Amiga

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This article is about the family of home computers. For other uses, see Amiga (disambiguation).

The Amiga is a family of home/personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation as an advanced home entertainment and productivity machine. Development on the Amiga began in 1982 with Jay Miner (1932-1994) as the principal hardware designer. Commodore International introduced the machine to the market in 1985, after having bought Amiga Corp. The machine sported a custom chipset with advanced graphics and sound capabilities, and a sophisticated pre-emptive multitasking operating system, now known as AmigaOS. It ceased production in 1996, but efforts to revive the OS on newer hardware have continued to the present day. The name amiga was selected by the developers specifically from the Spanish word for a female friend.

Based on the Motorola 68k series of 32-bit microprocessors, the Amiga provided a significant upgrade from 8-bit computers such as the Commodore 64, and the Amiga quickly grew in popularity among computer enthusiasts, especially in Europe. It also found a prominent role in the video production and show control business.

Considered "ahead of its time" due to being built from the ground up as a multimedia and multitasking machine, it was a less-expensive alternative to the Apple Macintosh and IBM-PC. Amiga also had arguably better hardware for the price than those two alternatives. The Amiga community has accused Commodore of poor marketing, resulting in the Amiga mostly being sold as a home-gaming machine, although early Commodore advertisements attempted to place the Amiga into several different markets at the same time.^[1][2]

Contents 1 History 2 Hardware 2.1 Central processing unit 2.2 Custom chipset 2.3 ROM 2.4 Three finger salute 2.5 Graphics 2.6 Genlock 2.7 Sound 2.8 Third party hardware 2.9 Models and variants 2.9.1 AmigaOS 4 compatible Models 2.10 Emulating the Amiga 3 Operating systems 3.1 AmigaOS 3.2 *NIX 3.3 The bootblock 3.4 Emulating other systems 4 Amiga software 5 Amiga community 6 After Commodore's demise 6.1 Amiga hardware clones 6.2 AmigaOS clones 7 Notable users 8 TV and motion picture usage 9 See also 10 References 11 Further reading

[edit] History

Main article: History of the Amiga

The Amiga was originally designed by a small company called Amiga Corporation as the ultimate video game machine. Before the machine was released into the market, the company was purchased by Commodore, and it was redesigned into a general-purpose computer. The first model, called the Amiga 1000, was released in 1985 as a successor to the Commodore 64 and a rival to the Atari ST.

Commodore later released several new Amiga models, both for low-end gaming use and high-end productivity use. Throughout the 1980s, the Amiga's combination of hardware and operating system software offered great value, but by the mid-nineties other platforms, most of all the PC, reduced or eliminated this advantage.

[edit] Hardware

At its core, the Amiga featured custom designed coprocessors, useful for handling tasks such as audio, video, encoding and animation. This freed up the Amiga's central processor for other tasks, given that the coprocessors could keep up with the central processor's demands, and gave the Amiga an edge on its competitors in many situations.

The platform has gone through three significant upgrades (not counting later non-Commodore technologies), with the Amiga 2000 in 1987, Amiga 3000 in 1990 and the Amiga 4000 in 1992. These upgrades improved the platform's graphical abilities, allowing for more colors and different display modes, and added expansion slots and ports. The best selling models however, were the much cheaper but still remarkably versatile console models, the Amiga 500 (1987) and the Amiga 1200 (1992).

The platform also introduced other innovations. For example, the Amiga CDTV was the first computer to feature a CD-ROM drive as standard. The Amiga was also one of the first computers for which inexpensive sound sampling and video digitization accessories were available.

[edit] Central processing unit

All Commodore Amiga models make use of Motorola CPUs based on the Motorola 68k architecture. Introduced by Motorola in 1979, the 68k CPU family has powered numerous computer and game systems, including the Atari ST, Apple Macintosh, Sega Mega Drive, and Sun Microsystems workstations and servers.

In desktop style Amiga models the CPU was fitted on a daughterboard (except the A2000), called a CPU card. Low cost Amiga models came with CPUs either socketed or embedded on the motherboard. On all Amiga models the CPU could be upgraded through an expansion card or direct CPU replacement. CPU cards were provided by both Commodore and third party manufacturers. These cards often came with onboard memory slots and hard drive interfaces, alleviating those tasks from the base Amiga.

The Amiga was not limited to solely the 68k CPU architecture; it was also possible to install a PPC coprocessor that could be used by PPC aware software and libraries. PPC accelerators are arguably self contained computers that only use the base Amiga for compatibility with chipset dependent software and hardware.

[edit] Custom chipset

Main articles: Original Amiga chipset, Enhanced Chip Set, and Advanced Graphics Architecture

The Amiga's custom chipset, as the name implies, consists of a number of chips.

There are three generations of chipsets used in the various Amiga models. The first is OCS, followed by ECS and finally AGA. What all these chipsets have in common is that they handle raster graphics, digital audio and communication between various peripherals (e.g. CPU, memory and floppy disks) in the Amiga.

[edit] ROM

When AmigaOS crashes, it displays a flashing red box with a number — two 32-bit hexadecimal values. It is called Guru Meditation screen. The number is usually the 68000 exception number or one of a list of error numbers, and some other piece of information, such as the address of the task running when the crash was detected. Lists of Guru errors codes were published regularly by Amiga magazines, so experienced users could use it as a useful reference. The term "Guru Meditation" comes from the fact that some of the original design team would see how long they could balance on an Amiga 'joyboard' while thinking about problems.^[3]

[edit] Three finger salute

Amiga's three-finger salute, (CTRL plus the two "Amiga" keys), which reboots the system (but doesn't erase or reload the kickstart software) is actually implemented in hardware, unlike the software-based forms in many OSs. If the OS software fails to acknowledge the key sequence in a short time (perhaps because the OS has crashed), the keyboard hardware will forcibly reset the CPU. Another kind of three-finger salute (CTRL plus the two "Alt" keys) was introduced with AmigaOS 4.0.

[edit] Graphics

Earlier Amigas could display graphics in 32, 64 (EHB Mode) or even its full complement of 4096 (HAM Mode) colors long before the IBM PC compatible and two years before the first full color Apple Macintosh. Its revolutionary visual processor made it one of the first home computers used to do digital effects for a TV program. Later models sporting the AGA chipset (A1200 and A4000) added 128, 256 and 262,000 color modes from a 24-bit (16.8 million) color palette.

[edit] Genlock

The Amiga chipset could genlock — adjust its own screen refresh timing to match an NTSC or PAL video signal. When combined with setting transparency, this allowed an Amiga to overlay an external video source with graphics. This ability made the Amiga popular for many applications, and provided the ability to do character generation and CGI effects far more cheaply than earlier systems. Some frequent users of this ability included wedding videographers, TV stations, advertising channels, music video production, and 'desktop video'. The NewTek Video Toaster was made possible by the genlock ability of the Amiga.

[edit] Sound

Main article: Original Amiga chipset#Paula

The sound chip, named Paula, supports four sound channels (2 for the left speaker and 2 for the right) with 8 bit resolution for each channel and a 6 bit volume control. The analog output is connected to a low-pass filter, which filters out high-frequency aliases when the Amiga is using a lower sampling rate (see Nyquist limit). The brightness of the Amiga's power LED is used to indicate the status of the Amiga’s low-pass filter. The filter is active when the LED is at normal brightness, and deactivated when dimmed. Older Amiga 500's simply turned off the power LED. Paula can read directly from the system's chip ram memory, using direct memory access (DMA), making sound playback without CPU intervention possible.

Although the hardware is limited to 4 separate sound channels, software such as Octamed uses software mixing to allow 8 or more virtual channels, and astute composers can mix two hardware channels to achieve a single 14-bit resolution channel by playing with the volumes of the channels in such a way that one of the source channels contributes the most significant bits and the other the least ones.

In the PC/Amiga/ST rivalry, the quality of the Amiga's sound output, and the fact that the hardware is ubiquitous and easily addressed by software, were standout features of Amiga hardware unavailable on PC platforms for years. Third party sound cards exist that provide DSP functions, multi-track direct to disk recording, multiple hardware sound channels and 16 bit and beyond resolutions. A retargetable sound API called AHI was developed allowing these cards to be used transparently by the OS and software.

[edit] Third party hardware

Many expansion boards were produced for Amigas to improve the performance and capability of the hardware, such as memory expansions, SCSI controllers, CPU boards, graphics boards; famous third party hardware manufacturers were Great Valley Products (GVP) and Phase5. Later small manufacturers include Individual Computers. Other upgrades included genlocks, ethernet cards, modems, sound cards and samplers, video digitizers, USB cards, extra serial ports, and IDE controllers.

The most popular upgrades were memory, SCSI controllers and CPU accelerator cards. These were sometimes combined into the one device, particularly on big box Amigas like the A2000, A3000 and A4000.

Early CPU accelerator cards featured full 32bit CPUs of the 68000 family such as the Motorola 68020 and Motorola 68030, almost always with 32bit memory and usually with FPUs and MMUs or the facility to add them. Later designs featured the Motorola 68040 and Motorola 68060. Both CPUs featured integrated FPUs and MMUs. Many CPU accelerator cards also had integrated SCSI controllers.

Phase5 designed the PowerUp boards (BlizzardPPC and CyberstormPPC) featuring both a 68k (a 68040 or 68060) and a PPC (603 or 604) CPU, which are able to run the two CPUs at the same time (and share the system memory). The PPC CPU on PowerUp boards is usually used as a coprocessor for heavy computations (a powerful CPU is needed to run for example MAME, but even decoding JPEG pictures and MP3 audio was considered heavy computation in those years). It is also possible to ignore the 68k CPU and run Linux on the PPC (project Linux APUS), but a PPC native Amiga OS was not available when the PPC boards first appeared.

There were/are also available 24 bit graphics cards and video cards. Graphics cards are designed primarily for 2D artwork production, workstation use, and later, gaming. Video cards are designed for inputting and outputting video signals, and processing and manipulating video.

Perhaps the most famous video card in the North American market was the NewTek Video Toaster. This was a powerful video effects board which turned the Amiga into an affordable video processing computer which found its way into many professional video environments. Due to its NTSC-only design it did not find a market in countries that used the PAL standard, such as in Europe. In PAL countries the Opalvision card was popular, although less featured and supported than the Video Toaster. Low-cost time base correctors (TBCs) specifically designed to work with the Toaster quickly came to market, most of which were designed as standard Amiga bus cards.

Various manufacturers started producing PCI busboards for the A1200 and A4000, allowing standard Amigas to use PCI cards such as Voodoo graphic cards, Soundblaster sound cards, 10/100 ethernet and TV tuners.

PowerPC upgrades with Wide SCSI controllers, PCI busboards with ethernet, sound and 3D graphics cards, and towerized cases allowed the A1200 and A4000 to survive well into the late nineties.

Expansion boards were made by Richmond Sound Design that allowed their show control and sound design software to communicate with their custom hardware frames either by ribbon cable or fiber optic cable for long distances, allowing the Amiga to control up to 8 million digitally controlled external audio, lighting, automation, relay and voltage control channels spread around a large theme park, for example. See Amiga software for more information on these applications.

[edit] Models and variants

Main article: Amiga models and variants

The Classic Amiga models: 1000, 500, 2000, 1500, 3000, 3000UX, 3000T, 500+, 600, 1200, 4000, 4000T and others, were produced from 1985 to 1996. Since then, no new generations of Classic Amigas have been produced. However, some companies have released either official or unofficial Amiga clones such as Amiga Walker or Pios ONE.

[edit] AmigaOS 4 compatible Models

AmigaOS 4 and beyond runs on both Amigas equipped with CyberstormPPC or BlizzardPPC accelerator boards, and on the PPC Teron series based AmigaOne computers built by Eyetech upon license by Amiga Inc. AmigaOS 4.0 for accelerator boards is available only to AOS 4.0 developers. Due to the nature of some provisions of the contract between Amiga Inc. and Hyperion Entertainment the Belgian-German firm which is developing the OS, the commercial AmigaOS has been licensed only to buyers of AmigaOne motherboards. AOS 4.0 had been available only in Beta releases for numerous years until the final version was 'released' in December 2006. Its sale being bound to hardware by license agreement but lacking availability of such, AOS 4.0 is waiting for the release of new motherboards announced for early 2007.

[edit] Emulating the Amiga

Main article: Amiga emulation

Since around 2000 hardware has developed to a point where many different platforms have Amiga emulation programs available that reproduce in software the functions of the Amiga hardware. This allows users to run software from the past indirectly on their machines without the need for an actual Amiga computer.

[edit] Operating systems

[edit] AmigaOS

Main article: AmigaOS

At the time of release AmigaOS gave the average consumer the experience of an OS quite ahead of its time. It was one of the first commercially available consumer operating systems to implement preemptive multitasking [3] Other features included combining a graphical user interface with a command line interface, allowing long filenames permitting whitespace and not requiring a file extension and the use of information files associated with other files to store icon, launch and other desktop data.

Like other operating systems of the time, the OS lacked memory protection. This was necessary also because the 68000 CPU of the first Amiga computers did not include a memory management unit, and because there was no way of enforcing use of flags indicating memory to be shared.^[4] The lack of memory protection made the Amiga OS more vulnerable to crashes from badly behaving programs, and fundamentally incapable of enforcing any form of security model since any program had full access to the system. Recently this memory protection feature has been implemented in Amiga OS 4.

The problem was somewhat exacerbated by Commodore's initial decision to release documentation relating not only to the OS's underlying software routines, but also to the hardware itself, enabling intrepid programmers to poke the hardware directly. While the decision to release this documentation was a popular one and allowed the creation of sophisticated sound and graphics routines in games and demos, it also contributed to system instability as some programmers lacked the expertise to program at this level. For this reason, when the new AGA chipset was released, Commodore declined to release documentation for it, forcing most programmers to adopt the approved software routines.

Relative stability therefore was dependent on the kinds of software used. In a business environment, a user would only use business tools, which were written to address the OS properly. If the user, however, toyed with experimental software the system required frequent reboots. This is still the situation with contemporary operating systems and like those the Amiga OS became more stable with each new OS release.

[edit] *NIX

Commodore-Amiga produced Amiga Unix, informally known as Amix, based on AT&T SVR4. It supported the Amiga 2500 and Amiga 3000 and was included with the Amiga 3000UX. There are still enthusiasts running Amix but it was never supported on the later Amiga systems based on 68040 or 68060. Amix was sold primarily to college students. Among other unusual features of Amix was a hardware-accelerated windowing system which could scroll windows without copying data.

Other, still maintained, operating systems are available for the classic Amiga platform, including Linux and NetBSD. Both require a CPU with MMU such as the 68020 with 68851 or full versions of the 68030, 68040 or 68060. There is a version of Linux for PPC accelerator cards. Debian and Yellow Dog Linux can run on the AmigaOne.

There is an official, older version of OpenBSD. The last Amiga release is 3.2.

Also, Minix 1.5.10 runs on Amiga. Floppies are formatted using Atari ST 720 kB format so they need to be converted to ADF format in order to run under UAE.

[edit] The bootblock

When an Amiga is reset, the Kickstart code selects a boot device (floppy or HD), loads the first two sectors of the disk or partition (the bootblock), and passes control to it. Normally this code passes control back to the OS, continuing to boot from the device or partition it was loaded from. The first production Amiga, the Amiga 1000, needed to load Kickstart from floppy disk into 256 kilobytes of RAM reserved for this purpose, but subsequent Amigas held Kickstart in ROM. Some games and demos for the A1000 (notably Dragon's Lair) provided an alternative codebase to install, in order to use the extra 256 kilobytes of RAM for data.

A floppy disk or HD partition bootblock normally contains code to load the dos.library (AmigaDOS) and then exit to it, invoking the GUI. Any such disk, no matter what the other contents of the disk, was referred to as a "Boot disk" or "Workbench disk". Some entertainment software contains custom bootblocks. The game or demo then takes control of memory and resources to suit itself, effectively disabling AmigaOS and the Amiga GUI.

The bootblock became an obvious target for virus writers. Some games or demos that used a custom bootblock would not work if infected with a bootblock virus, as the virus's code replaced the original. Anti-virus attempts included custom bootblocks that advertised their presence while checking the system for tell-tale signs of memory resident viruses and then passed control back to the system. Unfortunately these could not be used on disks that already relied on a custom bootblock, but did alert users of potential trouble.

[edit] Emulating other systems

Main article: Emulation on the Amiga

The Amiga is able to emulate other computer platforms which were in its same price range, or even far more expensive most notably the IBM PC, the Apple Macintosh and the Atari ST. There are also emulators available for many 8 bit systems such as the Commodore 64, Apple II and even the TRS-80. MAME (the arcade machine emulator) is also available for Amigas with PPC accelerator card upgrades.

[edit] Amiga software

Main article: Amiga software

The Amiga was a primary target for productivity and game development during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Software was often developed for the Amiga and the Atari ST simultaneously, since the ST shared a similar architecture.

Much of the freely available software was available on Aminet. Until around 1996, Aminet was the largest public archive of software for any platform.

[edit] Amiga community

When Commodore went bankrupt in 1994, there was still a very active Amiga community, and it continued to support the platform long after mainstream commercial vendors abandoned it. The most popular Amiga magazine, Amiga Format, continued to publish editions until 2000, some six years after Commodore filed for bankruptcy. Another magazine on Amiga, Amazing Computing, published editions until 1999.

One reason for this loyalty is the multiple strengths of the machine: it has a relatively compact, efficient, multitasking OS; it is relatively easy to program for; software has easy access to the hardware (the base hardware was fixed so software could be coded specifically to the hardware); there was a wealth of free software; and it was an affordable multimedia machine. The Amiga also allows an unusual degree of control over its environment and functions which makes it both highly configurable and versatile, so that it can be tailored to a user's unique needs and preferences, more so than Windows PCs of the era or for a number of years afterwards.

As time wore on, PC hardware and software continued to improve and the Amiga began to look dated. Nevertheless, the user base has remained strong and continues to produce software to get as much as possible from the machine. This is sometimes done using software and hardware expansions to enhance its capabilities. As of mid-2006, enough demand for the system remained for such expansion hardware to keep some small scale manufacturers in business.

[edit] After Commodore's demise

Commodore management voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 under US bankruptcy laws in May 1994. Chapter 11 US rules allow a firm to recover its debts and reorganize. Two times in the past Commodore was reorganized in various occasions and repaid by Irving Gould without requesting filing for Chapter 11, but this time, as being controlled by US bankruptcy laws, the board of trustees, which was appointed by the court to oversee Commodore, decided to "liquidate" (sell) the company without proceeding to reorganization. The majority of Commodore's assets and name were sold to Escom. Production was halted briefly, until it was restarted for a short time under Escom's Amiga Technologies. Though the machines had been upgraded and had plentiful hardware and software support, the lack of new Amigas meant that vendors sooner or later moved on. Most of the 'leading edge' technology hobbyists and productivity market moved to PC architecture.

Due to the fierce loyalty of some Amiga fans, the 'scene' continued, many years even after the last original Amiga was sold. Inevitably, though, the PC eventually became the undisputed leading home computing technology, and the console wars also left the CD32 for dead.

The rights to the Amiga platform were successively sold to Escom and later Gateway 2000, but Escom almost immediately went bankrupt itself (due to non-Amiga related problems) and Gateway vacillated over what to do with its new acquisition. In 1999, an entirely new company called Amiga, Inc. (no relation to the original Amiga Corporation) was incorporated in the US state of Washington, and received a license from Gateway to use Amiga-related patents and trademarks.

In 2002, Eyetech in cooperation with Amiga, Inc. (Washington), began selling a small number of AmigaOnes. The "AmigaOne SE" was based on Mai Logic's Teron CX motherboard from 2001 based on the POP (PowerPC Open Platform) design, and development to adapt AmigaOS 4 to this hardware began. The AmigaOne SE was succeeded by AmigaOne XE, which was based on the Teron PX, a newer design with a replaceable CPU module which came in G3 and G4 flavors. In 2004, Eyetech began selling the Micro-A1, based on the Teron Mini, a mini-ITX model with a 750GX G3 CPU. The older Amigas are sometimes referred to as "Classic Amigas" to avoid possible confusion with the AmigaOnes. AmigaOnes are not currently being produced or sold.

In July 2003, a different company with the name Amiga, Inc. (no relation to Washington-state Amiga, Inc.) was incorporated in Delaware. Originally this company was named KMOS, Inc., but it was renamed shortly after incorporation. According to Washington state records (UBI Number 601 983 734), Amiga, Inc. (Washington) became inactive in September 2004, when its license expired and was not renewed. At the time of this writing, Amiga, Inc. (Delaware) is still active and has a registered address in New York. Its president is Bill McEwen, who also was the president of Amiga, Inc. (Washington). According to whois records, the amiga.com domain is still registered to Amiga, Inc. (Washington).

AmigaOS 4 has been available since December 2006. The development of this version by Hyperion Entertainment will continue, but Amiga Inc has announced a new AmigaOS 5 which has been developed in-house and is available for multiple CPU. The release date of this new version is not known.

[edit] Amiga hardware clones

Long time Amiga developer, MacroSystems also entered the Amiga-clone market with their DraCo nonlinear video edit system. It appeared in two versions, initially a tower model and later a cube. DraCo expanded upon and combined a number of earlier expansion cards developed for Amiga (VLabMotion, Tocatta, WarpEngine, RetinaIII) into a true Amiga clone powered by Motorola's 68060 processor. The DraCo can run AmigaOS3.1 up through AmigaOS3.9. It is the only Amiga based system to support FireWire for video I/O. DraCo also offers an Amiga compatible ZORRO-II expansion bus and introduced a faster custom DraCoBus, capable of 30 MB/sec transfer rates (faster than Commodore's ZORRO-III).

[edit] AmigaOS clones

Following Commodore's bankruptcy, two main clones of AmigaOS were developed: MorphOS, which runs on Amiga and Pegasos machines, and the free software AROS project.

[edit] Notable users

• Andy Warhol, the famous pop artist, was an early user of the Amiga and appeared at the launch.^[5] Warhol used the Amiga to create a new style of art made with computers, and he was the author of a multimedia opera called "you are the one" which represents an animated sequence featuring images of actress Marilyn Monroe assembled in a short movie with soundtrack. The video was discovered on two old Amiga floppies in a drawer in Warhol's studio and repaired in 2006 by the Museum Of New Art.^[6] The pop artist also stated: "The thing I like most about doing this kind of work on the Amiga is that it looks like my work in other media."^[7][8]
• Arthur C. Clarke used Amigas to create screenshots of sightseeing on Mars and other planets by using terrain rendering programs such as Vista Pro.
• The Japanese composer of movie and anime soundtracks, Susumu Hirasawa, uses Amiga computers to compose his songs. He also uses Amigas in live performances featuring multiple monitors and using Scala Multimedia, OctaMED and Bars and Pipes to pilot the show.
• Actor Dick Van Dyke is a self-described "rabid" user of the Amiga.^[9][10]
• Amigas are still used in many theme parks, mainly at Universal Studios in Hollywood and Florida and Disney World, using Richmond Sound Design's show and sound control software (see related Wiki article on Amiga software).
• Amigas equipped with genlocks had a niche market among biologists analyzing video recordings (kinematic analysis) of organisms in motion, at a time when other systems capable of similar tasks were priced an order of magnitude more.
• The Mandala Interactive System from Vivid Group uses the genlock to do motion tracking and interactivity, 20 years before similar products like Sony EyeToy for PlayStation 2 video-game console. These Amigas were used in science museums to study gesture recognition capabilities and also featured in multimedia artistic exhibitions. See also: Vivid Group Mandala System.
• Amigas were used in various NASA laboratories to keep track of multiple low orbiting satellites, and were still used up to 2003/04 (dismissed and sold in 2006). This is another example of long lifetime reliability of Amiga hardware, as well as professional use. Amigas were also used at Kennedy Space Center to run strip-chart recorders, to format and display data, and control stations of platforms for Delta rocket launches. See also: Reportage: l'Amiga à la NASA; Obligement (Fr).
• The Amiga is still in use in US and Australian government agencies for topographical and GPS-integrated cartographical systems. For example United States Geological Survey used many Amigas to render DEM (Digital Elevation Map) data and show it in 3D.
• The US Navy used Amigas for piloting under sea ROVs and collecting data from oceanic automatic buoys.
• Musician and videogames music composer Bjorn Lynne used Amigas for many years.
• US Military Academy of West Point had a multimedia classroom equipped with a bank of Amigas running the videogame Universal Military Simulator I and II, which was found in those times extremely useful to train the cadets.
• Astronomer Charles Kowal, discoverer of Chiron (2nd most distant asteroid) and Leda (Jupiter's 13th moon), is a known Amiga user.
• Musician Betty Boo used Amigas in the production of her first album and used it as a sequencer in her first tour.
• Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons cartoon is also known to be an Amiga user.
• Musician Prince, formerly known as the Artist used Amigas equipped with Bars and Pipes to create music.
• In Scotland police used Amigas to pilot cameras during football matches and take digital photos of hooligans in the stadiums, discover criminals, and monitor suspects. Amigas were also used to study in optimizing flows of spectators walking the hall entrances of stadiums.
• Tom Fulp is noted as saying he used the Amiga as his first computer for creating cartoons and animations.^[11]
• David K. Buck originally wrote the POV-Ray raytracer to run on the Amiga.

For other notable users see Famous Amiga Users at AmigaHistory.

[edit] TV and motion picture usage

• Early episodes of the television series Babylon 5 were rendered on Amigas running Video Toasters [4]. Other television series using Amigas for special effects included SeaQuest DSV and Max Headroom.^{[citations needed]}
• The TV Guide Channel's predecessor, Prevue Guide, originally used Amigas to present local TV schedules using the Genlock ability to overlay a schedule on a video channel of advertisements.^[12]
• The fifth season of the British TV series Red Dwarf, aired in 1992, used Amigas for the keyboards on several spacecraft, including the Holoship Enlightenment and Red Dwarf itself.
• The TV game show Lingo from 1987 used the Amiga computer for the Lingo cards and the randomly selected five-letter words.
• The game show Nick Arcade used Amiga systems for the mini-games and the final endgame.^{[citation needed]}
• The TVS show Catchphrase used 7 Amigas for the Animations
• Some of the on-screen graphics on The Chart Show were generated by Amigas. The GUI seen during music videos between 1987-1996 would be recognisable to any Amiga user.^{[citation needed]}
• Musician Billy Idol used NewTek Video Toaster Amiga generated video walls in his video "Rock the Cradle of Love". Appeared on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno", Oct.1993.
• Todd Rundgren used Amigas with Video Toaster to produce a full-length video for "Change Myself" album in 1991.
• Director Steven Spielberg used Amigas in Jurassic Park for pre-visualization by Amblin Imaging, in the seaQuest DSV TV series for special fx and rendering of underwater craft, and in the TV cartoon Animaniacs.
• In Costa Gavras' movie "Betrayed", an Amiga 500 was involved as the major item in the plot, featuring the computer used by a terrorists group to store the names of their followers.
• In early sequences of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, commander Spock uses a Vulcan supercomputer. It was made by three Amigas.
• In Star Trek:Deep Space Nine and Star Trek The Next Generation TV series, Amigas were used in early modeling for vehicles and spaceships.
• Molly Cutpurse used an Amiga to create the computer graphics in the 1989 TV movie sci-fi murder story Murder on the Moon also known as Murder by Moonlight.
• Aardman Studios (of Wallace and Gromit fame) used Amigas with the "Personal Video Recorder" developed by DPS to record stop frame animation.
• Director George Lucas used Amigas in the TV series Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Amigas were used to create digital details of stages without hiring artists, sculptors, and carpenters skilled in the ancient styles of manufacturing. As an example, Amiga graphics were used to show the road-name plates on building corners using 19th century design.
• Many small TV Stations used the Amiga for creating show credits and other graphics overlays. Several stations (including many Shaw Canada TV Stations) used Amigas to generate listings, community service announcements, and used the Video Toaster for additional Graphics. Amigas could also be found in studios and mobile production trucks.

[edit] See also

• AmigaOS
• Amiga software
• Amiga emulation
• Unix Amiga Emulator
• SCA virus
• Gateway 2000
• Amiga games

[edit] References

1. ^ [1] Youtube video Commodore advert 1987 - Celebrities
2. ^ [2] Youtube video Commodore advert 1987 - TV spot version of 20 minute presentation
3. ^ Amiga Joyboard info
4. ^ Adding Memory Protection (MP) to the Amiga. groups.google.com. Retrieved on December 30, 2006.
5. ^ Amiga Andy article. Artnode online.
6. ^ Artdaily article about the discover and repair of "you are the one". Artdaily. Retrieved on 2007-01-07.
7. ^ Interview with Andy Warhol. Amiga World Magazine. Retrieved on 2007-01-07.
8. ^ Cynthia Goodman. The Digital Revolution: Art in the Computer Age. Retrieved on 2007-01-07.
9. ^ Dick van Dyke at SIGGRAPH. Retrieved on 2007-01-07.
10. ^ Katie Hafner. "The Return of a Desktop Cult Classic (No, Not the Mac)]", New York Times, June 22 2000. Retrieved on 2007-01-07.
11. ^ Tol Fulp interview
12. ^ TV Guide Channel

[edit] Further reading

• Amiga, Inc.
• Amiga Hardware Database - details of Amiga hardware
• Big Book of Amiga Hardware - Big Book of Amiga Hardware
• Amiga Lorraine: finally, the next generation Atari? John J. Anderson, Creative Computing, April 1984
• The Amiga A3000+ System Specification Dave Haynie, 1991 DevCon Release, July 17, 1991
• On the Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore Bagnall, Brian (2005), Variant Press, ISBN 0-9738649-0-7.
• Amiga.org
• Amiga Music Preservation The database for Amiga musics and musicians.
• Amigaworld.net - Official support forum for the AmigaOne.
• Amiga Wiki - Wiki dedicated to all things Amiga-related.

v • d • e List of Commodore microcomputers
MOS Technology 6502-based (8-bit)	MOS/CBM KIM-1 • PET/CBM • CBM-II (aka B/P series) • VIC-20/VC-20 • C64 • SX-64 • C16 & 116 • Plus/4 • C128
Motorola 68000-based (16-bit/32-bit)	Amiga 1000 • Amiga 500 • Amiga 2000 • Amiga 2500 • Amiga 1500 • Amiga CDTV • Amiga 3000 • Amiga 3000UX • Amiga 3000T • Amiga 500+ • Amiga 600 • Amiga 1200 • Amiga 4000 • Amiga 4000T

v • d • e AmigaOS (category)
Companies	Commodore International • Hyperion Entertainment
Computers	Amiga
Technology	Workbench • Intuition • AmigaDOS • ARexx • AmigaBASIC • Amigaguide • Software • Games • Demos
Operating systems	AmigaOS (versions) • AROS • MorphOS