It had some good ideas, but you're right.

Post #146,561 by Meerkat 3/16/04 5:07:44 PM Reply	It had some good ideas, but you're right. AmigaDOS was cool and could do a fair bit, in its day. Mind you, I didn't really know anything about Unix at the time, so my memories may be coloured by comparing it to MS-DOs and the C64 :) I'm still kinda in awe of the whole 'screen dragging' idea, where two or more desktops, if you will, could share the same physical screen, even if they were of different resolutions. OK, so I didn't explain that well, but if nothing else at least I know what I'm talking about :-) But yeah, I agree, it's time has come and gone - it's time to let go, people! (Having said that, I still have about four Amigas cluttering up my spare room) John. Busy lad.
Post #146,663 by drewk 3/17/04 9:19:26 AM Reply	Two words: Video Toaster Amd one [link\|http://www.mmhart.com/video_toaster.htm\|link] === Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
Post #146,674 by ChrisR 3/17/04 10:16:55 AM Reply	Is there a Linux or Winders equivalent to Toaster?
Post #146,676 by deSitter 3/17/04 10:27:26 AM Reply	DESCRIBE -drl
Post #146,682 by drewk 3/17/04 11:05:29 AM Reply	Video editing console in a box Take an entire hardware-based TV editing studio and put the controls on a GUI. The version I played with (in the early 90s, and it was already a couple of years old then) had four coax inputs, two coax outputs and a vga output. The coax connections also carried control information to start/stop/record/etc the 1-inch tape decks they connected to. The vga was for the monitor that had the GUI. You could have four independent video feeds, mix them down in the GUI -- which had a real-time thumbnail view of your output -- and two independent video outputs. All this from a small form factor box, probably comparable to an ATX case. I remember hearing at the time one of the pieces of magic that made this possible was that the system clock was syncronized to the NTSC clock the video ran on. As long as you keep the system closk at an integer multiple of NTSC, real-time compositing becomes trivial. === Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
Post #146,687 by deSitter 3/17/04 11:15:09 AM Reply	Re: Video editing console in a box I remember advising a friend to get an Amiga when they first came out - he used it for 10 years, until 1995 or so. There was a window of opportunity for it - too bad it didn't get a chance to develop. It was far better than the Mac of its day and Windows was literally a pathetic joke. -drl
Post #146,700 by inthane-chan 3/17/04 12:19:34 PM Reply	Commodore and IBM had one thing in common. The marketing department. "I'll stop calling this crew 'Orwellian' when they stop using 1984 as an operations manual." - J. Bradford DeLong
Post #146,715 by CRConrad 3/17/04 2:03:42 PM Reply	Also 2/3 of their names; "Commodore Business Machines", IIRC
Post #148,334 by orion 3/24/04 8:53:12 PM Reply	Two things in common #1 The marketing department. #2 Brain-Dead-MBAs in charge of the company that killed some of the finest products ever made due to their mistakes. IBM had OS/2 which was superior to anything Microsoft had, so WTF did it fail? BD-MBAs messed up. Same deal with CBM/Amiga, AmigaDOS was superior to anything Microsoft had, the Amiga was an awsume computer that made the Macintosh look like a Timex-Sinclair 1000. It did freaking multiasking on the same 68000 CPU that the Mac did, and the Mac could not pull it off, at the time anyway. I still have an Amiga 500, I let my nephews play on it when they come over to visit. CBM/Amiga messed up when the PC market caught up to them and offered VGA/SVGA display cards and Sound Cards that could match or surpass the Amiga video and audio. Then once the PC had multitasking operating systems, AmigaDOS was almost dead. The Mac caught up with them too. In 1985 the Amiga was high tech, cutting edge, by 1987 it was obsolite and they did not catch up to the PC and Mac market. By 1990, hardly anyone cared anymore. Soon after CBM/Amiga went out of business and the Amiga company got sold a few times. It is not dead yet, like OS/2 fans, there are Amiga fans that refuse to let it die. They are small in number, but they still use it. I am one of them. AmigaDOS 2.0 still runs great on my Amiga 500. My Amiga 1000 that I got in 1985 has gone to Amiga Heaven in 1992. *"Lady I only speak two languages, English and Bad English!" - Corbin Dallas "The Fifth Element"*

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