My classic computer is better than today's modern machines because..

[Keatah]

Wow. The anger -- all rooted from an unrealistic view of what a mid-80s/early-90s computer is capable of. Name one home computer prior to 1993 that can do Babylon 5 graphics in real-time. Even an SGI workstation couldn't do that back then.

 

As for doing 3D on an Amiga, I had no issues getting great results from LightWave (one of the least-expensive 3D apps on the market).

 

 

The salesman told me that this computer was used to make Babylon-5. And therefore that is what I expected. I expected to zoom the ships around and all that! Make laser blast sounds and graphic explosions. I mean they said the computer had chips like no other, and it was light-years ahead of anything else.

 

Did I have too blunt and too-literal an expectation? ..perhaps, but that was what I was told and that was what I expected. Even an assassin has a better code of ethics than most salesmen!!!

 

Everytime I tried LightWave on my stock A500 the damned thing slowed down or crashed or something. But it was basically un-usable.

 

When I was sold my Atari or Apple II and even my 486 I was not jerked off by excessive promises. In fact the expectations set by the sales demos were underwhelming and all that.

 

In fact, the Apple II guy made me feel like a million bucks, and I wasn't even a teenager yet. He was right that it would be a lifelong hobby and pursuit. And that the computer was well built of quality materials. He said I'd have it for a billion years. The department store Atari guy didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. But I bought it for Star Raiders, and had fun discovering the rest. And the 486 Gateway guy made me feek kuje a reak oeiddwaauibak. There was professionalism every step of the way. And none of them stuffed me with bullshit.

 

The Amiga store made promises upon promises and preached the machines virtues to kingdom come. They had all these demos going, and being a kid still, I didn't know they were simply looping animations or videos. I was reading (with vague understanding) about realtime graphics and the advertisements made me believe too much MAGIC was crammed into custom chips. I mean with the industry making rapid advances every other week, why wouldn't anyone believe the amiga ads. They always say low price and the stuff was coming down continually. Sure it was, all of it was, except for the $1,000's upon $1,000's of extras needed just to get Lightwave running and outputting to a VCR. Ughh.. This was worse than the dark ages.

 

The only other time(s) I've been upset and spoofed into buying something computer related which turned into a major disappointment was the MMX crap and Pentium 4 shit. But it wasn't nearly as bad as the Amiga.

 

I do remember the guy at Computerland, he was a dick. He didn't let me copy anything. But the guy at Compu-Shop rocked. So did the guy at RadioShack Computer Center. He even helped me fix my Lunar Lander type-in which kept crashing 10 meters above the surface.

[Nebulon]

 

 

The salesman told me that this computer was used to make Babylon-5. And therefore that is what I expected. I expected to zoom the ships around and all that! Make laser blast sounds and graphic explosions. I mean they said the computer had chips like no other, and it was light-years ahead of anything else.

 

Did I have too blunt and too-literal an expectation? ..perhaps, but that was what I was told and that was what I expected. Even an assassin has a better code of ethics than most salesmen!!!

 

Everytime I tried LightWave on my stock A500 the damned thing slowed down or crashed or something. But it was basically un-usable.

 

The Amiga store made promises upon promises and preached the machines virtues to kingdom come. They had all these demos going, and being a kid still, I didn't know they were simply looping animations or videos. I was reading (with vague understanding) about realtime graphics and the advertisements made me believe too much MAGIC was crammed into custom chips. I mean with the industry making rapid advances every other week, why wouldn't anyone believe the amiga ads. They always say low price and the stuff was coming down continually. Sure it was, all of it was, except for the $1,000's upon $1,000's of extras needed just to get Lightwave running and outputting to a VCR. Ughh.. This was worse than the dark ages.

 

 

Wow. I really enjoyed how you explained that.

 

It's unfortunate that the salesman you were dealing with didn't know what he was talking about and actually sold you an Amiga 500 while hyping a show like Babylon 5. The first season of B5 was done using Amiga 4000 machines. Essentially, he sold you the wrong computer (or didn't bother to mention necessary CPU, RAM, and hard drive upgrades). A bit like telling you what a Pentium could do while pointing at a 386sx.

 

The truth is, you'll run into good and bad sales people for any platform. I will admit though, some of the Amiga hype could get a bit out of hand at times.

 

As for LightWave costing a lot. It was a much better deal when they broke it away from the Video Toaster and sold it as a separate software app. LW 3D Version 3.5 was complete and less than a thousand dollars. Pretty good for a full-featured modeling, animation, texturing, and rendering app.

 

Since you were a kid at the time, I can see the misunderstanding between pre-rendered and real-time. At the time the A4000 was released, you'd be looking at similar rendering times on pretty much all higher-end home computers. Of course, later in the decade, the PC, SGI, and the Dec Alpha were to take the lead in rendering speeds (but that was the future at the time).

 

The Amiga's real lead was from around 1985 to 1989. After that it started to get somewhat ambiguous with things like multitasking, video editing/genlocking, the GUI, serial transfer speeds, and -- to some degree -- audio as things that kept it relevant until around 1995. From then on, it was pretty much game over for the un-accelerated Amiga.

[Omega-TI]

 

The Amiga's real lead was from around 1985 to 1989. After that it started to get somewhat ambiguous with things like multitasking, video editing/genlocking...

 

I used to volunteer at a local cable TV station, that used a TI-99/4A to send information to the Chyron... UNTIL THE AMIGA came out with the GENLOCK device, then it was all over for the lowly TI. The Amiga could do some amazing stuff with video back then.

[Keatah]

 

I used to volunteer at a local cable TV station, that used a TI-99/4A to send information to the Chyron... UNTIL THE AMIGA came out with the GENLOCK device, then it was all over for the lowly TI. The Amiga could do some amazing stuff with video back then.

 

..If you equipped it with thousands of dollars of add-ons. None of which would be available to a disappointed and depressed kid.

 

But, the one thing I did learn on the Amiga was PhotonPaint and Digi-View and Digi-Paint. We'd capture shit from the VCR and then use the B/W image as a starting point for our own art. As a matter of fact I have most, if not all, of the pictures and artwork.

 

The material and methodology I learned on those carried over to modern day photoshop nicely.

[Osgeld]

Amiga Genlocked out of the box

 

The Amiga chipset can genlock, which is the ability to adjust its own screen refresh timing to match an NTSC or PAL video signal. When combined with setting transparency, this allows an Amiga to overlay an external video source with graphics.

yet another clueless and ignorant statement from our grumpy Luddite Keatah, but remember, if you are 1 day younger than him YOU are the stupid one

[roland p]

I think the original amiga (A500, A2000, A3000) was great at its time. The later models (A1200, A4000) where not as advanced as the original models where in their days. Still 8-bit sound (an upgraded SID + 16-bit samples would be nice...), and while more colors, a workbench in an acceptable resolution (640x480) with 256 colors was still slow iirc. You could upgrade the processor but the video still has low bandwidth. I was considering mac's at that time, but they where too pricey. In about '95 I bought a cheap 486 to get on the internet, later upgraded with a 'vesa local bus' S3 videocard so games were playable.

Edited July 19, 2014 by roland p

[Keatah]

I always felt that the Amiga was limited by the very chips that made it be so state of the art. Perhaps for a short time there was a sweet spot with price and performance. But in the end it became difficult to to upgrade its architecture - for the whole set of custom chips would require redesigning as bus speeds increased. And back then, rolling custom chips was a much bigger expenditure than today. This really applies to any system with a lot of custom chippery.

 

With the PC, upgrading piecemeal was possible. And this was a huge factor.

 

And with the Amiga I didn't care what a genlock did or anything, if it didn't help me play games or do word processing it was a waste. All I knew was that when I dumped the A1000 for an A500 I had to get a $75 gender changer for my Digi-View digitizer. The whole thing stuck out like 4 inches. And it never sat quite even on the desk, always pried up at an angle that worked itself loose sooner or later. And they were too cheap to include screws to hold it in place. Zero thoughtfulness. Fuck'n pissed me off. Why'd the make the parallel port so stupid in the first place? It's crap like that that annoyed me.

 

Apple stuff or the PC didn't have that kind of problem. Even my Snappy Digitizer (designed by New-Tek) (which I still have) is better engineered!

[roland p]

With the PC, upgrading piecemeal was possible. And this was a huge factor.

I'm not sure.

 

My first PC had 'Vesa local bus', then PCI, AGP, PCI Express. These weren't very interchangable. Processor sockets same.

Every time wanted something 'new', I needed to replace a lot of parts.

 

The zorro bus of the amiga >=2000 seemed pretty consistent, but will have its limits too (I haven't played around with that stuff).

 

But that's natural, generation N+1 is better in every way than generation N so not very compatible (only the slow parts are compatible)

[Osgeld]

pc slots were backwards compatible until pci

[yarjr]

...it has 10,000 games and applications. 'nough said.

[Uzumaki]

There hasn't been a desktop type computer that can boot to OS and be ready in 3 seconds or less. The best I have gotten from power on to ready with Windows 8 is about 30 seconds and that's with a $150 SSD on SATA 6G.

[Nebulon]

There hasn't been a desktop type computer that can boot to OS and be ready in 3 seconds or less. The best I have gotten from power on to ready with Windows 8 is about 30 seconds and that's with a $150 SSD on SATA 6G.

Computer manufacturers really need to address this. Not so much for the older generation of computer users, but for the newer one. As a friend of mine observed, kids are getting so used to the instant-on of web-connected phones that they simply will not wait for a conventional computer to finish starting up. Instead they'll say "frag-it" and just search the information on their phone instead.

 

Eventually, the laptop and desktop manufacturers will wonder to themselves, "Why did people stop buying our products in favor of phones and mobile devices?"

 

I'd hate to see that happen, because I definitely prefer 'traditional' computers.

[roland p]

Computer manufacturers really need to address this. Not so much for the older generation of computer users, but for the newer one. As a friend of mine observed, kids are getting so used to the instant-on of web-connected phones that they simply will not wait for a conventional computer to finish starting up. Instead they'll say "frag-it" and just search the information on their phone instead.

My experience is different. Lid open = laptop on. Lid closed = laptop off. I never have to wait more than a few seconds for it to power on.

[Keatah]

I observe that directly. And it doesn't have to be that way. I mean if the Apple II can get itself ready in 5 seconds, why can't the same happen for a modern system thousands if times more powerful?

 

It doesn't bother me because I can use that 30 seconds to adjust my rolls of fat and get it all hanging just right! Get that Arby's sandwich stuffed in my mouth and all that.. Set me all up for a night of junkfood bliss and getting stuck in the early early years wintel nostalgia - which has gone on too long enough!

 

yeh whatever!

[John_L]

Computer manufacturers really need to address.

 

They have been for years. Microsoft finally address the issue and Windows is one of the fastest booting OSs out there. All those little bullshit system tray notification thingies that check for updates can slow down a boot, but the OS itself now a days is fast boot. Secondly, go out and buy a solid state drive. They're more expensive, but they're way faster. I know they're pricey but you can buy a small one for the OS, say 256 GB, and use your current drive for data storage, and with the SSD as the boot drive, booting isn't an issue.

 

From a completely off state, my 3.6 Ghz i5 booting from a 256 GB SSD takes 9 seconds. (From the POST beep to the desktop, ready to use). However, I never turn off my computer, instead I put it to sleep. Sleep mode takes a snapshot of the comptuer's memory and dumps it to disk, and when it wakes up, it simply loads that image back in, much faster than a boot sequence, and my computer is as "off" in sleep mode as it is when it's shutdown, and only takes 3 seconds for the desktop to appear. So, it's been addressed, you just need to adjust how you're using it. Edit your startup list and take out all those little update checking services for HP or Adobe, Java, etc, and choose "sleep" instead of "shutdown". If you want to take the extra step, invest in an SSD drive. Even without the SSD drive, booting from sleep mode will dramatically improve boot time.

[Keatah]

My experience is different. Lid open = laptop on. Lid closed = laptop off. I never have to wait more than a few seconds for it to power on.

 

Even on my old laptop workhorse I get performance like that. I use the standby mode. Cheating? yes. Does it work? yes. The system can stay "stood by" for many moons. Open the lid and I'm ready to roll.

[Nebulon]

I will admit, my Windows 8 machine has been booting up pretty darned fast. We'll see how it does after a few years though....

 

As for some of the previous versions of Windows, I've seen lots of issues with machines that either don't wake up or ones that spin-up but conveniently forget to activate the output to the monitor. It's mighty hard to trouble-shoot a modern PC when you can't see the screen.

[Keatah]

Ain't that the truth!! Or how about the ones that spin-up late and you get a warning balloon that all the data hasn't been saved yet..

 

I think this issue stems from motherboard manufacturers not staying consistent with the standards set from microsoft. Wintel machines are the worst of the lot when compared against other OS'.

 

On another aspect. Look at the heat generation of some of the older processors. The Pentium IV should be reaching "classic status" in another 5 years. But let's look at it for a moment now.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Pentium-4-Laptop-CPU-Processor-3-20GHz-1M-533-SL7NB/111257735516

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentium_4/Intel-Mobile%20Pentium%204%20538%203.2%20GHz%20-%20RK80546HE0881M.html

 

Laptop processor my ASS! The damned thing draws 102 watts of power and bogs itself down with a 31+ stage pipeline. 50 watts in standby stopclock/sleep mode? WTF was intel thinking? Didn't they market these as gamerz systemz that would [understandably] have a short battery life and even shorter market penetration?

Edited July 22, 2014 by Keatah

[Osgeld]

There hasn't been a desktop type computer that can boot to OS and be ready in 3 seconds or less. The best I have gotten from power on to ready with Windows 8 is about 30 seconds and that's with a $150 SSD on SATA 6G.

 

Takes about 1 min for my 86 mac SE to do it with minimal extensions, last time I booted a my 286 it took nearly 30 seconds to count the 4Mb ram. So unless you want to go back to the 1 boot, only 1 application on a floppy days .... oh snap it takes about 14 seconds for my apple II to load DOS that way, and that thing has a fast disk drive.

 

likewise MS dos on a quad core 4.2 ghz AMD box boots in less than a second, so does elua ... though both are mostly useless

 

get my drift heh

Edited July 23, 2014 by Osgeld

[Omega-TI]

ABANDON WARE

Most if not all software is FREE for the picking!

Long live Classic Computing!

[Muzz73]

Because they do what I tell them to do, when I tell them to do it and they don't give me any lip...

 

Delete file - Move file to trash can? Yes.

Empty Trash - Are you sure? Yes.

The file you are attempting to delete is in use. <Close Program>

Empty Trash - Are you sure? Yes.

You do not have proper permissions to permanently delete this file...

 

That's worth keeping 30 year old machines around for, right there! LOL

 

I mainly have mine for games & nostalgia, but having two Windows PC's and a MacPro at my desk on the job, you can imagine that I don't want to see either one of those blasted things when I come home.