Jump to content

Portal:Amiga

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Portal topics - (Random portal)

Activities
Culture
Geography
Health
History
Mathematics
Nature
People
Philosophy
Religion
Society
Technology
edit 

The Amiga Portal

The 1987 Amiga 500 was the best-selling model.
Shortcut

Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-bit or 16/32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. These include the Atari ST as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. The Amiga differs from its contemporaries through custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprites, a blitter, and four channels of sample-based audio. It runs a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS, with a desktop environment called Workbench.

The Amiga 1000, based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, was released in July 1985. Production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986. While early advertisements cast the computer as an all-purpose business machine, especially with the Sidecar IBM PC compatibility add-on, the Amiga was most commercially successful as a home computer with a range of video games and creative software. The bestselling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 along with the more expandable Amiga 2000. The 1990 Amiga 3000 includes a minor update to the graphics hardware via the Enhanced Chip Set also used in subsequent models.

The Amiga established a niche in audio and multimedia. The first music tracker was written for the Amiga, and it became a popular platform for music creation. The 3D rendering packages LightWave 3D, Imagine, and Traces (a predecessor to Blender) originated on the system. The 1990 third-party Video Toaster made the Amiga a comparatively low cost option for video production. In later years, the Amiga started losing market share to IBM PC compatibles and video game consoles, eventually leading to Commodore's bankruptcy in 1994 and the end of Amiga. Commodore is estimated to have sold 4.85 million Amigas. Various groups have since released spiritual successors. (Full article...)

edit 

Selected article

Hold-And-Modify, usually abbreviated as HAM, is a display mode of the Commodore Amiga computer. It uses a highly unusual technique to express the color of pixels, allowing many more colors to appear on screen than would otherwise be possible. HAM mode was commonly used to display digitized photographs or video frames, bitmap art and occasionally animation. At the time of the Amiga's launch in 1985, this near-photorealistic display was unprecedented for a home computer and it was widely used to demonstrate the Amiga's graphical capability. However, HAM has significant technical limitations which prevent it from being used as a general purpose display mode.

The original Amiga chipset uses a planar display with a 12-bit RGB color space that produces 4096 possible colors. (Full article...)

edit 

Selected biography

Gillen at the 2011 New York Comic Con
Gillen at the 2011 New York Comic Con
Kieron Gillen (born 1975) is a British comic book writer and former computer game and music journalist. He is known for his creator-owned comics Phonogram and The Wicked + The Divine, both created with artist Jamie McKelvie and published by Image Comics, and for numerous projects for Marvel Comics, such as Journey into Mystery and Uncanny X-Men.

Gillen has worked for publications such as PC Gamer UK, The Escapist, Amiga Power (under the pseudonym "C-Monster"), Wired, The Guardian, Edge, Games Developer, Develop, MCV, GamesMaster and PC Format, among others. (Full article...)

edit 

Categories

Category puzzle
Category puzzle
Select [►] to view subcategories
Amiga
Amiga chipsets
Amiga computers
AROS software
Amiga companies
Amiga emulators
Amiga magazines
MorphOS
AmigaOS
Amiga people
Amiga software
edit 

Selected picture

Amiga Joyboard
Amiga Joyboard
Credit: RaviC
Amiga Joyboard.
edit 

Did you know...

... that MorphOS implements AmigaOS API and provides binary compatibility with "OS-friendly" AmigaOS applications?
Other "Did you know" facts... Read more...
edit 
edit 

Topics

Pen & Earth
Pen & Earth


edit 

WikiProjects

WikiProjects
WikiProjects
WikiProject Amiga

edit 

Things to do

  • Create articles: There are many articles that have yet to be started... Pick your favorite and start researching!
  • Find photos for articles: Many Amiga–related articles would be substantially better with the addition of photographs.
  • Expand articles: There are many Amiga stubs which could use extensive updates and development.
  • Find sources: Many poorly sourced articles could use better citations.
  • Wikify: Add {{Portal|Amiga}} to the See also sections of Amiga-related articles.

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Discover Wikipedia using portals


Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Portal:Amiga&oldid=1127745629"