Friends,
On this day in 1985, the Commodore Amiga 1000 was first introduced to the public (although some say it was actually on the 24th, who are we to pick nits?). As personal computers go, it represented simultaneously a stunning a achievement with its multitasking operating system and custom chips while also being pretty low rent with its whopping 64 kilobytes of RAM.
I had a long and mostly happy time with my Amiga 1200, incompatibilities and slow development from Commodore and later the subsequent flaky owners of the brand aside. I even convinced my friend to purchase an Amiga 2000 for some R&D work many moons ago. With the custom chips Denise, Agnes and Paula serving up sweet for the time video, seeming unlimited memory, and eight bit audio; there was nothing these machines couldn’t do.
Except connect to cheap PC hard drives, or this world wide web thing. Or send decent output to a laser printer.
Thankfully, there are still weirdos out there selling parts and software for the old girl. There are even folks willing to, for nostalgia’s sake, invest a little time to open up the case to peek inside.
I still have my old 1200 stored in a place of prominence in a milk crate in the garage. It’s a great idea, of course, because you never know when the hackers will bring down your internets and your shiny multi-core ordenadors. Maybe we’ll fire up the Amigas and our 14.4k modems to get it all put back together again. And we’ll call our new service Delphi…
– bob