30 years of Amiga Software or What to show at the Amiga30th events

[tekmage]

As part of the our effort to honor the Amiga 30th anniversary, we will
have a complete line up of Amiga systems. Machines will include the
Lorraine prototype boards, first Amiga 1000 off the assembly line, every
C= machine, all the Amiga NG systems. Basically if it was designed to run
AmigaOS or a Amiga inspired OS it will be running.

So imagine it's July 25th 2015. There is a long display, 90 feet with 30
machines, each one is running and waiting for someone to sit down and use
it. Those guests may be people new to the Amiga, the original designers
like Dave Needle and Dale Luck, or folks who have not seen an Amiga in 20
years.

That begs the question: what should we show them?

We have 30 years with of software, 3 classic chipsets, high and low end,
Aros, MorphOS, AmigaOS 4, etc.  This is opens us up to be able to show
lots and lots of software. So what are the signature pieces of software
that show off the generations of Amiga?  Given the time and the
connections I'm confident we can obtain a working copy of virtually
anything, but what!?

I'm opening this thread up, and will cross post to other sites and boards,
to collect thoughts and suggestions from the Amiga community. To provide
some structure here's one way to categorize the eras and areas:

* OCS
* ECS, high and low ends
* AGA, high and low ends
* RTG
* AROS
* MorphOS
* AmigaOS 4

Let's hear from you!  What app, game or demo really embodies the Amiga
through time.  Break it down by category or not.

[save2600]

Among whatever else, the NewTek demos of course!   :lol:

[QuikSanz]

@tekmage,

Hmm, tough call. Maybe high end classic running quake, a low end classic running productivity and maybe a good Hollywood presentation on OS4.1.

Chris

[JimDrew]

What about emulations?  During our haydays, I was selling EMPLANT systems and making special software for companies like Amblin Entertainment.  They were using EMPLANT equipped Amigas in place of real Macs to run Avid video editing software/hardware.  Typically they used A2000's with 040 cards, and a Picasso video card. A single Amiga box could run the Toaster one day, and Avid the next.  The cost savings of not having to rent a studio just to use Avid systems paid for all their Amigas in the first few days.

[Tenacious]

I would think the low spec systems could be used to showcase some the most loved games and demos (especially those that were difficult for other platforms of the time).  

Some of the unusual (on other platforms) hardware configurations might be of interest, like a low spec machine running a RAD with only extra FAST ram.  Warm booting would be amazingly fast as would calling programs from RAD.  This might be a good system to demo the awesome power of the dir utils (advanced and almost unique) that evolved on the Amiga.  (Strangely, Amiga always had much more of its share of text readers as well. Other platforms used editors to read a file.)

Examples of original, low spec machines doing things that evolved years later, like playing Mp3s with a MasPlayer.

Pick a popular serial linked game and have that running on 2 machines.

Moving up to more expanded systems, an Amiga could be linked to the net.  If an older browser is used, perhaps sites should be limited to compatible ones like Aminet, Wikipedia, etc.

For those attendees who are unfamiliar with Amiga, it would be great to show off what is under the hood hardware and software wise.  Those admired attributes of the OS (dynamically allocated ram disk, multitasking, logical and straight forward system organization, the way the cli AND workbench were tightly integrated (WB was not splashed on top of a DOS, they were 2 facets of the same powerful OS), the clever icon system, the very small size and responsiveness of the system (near realtime) etc.) could be demo'ed.

Much could be said of the Amiga's native sound abilities, not only great quality playback, but sampling as well.  We made this (http://aminet.net/mods/smpl/VoiceOfAmiga.lha) in a matter of days with a DSS8+.  (Shameless plug,

It would be excellent if an Amiga could be set up to run a presentation with sound and images of its own history, technology, features, etc in a long continuous loop, all unassisted by a user!  An interactive presentation would be even better, if not harder to produce in the time allotted.  Amiga was, after all, billed as the first multimedia platform!

My 2 cents.

[NorthWay]

Boing!
RoboCity
"This is Amiga talking" (some kind of demo of the text to speech system)
Marble Madness, Defender of the Crown (two of the "killer-apps" games that sold the A1000)
Shadow of the Beast (one of the big A500 sellers)
Deluxe Paint (or wossname that Jim Sachs made the beautiful AGA image for)
A slideshow of Jim Sachs paintings

[Tenacious]

Boing!
RoboCity
"This is Amiga talking" (some kind of demo of the text to speech system)
Marble Madness, Defender of the Crown (two of the "killer-apps" games that sold the A1000)
Shadow of the Beast (one of the big A500 sellers)
Deluxe Paint (or wossname that Jim Sachs made the beautiful AGA image for)
A slideshow of Jim Sachs paintings

Yes!  I have no idea what the venue or atmosphere on offer at CHM is like, but, imagine several Amigas (perhaps serially linked) running slide shows, running demos, converting text to speech, etc while one talks (hopefully, in a sampled voice and thru some large speakers ) about the others and what they are running, about its own specs, about Jim's art background and obvious accomplishments, highlights of the OS, about Fred Fish and Aminet (at one time, the largest archive of any platform), details of how that machine is doing its own presentation (not a video tape!), the work of Jay Minor and other Amiga visionaries, etc.

Maybe these Amigas could be arranged in an entry way or along the approach to the main show but a little separated from all the hubbub and noise of 50 people talking at once.  

It would be a tremendous testament if the Amiga could present itself, without an operator  and intervention!  What other computer from 30 years ago has ever done this?

[NorthWay]

Ah yes, how could I forget Aminet. Set up one machine with a browser pointing to it.

I'd also suggest a machine loaded with all the possible strange and cool handlers there are. Things like FTP:, HTTP:, compression directory overlays, that editor I never remember that you could read the open files from directly through a handler etc.

Datatypes should be showing somewhere. That is something that I think nobody except Be has tried properly.

Bootable/loadable filesystems. One machine should be jammed full of all the filesystems you can find (hm, you'll hit the limit on the number of disk RDBs you have) and mount.

[bladerunner1963]

Deluxe Paint for sure, Digi Paint as well.

Amiga Live! with Invision.

Genlock.

Some of the original software like Textcraft, Graphicraft, Musiccraft (became Sonix).

jb

p.s. Oh, and of course the Walker Demo! As good as the juggler imho.

[Duce]

Ah yes, how could I forget Aminet. Set up one machine with a browser pointing to it.

As much as Aminet was a revolution to us, especially in the early days, having a terminal (be it a 'netted A500 or an X1000/MOS/AROS box running on gigabit ethernet), a "demo box" of Aminet would be about as exciting as a dry fart in a warm wind in this modern world.  It's effectively a static download website, and somewhere most of us have been pulling files from for over 20 years either via HTTP or FTP.  No offense intended, but it's just not display material meant to impress in this day and age of being able to download files at high speeds 20,000 feet in the air on a jetliner on a device that fits in your shirt pocket.

Aminet is a tremendous resource, but having a demo box dedicated to showing a bland (albeit very functional and wholly important to the Amiga scene for 20+ years) download site such as Aminet would be like watching paint dry.  Might as well just throw a 3.5" floppy container down on a table with a collection of Fred Fish disks and call it an interactive display.  Aminet is just a download site, nothing exotic or fancy.  Terribly important to us Amigans, but not a first of a first in the early computer scene if you consider the other platforms at all.  In fact, mid 90's it couldn't even compare size wise to the Pee Cee or Mac file download sites.  

I say this as a guy that to this day still runs a BBS that I mirror all of Aminet to my filebase once a week - not a knock against Aminet in the least!  (Not that anyone has a deep desire to grab Aminet files off my BBS with ZModem via Telnet, heh.  I think I've had about 30 downloads in the last year on my BBS as a whole.)

My vote?  The Toaster *made* the Amiga.  If you don't have an extensive Toaster display booth, you might as well not even bother with historical displays.  Same goes for gaming.

A DPaint and other early graphics software showcase is also a must.

I hope the whole event doesn't just turn into some masquerade of the OG Amiga stuff being on the sidelines as a "thoughtful consideration" while the NG platforms get flogged to death as the Second Coming, and a lot of people have such concerns with the event itself being sponsored by a NG hardware manufacturer.  

The bigger thing that needs to document in regards to the Amiga is just the atmosphere that was floating around when the Amiga came to be.  No one knew what they were doing.  No one was following a marketing plan, trying to figure out what would sell.  The computer industry was virgin soil and a bunch of guys got lucky enough to get enough funding to attempt to build the computer *THEY* would want to own.

I was lucky enough to talk to Jay Miner years ago and something he said to me stuck with me deeply, and that was "It was early days, we were just trying to build a machine we all wanted to own, the best machine you could dream of".

I'd like to think they succeeded, and then some.

[NorthWay]

The Toaster *made* the Amiga.

That is so US centric I don't know if I should laugh or cry. It isn't false, but it simply isn't true for the biggest part of the Amiga user base.

Now, all my suggestions do not need one machine for just the one thing, you might be able to stuff it all into just a small handful, but I would suggest some kind of posters sitting next to the machine pointing out the features available for peruse, or if there is some suitable Powerpoint substitute so the machines can announce it themselves.

Which reminds me that you might want to show Scala too.

[itix]

Considering OCS Amigas I think old DPaint and SoundTracker could be worth it. They are outdated but audience could try some old classic images and tracks just for memories.

Have some old classic demos and games running. There is plenty to choose from...

When it comes to AROS, AmigaOS 4 or MorphOS it is probably better let people tinker with those machines with whatever software they have there. Just give some instructions what software there is and how to try it out. People maybe don't know that OWB is a web browser and so on...

[itix]

That is so US centric I don't know if I should laugh or cry. It isn't false, but it simply isn't true for the biggest part of the Amiga user base.

Being US centric show it makes sense. I expect most visitors are from NA and only few from Europe.

[Duce]

The Toaster *DID* make the Amiga in North America, just like how gaming made a name for the platform in the rest of the world.  Didn't mean it as a slight, but as far as I am concerned, it's a fact I saw with my own eyes on this side of the pond.

From personal experience, over here in North America, big box Amiga's were the norm, the wedge boxes being seen ultimately as gaming systems or to harsher extremes - "toys", at least in the scene I grew up in, and I bought a handful of Amiga systems off the showroom floor, brand new in the 90's.

Other than one or two A500's, I didn't even see anything *but* big box Miggy's over here outside of on dealer floors until the A1200 launched.  Maybe I was in a different scene, I suppose - me and all my buddies were productivity, graphics, sound and especially BBS guys with little interest in gaming and total interest in expansion, so we always went for the big boxers.  I didn't even own a wedge Amiga until 2008, actually (and despised it, tbh).  I've literally used the C= tower Amiga's more than I have the wedge systems in this neck of the woods, they just were not that sought after, and a lot of that over here is due to the Toaster and other similar things.

[weirdami]

p.s. Oh, and of course the Walker Demo!

Speaking of Walker, who has the Walker prototype these days?