Amiga @wikipedia - history

[calimero]

And here is link of web site that made false claim that Jack Tramiel did contract with Amiga team:

BAD ONE:

"A history of the Amiga, part 4: Enter Commodore" by Jeremy Reimer
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007/10/ ... ore-years/
"The initial offer was for $3 a share and kept getting lower. When it hit 98¢ per share, both sides walked away from the table. It was at this point that Atari "loaned" Amiga $500,000 to continue operations for a few more months.
This poisonous deal was put together by none other than Jack Tramiel, who had managed to purchase Atari's computer division after being kicked out of Commodore."

"Chronological History of Commodore Computer" by www.commodore.ca
http://www.commodore.ca/history/company ... modore.htm
"Atari's president, Jack Tramiel, who had just left C=, because he purchased Atari secretly, was trying to get his revenge by buying Amiga Inc. He lent Amiga Inc. $1,000,000, to be payed back one month later."


GOOD ONE:

"The 68000 Wars, Part 2: Jack Is Back!" by Jimmy Maher
http://www.filfre.net/2015/04/the-68000 ... k-is-back/
" Whilst going through files of documents in early August, Jack’s son Leonard discovered the Amiga agreement, complete with the $500,000 cashed check from Atari to Amiga, and brought it to his father’s attention." (although he tend to portray Tramiels in very bad light whenever he can)


...to be continued

[calimero]

on youtube BAD ONE:

"Atari ST (1989) Computer System Review" by Dan Wood - kookytech.net
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbW5ovQtWh8
same old worng story how Jack wants to revenge to Commodore and try to get Amiga in front of their nose...

[Zarchos]

Best value for money was 1040 ST and Amiga 500, both were affordable in 1987, Maybe also considering a few home PCs like Schneider Euro PC. The choice was if you want to play mostly games or doing something serious with your machine as well. That made the difference between ST and Amiga. The Archi was mostly out of both as the most games weren't published for it and no Signum, no Cubase, no Calamus for it. Even no MS-Word, no dBase, no Multiplan, no Lotus 1-2ö3 and such boring stuff which made some home users to choose a PC. The Archi was powerfull, but expensive and a niche system. Unfortunatelly, because it really was powerfull. Do you know how I call the Archi since a few years? "Father of all smartphones."

Unfortunately what you describe is the 'urban legend' about the Archie, and certainly comes from the fact piracy wasn't as spread as on the ST or Amiga (and I'll add : 'fortunately' otherwise with such a small user base the machine would have quickly died), so people said 'there's nothing available for the Archie' meaning 'I can't steal anything and don't have access to software I should pay for'.
If it's true the Archie hadn't many games in the first years, you can check with this list in fact it has some games. I'll post a link to the full list later.

Now for the serious apps, how can you post such statement ?
From pipedream to techwriter (your Signum, I think), the Archie is blessed with 1st class 'productive' killer apps, ranked 1st when comparisons are made with their PC or Mac competitors (See Artworks for example, it's still being developped for RISC OS machine, but also on the PC under the name Photo And Graphic Designer by Xara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArtWorks ).
I remember a commentary of a tester I think in Computer Shopper who was evaluating Corel Draw on the PC and wrote sthing like : 'I'm glad I've got Artworks on the Archimedes, so much more powerful, user-friendly with RISC OS, efficient and faster'). Yes : these were the days where Archie users could just laugh at people on other platforms with their 'toys' apps.
For DTP a postcript full solution with an Acorn Archimedes + Computer Concepts Impression II for example performs better and is cheaper than an Apple solution (yes : cheaper partly because on the Archie you don't need a 'normal' postcript printer like on the Mac : you can get rid of the postcript encoding electronics the MAC needs because this part is computed by the Archimedes thanks to its 4 MIPS CPU, and its tranparent to the Archie user).
For DTP the choice was wide : all the Impression series, Acorn own DTP software, Ovation Pro, EasyWriter, Tempest, and even in the early days we had the lame protext from the Amiga for simple text writing à la MS Word (a lame and bugged to death app btw, sthing we never ever had on the Archie : with a niche market and the schools spending a lot of money to buy (and not steal) software the users were not beta testers, otherwise magazines like BBC Acorn User or Archive, Risc User, would 'kill' the product in their review.)
Remember RISC OS offers anti aliased fonts as a standard, it is of course a real plus.

I agree with you as far as music is concerned : no Cubase or Calamus.
The Archie had no MIDI interface as standard : this is a great thing for the ST to have one.
But Sibelius comes from the Archie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibelius_(software)
It mustn't be that bad to have received more than 35 (thirty five !) awards.
http://www.sibelius.com/products/sibelius/reviews/awards.html
'It is used by composers, arrangers, performers, music publishers, teachers and students, particularly for writing classical, jazz, band, vocal, film and television music. Beyond editing and printing scores, Sibelius can also play music back using synthesized sounds, produce legible scores for editing and printing,
'
The Wikipedia article is wrong as far as the date of availability on the Archie is concerned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sibelius_(software)#Acorn_.27version.27_numbers
I believe the 1st version of Sibelius appeared on the Archie in 1990 (the 1st version wasn't Sibelius 7, obviously).

The list goes on.
I could tell you about the expansion boards too : an area where too many people think there was nothing available for the Archie.
What a joke.
For example have you heard of the Millipede Electronics range of realtime graphics manipulation boards like the Apex, as used by the BBC and regional TVs : it was a niche market where the Archie and later the RISC PC excelled ... No Amiga for them, isn't that strange ?
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/24771/Apex-Imager-P3-Issue-4/
The man behind Millipede was such a brilliant electronics engineer that he also created the Imago :
http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/AfterAcorn/Millipede_Imago.html and don't forget to read the specs : http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/AfterAcorn/Millipede_Imago.html#spec
The Archie was also used by Reuters and the Stock Exchanges like the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Maybe the Amiga was used by the NASA to pilot a coffee machine, but the Archie was used by the RAF (with 3D software by Simis) and some astronomical observatories, and because it was FAST, it had lots of input/output boards for realtime data reading and manipulation, used by the industry and the research laboratories. Developping custom apps with a mix of BASIC and assembler was easy (both are standard in ROM and designed to work together) so it's why the Archie was a dream machine for developpers wanting speed and ease of development + usage.
It's not a surprise if the French Magazine ST Mag described the Archimedes as a logical choice for Atari users should they leave the Atari world and decide to buy a new machine (this was before the Falcon appeared). Many articles about the Archie hardware and software were published in ST Mag, where the Archie wasn't hated like in the U.K. because it was at 1st aimed at the education market (education being a terrible word, meaning 'dull and boring' : that's part of the modern age where values are reversed and a computer is praised for gaming).

Yes in a way the ST and Archie share part of the same philosophy : a computer to actually produce sthing, with a stock unexpanded machine.
Atari : computer for the masses. Acorn : workstations for ahem ... a third of the usual price for the same power.

[calimero]

For DTP a postcript full solution with an Acorn Archimedes + Computer Concepts Impression II for example performs better and is cheaper than an Apple solution (yes : cheaper partly because on the Archie you don't need a 'normal' postcript printer like on the Mac : you can get rid of the postcript encoding electronics the MAC needs because this part is computed by the Archimedes thanks to its 4 MIPS CPU, and its tranparent to the Archie user).

- pretty same as ST: Atari had SLM804 which was connected via fast DMA port and ST would drive SLM in same manner as (many years later) would "Windows Printers" work.

For DTP the choice was wide : all the Impression series, Acorn own DTP software, Ovation Pro, EasyWriter, Tempest, and even in the early days we had the lame protext from the Amiga for simple text writing à la MS Word

- Tempest from ST?
- Protext - there are two Protext for ST, completely different. I never use English Protext but German was very, very powerfull with scripting language you could make wonderful stuff (I believe that even todays M$ Word could not do something similar).

btw Can you recommend some sites with list of games and apps for Risc OS?

I agree with you as far as music is concerned : no Cubase or Calamus.

Calamus was DTP program. You can see how it works on ST here: http://milan.kovac.cc/atari/software/in ... older=/DTP (Click on video #1 under the screenshot)

IThe Archie had no MIDI interface as standard : this is a great thing for the ST to have one.
But Sibelius comes from the Archie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibelius_(software)

Maybe you could contribute in this thread with information from RiscOS side: viewtopic.php?t=22856 "Programs born on Atari, Amiga, Mac..."

I believe that there was more conversion like this between ST and RiscOS but it is hard to find and document everything... http://www.arcsite.de/hp/dapicture/indexuk.html "DA's Picture is an image processor for RISC OS computers. It was launched in 1995 by Digital Arts as a commercial product, and was made freeware in 2002. There is a program with the same name for Atari computers and they are related."

IThe list goes on.
I could tell you about the expansion boards too : an area where too many people think there was nothing available for the Archie.
What a joke.
For example have you heard of the Millipede Electronics range of realtime graphics manipulation boards like the Apex, as used by the BBC and regional TVs : it was a niche market where the Archie and later the RISC PC excelled ... No Amiga for them, isn't that strange ?

There was e.g. CLASSIC BiT BOPPER™ 1988 "A unique machine that harnessed the power of THREE Acorn RISC processors" https://web.archive.org/web/20080905163 ... /index.php
later ported (and reduced in process) to Atari Falcon: https://web.archive.org/web/20080905163 ... /index.php


Zarchos, thanks for post!
Maybe some moderator shouls split this thread to new one: "Acorn Archimedes - everything you want to know"

[Zarchos]

Hey !
Thanks for the info about the BiT BOPPER, I had never heard of it.

I'm sure you've heard of the Arcade machines by French company Sisteme, their games were also available on the Archimedes, sold by the same people but with a company named Eterna created ad hoc to distribute software on the Archies.
They also published some other games, including a few ones by demomakers like Poizone and Aldebaran https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eQ1uQUJKdU
The owners, owning the rights to their published games, gave permission to Jonathan Abbott to distribute them for all RISC OS machines through the Archimedes Software Preservation Project (sorry no link, the site is dead at the moment. Same site where there's the list of all games ever published on the Archie
http://forums.jaspp.org.uk:9000/forum/ Youtube channel : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4LqXC ... =dd&view=0
)

I don't see much interest to speak more about the Archies, it'll always end with a quarrel with Amiga fanboys.
Everything is here :
http://stardot.org.uk/forums/search.php ... ive_topics
and everybody can have access to it.
And well Google is your very good friend, if you're curious and ready to agree that no, there wasn't only the ST and the Amiga in the 80s and 90s to enjoy computing 'a different way' (from the PC or the Mac).
Note there are many videos on Youtube too.

More infos about the BitBOPPER provided by a *. member where I posted 10 minutes ago : http://www.tecterran.com/bitbopper/index.php

But we're off topic in an Amiga related thread now ... if there's a thread opened as you suggested I'll post at least a few technical reasons revealing why the Archie isn't only good at 3D, but can also excel in 2D (in particular thanks to sthing people thought impossible on the Archie but has been coded and demonstrated last year. And yes it changes not everything, but close).

EDIT : For Tempest on the Archie it was by Clares and I don't think they ever produced anything outside the Acorn world.
Protext was ported from the Amiga and because it used its own 'style' (ie it was not compliant with the Acorn RISC OS style guidelines, another good idea from Acorn so that from an application to the other one the user isn't lost) it made a deserved flop. No effort to port efficiently to the Archie using RISC OS features -> no success.

EDIT : Picture of an APEX Imager podule from Millipede Electronic Graphics, this one is for the RISC PC.
It's from 1995 and it must be the latest version with a Strong ARM daughterboard (top right).

4.jpg

EDIT 02/02/06 : Usage of the Archimedes, Hong Kong Stock Exchange : http://lists.cloud9.co.uk/pipermail/bbc ... 02571.html
I've also got some infos about the usage of the Archimedes to feed teletext infos for the French teletext system Antiope. France 3 chose the Archimedes solution sold by official French distributor ASHIV. The Archie received the infos from the operator, built the teletext infos, and sent the coded infos in realtime in the transfered analogic signals. It was still in use after the year 2000.
Also : most people don't know it but the crypted channel Canal+ used RISC OS based decoder systems. Like Pace in the U.K., a very successfull company, using a modified RISC OS and custom apps for its boxes.

[Zarchos]

Follow up to my previous post, I am back again because there are some people here from the French gamopat web site.
These people should remember they laughed at me when I wrote several years ago that the Archimedes and the RPCs were daily used by the BBC and other British channels, because the systems themselves were fast and reliable, and contrary to popular belief (popular meaning 'ignorant' and 'arrogant' from some people in the Amiga community, which I hate and despise for these reasons) the Acorn machines had some of the best high end expansions for video.(and audio too).
So, they laughed because they had never heard of it. And they thought the Amiga was king for video productions ...
Now you can see everything I said was true :
https://youtu.be/exW-LbLRJV0

They didn't use Amigas, of course.
When reliability is the key, speed, and realtime effects are needed, of course the Archimedes or RPC is the obvious choice.
All this for a third of the price of so called 'Professional solutions', cumbersome to use and not open.
1st class service was offered by Millipede too.

I have asked Jason if I could translate this video in French.
If so it'll be very soon on my YT channel.
I will add the numerous cases where Archimedes and RISC PCs were in use at Canal+, TF1, Météo France, Thomson armement, Aéroport de Paris the list goes on.

I will also soon demonstrate the Omnibus system (it uses RISC PCs), as I have just received a whole system with extra expansions from Danemark, coming from a Danish TV channel where it was used.

I will also demonstrate Acorn Replay, and the EIDOS optima high end video editing system (yes the EIDOS who later published Tomb Raider, again they come from the Archimedes world).

Adding to this the fact, as I wrote several years ago, that the Archimedes had much more hardware resources than most people thought, and again I was right, because today RasterMan is there.
And my fast sprites plotting routines too, tailored to work with RasterMan.
Not a single error in everything I wrote some years ago.

Expect a video in the coming months to trash these morons who insulted me in the 1st place.

He laughs best who laughs last.

Xavier Louis Tardy.