What's old is new again - Here Comes the Amiga!

[Robert Lane]

Never in my wildest "what if" scenarios would I have surmised this possibility, but those who used and adored the Commodore Amiga and it's progenitor, the C64, can live it's greatness again - soon:

Commodore USA

I cut my teeth on personal computing with the original Amiga 1000 and later became fascinated with the "Video Toaster" technology developed by NewTek, which was used in creating the VFX sequences in the '90's sci-fi series, "Babylon 5".

And as it turns out NewTek is one of the developing partners for this Commodore/Amiga resurrection.

For those unfamiliar with the Amiga, it was light-years ahead of every personal computing option available in the mid-80's. It was the first to have a full-color screen, a fully utilized "GUI" (desktop icons rather than typing in commands) and a 4-channel discrete audio section capable of full musical tones output rather than "beeps" (PC's) or 6-stage ramping beeps (Macintosh).

The C64 is due out first with the Amiga line to follow later, all with dual-boot options Commodore OS (COS) or Windows - just like Boot Camp.

Who knows, maybe a year from now we'll see pro-level video being edited on Amigas! Video Toaster V2 from NewTek? Time will tell.

Will I get one? The C64 no, but the first A-1000... you betcha.

[Roger Van Duyn]

Well, I used to really love my Amigas. However, there have been several resurrections of the Amiga in the past that never actually came to pass. I remember the excitement over Gateway going to resurrect the Amiga. There were other false starts too. There was talk of a PDA Amiga a few years ago. I'm not going to be first to jump, although I did buy the very first Amiga in Polk County Florida way back when.

[Chris Hurd]

Story at The Commodore 64, that '80s computer icon, lives again - CNN.com

The very first time I used a computer with video was the first generation Video Toaster, running on a Commodore Amiga. That takes me back... way back.

[Bill Davis]

Dammit,

Something tells me I'm going to be dreaming of freaking falling-SHEEP tonight!

Oh the horror...


BTW, I still think the reason the Amiga/Commodore/Toaster was considered so "far ahead" of it's time, was that it was the only computer in it's day that was based around SD video monitor output, rather than the progressive scan higher refresh, higher rez (tho mono-color) solutions of IBM, Mac and others of that era.

They essentially traded resolution for video compatibility - and for those looking to do video, NOT needing to transcode from a computer's progressive scan output into interlace to get it on a TV screen WAS revolutionary. But at the cost of substantially lower resolution, making the Toaster a GREAT video solution, but a marginal general purpose computing solution at best.

And since the planet was computerizing everything, including office tasks where clarity of resolution for tasks like word-processing and spreadsheets were much more "mission critical" in society than making video - the VT ecosystem had a nice niche run, but was doomed to be shuttled aside as the primary business machines dominated the market and eventually were refined into machines that could easily surpass the video stuff that was the Toaster's niche.

Ah, history.

[Insung Hwang]

I'd owned a Vic 20, Amgia 500 and the 3000. I was at NAB this year and saw that NewTek (Video Toaster) guys were still around with some new products. I'm pretty sure that the model was still, no other than Kiki Stockhammer. She still looked good.

[Mark Watson]

I bought my first C-64 in 1984. There were so many 3rd party gadgets and software available. Unlike the closed architecture of the Apple offering. Then the Amiga 1000 came along, and I think in the late 80's there was the Amiga 3000 "Ranger". I never got to own one, could only lust for it. I thought one of the unique characteristics of the Amiga was that its multitasking ability was hardware based. I bought the EPROM burning kit that plugged into the back of the C-64 and would make my own custom cartridges. I had Omni-Word, a file manager and other utilities all on one cartridge. I'd just plug it in and turn on the computer and within about 3 seconds I was in my program. The 1541 floppy was notoriously slow.
Great little computers. Commodore owned the technology to make their own custom chips, but their marketing strategy is what killed them. As I recall, they had a very high turnover rate for their executives.

Mark

[Alen Koebel]

Commodore was run by morons, pure and simple. The company was managed into the ground.

I'll wait and see what comes of this new incarnation of the brand name, specifically concerning the Amiga. I consigned my Amiga to the dumpster many years ago (an A500 souped up with an accelerator, flicker-fixer, hard drive bay, etc.). But I've kept a lot of the software for it. I even kept a Digital Creations DCTV, even though it's totally useless to me now and the blurry composite output was never anything to write home about. See how sentimental I am? :)

[John Threat]

while it may be true that it was managed wrong - hey that happens - Polaroid passes on xerox, ibm passed on microsoft - xerox passed on something - etc.

The commodore 64 proved that people wanted multimedia experiences as part of computing - games, color graphics, rich audio. It was a great jumping off point for the consumer computer revolution - it was cheap - you could program it right out of the box (try that with a ibm pc Jr without buying something first for $1000) - it has peripherals.

i loved it and I wouldnt know as much about computers if it wasnt for the commodore 64!

[Keith Ward]

It looks like they're still stuck in the past, though. That website is straight outta 1993. Yikes!

[Alen Koebel]

It's time to resurrect this old thread. "Commodore" now has a new "Amiga":

Commodore AMIGA mini

Except for the case this seems like just another PC to me. But since it has the Amiga name I guess it _must_ be an Amiga, right? ;->

[Mark Watson]

I haven't been keeping up with this revival of a classic. I went to their web-site and read their vision statement(s).

I wish them luck, but it looks like 10% innovation and 90% marketing. Either someone has taken on a super-risky endeavor, or.... well that's all I got.

That little Amiga box is kind of cool. I like the form factor but without firewire, I can't own one. Unless there's an expansion slot inside that will add a firewire connection???

From their FAQ page, "Will you repair my Commodores from the 80s and 90s? I'm afraid we can't do that."

Oh that's rich, really rich!