A3K

[pasithea]

I was looking for some stuff about Will (my former Maya instructor) and stumbled across a short interview with him about 4 minutes into this Amiga3000 promotional video from 1988.

http://www.archive.org/details/amiga3000

I left the video running while I was doing other stuff just because the noise was entertaining.

Anyhow. I make fun of Amiga fanboys a lot. The ones who still believe the Amiga is going to make a comeback at this point sound very similar to the 'The South Will Rise Again' sorts...

But there's a big difference between the South and the Amiga. The Amiga really was pretty awesome. I know what my computer was capable of in 1988 and the Amiga quite frankly blew it away.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I saw that I was unaware of is at about 14 minutes into the video.

It was freakin' Flash before Flash existed. Graphical OO programming where you could just double-click an object and edit code in it. YOu could create buttons and hot areas and mix in audio, video, and animation. Pretty darn cool. If only they'd been able to do something with it instead of MacroMedia.

Really neat stuff. You might watch this just for the fun history lesson.

Comments

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

I had gotten an A3000 back when they came out for the OMG grand total (after everything, monitor, tax, etc) of just about $3000. It really was a nice system and I was glad I got it -- but eventually all my 'Amiga friends' left the area or switched computers and it just didn't seem worth keeping up and running anymore since I needed a computer for more practical purposes and the computers used where I worked were Macs. (I did have a MacPlus emulator for the Amiga).

One thing that annoyed me about the A3000 in particular was that it always seemed like the 'seldom-supported oddball' when it came to Amiga upgrades. You looked at video cards and they were all meant for the A500, A2000, or A4000. You look at ethernet cards and again they're for the A500, A2000, or A4000. It was the smaller case size that did it. You could theoretically put most of those cards in an A3000 if you were willing to chop a hole in the side of your case.

I still have it -- I don't know what it's worth. A few years ago I 'cut out' the motherboard battery* but it may have been too late since it looked like it had started to leak. (That's apparently been a big problem with those)

* This was a kinda silly decision on Amiga's part -- soldering in the motherboard backup battery instead of putting some kind of holder for it so you can replace it normally.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

When the Amiga came out, it was brain-meltingly awesome. It was a decade ahead of its time. But then Commodore refused to put any money into R&D. And ten years later there'd been one minor bump - the 3000 and its smaller sister the 1200 - and everyone else had passed it by.

Some people held onto the memories of it being AWESOME for a while. Myself included.

There were a lot of conspiracy theories but really, I mostly just suspect incompetence and lack of sufficient capital to push it forward.

[tilton.livejournal.com]

Amen! I was an Amiga 500 user from 1988 to 1992, I loved that thing. Sure it's dead, and I hope folks would have moved on by now, but back then it was way ahead of things. It brings back tons of fond memories.

[idragosani.livejournal.com]

Amigas ruled. We used to say "Amiga means Ah, Me It's God Almighty"

I still have the original Video Toaster promo video on VHS, with Todd Rundgren's music video 'I'd like change the world' done entirely on the Amiga.

And have you seen this Amiga tribute, done entirely on an Amiga 4000?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mg6wrYCT9Q