Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The "Boing Ball" arises from the grave

This is topic The "Boing Ball" arises from the grave in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 04-14-2011, 04:21 PM:

Commodore-Amiga arises from the ashes once again:

Commodore-Amiga

think this time, it will make a definite go?

-Monte

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 04-14-2011, 05:22 PM:

NO clue what a "boing ball" is, but OK.

For me the Amiga always seemed awesome because I didn't have one. But when a friend got one (complete with Lightwave 3D and Video Toaster) I got to borrow it for a few weeks while he went on vacation. I was thoroughly unimpressed. The OS was crap. I think it was called "Workbench" or some other nonsense like that. The Video Toaster was practically useless, Lightwave was a headache and the thing crawled at a snail's pace. And yes, this was back when it was all still current and on the market. I know he beefed it up so it wasn't like I was using an underpowered system. Don't care about Commodore or other Euro computers. Sam Tramiel sucks.

The Commodore 64 had awful graphics even for its time. The SID sound chip was really cool, but it was ruined by all of the damn arpeggios that the Euro musicians seemingly could not live without.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 04-14-2011, 06:10 PM:

The Boing Ball was supposed to be the trademark for new AMIGA.

The demo that sold a million Amigas was the Boing Ball demo, written by RJ Mical during a break at a trade show. In a time when other computers were only just managing colour display, the Amiga was displaying smooth animation in full colour. It was adopted as the official logo, showing the products' distinctiveness.

Workbench 1.0 being the first OS, but using the Motorola 68000 chip (same chip in the Sega Genesis) was the first home computer to have 16 bit technology where others, including the C-64 still were doing 8 bit processing.

It was fun being in that home computer wars back then with all of the products vieing for the home computer premacy (I had ATARI 400 and 800 stuff then...)

Posted by Tom Mundell (Member # 4555) on 04-15-2011, 10:27 AM:

quote: Joe Redifer
The Commodore 64 had awful graphics even for its time

It was very similar with other computers in 1982 though, there were pros/cons of each system at the time and I don't any was a clear winner.

quote: Monte L Fullmer
but using the Motorola 68000 chip (same chip in the Sega Genesis) was the first home computer to have 16 bit technology where others, including the C-64 still were doing 8 bit processing.

Not the first, the Amiga came out in 1985 and the TI-99/4 was a 16 bit system in 1979. Also the IBM AT had the 80286 in 1984. The original PC in 1981 used the 8088 which was a 16 bit cpu but only had an 8 bit data bus.

Posted by Aaron Sisemore (Member # 145) on 04-15-2011, 09:19 PM:

Aren't the 'new' Amigas 'Amigas' in name only? from what I have seen they will be basically Amiga-branded Intel/AMD PCs running Linux.

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 04-19-2011, 02:15 PM:

I never understood the attraction that Commodore and Amiga had at the time. I was big into the Atari computers, especially because of their sound and video capabilities, but I was never able to afford one.

By the time I could afford one, they were off the market and the PC clone market had matured to the point where that was the natural path to follow.

I probably still have that full-page ad for the Atari 1450XLD somewhere around here...

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 04-19-2011, 05:57 PM:

I got in cheap with ATARI and AMIGA due to donations from my friends who rid of these units for PC or APPLE II computers.

Thus, I inherited ATARI 800XL and the AMIGA 1000 and 3000 units along with all the necessary software ..... and grew from there on how to work with computers until at one theatre I worked at, the owner had an old 8088 unit running LOTUS 2.3 for the office work and I really took off from there...

-Monte