The Computer Chronicles - The New Amigas (1988)

[@curiousottman]

I saved all summer working 3 jobs in 1986 to buy an Amiga 1000 when I was 16. Still the most incredible machine that has ever inspired me. The thrill of exploring its capabilities is still unmatched by any computer or smartphone since.

[@cubematrixstudio7605]

God, I miss my Amiga... That age of discovery of doing something that few people knew about. GOOD TIMES!

[@scottlowell493]

Start of the 80's : type writers and Video cassettes. End of 80's: word processing software, stereo music and digital image manipulation.

[@jackgamble6120]

I agree with ya all the way! My first computer was the Amiga 1000. At an expo, Amiga offered a free color monitor with the computer. The system totally blew the competition away. Too bad that Amiga fell into hard times.

[@TomiTapio]

Sampling instruments off library loan CDs... With a cheap 8bit audio digitiser.

[@ReasonBeing25]

I love being able to go back and watch these every few years

[@andersdenkend]

That photographer was quite forward thinking; "The process won't change, only the quality will change." Also Heidi is doing some pretty dope anims!

[@keyboard_g]

Larry was well respected and published. He passed in 2011, but you can find his works online.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

“Turnipseed” is a real name. I looked her up online, found a small handful of computer game credits from the early 1990s, that was it.

[@Ponk_80]

If by dope you mean stupid, then I do not agree.

[@andersdenkend]

@@Ponk_80 Oh, I definitely did not mean "stupid". Maybe I should have used "rad".

[@marctronixx]

some of us knew what you meant. im pickin' up what you're layin' down@@andersdenkend

[@BAZFANSHOTHITSClassicTunes]

The Amiga was way ahead of everything else on the market in 1988. Graphics and audio was and still is awesome.

[@borisb.2344]

Way way way ahead!!

[@cubematrixstudio7605]

Amiga was more than just way ahead... It set the very foundation of everything we do with computers today in the video, 3D, animation and graphics genres.

[@jetfrog4574]

@@cubematrixstudio7605 Not really.

[@eijentwun5509]

Amiga in many ways was STILL ahead up to the year 2008. I worked as a VJ at a club using an Amiga CD32 with an SX32 Pro 128mb RAM SUpergenSX, ChromaKey plus, and no Mac or PC user could match the resolution of the clips I was playing nor at the speed I was doing it using SCALA MM400 and Elan Performer.

[@scottlowell493]

I compared my amiga 500 to an IBM PC. The PC's graphics were 16 or 256 colors, mono sound and not even close to the price or performance.

[@cucho69]

Commodore 64 and Amiga in 8 / 16 32 bits are unbeatable, unfortunately the "market" opted for the late but "professional" (and very expensive) Wintel PCs or Macs; Atari also suffered this injustice. Amiga is the first gaming platform, the first multitasking, the first (affordable) in video rendering, animations, etc. Thank you Commodore, Amiga, Atari, Tramiel, Miner, Mensch, Yannes, and all who made these wonders that I still enjoy.

[@TomiTapio]

When PC got sound blaster and SVGA (and 25 to 66 MHz) it was over for the Amiga and Atari.

[@vokost]

My 1990 Amiga 500 is still on a desk upstairs, still working today. In the UK, I think it cost £399 (GBP) back then, no monitor, and came with a few games (New Zealand Story was one) and Deluxe Paint 2. When I was at Bournemouth University in 1998, they were still using an Amiga 600 to do the credits for programmes made in the media dept's TV studio!

[@royf.9034]

I've heard something called "Video Toaster" was the app that sold the Amiga. But the PC killed it.

[@TheTurnipKing]

It was a uniquely NTSC device. Fortunately PAL regions didn't need an excuse to buy into the Amiga, they did it enthusiastically. The PC didn't really kill the Amiga. It was a combination of factors, chief among which was mismanagement by Commodore US, their bankruptcy and the corresponding lack of any platform holder oversight during a very delicate time of moving the system away from the venerable Motorola 68k processors - almost exactly the same problem the Powermacs had.

[@RMCRetro]

My first Amiga 500 was bought from the Lansdowne Computer Centre, just down the road from Bournemouth Uni Campus on the Lansdowne roundabout. Long gone now.

[@bryonmiller4326]

Video Toaster was a Hardware upgrade that allowed TV Studios to replace Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of video editing hardware because a $1,500 upgrade to an Amiga computer could do everything they could. It's also where Lightwave 3d was born. But Amiga had so much more than just Video Toaster. Games were usually much better on Amiga than other platforms for years. Dragon's Lair the Arcade game is what sold me on an Amiga 500 way back in the day.

[@stephenfalken]

New Zealand Story, Deluxe Paint 2, F/A 18 Interceptor and of course... Batman! This was I assume the same pack we got. The amazing A500 Batman Pack?

[@bsiccs]

It’s nice when someone knows a product so well, they can demonstrate it, use it, and talk about it at the same time!

[@sluggotg]

The Video Toaster inside an Amiga, (all said about $4,000.00), was as capable as a $250,000.00 video editor at that time. It was popular for a while to Mock Newtek because the "Video Toaster" was considered Vapor Ware. The Proposed Capabilities were considered "Absurd" at the time. Then Newtek released it.. Holy Crap!! It did more than they ever predicted! A Lot of folks had to eat Crow on the release of the Video Toaster. Nothing had ever been created for a home computer that could compare. They did Seaquest DSV and Babylon 5, (two TV series), using the Video Toaster. At that time most people had no clue. You have to understand that computers back then were generally "Single Tasking, crap sound, crap Video machines". The Amiga was the first "Fully Pre-emptive, Multi Tasking Machine" and it had killer sound and Graphics. Today the machines are literally Millions of times more powerful. So much of this sounds ho hum... but at the time it was Amazing! Sluggo

[@jrjohannes1]

Tim Jenison is doing quite well today! NewTek currently makes the Tricaster (video truck) in a back pack! And LightWave...currently one of the top 3D graphics software packages!

[@Scrapla1]

Wow the memories. We used that to make a custom animated short movie for my grandpas retirement party in the late 80s and we printed it to actual film. I remember our other family members were amazed and thought we paid some company big bucks to do it but nope just used my dads good ole Amiga!

[@straightpipediesel]

Multitasking on the Amiga was "preemptive" in that programs did not have to explicitly release control back to the OS. However, it isn't considered "fully preemptive" like it is today because programs could explicitly prevent other programs from running. Additionally, the Amiga had no protected memory, again allowing a broken program to take down the whole system. Microsoft XENIX 286 had both of these features, and predated the Amiga by about a year.

[@vapourmile]

Your claims are bunk. The video toaster was almost unusable. It wasn't until much later in the 1990s DVE really became viable. The first video toaster wasn't even a DVE at all. It was basically a video switch. There was no Video Toaster capable of recording digital video until the Flyer of 1994. The first digital NLE was for the PC in 1989.

[@PhilipKerry]

@@vapourmile His claims are not claims but are fact , the amiga with the video toaster fitted did indeed provide the cgi for Babylon5 and Seaquest DSV and was also used in ST The Next Generation and Stargate SG1 . It seems to me that you've got something against the amiga .

[@doctorsocrates4413]

I still have 3 Amiga500s in their original boxes stored up..I tend to emulate these days but i occasionally get the amigas out for a short power up..The amiga had a massive impact when it was released with it's advanced graphics and sound.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

there was nothing advanced on Amiga graphics nor the sound when Amiga was released, that and the high price was the reason why Amiga 1000 was a flop. When A500 was released, plenty of computers surpassed Amiga by miles.

[@doctorsocrates4413]

@@madigorfkgoogle9349 Ok well the only computer which i can think of to surpass the A500 at that time would be the acorn archimedes but that machine as good as it was never had the software support..i must disagree with you on your assertion the amiga was not advanced...It was very much superior to most machines at the time for home computing.

[@RTDOSboi]

@@madigorfkgoogle9349you all right, buddy?

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@RTDOSboi absolutely, thank you for asking, buddy. What about you?

[@villipend]

I still remember being over at a friends house and he had an Amiga 500. He was playing a game then suddenly used the mouse to grab the top of screen pulled it down and showed the other application running ! This was 1989 and I was blown away! He didn't like it though, he was sold the 500 based on the idea that his commodore 64 games would run, they didn't( at least most wouldn't) and he took it back and bought a commodore 128!

[@Phenom98]

villipend Lmao that's like trading your gtx1080 for a voodoo 3 so your games can run

[@thealaskan1635]

What a moron

[@mrdorf2784]

In Europe the Amiga was king! Especially for gaming.

[@Frostie3672]

Still got all my Amiga gear, without a doubt the best computer ever made.

[@briangoldberg4439]

I think the problem came with little technical improvements. The graphics and processing capabilities of the Amiga started to lag behind the 486 in the early 90's. It was way ahead of the PC in the 80's, but failed to improve fast enough at a crucial time.

[@DS-pk4eh]

@@briangoldberg4439 Yep , instead working right away on new, better chipset in 1985, they upgrade many years later with AGA and that was not so revolutionary anymore. AGA was late at least 3-4 years. And 3D and full color never arrived. It was the end.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

not really, actually even the Atari ST was better, but the real king was C64, no doubt.

[@Joeyboots80]

Ah Amiga, you were so awesome.

[@ZxSpectrumplus]

I have a perfect collection of Amiga games on a Retropie on a Pi400. I never have an Amiga before....too poor as a kid to own one. Now i am glad i can enjoy all those games and experience i've missed.

[@icemachine79]

I used to dream about owning a Video Toaster back in the early 90s. The idea that you could actually hook up a home computer to a VCR and record video files was amazing to me back then. The VT manufacturer used to really play up the fact that you could essentially produce broadcast-quality material at a tenth of the price. But even that price was outside the range of my family's resources (or at least the will to spend) at the time!

[@hardwarecodes]

a fourteenth - or perhaps according to what I know in some specific situations even a fortieth of the price where you only want to put in some simple text and graphics - of the price ;)

[@agentumsilwersilwer5310]

Yes but it was a lot of companys that could not aford a expensive supercomputer or buy al the graphics for everything the wanted to show and they bougt this. The solution was so good that we in Europe even bougt the US toaster with NTSC and added a converter for PAL before a PAL version was out and really that took years for some reason and CBM did not see this and did never really get that Amiga was much bigger in Europe than in the US. They was always concerned with the homemarket making them thing the shoul jump on the PC concept and failing badly just because american people liked the PC clones.

[@eijentwun5509]

I had Various Video Toasters and in my experience you could do the same with SCALA MM300 and a SuperGen SX if you created your own animated Transitions. Also if you added a DCTV gfx unit with the RGB adaptor to the SuperGen SX....you increase the abilities especially if you are not on an AGA Amiga. I originally used an Amiga CD32 turned into a Super Amiga with 128mb RAM big harddrive loaded with animations and a ChromeKey Plus device for doing Live events with Dancers on a Green screen and Graphics overlayed over them. I got a couple of videos here on KZbin...search Amiga Japanese VJ or something like that.

[@akfreed6949]

It was outside most homes in America , thanks to Reaganomics . That was one reason the ST and AMIGA computers failed to survive .

[@icemachine79]

@@akfreed6949 Yep, that's why I was lucky to have the used Atari 800 I got from a relative. Hand-me-downs were very 80s under Reagan.

[@Audfile]

You walked into the store and just watched it play game demos. I was that kid with a C64 doing triple takes for the entire time my mom shopped.

[@Jammer858]

Damn i miss my old Amiga. If nothing else for the games i used long nights to play

[@dave4shmups]

A computer that was hardly marketed at all, at least here in the United States. Same for the Atari ST.

[@override7486]

Commodore spent over 40 millions USD for marketing of Amiga itself. The way how it was marketed was a different thing...

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

well, Commodore wasted a lot of money to marked Amiga in 1985 despite the fact it was paper launch and you could not buy the overpriced A1000. It flopped and Commodore almost went bankrupt, so after streamlining and still good sales in Europe, Commodore decided to use its limited marketing founds there. Atari was bit different, Jack Tramiel had not those founds of mega company like Commodore, so Atari didnt do much advertising until it was to late. But most of the time the ST line was sold out, so there was probably not much need for advertising until 1988.

[@GustafStechmann]

suprised to see David Joiner in this video... he later did the game Faery Tale on the Amiga which had awesome music

[@egieseke6855]

Faery tale was actually from 1986.. already 2 years its still cool! :)

[@crumplezone1]

The eighties was the golden decade, a lot of innovation came from it and gave us the crap we have today !

[@LordPBA]

yes, that was before IT was full of porn

[@Blake4014]

@referral madness lool funny dude, I like your style.

[@yellowblanka6058]

@@LordPBA Huh? Unless you're working in the IT department of some porn site, no, IT is not "full of porn"

[@radiosaido66]

The 80's gave us the cellular telephone, true desktop computers, portable music players (like the walkman), and many others. It eventually took time for them to become more advanced and more powerful as they are now. _thank you people in the 80s!_

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@radiosaido66 not really, true desktop computers came from 70s, cellular telephone also known as GSM came in 90s, the Walkman came in 70s, Discman (CD "Walkman") came in 80s and MP3 came in 90s. VHS came in 70s, DVD in 90s, flat TVs in 90s. Hmm, somehow you are very off.

[@power2084]

Babylon 5 was made using Amiga Toaster, featured in this episode !

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

No, it was a later version from 1990 and the Toaster package part was called LightWave. Only few scenes were rendered with Amiga, later seasons were rendered on PCs and SGIs since Amiga was to slow.

[@thealaskan1635]

what the public ignored about the Amiga&newtek videotoaster is it could do the same quality video computer graphics that were used FOR the Computer Chronicles @ a MUCH cheaper price. This went on for quite a few years til the Pentium chip era

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

Public did not ignore it, public just had no need for this functionality, yet...

[@RedSkyHorizon]

Interceptor! I played that to death trying to land on the aircraft carrier and intercepting those missiles skimming the water. Anyone else pausing the 'E' ?

[@edstar83]

Me too lol

[@power2084]

@Reee Flex loved Star Control

[@PrzeszczepiX]

I still have an Amiga 500

[@maxtivey32]

Ditto. Not a lot of software tho. :(

[@steveh2432]

Talin (aka David Joiner) thank you so much for Faerytale Adventure. Classic adventure game

[@wallacelang1374]

I wanted either an Atari ST or an Amiga back in the late 1980s, but unfortunately there were no computer stores in my hometown that carried Atari STs and Amigas at that time. Of course even though both the Atari ST and the Amiga could do incredible video and sound they were both way beyond my price range.

[@ZxSpectrumplus]

Actually, the sound in the ST is hardly incredible. It use the same AY chip like most other 8 bit micros of the day. Only the MIDI port saves it, but that is basically for musicians.

[@bl8896]

By far one of the best ep's and great content, almsot like they could see KZbin on the horizon

[@madelefant05]

Computer chronicles was really behind the Amiga.

[@thealaskan1635]

Because it was a better computer.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@thealaskan1635 you both kidding.

[@antiriad]

FYI David Joiner(Talin) from Micro illusions is on the second part of the video. He is known for the Faery Tale Adventure cult game.

[@DataWaveTaGo]

Compu$erve: A friend hooked up to it for 1 hour, around 1990, & was billed $260.00. Great times!

[@oldtwinsna8347]

Knew of some kids who racked up thousands of dollar and were still paying for it a decade later.

[@NathanDrake5]

@@oldtwinsna8347 LOL, their parents must be mad!

[@ma_er233]

21:28 “Do you think the consumers are gonna really be doing the full editing in their home in the future?” Pretty interesting to hear this line on KZbin lol

[@phobos2k2]

Digitize this, digitize that. Little did they know THEY would get "digitized" and shared all over the world in the future.

[@AbdiPianoChannel]

Newtek is still around. The video toaster was so amazing.

[@floydjohnson7888]

Makers of the TriCaster, used in higher-end long-form podcasts

[@abergethirty]

The local cable company would scroll local events and Obituaries on one of the channels. Once in a while it would crash and you would see the Amiga 1.3 work bench screen. This was back in 2008.

[@ljp1942]

Wow maybe they used Amiga 500 computers to edit MTV.

[@MartinFarrell1972]

It happened at my cable company. It was scrolling error messages most of the day with the Amiga DOS on the window

[@solidstate0]

Whatever happened to that 3D processor initiative. That sounds savage!!

[@kippie80]

Wow, what a frame of reference. There was actual information on TV!

[@tankdriver23]

Why "were"? I still have 4 of them, two used every day. This stuff will never die!

[@raven4k998]

that just speaks to the quaility amiga put into those old computer back then today apple makes crap that breaks so it won't be like that 40 years later

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@raven4k998 actually, Amiga is probably most broken retro computer. Apples from early 90s are not much better...

[@zeffster2]

This is my biggest disapointment in computing history. The Amiga was downed because the businesspeople failed at businessing. They had everything technically set up for success. A truly great and affordable computer. We will never forget the Amiga.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

no, the Amiga had very limited architecture of a game console which was outdated very fast.

[@johneygd]

Holy shit,did they back then already had a video and foto digitizer in such high quality, that's incredible. That amiga with it's video card for capturing video from camera and vcr tapes along it's realtime special effects is awesome, i wish my ungle had this back then because even at that time he was already a camera man.

[@davidt8087]

Yea it is crazy but let’s remember that the video quality and resolution was probably 320x240. CPUs back then did all the video work. Idk if video toasted had its own processor, but normal CPUs couldnt do that real time I think unless resolution was low. But the colors were really good and I’m pretty sure PCs then couldn’t show colors and detail like that

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@davidt8087 no, there was no digitizer at work, it was all analogue and in real time, the only option. Basically it was a analogue video signal switcher that could "skew" the signal using the Amiga chipset (I think mostly the Copper) by controlling the synchronization. Amiga colour palette was not used at all, all was analogue signal, if I right remember. You could buy similar cards for PC in 1989 already.

[@davidt8087]

@@madigorfkgoogle9349 interesting

[@SmartK8]

Stewart and Gary are actually robots activated only by turning the lights on.

[@jonathanstein6056]

Now THAT is funny!

[@ratix98]

You should see the later episodes in the 90s. The guests stay perfectly still when Stewart moves to the next guest. Its practically jarring when you notice it!

[@tahustvedt]

The local cable TV provider used an Amiga for the local ad/info channel for as long as analog cable TV was a thing.

[@fabiofabtube]

What a wonderful machine, much ahead for spreading the wings of home and professional artists. Also, it's admirable the professional quiteness of Cheifet during the funny video effects on him: no need of useless laugh but focused on the demo. It was a great show, I was 9 but not living in the US to enjoy it!

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

much ahead? In what sense?

[@fabiofabtube]

@@madigorfkgoogle9349 way ahead of its time. Graphics, sound and more in one machine

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@fabiofabtube you speak about Atari 800 then that was ahead of Amiga by half a decade. it had Graphics, sound and more in one machine... like any other home computer in mid 80s.

[@fabiofabtube]

@@madigorfkgoogle9349mm yeah, that's also true, Amiga architecture was inspired on Atari 800 indeed. But Amiga got much more success, at least here in Europe.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@fabiofabtube not really, even the ST was sold in about same numbers as Amiga in Europe.

[@djmips]

23:31 Aha! I was startled because I worked on a Kyodai game. Ancient Land of YS for PC and Apple IIgs. I do feel old now.

[@fcukugimmeausername]

0:30 Finally, the guy who calls me to tell me my Internet will be disconnected unless I pay $200 is revealed.

[@truthteller4689]

I bought my Amiga 600 for about £299. Wild Weird and Wicked pack with the quavers adverts in the push over game.

[@Ama-hi5kn]

I remember F/A 18 Interceptor always had timing problems related to the CPU. We tried running it on an Amiga 3000 back in the days. It just ran too fast. But great game.

[@timecapsule5604]

I was 16 in 85' i was still enjoying my 64 and my new 128 by then didnt care for the Amiga computers

[@borisb.2344]

R.I.P Gary Kildall, the man who could have been Bill Gates.

[@thealaskan1635]

Better than Bill Gates. Bill Gates made a crappy ripoff operating system of the Mac. Then he made red ring of death game consoles. Oh, and a crappy ripoff of the iPod touch. Anyone still use Zune? Or crappy Microsoft cellphones?

[@alangiles2763]

Also, Paul Montgomery, who died of a heart attack in 1999

[@robertgijsen]

@@thealaskan1635 anyone using CP/M or Commodore machines anymore? The best doesn't always win. I guess Gates had some better tricks up his sleeve. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate Gary Kildall pretty much more than anyone else. But do you really think a company only is successful if all products succeed in the market? Sure. Zune failed, Windows Mobile failes, RT failed bigtime, and a multitude of other products as well. But hey, who cares? They tried. Windows made it bigtime. Azure is pretty big as well. XBOX seems.to do pretty well too. Microsoft is one of the most valuable companies in the world, and that's mostly because Bill Gates led it to where it was when he left. He was ruthless and extremely competitive. But in the big world you won't succeed when you aren't. Gary Killdall was much more of a visionary in my opinion, even more technical savvy as Gates and certainly a more likeable guy. But he was too soft as a businessman. Having said that, I certainly like the Gates from after MS way more. He's doing great things with his money, which he could've spent on himself as well. Gary could and maybe should've been Gates. But actually I think Amiga should've been IBM and they should've blown both Gary and Bill out of the water. The Amiga at the time was way ahead of its time and PC's took years to catch up. Yet, the Amiga was so cheap people regarded it as toy machines. If marketing was better (or existed at all) at commodore, we might be in a completely different computer landscape by now. Alas, the best doesn't always win.

[@Mr_ToR]

@@robertgijsen Also let's not forget that Apple is only existing today because Bill Gates practically gave away a ton of money to Apple so that Apple wouldn't disappear from the market so that Microsoft wouldn't face the then imminent monopoly lawsuit. By the way, I have a CPU-Z expansion for my CBM-8096 with which it runs CP/M.

[@ian_b]

He never could have been Bill Gates. Cheifet knew Kildall well, and all the other Silicon Valley people, and his assessment is that Kildall was a great guy but never had the killer instinct for business that his competitors in general- not just Gates- had. The people who succeeded were superb businessmen, including Gates. That's the skillset you need if you're running a business.

[@retrorter89]

I still fire up my 2000/060 almost every week for some retro fun :) Still can't believe Commodore failed such a wonderful machine :( If Jack Tramiel had gotten his hands on the Amiga as he almost did it would have fared so much better...no ST competition for a start !

[@amigabang6157]

Only Amiga makes it possible.

[@marauderii1]

David joiner the developer of music-x also developed the game FaeryTale Adventure.

[@chukchee]

The graphics are spectacular!!!

[@kamiboy]

Meanwhile in Japan, Sharp X68000, the Rolls Royce of personal computers.

[@IvanBoskovic808]

Anything up to 1997 ? Hmmm

[@CasperLD]

The US snoozed on the Amiga.

[@franriding6473]

Heidi's hair is tremendous. About four hair cuts all in one.

[@user-xg2dk7ff2k]

they really loved brown back in those days

[@fullspectrumtuning8814]

Came for the Amiga history, stayed for the theme music.

[@SE09uk]

wow when will these be out i want one

[@kuntosjedebil]

It is funny how she dodged the hard question posed by Kilgard at 8:15, "Is it commercially usable for broadcasting?". She got out of that sticky situation by referring to the Genlock, but the correct answer is that without an add-on graphics card, the resolution is not good enough for broadcast.

[@oldtwins]

+kuntosjedebil good point and a big reason the amiga died. it didn't have the kind of resolution and color needed. was okay in 1987 but by 1990 it was downright embarrassing to have 320x200 animation screens for professional standards. commodore simply made the decision to have the system cater to the low-end gaming market and so that's what it became known forever on.

[@kuntosjedebil]

They were talking about stock Amigas in the video, not about upgrades.

[@ArtesianFalma]

I wish I could be reborn in a universe where Amiga didn't go bankrupt.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

well it was Commodore that got bankrupt due to Amiga outdated architecture.

[@ArtesianFalma]

@@madigorfkgoogle9349 Yes, they should have kept up to date.

[@jeremyandrews3292]

When I was a kid, I never understood why the Amiga had such a cult following... it seemed to me like my 486DX with 8MB of RAM and Windows 3.11 could do everything just as well. I would always say, "Why did anyone in their right mind buy an Amiga? It has a weird Motorola processor and has PC compatibility issues." But recently, I started studying the year I was born (1988) very closely, looking at all the software and games available during that year to get a feel for what things were like then. I'm really surprised at how primitive CGA graphics were (by the time I was old enough to use a computer, VGA and SVGA were standard). I always thought NES-style graphics and CGA were just the best they had back in the 1980s and that's why people were fine with it... but then I saw the Amiga and the TurboGrafx 16, and I realize that SNES-quality graphics weren't as far off in the late 1980s as I would have thought. Those Amiga games and programs look very nearly as good the PC and Mac software of 6 or 7 years later! I know, because I used early 1990s DOS stuff quite a bit growing up. People apparently just settled for worse graphics because either business stuff and compatibility was more important, or else the better stuff was out of their price range.

[@gamedoutgamer]

Yes by the time the 486DX w/8MB of ram was available ('92-'93) PC's were much more capable. However in '87 when the A500 released PC's didn't compete as far as games go. That's putting it it mildly. PC's sucked for games with CGA/EGA and even early VGA on a 386 that CPU isn't fast enough to compete with the Amiga's graphics & sound chipset. But there are good reasons why the PC won. An open hardware market is vital.

[@jesuszamora6949]

GamedOut Gamer Indeed. Commodore was fuve years ahead of everything else with the A1000, 500 and 2000, and if they actually bothered to upgrade and promote it, they could have been the standard.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

I was hardcore Amiga until about 92 when I got a 386 bridgeboard and used the bridgeboard so much that I bailed and just got a 486 machine a year later. Sold the Amiga and never looked back with regret even till this day. I even still have my 3.5" discs but never felt the need to load them back up on an emulator or what not. The Amiga was fun when it came out in '87 (A500) and while it had its moments, it also had a lot of ugly disgusting things about it that Commodore never dealt with.

[@nikamota]

Jeremy Andrews Good comment.The Amiga was way way ahead of its time,I bought mine in 1989 after saving to get one. People were buying PCs with crap graphics and sound for far more money than the Amiga cost. The Amiga was hugely popular in in the UK Europe,it's such a shame it was a flop in the US.

[@SWRadioConcepts]

+ GamedOut Gamer - 486(DX) was released in 1989. Pentiums were released in '93.

[@fcukugimmeausername]

2:04 I LOVED this game!

[@CamaroWarrior]

if you look at the guy from the side he looks like a young Dave Grohl before joining Nirvana lol

[@franriding6473]

In fact Heidi"s hair looks like it was cut by a computer

[@rickiehiddenname2545]

I owned both an atari st and an amiga i can honestly say the only way an st was better than an amiga was in sound quality. in EVERYTHING else the amigas custom chipset allowed the amiga to outperform the st by about 10-20% and it really showed in games.

[@RainerK.]

+Kreig The games on the ST often had ridiculous sound.

[@thealaskan1635]

The Amiga is really an ATARI machine because quite a few ATARI chips were used. Also the ST did better than any other computer in the music business because of the built-in MIDI interface.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

not really, the ST had 10-20% higher computing power, thats why more technically oriented users chose it over Amiga (and the SM124 hirez monitor of course). Amiga was good at outdated arcade pixel/scroll games good for kids, more adult users preferred more modern 3D games where ST ruled the 68000 world (if we mind the Japanese Sharp X68000). And since 1989 even the sound was much better on ST, and Im not talking about MIDI.

[@CasperUK31]

5:10 "and next to Heidi is Dwight Schrute from Scranton, Pennsylvania"

[@vicp8772]

Wonder how much hhd space was needed for 1hr of NTSC footage? Back then w audio.

[@johnnylongfeather3086]

3 floppies

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

the Toaster was not digitizer, it was analogue switcher, could work in real time only, no HDD needed.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

19:37 These flashy effects became the hallmark of the amateur video maker. Professionals would essentially never use them.

[@kippie80]

Was still used a lot for titling.

[@SaccoBelmonte]

I remember back in the days everyone in graphs and music had an Amiga. Then those with more money switched to a Mac quadra. I was like 15, and my dream was to get an Amiga and a bunch of keyboards.

[@303machine]

+Sacco Belmonte Atari ST was used more as music tool than Amiga.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

you remember it wrong, music was ruled by Atari ST and Graphics by Macintosh, the DTP by Mac and ST, the CAD by PC, ST and Workstations.. Amiga was a game console...

[@SaccoBelmonte]

@@madigorfkgoogle9349It could well be. I was very young. Thinking about it I do remember them rebooting and the Atari logo was quite crazy to see in a PC. All I knew was the 2600 when it comes to Atari.

[@Arcsecant]

Never had an Amiga, but the Commodore 64 and Apple II started my love for computers.

[@EstraNiato]

That looks like a preview of Interceptor, for example it carries sparrows instead of amraams :o

[@NightSprinter]

"Adams Douglas".. :thinking:

[@Spurdospaerde692]

24. The meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

[@TestTubeBabySpy]

that compuserve phone number sure got around in the 80s

[@Ichinin]

Was gonna write about how i also had Amigas too, but ... $5000 for a CDROM!

[@0raffie0]

Not a CD-ROM, it would have been a magneto-optical drive, which, as mentioned, is rewritable.

[@Thegoldmine1]

Was MIDI better on the Atari ST due the fact that the MIDI is directly on the motherboard?

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

yes, actually Amiga is unfit for anything beyond amateur level of MIDI accuracy. It was not known yet in 1988. And it is not due to onboard MIDI, it is due to Amiga architecture.

[@CaptchaNeon]

What in the world is telephone lines and cyclone fences on photos?

[@danyoutube7491]

He was giving an example of undesired features that might be captured in a photograph and that you might want to edit out on the computer. If you are taking pictures in an outdoor environment, there may well be telephone wires (wires suspended on tall poles above streets) and fences (apparently cyclone fencing is chain link fencing) in addition to the subject of your photo.

[@brianh2771]

All that glorious Amiga tech. Then they follow with “Microsoft Excel. It can help you do your taxes!”

[@proshadu606]

The years relies unix system v4 release

[@datfella9063]

18:28 - wow... the Amiga sure made it cheap to do those live video effects :D up to $300,000.00 ?!?!?! :P

[@edstar83]

The guy must of confused the Amiga 500 with the Amiga 1000, 2000 ect. They were expensive, but No way did the Amiga 500 cost that much. They launched for around $600 in the US. I had one as a kid in 1989, I even had 1 mb of ram expansion. I still have it. it's discoloured but it works.

[@davidcollier6156]

@@edstar83 I had both the 500 and a tricked out 2000. The 2000 was definitely expensive but comparably cheaper than a Mac that time.

[@danyoutube7491]

@@edstar83 He wasn't saying that the Amiga cost up to $300,000, he was saying that the industry equipment the Amiga could replace cost up to $300,000, so an Amiga 2000 with 8MB of RAM and the Video Toaster would be saving you, in that scenario, almost $300,000, because even a powerful Amiga set up like that would just be a few thousand dollars.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@danyoutube7491 well except those few thousands dollars were around 5.000 at the end.

[@andywolan]

Had the Amiga been marketed properly, I think it would have succeed in the US. Growing up, I don't recall ever seeing one in the stores.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

Dealers had learned their lesson with Commodore and had no motivation to do business with them. Meanwhile, PC makers combined with Microsoft money, was handing out promotional deals to stores to sell their products. Add to that massive economies of scale to the equation and the PC became cheap to build and sell. It was a force Commodore could not dodge even if things went better for them.

[@andywolan]

@@oldtwinsna8347 True. MS and the PC clone makers would be too much to overcome.

[@Neflyte49]

These things where advanced

[@ibuprofenPill]

If quality of computing was the market guiding force, we wouldn't be in an Apple/Microsoft world. Rather, most likely Amiga/Wang. These things were so far ahead of both Windows and MacOS at the time.

[@satiropan]

fantastico!

[@retroelectrical]

Funny how the Hughes 3d stacked processor, something we still don't have today in 2017, has almost NO documentation on the internet. If it were to scale up to 16000 processors in a few years, it would have given PS3 "Cell" processor power in a PS3-sized box, in the early 90's. Lord only knows our true level of technology today with all of the stuff that's been hidden and suppressed from the public over the past 45 years.

[@PrzeszczepiX]

Amiga is the best! :)

[@desiv1170]

You can see the interviewers don't see home video editing as a realistic consumer product... Today, it's just assumed... People can even do video editing on their phones. ;-)

[@Cryo837]

Chose the Atari 1040ST over the Amiga because of the built-in MIDI port. As a musician at that time, this was HUGE!!!

[@johnnylongfeather3086]

Mistake

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@johnnylongfeather3086 nope, Amiga is garbage for professional music production.

[@agentumsilwersilwer5310]

This history of the Amiga is being erased by the likes of Apple macintosh, they was just a low selling company then and would really on a big market just has it time later. Manufacturers like CBM and Atari was much bigger, but as they are gone people tries to change this to build up a false history about their so amazing company.

[@oldtwins]

+Agentum Silwer Silwer Agreed. Thing to remember here is that Apple almost died in the mid 90s because its Mac line was a financial disaster. The only thing keeping them alive were the continued 8 bit apple // series sales that were still rampant due to the software base.

[@TheTurnipKing]

Hilariously the Mac suffered almost exactly the same problem the Amiga did: PC CPU speeds were beginning to ramp up to ridiculous performance levels and the venerable Motorola 680x0 line didn't keep up, capping out at around the 060 - roughly low level Pentium levels of performance, but the price was comparatively massive. In addition to this you had the double threat of 3D accelerators on the PC. Replacing the graphics chipset on low end Amigas wasn't really an option without replacing the entire machine.

[@agentumsilwersilwer5310]

TheTurnipKing​​ you could change grfx card easily, but it was just another 2D card for lots of money doing what the Amiga at that time should have been able to do standard. The update to AGA was much to little to late. And yes Not even go PPC but keeping the old Motorola 0xx was a problem. But i guess they just didnt want to do it because it would cost lots of money and to fuck all fans they just did nothing till the end of the whole company. The once biggest computermanufacturer of the world. Not that i think they would have last to modern times, but they should have give one last go, it was not like there engineers didnt have any ideas, they was just all stopped by management.

[@TheTurnipKing]

Except you couldn't, not really. Not on the most common systems. You could do it on the "big box" Amigas, but those had proprietary slots, denying the use of generic PC card standards like ISA or PCI, forcing you into - as you note - using something usually overpriced and underpowered for a Zorro II or III slot. Fitting something like that to a 1200 was a labour of love. You'd need a CPU accelerator, a graphics card, you'd probably want to rehouse the thing in a tower so you could use a more powerful PC power supply and fit CD-ROMS and hard drives for which you'd need a buffered interface card. You'd need to break out the keyboard, and at the end of all this upgrading, you'd still be left with something that would still struggle to run Quake.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@agentumsilwersilwer5310 the once largest computer manufacturer made the grave mistake with introduction of Amiga, since then it all went downhill. Keeping the old MC68k line as a computer CPU was already not the plan when the 68060 was introduced, the PPC was long in making already.

[@garyhoffmann1615]

The Amiga could have been king but commodore effed up.

[@valenrn8657]

68K's failure is Motorola's. Hector Ruiz is part of the problem.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@valenrn8657 MC68k a failure? You are kidding right?

[@valenrn8657]

@@madigorfkgoogle9349 For the desktop, 68K has a failed road map.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@valenrn8657 in what way?

[@RetroMMA]

Gotta "love" how unimpressed they were with something like the Video Toaster... smh

[@oldtwins]

RetroMMA my guess is that someone like Stewart with a career in broadcast felt threatened by how one day home amateurs would produce content that was only reserved for high-paying professionals. You could see it in his eyes how he scoffed the guy at the end making it seem like this device or others like it had no future.

[@agentumsilwersilwer5310]

Hehe yes, the thing that really made the Amiga useful for companys as it failed against mac especially to get it place as a workstation. Those video toasters made graphics on the tv screen cheap, it was in Sweden even used on the bigger channels, it was no reason to buy the graphics or use a ten time more expensive computer to do it. I really think the suits in CBM never understood that themselves making bad decisions after another.

[@optimalsupreme5080]

Agentum Silwer Silwer well first and foremost more expensive computers couldnt do it.

[@agentumsilwersilwer5310]

Not directly on the tv screen, that was very unique, The Amiga had outputs for tv, you did not hook up your IBM, mac or SGI to the tv.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@agentumsilwersilwer5310 *Those video toasters made graphics on the tv screen cheap, it was in Sweden even used on the bigger channels* I dont think Toasters were used in Sweden, there were much more advanced German and UK made cards for Amiga here in Europe, and even much more expensive. The Toaster was not very useful here.

[@lucius1976]

My first girl friend was an amiga too.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

... and then you switched to Amigos to run away from your Amiga 2.0 (aka wife), right?

[@Mintcar923]

My god the dude actually said the word American and not western.. Things were far more fair & balanced in the 80’s

[@johnnylongfeather3086]

3:49 cyclone fences?

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

Roland's MIDI standard was introduced in the early 80's. It is so good that version 2.0 is being released this year, nearly 40 years after version 1.0. Main upgrades: Higher comm speeds and more channels.

[@videooblivion]

Six Atari ST users downvoted this video.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

for a good reason, LOL

[@johannesdolch]

Love how these many years later, people still care about the Amiga 500. It's "Up-Market Competitors"? Nope. Nobody gives a shit.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

...and that is wrong, Atari ST line and Macintosh does have huge active following.

[@SeaJay_Oceans]

A M I G A ! :-D

[@mokopa]

Here I am, watching "desktop video" that is capable of much higher resolutions, much greater colour depth and at a much higher frame rate than anything - even high-end equipment - was capable of in 1988. Lol...and just as I finished writing this, Steward talks of Advanced Graphic Applications' new $5000 "re-writable optical disk storage system"...just as I finished burning a DVD full of mp3s for an old car radio...jeez, the future is amazing

[@MarkHahn]

The 80's were AWESOME! I wish we still had the hair and the metal.. ahhhhhh the good ol days. Glad I'm not a melinial. My generation got to experience old and new schools. 👍

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

hell yeah, end of 80s and begin of 90s, best years...

[@brianc5537]

Wish Amiga succeeded in the US…