Portal:Amiga

Portal topics - (Random portal)

Activities
Culture
Geography
Health
History
Mathematics
Nature
People
Philosophy
Religion
Society
Technology
edit 

The Amiga Portal

The 1987 Amiga 500 was the best-selling model.
Shortcut

Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. When introduced, it was one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-bit or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, and mouse-based GUIs. These include the Atari ST—the Amiga's primary competitor—Macintosh, Apple IIGS, and Archimedes. The Amiga differs from its contemporaries through custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprites, a blitter, and four channels of sample-based audio. It runs a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS, with a desktop environment called Workbench.

The Amiga 1000, based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, was released in July 1985. Production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986. While early advertisements cast the computer as an all-purpose business machine, especially with the Sidecar IBM PC compatibility add-on, the Amiga was most commercially successful as a home computer with a range of video games and creative software. The bestselling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 along with the more expandable Amiga 2000. The 1990 Amiga 3000 includes minor updates to the graphics hardware via the Enhanced Chip Set also used in subsequent systems.

The Amiga established a niche in audio and multimedia. The first music tracker was written for the Amiga, and it became a popular platform for music creation. The 3D rendering packages LightWave 3D, Imagine, and Traces (a predecessor to Blender) originated on the system. The 1990 third-party Video Toaster made the Amiga a comparatively low cost option for video production. Many video games originated on the Amiga before being converted to other platforms, such as Populous (1989) and Lemmings (1991).

The Amiga eventually started losing market share to IBM PC compatibles, which gained 256 color VGA graphics in 1987, and the fourth generation of video game consoles, eventually leading to Commodore's bankruptcy in 1994. Commodore is estimated to have sold nearly five million Amigas. Various groups have since released spiritual successors. (Full article...)

edit 

Selected article

Workbench is the graphical file manager of AmigaOS developed by Commodore International for their Amiga line of computers. Workbench provides the user with a graphical interface to work with file systems and launch applications. It uses a workbench metaphor (in place of the more common desktop metaphor) for representing file system organisation.

The Amiga Workbench uses the metaphor of a workbench (i.e. a workbench of manual labor), rather than the now standard desktop metaphor, for representing file system organization. The desktop itself is called Workbench and uses the following representations: drawers (instead of folders) for directories, tools for executable programs, projects for data files; and a trash can as a folder intended to contain deleted files. These representations may be considered somewhat unusual by a modern user, but at the time there were no commonly accepted metaphors and Commodore chose to use different idioms from their competitors (Apple had already pursued legal action to prevent other software companies from offering graphical user interfaces similar to its own). Additionally, in 1985 computer graphics capabilities were more common in high end "workstations", and the Amiga was a multimedia/'creative' machine rather than an office machine, which may have provided further inspiration for the metaphor. (Full article...)

edit 

Selected biography

François Lionet is a French programmer, best known for having written STOS BASIC on the Atari ST and AMOS BASIC on the Amiga and (along with Constantin Sotiropoulos). He has also written several games on these platforms.

In 1994, he founded Clickteam with Yves Lamoureux, producing the Klik series of games-creation tools, including Multimedia Fusion. (Full article...)

edit 

Categories

Category puzzle
Category puzzle
Select [►] to view subcategories
Amiga
AROS software
Amiga chipsets
Amiga companies
Amiga computers
Amiga emulators
Amiga magazines
MorphOS
AmigaOS
Amiga people
Amiga software
edit 

Selected picture

Boing Ball
Boing Ball
Simulation of the Amiga Boing Ball.
edit 

Did you know...

... that AROS implements the AmigaOS API in a portable open-source operating system?
Other "Did you know" facts... Read more...
edit 
edit 

Topics

Pen & Earth
Pen & Earth
edit 

WikiProjects

WikiProjects
WikiProjects
WikiProject Amiga

edit 

Things to do

  • Create articles: There are many articles that have yet to be started... Pick your favorite and start researching!
  • Find photos for articles: Many Amiga–related articles would be substantially better with the addition of photographs.
  • Expand articles: There are many Amiga stubs which could use extensive updates and development.
  • Find sources: Many poorly sourced articles could use better citations.
  • Wikify: Add {{Portal|Amiga}} to the See also sections of Amiga-related articles.

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Discover Wikipedia using portals