From: Kevin Fisher [mailto:kgf@golden.net] I still have ancient computer magazines that mention the "Lorraine", the former codename for the first Amiga.
I still have an Amiga 1000, one of the first batch of ten development boxes that got shipped into the UK. *Way* ahead of its time, with huge hardware acceleration to help with the graphics --- a blitter, line drawer and polygon filler on one chip, and a scan-driven video coprocessor on another that allowed you to change I/O register contents as the scan passed a given point on the screen. I still miss the ability to slide entire *screens* of information up and down the monitor smoothly. Oh, and it had a decent multitasking OS instead of a DOS clone :-).
I think the Amiga illustrates an important point for the thread about 'modern' games. The designers went to a lot of effort to push common operations into faster blocks --- in the Amiga's case, into hardware. This cost CPU cycles, as the coprocessors stole from the processor bandwidth (and the 68000 had no cache). Squeak can do the same by pushing common operations into faster blocks --- in Squeak's case, into plug-ins that may then use native hardware support.
- Peter
On Fri, Nov 02, 2001 at 10:03:41AM -0000, Peter Crowther wrote:
From: Kevin Fisher [mailto:kgf@golden.net] I still have ancient computer magazines that mention the "Lorraine", the former codename for the first Amiga.
I still have an Amiga 1000, one of the first batch of ten development boxes that got shipped into the UK. *Way* ahead of its time, with huge hardware acceleration to help with the graphics --- a blitter, line drawer and polygon filler on one chip, and a scan-driven video coprocessor on another that allowed you to change I/O register contents as the scan passed a given point on the screen. I still miss the ability to slide entire *screens* of information up and down the monitor smoothly. Oh, and it had a decent multitasking OS instead of a DOS clone :-).
At one time I owned an A1000 as well. I found out a week after I sold it that the designers had all put their signatures on the inside of the case... including "Mitchi the dog", too!
Of course I did manage to find the "hidden" messages they left scattered throughout the OS...some were rather unflattering to Commodore, to put it mildly.
I believe that Enlightenment (on UNIX/X11) is heavily inspired by the Amiga. The last stable release had "sliding screens" just like the Amiga.. although you couldn't have different resolutions for each screen, unlike the Amiga. :)
I think the Amiga illustrates an important point for the thread about 'modern' games. The designers went to a lot of effort to push common operations into faster blocks --- in the Amiga's case, into hardware. This cost CPU cycles, as the coprocessors stole from the processor bandwidth (and the 68000 had no cache). Squeak can do the same by pushing common operations into faster blocks --- in Squeak's case, into plug-ins that may then use native hardware support.
- Peter
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