The legendary Amiga is 30 years old

The Commodore Amiga 1000 (or A1000) was released on July 23, 1985, and is still considered to have been years ahead of its time.

It stood out from the crowd for several reasons. Firstly, it sported a color graphical user interface (4096 colors) at a time when Apple's Macintosh cost considerably more (~$1000 more or so) with a black and white display. Most Amiga 1000 units were sold with an RGB monitor, but it did feature a built-in composite video output to support other monitors.

AmigaOS was a truly multitask operating system too.

Under the hood, it packed a Motorola 68000 CPU (7.16MHz NTSC, 7.09MHz PAL) upgradable officially to a 68010 and to other CPUs via third party route. While the 68000 was common in 1985, the Amiga 1000 features three additional co-processors for multimedia operations.

The Amiga 1000 had 256 KB of Amiga Chip RAM, which was officially upgradable to 512 KB and further with third party upgrades. Further hardware upgrades were possible through the included 86-pin expansion port.

When the Amiga 500 model launched a couple of years after for a cut price of $700, it established Amiga as a popular gaming system, with sales of around 6 million units.

For our younger readers, here's a look at 100 Amiga games in 10 minutes. For our slightly older (OK.. wiser!) readers, enjoy the nostalgia!

Written by: James Delahunty @ 24 Jul 2015 1:58

xnonsuchx

No love for the legendary Atari ST's 30th birthday last month??? ;-)

25.7.2015 19:26 #1

burdman

My school system still uses an Amiga at a central location to control the heating and cooling for about 20 of their schools.

http://woodtv.com/2015/06/11/1980s-comp...ps-heat-and-ac/

25.7.2015 23:47 #2

SomeBozo

The interesting thing, from what I remember is most all of the key developers that build that Atari 400/800 and the later 520/1040 models, most left Atari and jumped over to Commodore to work on the Amiga. Open up the Amiga and look at the signatures in the case, many if not most are ex-Atari developers.

Might be me but I still have a fondness for those old computers, still think many of the best games (arcade style) back then were way better then the games of today. While they may not have the super flashy hi-res graphics of today, the game play was way better. I for one would love to get an Atari 800 and play some of the old games if they ever re-released them. Sure you can get most of the games on emulators, but they just don't play the same.

26.7.2015 20:25 #3

xnonsuchx

Originally posted by SomeBozo: The interesting thing, from what I remember is most all of the key developers that build that Atari 400/800 and the later 520/1040 models, most left Atari and jumped over to Commodore to work on the Amiga. Open up the Amiga and look at the signatures in the case, many if not most are ex-Atari developers.

Might be me but I still have a fondness for those old computers, still think many of the best games (arcade style) back then were way better then the games of today. While they may not have the super flashy hi-res graphics of today, the game play was way better. I for one would love to get an Atari 800 and play some of the old games if they ever re-released them. Sure you can get most of the games on emulators, but they just don't play the same.

Yes, Jay Miner designed the chipset of the Atari 8-Bits and the Amiga, but Atari initially rejected it, so he took the idea elsewhere. Oddly, Atari ended up helping to fund Amiga development later and had the option to buy it, but then passed on it and Commodore partnered with them instead.

26.7.2015 21:54 #4

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