Studio Liverpool. (Full article...)

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Amiga 4000
Amiga 4000
Credit: Iggy Drougge
Amiga 4000 open.

Did you know...

... that the Amiga became one of the first widespread 3D development platforms?
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