@AmigaBlitter

i wanted and tried to leave a few times over the years but my miggies and Amiga community always made me feel at home even in troubled times

Last edited by klx300r on 21-Dec-2018 at 10:05 PM.

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X1000 I BELIEVE

I left because AmigaOS lacked memory protection and virtual memory. FFS was fragile and I had 80+ floppies for backup, and far too often it corrupted the file system beyond repair. I had to rely on that the floppies would work to restore things, sometimes it did not do that entirely. It was a pain. Also, lots GNU software would not run properly. This was 25 years ago and before Commodore went belly up.

@JimS

Quote:

JimS wrote: @amigasociety Quote: amigasociety wrote: Yeh I am in USA and for professional use, the Atari and Amiga and other non PC non Mac platforms seemed to have never become real, in my opinion, for professional use. The Amiga had some niche professional users in the US. There were plenty of videographers using it, either with Toasters or Genlocks. There were animators as well. I even knew a guy who used A3000s to do the display ads for his newspaper and a 2000 to manage the classified ads.

Yeh I am familiar with that and just like the Atari was quite popular for being a great DTP system cheaper compared to Mac as example, it was just never a massive hit in USA like Amiga was not in the business world. A few niche areas but that was about it.

Most business gravitated to PC or Mac. Just my humble opinion.

TJ

@g0blin

Quote:

I'm reading David Pleasance book these days and, from that perspective, it seems to me that most american users actually abandoned the Amiga even before Commodore demise.

That is true, to a large extent. When Wolfenstein 3D came out in 1992, it started to look like a generic PC was a better system for gaming than an Amiga, and when Doom came out in 1993, that was really apparent. By the time Commodore went under in 1994, I and most of my friends had already purchased 386 PCs.

_________________
"Unix is supposed to fix that." -- Jay Miner

@bison

I remember the years before. PC people complained the Amiga was no good because it was a games machine. That was a problem according to them. Around 1995 (or whatever year it was) PC got better at games and you never heard any more comments about being able to run games was anything negative, rather the opposite...

Quote:

JimS wrote: The Amiga had some niche professional users in the US. There were plenty of videographers using it, either with Toasters or Genlocks. There were animators as well. I even knew a guy who used A3000s to do the display ads for his newspaper and a 2000 to manage the classified ads.

My uncle was printing large signs/banners (DeluxePrint?) and printing mailing list labels (Microfiche Filer Plus) for his bookstore on the Amiga. I customized SuperBase Pro for invoices and mailing list relational databases (they didn't want inventory management oddly) to replace his C= SX-64 custom program with an Amiga 1000 including expanded memory but no HD (lack of cheap HD solutions hurting the Amiga again). It was complete and being tested but they ended up closing the bookstore instead. The great thing about all three of these applications was that the Amiga showed on screen a graphical representation of what was going to be printed. I later considered customizing SuperBase Pro software for a larger family business but the Amiga version lacked multi-user and multi-computer support. I did use the Amiga (PPaint, TV Paint and ImageFX) to create most of the web site for that business though.

I lived within walking distance (U.S. K.C.) of an engineer who helped design a Zorro II board for milking machines. It was an international company so check those old milking barns for Amiga 2000s. I went to some Amiga shows with him, bought some chips from him and removed a tree stump for him (he broke several axe handles on the stump which I ripped out of the ground using strength to his surprise). The Amiga was used in some embedded applications which many people don't realize today.

I live within commute distance of Topeka Kansas and put in a work application at NewTek. I was still in school then and didn't hear back from them but I wasn't particularly qualified for the openings they had. It wasn't until later that I learned about CPUs with the Natami/Apollo and on my own, modified the ADis dissasembler and updated the FPU support for the vbcc compiler. Now I could disassemble Lightwave and optimize it for the 68040 and 68060 (it is currently optimized for the 68881/68882 using SAS/C). When the Toaster was popular, I probably could have made descent money making a performance patch for the 68040 and 68060 and maybe NewTek would have been interested in me optimizing Lightwave. My luck has usually been that I get good about the time everything is falling apart.

The Amiga started to find some niches in business even in the U.S. The Amiga was starting to get some professional software just as the Amiga was losing momentum here. Commodore was a big part of the problem in my view. They were inconsistent, didn't upgrade and support their products well enough, didn't support developers enough, did a poor job of advertising and marketing the Amiga, did a poor job of licensing, etc.

Quote:

BigD wrote: True, but if given the right investment in R&D / Moore's law applying to Commodore in an alternative universe / the bringing to market of Ranger custom chips and or the A3000+ with DSP then the Amiga COULD have kept pace or exceeded the improvements on the IBM PC. I still maintain the PC was NOT a good home computer until Windows XP was released.

Commodore needed Moore's Law to *not* apply to them.

Moore's Law chart:
https://3s81si1s5ygj3mzby34dq6qf-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/ibm-openpower-summit-patterson-chart.jpg

Moore's Law technology advances picked up the pace just as Amiga was getting started in 1985. Commodore was the market leader in 1983 with 33% of the personal computer market from the C64 but margins were low. Commodore fell into financial trouble just as the Amiga was launching also do to not having enough inventory for the 1985 Christmas season and wasting $40 million on poor advertising.

C= yearly profit
1983 $92.7 million
1984 $143 million
1985 -$113 million
1986 -$127 million
1987 $28.6 million

Thomas Raddigan turned C= around by stopping Amiga production and cutting costs including closing the Los Gatos development facility resulting in most of the original Amiga team leaving. Commodore was cutting costs and fighting to survive when it needed to start fast paced development to stay competitive.

The Ranger chip set could have been part of the fast paced development cycle but it also would have increased the price of an already expensive Amiga. The Atari ST was doing well by undercutting the Amiga cost and a larger price gap could have made matters worse. Commodore's financial situation had to be the priority as the Amiga started out ahead of the technology curve. They survived skipping the first generation of technology upgrades but they failed to improve the Amiga much until AGA in 1992. Ouch! Tech companies were commonly releasing new products every year as Moore's Law kicked in. Companies like 3dfx went bankrupt after missing just one yearly upgrade cycle for gfx cards despite revolutionizing 3D a few years earlier.

The Amiga 3000+ would have brought AGA to market earlier and probably improved 3000 margins but this was not the low cost mass produced AGA computer C= needed for developers to support AGA. The Amiga 1200 was but it was late. A DSP would have increased costs and limited size reductions which would have been ok as a high end option but detrimental to base model sales. The DSP would have been mostly outdated by the time an SIMD unit was put in 68k CPUs which likely would have been in the next major upgrade of the 68060 (the demise of the 68k had a lot to do with the fortunes of the Amiga, Atari ST and abandonment by the Mac). I would have preferred chunky gfx and upgraded chip memory performance over a DSP (and cheap HD support earlier). Improved upgrade cycles could have left C= in a situation to successfully license the 68k as they planned to reduce the cost and size of the Amiga more. C= had the technology (MOS) to upgrade chips and processors at one time but let it fall out of date and it turned into a liability. C= themselves could have licensed Amiga technology to compete with PC clones and in the embedded market. Moore's law was certainly rough as getting to market fast was critical to survival, but as the curve flattens out today, good and efficient hardware designs are more important again and can have a longer product life.

Last edited by matthey on 22-Dec-2018 at 12:39 AM.
Last edited by matthey on 22-Dec-2018 at 12:34 AM.

@hth313

FFS was pretty easy to rebuild from a block level. I don't really get the connection between FFS and the lack of memory protection...

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@AmigaBlitter

"For God's sake, let us sit upon the carpet and tell sad stories...".

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Sam

@bison
Thanks for your reply

@matthey
Thanks to you as well. Awesome piece of history you described right here. One can only wonder what could have happened with a different class of Commodore managers. I'm not so naive to thing that Amiga would be ruling the world: a decent browser and no need for emulation would be enough for me.

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@Daedalus

When I sat developing and had a crash, it better not come during that 3 seconds delayed flush to disk.

I remember waiting to test the latest build, watching that HD light go out think it would be safe, hit the return and start running. Only to have the disk spin up again, and a crash. Take a deep breath and hope it could validate itself on reboot and it was not always the case...

I had many things going on the Amiga, being a multitasking machine and also beta tested my own software. Even when pretty stable, it sometimes crashed and FFS was not entirely safe against this.

Floppy backups to the rescue, and not always the most recent... and it took a long time.

I had (and have) no knowledge how to rebuild FFS on the block level.

It was so much better on a machine with memory protection, like a UNIX. I cannot remember having suffered any file system corruption in the 25 years I have been using them.

@amigasociety

Quote:

Yeh I am familiar with that and just like the Atari was quite popular for being a great DTP system cheaper compared to Mac as example, it was just never a massive hit in USA like Amiga was not in the business world. A few niche areas but that was about it. Most business gravitated to PC or Mac. Just my humble opinion. TJ

Oh yeah, Then there was the fact that the Amiga, being more or less locked into the NTSC/PAL video standard made it great for desktop video applications, but less so for productivity stuff. Since more businesses needed the non flickering higher than video rez screens of VGA that's where they went.

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It's got 32 bits and it uses them all. It's overclocked, watch the bouncing ball!

Here's a recap of my computing story and why I choose to stay with the Amiga. Thought to post on this thread, but Jesus came up too many times instead :P Also, I prefer to post here just to break the misery out of some people; Jesus guys! Ooops, see what I did here? :P

I started at around the age of 8 year's old (was it something like 1990 or so, can't recall) with an A500, given the age, games matter the most even if I was enjoying writing on workbench's notepad from time to time pretending to be a writer or astonishing my minor friends with cli say :) Long story short, by 1996 it seemed that I was falling behind technologically wise, requested an upgrade and got a PC instead of the A1200 I was hoping for, as a present. TBH in retrospec it was for the better because the PC scene was starting to get bigger month by month.

However I remained loyal by keeping my subscription to Amiga Format and later even on Amiga Active. As an underage student I couldn't afford none the upgrades I was reading about and looked just so fucking awesome. I was getting my free of charge personal fix through winfellow / uae and in a very short time I could build an AmigaSYS (before it even existed :P) sort of environment with my eyes closed. Workbench always seemed to me as a computing "home" and I was always amazed by the indie or mainstream software releases of the late Amiga scene (which I couldn't handle due to emulation limits). I kept messing everyday with Workbench (3.1, 3.5, 3.9) and maxed out emulation capabilities. Yeah AOS didn't had memory protection but Windows displayed BSOD syndromes under the same rate with Gurus, so who cares at the end of the day? Cool story: I had a more stable computing environment under Amiga emulation rather than running Windows with its native proggies :) Oh and btw Linux back then sucked big, big time. Whoever says the opposite he was either a noob or a total mastermind who could handle a computing environment full of shells as if we were living on the eighties. Here's a recap of Suse by late nighties; Sudo this, sudo that and should you want to run an MP3 here's a system freeze.

By 2008 I had the money and the will to invest on Amiga as hardware/software/OS platform again; I took a pen and paper and calculated that buying a second/third hand A1200 and upgrading to its teeth would require more or less the same amount of money as of buying a Sam440/OS4 (had already bought 3-4 years ago an A1200 with 030 50Mhz 64mb ram, Buddha ide hd etc, but I wanted it to keep on its original case). Raw benchmarks were also in favor of the NG option. Bought it and after one year of everyday usage I was deeply disappointing. Let me tell you this; I follow OS4 developments every year through our annual AmiCamp gatherings. OS4 a decade ago hadn't the least to do with what OS4 is today. The OS was extremely fragile, usb stack was shit and native software options ranging from eye candy to useful were scarce (plus the hardware was a let down since it couldn't handle adequately even Quake II, which was an 11 year's old PC game already).

That was the only moment when I truly thought to give up.

A former friend of mine convinced me to take a closer look on MorphOS. Found an ultra cheap maxed out G4 Sawtooth with Sonnet board and the likes, installed MorphOS with literally no hope and after one minute I was whispering: damnnnn!

Speed, stability and an environment truly to the spirit of classic AOS down to its last byte. When I figured out that the best thing to do in order to maintain compatibility was to copy libs/c/datatypes from my original OS3.1 floppies I was getting more and more closer to the ultimate Amiga I had in my mind; all my classic stuff were running blazing fast, I could easily have ten or more screens with different proggies switching them over and over and the system kept being soooo responsive, I could casually browse on aminet download x,y,z command and it just worked, I could run most of late Amiga scene software that I couldn't on emulation in the past, late Amiga games were also a treat, 3D ported games were running ultra smooth, entered PPC demo scene, solved the puzzle on running whdload slaves through Ambient on the long run, MUI was/is the best user interface on computers (imho ofc) and I am still enjoying the developments and efforts of its developers. Just take a look at Iris, it's an amazing effort from just one guy (yo jaca, you rock if you read this post :)). Down to this day, my only complain is a comparable solution of Nalle Puh, how frigging difficult can be it be to write one? Come on we will be one step to ultimate compatibility here ;)

Almost a decade has past since that day and I 've never regret it. All my classic stuff were put on a closet and Sam is getting dust on a corner where it can't be seen.

So, if someone expects a new Amiga under similar terms at the day of its invention; it's not going to happen. No new custom chipsets for you. It happened once, took the world by storm and unfortunately ended. If however you liked AOS, running amiga programs, having a similar working / hobby environment there are solutions that follow the path of the Amiga, preserve its spirit 100% and expand upon it. MorphOS was/is/will be for me the right choice, AROS, OS4 or a Vamp might be for you. It's Christmas after all, get yourself a gift and you might like it :)

And keeping the tradition of edited posts here on AW, there I go with my edits as well :)

Last edited by Cool_amigaN on 22-Dec-2018 at 08:35 PM.
Last edited by Cool_amigaN on 22-Dec-2018 at 08:33 PM.
Last edited by Cool_amigaN on 22-Dec-2018 at 08:33 PM.

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@Cool_amigaN

Great post, mate! Thank you for sharing.

As for me, at present I'm more confident with AOS4 than with other solutions but, as you said, whatever works is fine!

Keep it up!

_________________
GDG Entertainment

Cybersphere Page

Quote:

Cool_amigaN wrote: I started at around the age of 8 year's old (was it something like 1990 or so, can't recall) with an A500, given the age, games matter the most even if I was enjoying writing on workbench's notepad from time to time pretending to be a writer or astonishing my minor friends with cli say :) Long story short, by 1996 it seemed that I was falling behind technologically wise, requested an upgrade and got a PC instead of the A1200 I was hoping for, as a present. TBH in retrospec it was for the better because the PC scene was starting to get bigger month by month. However I remained loyal by keeping my subscription to Amiga Format and later even on Amiga Active. As an underage student I couldn't afford none the upgrades I was reading about and looked just so fucking awesome. I was getting my free of charge personal fix through winfellow / uae and in a very short time I could build an AmigaSYS (before it even existed :P) sort of environment with my eyes closed. Workbench always seemed to me as a computing "home" and I was always amazed by the indie or mainstream software releases of the late Amiga scene (which I couldn't handle due to emulation limits). I kept messing everyday with Workbench (3.1, 3.5, 3.9) and maxed out emulation capabilities. Yeah AOS didn't had memory protection but Windows displayed BSOD syndromes under the same rate with Gurus, so who cares at the end of the day? Cool story: I had a more stable computing environment under Amiga emulation rather than running Windows with its native proggies :) Oh and btw Linux back then sucked big, big time. Whoever says the opposite he was either a noob or a total mastermind who could handle a computing environment full of shells as if we were living on the eighties. Here's a recap of Suse by late nighties; Sudo this, sudo that and should you want to run an MP3 here's a system freeze.

You had a late start with the Amiga. The early days in 1985-1986 were painful. AmigaOS before 1.3 was barely usable with not much software. AmigaOS 3.1 was the best AmigaOS upgrade ever and did bring stability much on par with other operating systems of the day despite lacking memory protection. x86 hardware was tricky to program, especially for handling interrupts. Linux suffered with too many flavors and targets and not enough users and developers for each variation (standardization problem Amiga flavors have today too).

Quote:

So, if someone expects a new Amiga under similar terms at the day of its invention; it's not going to happen. No new custom chipsets for you. It happened once, took the world by storm and unfortunately ended. If however you liked AOS, running amiga programs, having a similar working / hobby environment there are solutions that follow the path of the Amiga, preserve its spirit 100% and expand upon it. MorphOS was/is/will be for me the right choice, AROS, OS4 or a Vamp might be for you. It's Christmas after all, get yourself a gift and you might like it :)

It would be difficult to make Amiga hardware as far ahead in technology as the first Amiga today. It was competitive for about 5 years with only minor upgrades during a time when chip performance was doubling about every 1.5 years. It cost huge amounts of money to update custom chips every year and development and production costs were relatively much higher then. Today with Moore's Law ending, chip performance may be doubling every 5 years and continues to slow. Chip production costs for the smallest die sizes are very high but a little older and more practical die sizes are cheap in underutilized fabs. Amiga custom chips, including the CPU as a SoC, could be put in one custom ASIC today where C= had to update several custom chips. More standard hardware usually results in more stable and efficient software (including the OS). Custom hardware has a better chance of retaining compatibility and current Amiga users/customers and developers. The Vamp (Apollo Core + SAGA) has a low production and expensive SoC in a single FPGA today. Why "no new custom chipsets"?

@matthey

Quote:

AmigaOS before 1.3 was barely usable with not much software.

My recollections are similar. 1.0 was barely usable; it would guru every 20 minutes. 1.1 was better, and 1.2 was good, for the most part. 1.3 had a nicer trash can icon.

_________________
"Unix is supposed to fix that." -- Jay Miner

Funny how you all act like you look for the masses to return when it is just talk. You do your best to protect your little aging boys club called a community and lash out at anyone who comes with new ideas outside of your developer bubble. AB kept trying to point you to the bigger pic and push for compromise. You can talk all you want about leadership while there's a large portion of the community which is toxic and tries to keep up the walls and most of that comes from the same gloried past.

Last edited by Srtest on 25-Dec-2018 at 01:05 PM.
Last edited by Srtest on 25-Dec-2018 at 01:05 PM.

Quote:

Quote: matthey wrote: AmigaOS before 1.3 was barely usable with not much software. bison wrote: My recollections are similar. 1.0 was barely usable; it would guru every 20 minutes. 1.1 was better, and 1.2 was good, for the most part. 1.3 had a nicer trash can icon.

AmigaOS 1.3 was a refinement of AmigaOS 1.2 with further bug fixes (and FFS for hard disk support as I recall). This is similar to AmigaOS 3.1 compared to AmigaOS 3.0. I tend to think of the bug fixed and finished AmigaOS updates but I believe you are correct that AmigaOS 1.2 was the first "good" version (Spartan and crude but stable).

Quote:

Srtest wrote: Funny how you all act like you look for the masses to return when it is just talk. You do your best to protect your little aging boys club called a community and lash out at anyone who comes with new ideas outside of your developer bubble. AB kept trying to point you to the bigger pic and push for compromise. You can talk all you want about leadership while there's a large portion of the community which is toxic and tries to keep up the walls and most of that comes from the same gloried past.

I think the different Amiga camps recognize that the Amiga community is not healthy because of the divisions and small user bases of each camp. The different camps are trying to appeal to the masses.

AmigaOS 4 PPC - Tabor is an effort to make a cost reduced Amiga which more Amiga users can afford.
+ cheaper entry point for AmigaOS 4
+ BE allows for more efficient Amiga compatibility
- lack of SMP in AmigaOS 4 reduces performance potential
- lacks 64 bit CPU, standard FPU, SIMD unit and Amiga custom chip compatibility
- PPC is dead and the CPU is a PPC bastard
- price/performance ratio not improved as performance was cut to reduce cost

MorphOS x86_64 - Moving to x86_64 improves the price/performance ratio and availability of hardware for an Amiga like OS.
+ high performance, good price/performance ratio and common commodity hardware
- lack of standardized hardware makes OS and driver support a nightmare
- existing Amiga and MorphOS compatibility will be lost

AROS x86_64 - Moving to x86_64 improves the price/performance ratio and availability of hardware for an Amiga like OS.
+ high performance, good price/performance ratio and common commodity hardware
- lack of standardized hardware makes OS and driver support a nightmare
- existing Amiga compatibility is lost

AROS ARM BE - Michael's efforts to bring AROS to the Raspberry Pi ARM big endian targets an unprecedented low price, provides standardization and attempts to retain some compatibility.
+ extremely cheap, good price/performance hardware and tiny footprint
+ standardized hardware allows for simpler OS and driver support
+ BE allows for more efficient Amiga compatibility
- limited expandability
- limited performance

Vampire 68k - Uses commodity FPGAs while retaining 68k and custom chip compatibility.
+ very good compatibility on customizable custom chips
+ integration of most functionality into a single FPGA allows for a small product
+ commodity FPGA availability is good and costs are likely to decline over time
- FPGA CPUs are limited to '90s CPU performance
- FPGA costs are not competitive with mass produced ASIC costs

FPGA Arcade ARM 68k emulation - Uses a combination of ARM CPU emulation with FPGA custom chip simulation.
+ very good compatibility on customizable custom chips
+ leverages commodity ARM CPUs and FPGAs
+ commodity FPGA availability is good and costs are likely to decline over time
- limited CPU emulation performance
- FPGA costs are not competitive with mass produced ASIC costs

Commodity hardware *is* mass produced hardware. Economies of scale are still important with Moore's Law ending. Capitalism is harsh on those who are not competitive. It would be nice if there was more cooperation by Amiga camps to fight for the Amiga's survival but there is disagreement as to the best route to go. The further hardware varies from the original Amiga, the more difficult cooperation will become. It looks to me like respect for other attempts is growing as the window of opportunity for the Amiga shrinks.

@matthey

That's exactly the point - I have no delusion (not anymore) about said parties wanting what's best for Amiga. I referred the culture which is mostly stemming from the old schoolers club builders but not restricted to them. I didn't mean a certain commodity with mass appeal. Most of the arguments about mass appeal are completely disjointed from what currently attracts the peeps. On one hand you can see these discussions about some pipe dream about the Power9 (or what they perceive as power) being a difference maker and another thinking the 68k is anything other than nostalgia, when the basis for their comparison isn't even that basis anymore. The PC is like an always shrinking platform being dedicated to very speciifc actions (a games machine?) so they are comparing their aspiring platforms to something that is not really there.

The move to the web helped the move to smart devices and was facilitated by that same move. That has nothing to do with what is being discussed. When you try to bring that up all you get is bitterness and closed minds by those with some experience in the field (mostly 20 years ago) who think they know everything and don't know the first thing about what peeps want, what kind of interface works for them (and why) and can be appealing to them and of course, what might be an alternative to what is perceived as the only way forward in computing and personal engagement, productivity and entertainment. If that were to happen then their little club might mean a lot less and their opinions will not be heard as much. I feel like AB in that those efforts to reach out are futile. You need to cultivate an entire different culture and the ironic thing is that those I'm talking about always talk about open systems and open sourse yet they are the most boxed heads I've ever seen. There is almost no difference between those "mass produced" versions of the platforms you've mentioned and the original more elitist versions.

Last edited by Srtest on 25-Dec-2018 at 05:28 PM.
Last edited by Srtest on 25-Dec-2018 at 05:28 PM.

@matthey

.. and from the things you listed I see biggest chance to leverage at least a little bit in the RPi AROS effort.

OS 4 is virtually dead(close to zero development and in a legal deep coma). MorphOS x64 is probably a bit far away and wants too much (but we have MorphOS ppc - still *very nice* and actively developed, but not adopted by enough users for some hard to understand reasons IMHO) AROS x86/x64 has not taken off, too and Vampire (stand alone)/FPGA Arcade is too expensive for the masses while with FPGA and I don't see anyone shlling out the money to go ASIC.

But IF AROS on RPi will actually get to a pretty useable level that can gain some interest and users. Not masses, but at least some fresh blood: The RPi is cheap, has a geeky community and alternatives to Linux are rather welcome (if security is not a high priority).

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MorphOS user since V0.4 (2001)

@AmigaBlitter

I feel your pain. As an Amiga owner since 1988 I have come to view the current Amigas as professional programmers tools, no longer a consumer electronic product. I think the Apollo Team and their Vampire equipped hardware will eventually become the future Amiga platform because of the huge software base and game applications. Sorry X5000 guys, but most of what I read about patching code and installing this and that to get it to work is all Greek to me today. As for Apollo, I bought a Vampire and spent $800 getting an A600 running, updated chip RAM, OS 3.1 roms and Cloanto CF drive. The Vampire arrives in a plain cardboard box, no instructions and no install disk. Never in my 22 years in marketing and advertising have I seen such a bolixed up mess. After installing seven accelerators successfully in different machines suddenly I have no way of getting my system to recognize the presence of a faster processor and extra RAM. There should've been an install disk! I managed to get the board seated OK and squeezed my $99 gold plated HDMI cable neatly out a little hole I drilled in the back right on the seam between top and bottom case for a nice tight fit. When I booted up I got a gorgeous Vampire 2 logo on screen, but no pointer, no hard drive icons, no access to anything. My A600 would just boot and lock up. I went everywhere for help. Apollo sent me to a site where I asked questions, but got no answers. There were discussion groups, but no one recognized that I was there! I even contacted Dan Wood who was nice enough to respond that he never heard of my problem before. No support!

The last thing I wanted to hear was that I needed to download something. How can I download into a machine that doesn't work because I haven't downloaded some drivers or something that should've been on an install disk? So I junked everything and sold it all on ebay and was lucky to get my $800 back, but lost 18 months of my Amiga life. At 67 I can't afford that.

No $2000 for an X5000. Tabor? I said a year ago there'll be no such product actually sold. What kind of fool who's got unsold inventory of computers selling for $2000 is going to introduce a model that runs the same OS, the same software, does the same work, but sells for half the price? NO ONE!

I ended up buying a nice 800 MHz Amithlon with OS 3.9 on it, even though some wiseguy tried to sucker punch me out of it by bidding with only 3 tenths of a second left in the auction, but fell just under my secret high number - no time to rebid, awww! It's blazing fast. and TV Paint Professional has made the last available Amiga version downloadable free. (The PC version now sells for $3000!) Yes, I now download to my Dell PC using a 32 gig USB stick and plug it right into my Amithlon. All Amiga files transfer perfectly! World Construction Set, Amiga version is very rare, just sold my copy for $56 in ebay. First I installed it and transcribed the entire instruction manual (as thick as a Manhattan Telephone Directory). Without that it's ungodly complex. Again PC version $3000! On a small XP partition I have Lightwave 6, Adobe Premiere, Vista Pro 4 (most people don't know there was a version 4 on 2 CD's with a gazillion USGS DEM's even Mars! and of course Quake II PPC! I can't understand why the Amithlon wasn't the path to follow ten years ago. Now look where we are!

Sorry this got so long and I do believe TV Paint runs on OS 4.1 Amigas. I'm still sitting on my original A 2000 PAR machine playing games and recording animations from Lightwave on the Micropolis animation drive. Now to try another Vampire!