Some comments have made me chuckle about get a newer machine. Day to day I use a Macbook pro dual core 3ghz with 8gb ram 512gb SSD drive and that is my slow machine. I also have an Nvidia GTX780 powered monster. The bottom line is I love Amiga's just like some people love old cars, they can still get you around and remind you of why you love computers because although I have a soft spot for my Spectrum, my first true computing love was Amiga.
My respect! you are lucky to have an Amiga 3000, i have a Comodore 16, Amiga 500, Amiga 1200, and a Mac 1, and yes many time i use it, sometimes i play with my Atary Lynx, for your same reason. And i have Macbook pro and a PC with you same videocard, and i'm Oculus Dev. Those pieces of history led me to be who I am today, for better or for worse. P.S. Every time I start, Beneath a Steel Sky and listening to the music of the intro...is a unique emotion
Apple laptops yuck! I would never buy an apple product based solely on the fact that Apple is the worst company ever, and no one should ever buy there products no matter how good they may be! I have nothing but complete and utter disdain for Apple.
Its 2018 and I just ran into this.. so many memories. had the 500 as a kid and later worked on 3d animations using the 4000 (lightwave). loved painting on the 500 and made some music. Huge part of my childhood. Thanks for the good memories :)
The 3000 had the nicest form factor of all the desktop Amigas - such a sweet machine, with a hardware flicker-flixer and 32-bit SCSI to boot. Only downside was the hard-to-find ZIP memory chips; I enjoyed my 4000, but only the 3000 was free of the ugly IBM-PC aesthetics that plagued the rest.
I had an Amiga 3000 with Phase 5 68060/50MHz accel with 128MB of RAM, and a Cybervision64 graphics card. Directory Opus 5 as a Workbench replacement. My wife and I used it with ImageFX to do high resolution (at the time) 2400x3000 pixel graphics with up to 18 layers at a time, with multiple programs loaded and working at the same time. We'd take it to sci fi conventions to take digital photos of people in their costumes and composite them into different scenes. Google for Polymorph Digital Photography, the website is still up. I would have Shapeshifter running the tethered digital camera, and be working on a composite in ImageFX while the inkjet or dye sub printer was working. Sometimes also rendering a 3D element for a picture at the same time. 17 inch monitor and a 12x12 Wacom tablet as large as the screen. It was a thing of beauty...
What is ironic is that your past dream machine could literally take you to Pluto. Owning a 3000, to me, in the early 90s would have been like owning a Ferrari...it was simply a fantasy...cheers.
The A2000 was engineered in Germany with help from Dave Haynie. It was based on the technology developed in the USA for the A500 (which is why they are so compatible, just like the later A1200 and A4000). C= Germany wanted to make it as expandable as possible, so they used the same run-off-the-mill big box metal cabinet that they used on their PC range, rather than the more cramped, custom plastic cabinets C= USA tended to use. C= Germany also developed the Bridgeboard expansion for it, which actually turned your A2000 into an XT-compatible PC as well as an Amiga. This expandability made the A2000 the number one choice for professional use. Even when the more powerful A3000 came, companies still preferred the A2000. Hence - ugly though it may be - the A2000 was in production longer than any other Amiga, and also was sold in more varieties (A1500, A2000HD, A2500).
Stephen Jones, I agree about the old computers and how they still have great usefulness! I grew up on "electronic gadgets" before they went mainstream! My first was a Fairchild Channel F game system(1977). Then an Intellivision(1980). I got my first computer with the Tandy Color Computer back in 1982. A WHOPPING 4k of RAM, analog joysticks, 320 x 200/8 color display, tape drive, and hooked to a small Sony TV. Then I got an Atari 800xl. That led me to the Atari 520ST, and THAT is the computer I miss most today! The Atari 520ST was an amazing computer for the day, and while I have ST emulation on my bad boy PC (STeem), it's nothing compared to having the real thing! One day I may splurge and get a complete ST system because like you, I still have a warm place in my heart for that old computer!
I owned numerous Amigas and loved them all. My favourite was the CDTV. Way ahead of its time and I wish I kept it. Games were what I mainly used it for but its great to see others still using Amigas for day to day tasks
I collect the retro unix machines. But my computer adventure started with c64 and later Amiga - back in the golden 90s. Always dreamed about A3000 for me its the most beautiful Comodore machine ever - keep it alive I wish you all the best and might it serve you long.
Ah! The 3000. I went from a 1000 straight to a 3000. Unfortunately, a few months after we bought it, the 1200 and 4000 came out with AGA graphics and suddenly it felt obsolete. Argh! At any rate, great review and background on the system.
Funny, I also had (still have) the A-1000 and was going to buy the A-3000 because ut was beautiful but I was slower thab you and the A-4000/040 came out. Well... It is still standing on my desk now... Love it! With an Apollo 060 board...
it might be a old video and a old computer but it was just nice to look at an old screen again. after all those years amiga desktop still makes me feel at home. a computer thats doing what i tell him to do... i kinda miss that
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I fully understand your love to this amazing adorable machine!
Whoaaah! Thank you very much for this journey back in time Stephen! :-D I've been using Real3D & Reflections on my Amigas and I almost forgot how slow everything was! ^^
I am genuinely blown away and speechless! I never thought these programs were that powerfull and yet that old... Thank you for sharing, keep that gem and take care of it. ;)
i had amigas in use from 1988 to 1997 and you can work with multitasking like we are used to today on pcs. But PCs had started that kind of multitasking with Win95 in 1995. So thats 8 years prior to PC.
I went A500, then upgraded the RAM and CPU via the daughter board. Then sold it and got a A1200, put in an IDE hard drive and upgrade the RAM and again added a new CPU via the daughter board. The fact you could essentially go from 68020E to 68060 always impressed me.
I never owned an Amiga 3000, but it was the Amiga of my dreams back in 1990. Still today I think it was the most beautiful and elegant Amiga! I still remember how futuristic and modern the look of the Workbench 2.0 was. Today it looks awfully antique - even with your pimped MagicWB add-on... notable how the visual habits change by time...
Wow, this was a very nostalgic trip. My first computer was an Amiga 500. I then saved up for an Amiga 3000 tower. I was going to film school at the time and so I was looking for a system to edit video and output animation. I played around with D paint and I had a copy of lightwave 3-D. And eventually, nonlinear video editing showed up. I bought a piece of hardware and software called V Lab motion. It was a little finicky but it was one of the first nonlinear video editing systems. I've long since moved away from Amiga's I went to SGI and then to Windows. Watching this video brought back some fond memories. I'll my whole start in the world of visual effects to my Commodore Amiga 3000 tower. I wish I had never sold it.
When the A3000 came out I was much younger and poorer, it was a dream never to be realized for me in those days not to mention in CANADA even more rare and pricey but I knew ONE STORE in my city that carried Amiga products and the manager was pretty cool so he let me "hang out" and explore the A3000. To me as a non-AGA machine it was awesome in every other way.
I bought in the first month it was available in Germany and used it for over 10 Years (1990-2000) as my main computer! It came with a 50MB SCSI-Harddrive. Later I added HDs, RAM, SCSI-CDROM, SCSI-Scanner, GFX Card + 21" Eizo Monitor, ... I can confirm all of your feelings to this incredible machine.
The Amiga got me started in 3D way back in 1987. I started on the 500, then 2000 with the GVP 68040 Card with 8 megs of RAM plus the Video Toaster. I made so many Videos back in the 90's with the Video Toaster. I also had the PC bridgeboard with the 5 1/4" floppy. It was an amazing computer for 1987 base price 1,400$ US. Then I got a 3000 and the Video Toaster didn't fit it. I sold my A2000 with the 040 card and Video Toaster for $5,000 in 1994.
The Amiga 3000 has been one of my favorite computers for years. I got my first one in 1992 but got rid of it for an A4000. I now have another A3000 with a Cyberstorm 060 board, X-surf, EGS Spectrum graphics board and a Multiface III I/O board. It's a very quick system and my only complaint about Amiga's has always been how fragile the file system is. Who knows what would've happened if Mehdi Ali hadn't siphoned off so much money into his own pockets and actually put it towards the product?
God, this makes me nostalgic. My dad used to work at Commodore in its final years, and we had an A3000 and an A500 that was my gaming machine. The A3000 started not working properly after a while (in hindsight I think i filled up the HD with all my games) but I still have great childhood memories of those old computers. :)
Beautiful machine - it was my dream for many many years. Today all of those are cheep - I have all computers I ever wanted SGIs,NeXT etc - If I only could move in time. PS - I love to see you keep it in great shape, and still in use .
in my opinion, the amiga 2000 is the greatest computer, because it is so expansionable. also look at it with its two floppy drives, and the thick case. it looks fucking cool
This brings back memories! I had an Amiga 500, 2000 and 1200. The 500 was my first Amiga, and I sold it when I got my 1200 and regretted selling it. Later on I grabbed an A2000HD which I owned until Commodore went bankrupt. I loved my A500, I had a really nice hard drive for it at the time that went on the side and matched the look of the A500 case. I also owned a GSS digitizer and used to run a BBS at the time using TransAmiga software which was nice. Good times, I miss those days.
My feeling in retrospect, is that the 3000 was the pinnacle of the Amiga stable. To me the 4000 was a step back, though having said that, I realise that by the time of the 4000 the company was beset by financial problems (and Mehdi Ali) and they were no doubt constrained by those severe problems. Given the problems, it is a wonder the designers and engineers felt able to continue their research and development. Having read Brian Bagnall's triology, I am convinced any of us enthusiasts could have run that company better than those who were running it. I would love to find another 3000 now but the prices when you see them are well out of my pocket. As to this video, Steve's enthusiasm is really infectious and makes you want to get hold of the machine again.
I also have a A3000 along some other old machines from PC's to macs) Today installed a new HDD and workbench on my A3000 and going to use it for gaming and to see all that amazing amiga artistic software)
It's hard to imagine how long it took to render a full quality tv frame from light wave. I spent days waiting for a sequence of animation to render... Those who are younger than probably 30+ or so, they have never experienced working on a system that took long minutes to produce a single TV (PAL or NTSC format) quality frame while today's typical gaming computer can do this in HD resolution in real time - 30+ frames/s.
25 Mhz was pretty damn speedy for the day especially since it was RISC. I wish the Amiga had persisted as a platform. So much better than the bog standard Macs and PC's of the day. Our computing today would have been the equivalent of the Dark Ages never happening. We would be so much further ahead.
No its not a RISC cpu, that was the English Acorn Archimedes, Amiga was all about its multiple chips that togheter made something special, and made it survive without much updates so long. But in the end everything catches up.
As 3D hobbiest using amatuer software like DAZ Studio and DAZ Hexagon, it was great seeing the Amiga's renders as some of the old salts in my hobbey community talk about 'the old days' and Amiga's. I grew up with an AtariST that my brothers had, and a whole range of BBC's, Apple Macintosh and then into 486's etc thanks to my old man working in computer networking. I still remember sitting on my Dads knee at 2 in the morning watching him play Elite instead of being in bed like a 6 year old should
I had an Amiga 500. I also had a c64, I also had a Sharp mz 721, I had an Atari 2600, I had one of the first IBM computers. I grew up with commodore, I loved them, I even loved the smell of these computers. But you need to realize that all these machines, only live in your head these days, it is all memories,everything an Amiga can do can be done with an IBM pc. If you really wanted an Amiga back, I mean REALLY, you would have had one by now, they are easy to get.
I got an A3000 as a gift from Peter Cherna himself (his personal machine) in 2008. Tried to use it as my main machine but it just couldn't cut it. I ended up auctioning it along my whole Amiga lot (an A2000, an A4000 and a A4000T) in 2011.
nice job you've done with your short yet comprehensible demonstration of the great abilities of an A3K machine and the Amiga in general ... a system way ahead of its time! and still a good one to use even today after so many years! a suggestion here: you could have used the Amiga's own video out capabilities to record video directly to tape or other media instead of using a camera that can't do justice to the true image quality of the Amiga ... that way, you could also avoid those annoying flickers! (or you could use a higher resolution camera at least ... believe it or not, there are still 'super advanced PC nerds' out there who do not simply understand about such technical details and they may think this was how an Amiga display worked by default back in the day!) ;-)
It is funny how you can see the interlaced versus progressive with the flickering on the old CRT Monitor. Now a days even a 1080-interlaced would not show a flicker.
ungratefulmetalpansy I know this but the video camera allows one to see that it is interlaced in a CRT fashion, not some other effect so it is what I am able to see because of the camera. Think of it like Night Vision goggles, you see what you usually can't - does it make it any less real.
When I was 17 or 18, I worked in a computer shop that sold the original Amiga and also the Atari ST. It's sad to see that neither became the huge success, like the Mac did. The Amiga in particular with its advanced multitasking operating system.
Very interesting video there mate. Nice one. Never really was into the Amigas myself, probably because I wasn't old enough. I did have a C64 when I was very small, but that was really just for playing games. But yeah, very informative video! By the way, random, but has anyone ever told you your voice sounds more than just a little like Alan Davies? Could just be the accent mind you.
sold mine 2015 to a happy guy in romania.... A3000 was a lovely machine. The sheet metal of the case was thick! thicker than on A2000. To me the A3000 is the best made computer in term of hardware and of course, there is amigaOS. And it would run linux aswell.
Hey man what version of Winamp do you use, and whats the exact skin layout and configuration you have? I v 5.63 as of now, let me know if they're are any better versions.
love ur vids, sad to hear the upgrade messed things up, its happened to me many times too.. there was a company in france who fixed my amiga stuff for a while, now im awaiting the netbook :D
I had an Amiga 500 back in those days, they were way ahead of their time. But, as a graphic designer, Apple came out with the Mac Plus, which had POSTSCRIPT. Suddenly we could do our own typesetting and have it output at the typesetter's business. It saved us a bunch of money. But it was black and white. Then Illustrator came out and we could do technical illustrations in postscript vector format and have that output instead of spending hours with a Rapidograph pen and drafting table. That little machine single handedly destroyed typesetting companies. It pretty much killed the Amiga as well. They changed into "service bureaus" and eventually those died out too. The Mac IIci came out in COLOR, with color postscript and the primitive ability to do color seperations. That machine put out of business million dollar photo editing machines at color seperation houses. It made our lives easier, but it destroyed much of our business income, because kids would buy them and claim they were instant graphic designers, so we lost small jobs and horrible artwork began appearing print and the quality of the design field dropped dramatically, due to the influx of "desktop publishers," who were untrained "artists" working for cheap. Its amazing the history of these computers, I went thru most of them, the Commodore C64, the Amiga 500, the Mac Plus, and virtually every other Mac that came out year after year.
SDPickups I did all my adverts with pro page on AmigaKit and outputted postscript files which just needed sending to print machine and worked perfectly. however it was the idiots in print shops that did not know this and it was colour
This was a pure joy to watch. Amiga was almost like a religion to me and it would not surprise med if it was for many others as well. It is sad that the Amiga was not by many considered a professional machine even if it was more professional than most / all? computers at the time. Amiga was then what we now take for granted. A true milestone in computing!
Fair point she is a machine I use for fun, my interest is in working on old computers much like old cars. I was trying to show that she can still be used for all kinds of work, however, in my case I hope to buy her an 060 so that I can play around again properly. However, it will be to compare with my existing project Aros and so we can see areas we need to work on. Not sure that answers the comment but maybe.
I discovered the best use of a Pentium 200MHz computer: Install Amiga Forever (WinUAE with a commercial front end, and includes licensed ROM images and Workbench installations). Ironically, after my Amiga 3000 died, I started using Amiga Forever on a Pentium 200 that had exactly the same chipset on the graphics card. Windows 95 doesn't multitask as well as the Amiga WB, but to W95, UAE is a single task. So the Amiga multitasks great on it! I still have the Pentium 200! I do also have Amiga Forever installed on my Toshiba stinking fast laptop.
WOW!!! ...I can remember it all like yesterday! - just too many of the people that were connected to my life were wrong-uns - in the end, I remember simply giving up and VANISHING back to Crete;
Did you see it nearly cry when he started mui.. magic user interface. Lol When i ran the very first mui program on my 1200 it was that exact moment i knew my 1200 wasnt ever gonna keep up with the 486 pcs and it was time to cry, say goodbye and buy a pc.. Weak ass resolution pc hmmp. Lol. They got better... :)
hi great tour! thx:) i have a 4000/040 25 mhz that I really should get up and running, when i get the time, some of that time I spend on my AmigaOne :D ...again nice video!
So many occasions have I been looking at Phase 5 Blizzard 68060 accelerators on eBay, looking at credit card, looking, at screen, looking at credit card...no matter the price they always get sold!
I did mostly yes, from the PS1 days onward. i started coding on the ZX81,bbc micro (instead of C64), but the amiga holds a special place for me, thats where I started 3D programming... I'd say the amiga is where i developped my skills mostly.
I agree the Amiga was an incredible slow computer. However the Amiga OS was more fun to use than any PC OS ever. The Amiga games while not as flash as today's photo realistic games, but were in a lot of ways more fun to play that the current games. I still enjoy some of today's games. but occasionally i still go back and play my old favorite amiga games.
Good video. I always loved AMIGA. I would have loved an A3000 when they came out. I went through a few A500s, eventually got an A1200 but was forced to go Windows shortly after that. I was fully into AMIGA though, My A500, I personally upgraded it to ECS chipset, Fat Agnus, Amiga OS 2.04, 120 MEG HD and 3 MEGs of RAM (Fat Agnus allowed 1 Meg of Chip RAM I believe.) 3 MEGS was an insane amount of RAM back then.
Steve, a question about Lightwave: Did it by default use Workbench standard resolution or did you have to tweak some tooltypes in order for it to "fit" on the screen ? And if so, what kind of changes can you make ? Because my Lightwave is too large for my resolution, 640x512 and I've tried to change resolution before starting the program but it still doesn't work
The A3000 had just come out by the time I was selling my A500, as my parents banned me from using the modem, and a disasterous attempt at learning assembler with DevPac 2 (after success with ARexx and Amiga Basic). I only got back into computers once I found the internet at university in 1994.
AMIGA was Just light years ahead of its time ! living proof is what it can still do nowdays ! Yea it will take more time etc to do certain functions but that is just cause we have become so used to SSD Drives and such,this still can be used for a Lot of things and is very functional,i doubt any damn expensive PC from 20 years ago could run half the things this does as well as it does ! i have yet to see anything nowdays resembeling the revolution and steps ahead in Home computer or games technology that The Amiga brought in comparison to what was out there before it,best i can remember is the C64 that also was a great piece of hardware for its time but u really can see the leaps ahead in Graphics sound and architechture that the Amiga brought to the world.
I wonder if Wolfenstein3D had big part in the process of turning crowds of Amigakids into PCkids, as that's quite exactly how it went with me. I kinda regret it even if it was inevitable and I was the only kid having Amiga... I still remember the day I got A500 and loaded one of the Capcom Collection games that came with it, Dynasty wars it was I think. Simply awesome graphics and sound and made C64 feel so ancient. I wish I could go back after I die, lol.
Some comments have made me chuckle about get a newer machine. Day to day I use a Macbook pro dual core 3ghz with 8gb ram 512gb SSD drive and that is my slow machine. I also have an Nvidia GTX780 powered monster. The bottom line is I love Amiga's just like some people love old cars, they can still get you around and remind you of why you love computers because although I have a soft spot for my Spectrum, my first true computing love was Amiga.
My respect! you are lucky to have an Amiga 3000, i have a Comodore 16, Amiga 500, Amiga 1200, and a Mac 1, and yes many time i use it, sometimes i play with my Atary Lynx, for your same reason.
And i have Macbook pro and a PC with you same videocard, and i'm Oculus Dev.
Those pieces of history led me to be who I am today, for better or for worse.
P.S.
Every time I start, Beneath a Steel Sky
and listening to the music of the intro...is a unique emotion
Apple laptops yuck! I would never buy an apple product based solely on the fact that Apple is the worst company ever, and no one should ever buy there products no matter how good they may be! I have nothing but complete and utter disdain for Apple.
Joey JoeJoe Jr Shabadoo *their but I agree that apple is evil. I do like them a little more than M$ though. (I run debian on a home built PC)
Stephen Jones crApple blows. But I agree with getting the right processor and ram.
Joey JoeJoe Jr Shabadoo You didn't say why.
Its 2018 and I just ran into this.. so many memories.
had the 500 as a kid and later worked on 3d animations using the 4000 (lightwave).
loved painting on the 500 and made some music. Huge part of my childhood.
Thanks for the good memories :)
it is 2024 and i still use my amiga500...it was brilliant in 1987 and it is brilliant still now...thank you for the upload.
The 3000 had the nicest form factor of all the desktop Amigas - such a sweet machine, with a hardware flicker-flixer and 32-bit SCSI to boot. Only downside was the hard-to-find ZIP memory chips; I enjoyed my 4000, but only the 3000 was free of the ugly IBM-PC aesthetics that plagued the rest.
The A3000 with Video Toaster was my dream machine, but as a high schooler I was never able to afford it. Thanks for a trip down memory lane!
I had an Amiga 3000 with Phase 5 68060/50MHz accel with 128MB of RAM, and a Cybervision64 graphics card. Directory Opus 5 as a Workbench replacement. My wife and I used it with ImageFX to do high resolution (at the time) 2400x3000 pixel graphics with up to 18 layers at a time, with multiple programs loaded and working at the same time.
We'd take it to sci fi conventions to take digital photos of people in their costumes and composite them into different scenes. Google for Polymorph Digital Photography, the website is still up. I would have Shapeshifter running the tethered digital camera, and be working on a composite in ImageFX while the inkjet or dye sub printer was working. Sometimes also rendering a 3D element for a picture at the same time. 17 inch monitor and a 12x12 Wacom tablet as large as the screen.
It was a thing of beauty...
What is ironic is that your past dream machine could literally take you to Pluto. Owning a 3000, to me, in the early 90s would have been like owning a Ferrari...it was simply a fantasy...cheers.
You think worth to have it again.
? I mean is it still possible to do some daily tasks with it. Web browsing, file handling maybe some C coding?
The A2000 was engineered in Germany with help from Dave Haynie. It was based on the technology developed in the USA for the A500 (which is why they are so compatible, just like the later A1200 and A4000). C= Germany wanted to make it as expandable as possible, so they used the same run-off-the-mill big box metal cabinet that they used on their PC range, rather than the more cramped, custom plastic cabinets C= USA tended to use. C= Germany also developed the Bridgeboard expansion for it, which actually turned your A2000 into an XT-compatible PC as well as an Amiga. This expandability made the A2000 the number one choice for professional use. Even when the more powerful A3000 came, companies still preferred the A2000. Hence - ugly though it may be - the A2000 was in production longer than any other Amiga, and also was sold in more varieties (A1500, A2000HD, A2500).
Stephen Jones,
I agree about the old computers and how they still have great usefulness! I grew up on "electronic gadgets" before they went mainstream! My first was a Fairchild Channel F game system(1977). Then an Intellivision(1980). I got my first computer with the Tandy Color Computer back in 1982. A WHOPPING 4k of RAM, analog joysticks, 320 x 200/8 color display, tape drive, and hooked to a small Sony TV. Then I got an Atari 800xl. That led me to the Atari 520ST, and THAT is the computer I miss most today!
The Atari 520ST was an amazing computer for the day, and while I have ST emulation on my bad boy PC (STeem), it's nothing compared to having the real thing! One day I may splurge and get a complete ST system because like you, I still have a warm place in my heart for that old computer!
I love these retro Amiga videos .. saves me hours of tinkering. I can just watch someone else do it ❤️
I owned numerous Amigas and loved them all. My favourite was the CDTV. Way ahead of its time and I wish I kept it.
Games were what I mainly used it for but its great to see others still using Amigas for day to day tasks
I collect the retro unix machines.
But my computer adventure started with c64 and later Amiga - back in the golden 90s.
Always dreamed about A3000 for me its the most beautiful Comodore machine ever - keep it alive I wish you all the best and might it serve you long.
I had an Amiga 3000 in 1990-92 Great Machine. If it wasn't for the commodore CEO ruining the company, AmigaOS would've been a great business OS.
i guess you were rich..it costed 4000$ here in my country ..i had amiga 500 and 3000 was way off my budget ..i could only read about it in magazines
Ah! The 3000. I went from a 1000 straight to a 3000. Unfortunately, a few months after we bought it, the 1200 and 4000 came out with AGA graphics and suddenly it felt obsolete. Argh! At any rate, great review and background on the system.
Funny, I also had (still have) the A-1000 and was going to buy the A-3000 because ut was beautiful but I was slower thab you and the A-4000/040 came out. Well... It is still standing on my desk now... Love it! With an Apollo 060 board...
it might be a old video and a old computer but it was just nice to look at an old screen again. after all those years amiga desktop still makes me feel at home. a computer thats doing what i tell him to do... i kinda miss that
I fully understand your love to this amazing adorable machine!
Whoaaah! Thank you very much for this journey back in time Stephen! :-D I've been using Real3D & Reflections on my Amigas and I almost forgot how slow everything was! ^^
I am genuinely blown away and speechless! I never thought these programs were that powerfull and yet that old... Thank you for sharing, keep that gem and take care of it. ;)
i had amigas in use from 1988 to 1997 and you can work with multitasking like we are used to today on pcs. But PCs had started that kind of multitasking with Win95 in 1995. So thats 8 years prior to PC.
Lovely, thanks for showing your Amiga, it is indeed a great machine, classic apps
That lightwave is where it all began for me :) thanks for the upload!
I went A500, then upgraded the RAM and CPU via the daughter board. Then sold it and got a A1200, put in an IDE hard drive and upgrade the RAM and again added a new CPU via the daughter board. The fact you could essentially go from 68020E to 68060 always impressed me.
Sweet setup - great machine !
I never owned an Amiga 3000, but it was the Amiga of my dreams back in 1990.
Still today I think it was the most beautiful and elegant Amiga!
I still remember how futuristic and modern the look of the Workbench 2.0 was. Today it looks awfully antique - even with your pimped MagicWB add-on... notable how the visual habits change by time...
Brings back memories. I also used Brilliance (as well as DigiPaint and DPaint).
Wow, this was a very nostalgic trip. My first computer was an Amiga 500. I then saved up for an Amiga 3000 tower. I was going to film school at the time and so I was looking for a system to edit video and output animation. I played around with D paint and I had a copy of lightwave 3-D. And eventually, nonlinear video editing showed up. I bought a piece of hardware and software called V Lab motion. It was a little finicky but it was one of the first nonlinear video editing systems. I've long since moved away from Amiga's I went to SGI and then to Windows. Watching this video brought back some fond memories. I'll my whole start in the world of visual effects to my Commodore Amiga 3000 tower. I wish I had never sold it.
Always wanted to see the DC-TV in action, pretty awesome.
Thanks man.
When the A3000 came out I was much younger and poorer, it was a dream never to be realized for me in those days not to mention in CANADA even more rare and pricey but I knew ONE STORE in my city that carried Amiga products and the manager was pretty cool so he let me "hang out" and explore the A3000. To me as a non-AGA machine it was awesome in every other way.
I bought in the first month it was available in Germany and used it for over 10 Years (1990-2000) as my main computer! It came with a 50MB SCSI-Harddrive. Later I added HDs, RAM, SCSI-CDROM, SCSI-Scanner, GFX Card + 21" Eizo Monitor, ... I can confirm all of your feelings to this incredible machine.
The Amiga got me started in 3D way back in 1987. I started on the 500, then 2000 with the GVP 68040 Card with 8 megs of RAM plus the Video Toaster. I made so many Videos back in the 90's with the Video Toaster. I also had the PC bridgeboard with the 5 1/4" floppy. It was an amazing computer for 1987 base price 1,400$ US.
Then I got a 3000 and the Video Toaster didn't fit it. I sold my A2000 with the 040 card and Video Toaster for $5,000 in 1994.
The Amiga 3000 has been one of my favorite computers for years. I got my first one in 1992 but got rid of it for an A4000. I now have another A3000 with a Cyberstorm 060 board, X-surf, EGS Spectrum graphics board and a Multiface III I/O board. It's a very quick system and my only complaint about Amiga's has always been how fragile the file system is. Who knows what would've happened if Mehdi Ali hadn't siphoned off so much money into his own pockets and actually put it towards the product?
God, this makes me nostalgic. My dad used to work at Commodore in its final years, and we had an A3000 and an A500 that was my gaming machine. The A3000 started not working properly after a while (in hindsight I think i filled up the HD with all my games) but I still have great childhood memories of those old computers. :)
Fantastic computer and software.
Beautiful machine - it was my dream for many many years. Today all of those are cheep - I have all computers I ever wanted SGIs,NeXT etc - If I only could move in time.
PS - I love to see you keep it in great shape, and still in use .
in my opinion, the amiga 2000 is the greatest computer, because it is so expansionable.
also look at it with its two floppy drives, and the thick case. it looks fucking cool
Interesting machine.
Love old computers.
These were always brilliant machines. I regret selling mine back in 2003. I am trying to find another one for a cheap price on eBay.
This brings back memories! I had an Amiga 500, 2000 and 1200. The 500 was my first Amiga, and I sold it when I got my 1200 and regretted selling it. Later on I grabbed an A2000HD which I owned until Commodore went bankrupt. I loved my A500, I had a really nice hard drive for it at the time that went on the side and matched the look of the A500 case. I also owned a GSS digitizer and used to run a BBS at the time using TransAmiga software which was nice. Good times, I miss those days.
GREAT VIDEO - ALL THE BEST !!!
My feeling in retrospect, is that the 3000 was the pinnacle of the Amiga stable. To me the 4000 was a step back, though having said that, I realise that by the time of the 4000 the company was beset by financial problems (and Mehdi Ali) and they were no doubt constrained by those severe problems. Given the problems, it is a wonder the designers and engineers felt able to continue their research and development. Having read Brian Bagnall's triology, I am convinced any of us enthusiasts could have run that company better than those who were running it. I would love to find another 3000 now but the prices when you see them are well out of my pocket. As to this video, Steve's enthusiasm is really infectious and makes you want to get hold of the machine again.
very good informative AND entertaining video. i subscribed
I also have a A3000 along some other old machines from PC's to macs) Today installed a new HDD and workbench on my A3000 and going to use it for gaming and to see all that amazing amiga artistic software)
It's hard to imagine how long it took to render a full quality tv frame from light wave. I spent days waiting for a sequence of animation to render... Those who are younger than probably 30+ or so, they have never experienced working on a system that took long minutes to produce a single TV (PAL or NTSC format) quality frame while today's typical gaming computer can do this in HD resolution in real time - 30+ frames/s.
25 Mhz was pretty damn speedy for the day especially since it was RISC. I wish the Amiga had persisted as a platform. So much better than the bog standard Macs and PC's of the day. Our computing today would have been the equivalent of the Dark Ages never happening. We would be so much further ahead.
it wasn't RISC
No its not a RISC cpu, that was the English Acorn Archimedes, Amiga was all about its multiple chips that togheter made something special, and made it survive without much updates so long.
But in the end everything catches up.
That architecture made it amazing but also led to its doom.
68k was never a RISC architecture. It's CISC, and always was.
You're correct. My mistake.
As 3D hobbiest using amatuer software like DAZ Studio and DAZ Hexagon, it was great seeing the Amiga's renders as some of the old salts in my hobbey community talk about 'the old days' and Amiga's. I grew up with an AtariST that my brothers had, and a whole range of BBC's, Apple Macintosh and then into 486's etc thanks to my old man working in computer networking. I still remember sitting on my Dads knee at 2 in the morning watching him play Elite instead of being in bed like a 6 year old should
I love Amiga.
nice magic workbench looks good brings back old memories
I had an Amiga 500. I also had a c64, I also had a Sharp mz 721, I had an Atari 2600, I had one of the first IBM computers. I grew up with commodore, I loved them, I even loved the smell of these computers. But you need to realize that all these machines, only live in your head these days, it is all memories,everything an Amiga can do can be done with an IBM pc. If you really wanted an Amiga back, I mean REALLY, you would have had one by now, they are easy to get.
I miss my CDTV ^^ It had built-in MIDI in/out and I used D.S.S (which came with a sound digitizer card) a lot with it :)
I got an A3000 as a gift from Peter Cherna himself (his personal machine) in 2008. Tried to use it as my main machine but it just couldn't cut it. I ended up auctioning it along my whole Amiga lot (an A2000, an A4000 and a A4000T) in 2011.
I view my current and past Amiga's not as Commodore products, but as part of the great Jay Miner legacy...along with my 8 bit Atari computers.
I hope to do a video about this one day. Jay miner should be know like Wozniak.
Always wanted a 3000, the design of it is just so Amiga. The 4000 looked like an Amstrad PC compatible.
Just about all computers from that time are ugly gray boxes.
nice job you've done with your short yet comprehensible demonstration of the great abilities of an A3K machine and the Amiga in general ... a system way ahead of its time! and still a good one to use even today after so many years!
a suggestion here:
you could have used the Amiga's own video out capabilities to record video directly to tape or other media instead of using a camera that can't do justice to the true image quality of the Amiga ... that way, you could also avoid those annoying flickers! (or you could use a higher resolution camera at least ... believe it or not, there are still 'super advanced PC nerds' out there who do not simply understand about such technical details and they may think this was how an Amiga display worked by default back in the day!) ;-)
Thanks
That's cool. I remember seeing a ZX81 but it's penetration in NA was nonexistent. It was huge in the UK though so I'm not surprised you had one.
Love the A3000 I had one and she is a real work horse. Got the PPC A1200 now but still miss the 3000
WOW
You're a real veteran of the industry !
can you hear the CRT whine?
Stephen, what are your experiences with Miami and Miami DX? Does it use alot of memory or is it fairly "easy" on the system ?
Love your video. Subscribed your channel now. Thank you very much!
It is funny how you can see the interlaced versus progressive with the flickering on the old CRT Monitor. Now a days even a 1080-interlaced would not show a flicker.
ungratefulmetalpansy
That is what I am seeing.
ungratefulmetalpansy
I know this but the video camera allows one to see that it is interlaced in a CRT fashion, not some other effect so it is what I am able to see because of the camera. Think of it like Night Vision goggles, you see what you usually can't - does it make it any less real.
When I was 17 or 18, I worked in a computer shop that sold the original Amiga and also the Atari ST. It's sad to see that neither became the huge success, like the Mac did. The Amiga in particular with its advanced multitasking operating system.
Fantastic thanks!
Very nice! What Operating System does the Amiga 3000 use?
Very interesting video there mate. Nice one. Never really was into the Amigas myself, probably because I wasn't old enough. I did have a C64 when I was very small, but that was really just for playing games. But yeah, very informative video! By the way, random, but has anyone ever told you your voice sounds more than just a little like Alan Davies? Could just be the accent mind you.
Nice! Very interesting!
Stephen you convinced me !
I must find an A3000 and buy it!
sold mine 2015 to a happy guy in romania.... A3000 was a lovely machine. The sheet metal of the case was thick! thicker than on A2000.
To me the A3000 is the best made computer in term of hardware and of course, there is amigaOS. And it would run linux aswell.
nice setup
i like your curtains btw
You Sir, You're an hero.
Hey, would IBrowse work on my Amiga 600? I upgraded it with a Workbench 3.1 ROM chip. Thanks!
Hey man what version of Winamp do you use, and whats the exact skin layout and configuration you have? I v 5.63 as of now, let me know if they're are any better versions.
У меня до сих пор есть Amiga 1200 и она отлично работает! Супер компьютер опередивший время! Раньше еще была Amiga 600HD.
I like the cuts to 1084. Flickerfixer broken?
love ur vids, sad to hear the upgrade messed things up, its happened to me many times too.. there was a company in france who fixed my amiga stuff for a while, now im awaiting the netbook :D
What a awesome video! I have a question for you. May I use few sec for my animated project?
I had an Amiga 500 back in those days, they were way ahead of their time. But, as a graphic designer, Apple came out with the Mac Plus, which had POSTSCRIPT. Suddenly we could do our own typesetting and have it output at the typesetter's business. It saved us a bunch of money. But it was black and white. Then Illustrator came out and we could do technical illustrations in postscript vector format and have that output instead of spending hours with a Rapidograph pen and drafting table. That little machine single handedly destroyed typesetting companies. It pretty much killed the Amiga as well. They changed into "service bureaus" and eventually those died out too. The Mac IIci came out in COLOR, with color postscript and the primitive ability to do color seperations. That machine put out of business million dollar photo editing machines at color seperation houses. It made our lives easier, but it destroyed much of our business income, because kids would buy them and claim they were instant graphic designers, so we lost small jobs and horrible artwork began appearing print and the quality of the design field dropped dramatically, due to the influx of "desktop publishers," who were untrained "artists" working for cheap. Its amazing the history of these computers, I went thru most of them, the Commodore C64, the Amiga 500, the Mac Plus, and virtually every other Mac that came out year after year.
SDPickups I did all my adverts with pro page on AmigaKit and outputted postscript files which just needed sending to print machine and worked perfectly. however it was the idiots in print shops that did not know this and it was colour
Brian the lion on Amiga 3000 was my childhood favourite :)
This was a pure joy to watch. Amiga was almost like a religion to me and it would not surprise med if it was for many others as well. It is sad that the Amiga was not by many considered a professional machine even if it was more professional than most / all? computers at the time. Amiga was then what we now take for granted. A true milestone in computing!
Do you actually USE the DCTV for Painting? TV Paint could even load and save now common graphics formats.
Fair point she is a machine I use for fun, my interest is in working on old computers much like old cars. I was trying to show that she can still be used for all kinds of work, however, in my case I hope to buy her an 060 so that I can play around again properly. However, it will be to compare with my existing project Aros and so we can see areas we need to work on. Not sure that answers the comment but maybe.
I discovered the best use of a Pentium 200MHz computer: Install Amiga Forever (WinUAE with a commercial front end, and includes licensed ROM images and Workbench installations). Ironically, after my Amiga 3000 died, I started using Amiga Forever on a Pentium 200 that had exactly the same chipset on the graphics card. Windows 95 doesn't multitask as well as the Amiga WB, but to W95, UAE is a single task. So the Amiga multitasks great on it!
I still have the Pentium 200! I do also have Amiga Forever installed on my Toshiba stinking fast laptop.
WOW!!! ...I can remember it all like yesterday! - just too many of the people that were connected to my life were wrong-uns - in the end, I remember simply giving up and VANISHING back to Crete;
a wonderful Amiga 3000 :) QC
a1200 was so fuckin rad.. loved that baby.. love all my amigas.. they were endeared more than any pc afterwards...
Amiga is the best computer ever! With a small computing power can produce miracles!
Mind if I ask what the name of the application was ?
As a kid the C64 was my first computer and I'm familiar with most software for the platform.
Even this machine is better than Windows 8
You meant to say Windows 10.
Windows 12
Did you see it nearly cry when he started mui.. magic user interface. Lol
When i ran the very first mui program on my 1200 it was that exact moment i knew my 1200 wasnt ever gonna keep up with the 486 pcs and it was time to cry, say goodbye and buy a pc..
Weak ass resolution pc hmmp. Lol. They got better...
:)
Windows 8 trash
Windows 10 good
hi great tour! thx:) i have a 4000/040 25 mhz that I really should get up and running, when i get the time, some of that time I spend on my AmigaOne :D ...again nice video!
Are programs for older Amigas work on new machines? I've been looking into getting a newer Amiga to relieve my gaming rig of non gaming programs.
aaahhh, that green Amiga led
Yes, I always wanted an Amiga 3000 too but could only afford the 500. I have two Amiga 3000's now. :-) Both work perfectly.
My favorite Amiga.
i still want a 4000 with video toaster :)
i know its a boyhood dream that will never be fulfilled and is a pointless exercise, but i still want one
I had to go look on e-bay for a cost. Complete system for $2,300 US. Holy cow....
It should be a birthright for anyone living. One Video Toaster Per Child I say.
So many occasions have I been looking at Phase 5 Blizzard 68060 accelerators on eBay, looking at credit card, looking, at screen, looking at credit card...no matter the price they always get sold!
Love the 3000. Would love to have one :) But I have a 600 with accelerator so I am happy enough :)
I did mostly yes, from the PS1 days onward.
i started coding on the ZX81,bbc micro (instead of C64), but the amiga holds a special place for me, thats where I started 3D programming... I'd say the amiga is where i developped my skills mostly.
I agree the Amiga was an incredible slow computer. However the Amiga OS was more fun to use than any PC OS ever. The Amiga games while not as flash as today's photo realistic games, but were in a lot of ways more fun to play that the current games. I still enjoy some of today's games. but occasionally i still go back and play my old favorite amiga games.
Good video. I always loved AMIGA. I would have loved an A3000 when they came out. I went through a few A500s, eventually got an A1200 but was forced to go Windows shortly after that. I was fully into AMIGA though, My A500, I personally upgraded it to ECS chipset, Fat Agnus, Amiga OS 2.04, 120 MEG HD and 3 MEGs of RAM (Fat Agnus allowed 1 Meg of Chip RAM I believe.) 3 MEGS was an insane amount of RAM back then.
Steve, a question about Lightwave:
Did it by default use Workbench standard resolution or did you have to tweak some tooltypes in order for it to "fit" on the screen ?
And if so, what kind of changes can you make ? Because my Lightwave is too large for my resolution, 640x512 and I've tried to change resolution before starting the program but it still doesn't work
loved the words - Lightwave and workbench - thanx for the memories - cheers m8
kerry moulding
Cheers
The A3000 had just come out by the time I was selling my A500, as my parents banned me from using the modem, and a disasterous attempt at learning assembler with DevPac 2 (after success with ARexx and Amiga Basic). I only got back into computers once I found the internet at university in 1994.
AMIGA was Just light years ahead of its time ! living proof is what it can still do nowdays ! Yea it will take more time etc to do certain functions but that is just cause we have become so used to SSD Drives and such,this still can be used for a Lot of things and is very functional,i doubt any damn expensive PC from 20 years ago could run half the things this does as well as it does ! i have yet to see anything nowdays resembeling the revolution and steps ahead in Home computer or games technology that The Amiga brought in comparison to what was out there before it,best i can remember is the C64 that also was a great piece of hardware for its time but u really can see the leaps ahead in Graphics sound and architechture that the Amiga brought to the world.
Scandoubler, SCSI, Flicker, A2000 keyboard, ECS ... Classy at the time, almost like Mac :)
I wonder if Wolfenstein3D had big part in the process of turning crowds of Amigakids into PCkids, as that's quite exactly how it went with me. I kinda regret it even if it was inevitable and I was the only kid having Amiga... I still remember the day I got A500 and loaded one of the Capcom Collection games that came with it, Dynasty wars it was I think. Simply awesome graphics and sound and made C64 feel so ancient. I wish I could go back after I die, lol.