Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: hishamk on December 07, 2011, 12:27:06 PM
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Part of their Platform Studies series.
http://www.amazon.com/Future-Was-Here-Commodore-Platform/dp/0262017202
Can't wait.
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Awesome! I've read Racing the Beam (Atari 2600) in the same series which was, albeit a bit incoherent, a very enjoyable read.
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Awesome! I've read Racing the Beam (Atari 2600) in the same series which was, albeit a bit incoherent, a very enjoyable read.
Racing the Beam was pretty awesome. It's interesting to see how this one on Amiga turns out considering it's a much more complicated system.
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As much as I appreciate the research efforts that went into On the Edge, the final product suffered from the lack of oversight of a professional publisher - typos, spelling errors, and other inconsistencies. These problems seemed amplified in the second edition, so much so that I haven't been able to get through it.
So I'm looking forward to the polish that MIT can bring to an Amiga book... and I've just preordered it.
That being said, I hope that On the Edge (and its upcoming Amiga-focused follow-up) get picked up by a professional publisher for a third edition. The world needs more memories of the Amiga.
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Part of their Platform Studies series.
http://www.amazon.com/Future-Was-Here-Commodore-Platform/dp/0262017202
Can't wait.
Woohoo...it's shipping; got this a few minutes ago:
Greetings Hisham Khalifa!
We thought you'd like to know that we shipped your items, and that this completes your order. Your order is being shipped and cannot be changed by you or by our customer service department.
Your estimated delivery date is:
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
:)
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Man, I was hoping to get the Kindle version but it's not ready until the middle of next month. :(
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Man, I was hoping to get the Kindle version but it's not ready until the middle of next month. :(
I hope its good. i just got a copy for my vacation in a few weeks.
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Woohoo...it's shipping; got this a few minutes ago:
Greetings Hisham Khalifa!
We thought you'd like to know that we shipped your items, and that this completes your order. Your order is being shipped and cannot be changed by you or by our customer service department.
Your estimated delivery date is:
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
:)
Hmmm, my Amazon order says it is being packaged or something. Trying to cancel as it says they will charge me nearly $10 shipping but the item description says it qualifies for free shipping. Don't get that... If They send it anyway, oh well, if my cancel request is honored then I'll reorder with the free shipping.
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Trying to cancel as it says they will charge me nearly $10 shipping but the item description says it qualifies for free shipping.
Did you order other stuff (that also qualifies for free shipping) to get the order price over $25?
The "free shipping" only works if you buys $25 worth or more of items that qualify for free shipping..
desiv
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Hmmm, my Amazon order says it is being packaged or something. Trying to cancel as it says they will charge me nearly $10 shipping but the item description says it qualifies for free shipping. Don't get that... If They send it anyway, oh well, if my cancel request is honored then I'll reorder with the free shipping.
I almost got caught up into that as well. You needed to select the standard fedex for $3.99 and not the 2 day for $10(which was selected by default).
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Im waiting for the release of 'commodore the amiga years'http://www.amazon.com/Commodore-Amiga-Years-Brian-Bagnall/dp/0973864990/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335153582&sr=1-1
There's a proper atari history book coming out too with proper interviews and more.Im interested in reading about jack tramiels tenure at atari in particular though that might not be covered till the second volumehttp://www.amazon.com/Commodore-Amiga-Years-Brian-Bagnall/dp/0973864990/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335153582&sr=1-1
Commodore a company on the edge was great.I ripped through it.
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Im waiting for the release of 'commodore the amiga years'http://www.amazon.com/Commodore-Amiga-Years-Brian-Bagnall/dp/0973864990/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335153582&sr=1-1
There's a proper atari history book coming out too with proper interviews and more.Im interested in reading about jack tramiels tenure at atari in particular though that might not be covered till the second volumehttp://www.amazon.com/Commodore-Amiga-Years-Brian-Bagnall/dp/0973864990/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335153582&sr=1-1
Commodore a company on the edge was great.I ripped through it.
What atari history book are you talking about? I would be interested in that too but both of your links are to the Bagnall book on Commodore.
I am glad to see the MIT book is coming. Preordered it when I first heard about it. So few books on Atari and Commodore from those days and with so much computer history being written with them left out these are the only way to keep the memory of their contributions alive.
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My copy of the MIT book should be here Thursday. I'm looking forward to reading it.
Also, the Atari book mentioned above sounds interesting. I too would like to read that.
Commodore and Atari (plus many more) played such important parts of computer history which the media tends to leave out.
-P
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What atari history book are you talking about? I would be interested in that too but both of your links are to the Bagnall book on Commodore.
I am glad to see the MIT book is coming. Preordered it when I first heard about it. So few books on Atari and Commodore from those days and with so much computer history being written with them left out these are the only way to keep the memory of their contributions alive.
Sorry here's the linkhttp://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ataribook/atari-history-book-volume-1-beginnings-to-1984?ref=search
It was partly funded via kickstarter.Looks proper.
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I ordered the book!
Looks interesting, nice addition to my retro books.
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Hmmm, my Amazon order says it is being packaged or something. Trying to cancel as it says they will charge me nearly $10 shipping but the item description says it qualifies for free shipping. Don't get that... If They send it anyway, oh well, if my cancel request is honored then I'll reorder with the free shipping.
I received the package today, and amazon were cool enough to refund the shipping fee! Neat! They list it as a $29.something original price and discount it to less than that, i'm not sure if the discount was listed when i preordered or not back in february. it might or might not have met the $25 line when i ordered and then they changed it. dunno
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I just got the Book. It looks really interesting so far.
I skimmed through the section on how the Boing Ball works.
Very interesting for me as I have coded my own boing balls for android and amiga classic. I had no idea the original used color cycling...
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Very interesting for me as I have coded my own boing balls for android and amiga classic. I had no idea the original used color cycling...
It's not a secret that it uses color cycling. I don't know how you missed it.
You should be able to do the entire boing ball demo with a copper list and no blitter at all.
The ball in the even bitplanes and the background in the odd bitplanes would allow you to scroll them independently. With the shaddow generated using EHB.
If you need more colours for the ball then you'd need to preshift the background grid, but as it's pretty uniform then you'd only need one line of each and duplicate it with a copper list too.
A boing ball in ham would be interesting as you'd be cycling the base colours, but the modify ones would stay the same.
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It's not a secret that it uses color cycling. I don't know how you missed it.
I never really looked at it that closely. Other than moving the ViewPort around, I knew it was using some kind of trick as it does not use much CPU at all. I'm sure if I would have captured the screen i would have figured it out pretty quickly.
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I too received my copy and it looks nice.
I wish the pictures were in color in the book. I also wish they had more pictures. :-)
It looks interesting...Will have to report back when I've read of it.
-P
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I got my copy here in Canada (ordered from Amazon.ca) today, Thursday, April 26th. I was surprised by this because the Canadian Amazon site said it was still a pre-order when I ordered it only a few days ago (I was also pleased by the very fast shipping).
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I wish the pictures were in color in the book. I also wish they had more pictures. :-)
would you also like it slightly larger than a book?
Maybe you are looking for a magazine :)
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would you also like it slightly larger than a book?
Maybe you are looking for a magazine :)
Well, he has a point. There is one page that has a comparison between a 24-bit image and DPaints 256-colour rendering of the same image. Since the images are black and white and small, you really can't see any meaningful difference. The caption under the images even says you should visit the books website to view the colour versions of the images.
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I just bought this as an ebook from Google and am really enjoying it. It's much, much better written than "Racing the Beam", but obviously aimed at a similar geek demographic. The descriptions of the Amiga's hardware quirks and the ways in which they were exploited by talented programmers are first rate. Maher doesn't just regurgitate material from the Internet either. To give an example of his attention to detail, the section on hardware-banging game programming techniques is backed up by his own reconstruction of DMA's Menace engine, with full C source code provided on his website. One of the best things about the book is its objectivity. Although Maher's appreciation for Amiga's design shines through, he is refreshingly candid about its shortcomings too. Like the Concorde, the Amiga was a brilliant but flawed harbinger of a future that never was.
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I just bought this as an ebook from Google...
What? It does look like it's on Google as an e-book already.
Not yet for Amazon..
And it appears to cost less too.. (well, only pennies.. thought it was more..)
Haven't bought an e-book from Google before.. Have to do some checking..
desiv
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My copy arrived the other day and I quickly burned it!!!
How dare the author try to get the truth out, how dare the author challenge the mass media when they say that Apple and Microsoft invented modern multi-media computing?!?!
If you want to know how it all really happened, watch Pirates of Silicon Valley, there is nothing to learn from this book, move along, move along!
I'm off to order more copies and burn them too, the world must be left in the dark!!!
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I'm off to order more copies and burn them too, the world must be left in the dark!!!
Make sure you delete all the ebooks too! ;)
I'm pretty upset about the Google thing. I want it for my Kindle, but that's still two weeks off and Kindle won't read Google ebooks.
Google's preview is even way longer than the Amazon preview.
Based on the preview, I haven't seen anything I wasn't aware of already, but it was an interesting read. I'm going to buy it somewhere, that's for sure.
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Make sure you delete all the ebooks too! ;)
I'm pretty upset about the Google thing. I want it for my Kindle, but that's still two weeks off and Kindle won't read Google ebooks.
Alright, mail me your ebook readers and I'll take care of that! ;)
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Got my copy yesterday, loving it so far
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Got my copy yesterday, loving it so far
Thanks everyone for letting us know this was available.
Got mine Friday!
I'm interesting in reading it. I liked Racing the Beam despite some editing problems......
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Thanks everyone for letting us know this was available.
Got mine Friday!
I'm interesting in reading it. I liked Racing the Beam despite some editing problems......
I'm on chapter 4 of this book and I have noticed that it's very well written and edited. I also purchased "The Rise and Fall of Commodore" when it first came out, and although I enjoyed it very much, there were obvious editing problems, spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and some hyperbole with the first edition of that book.
I've only notice one very small editing issue with this book in four chapters (missing word in a sentence). The book is written very carefully, remains factual, provides references, and goes into depth on technical issues and software after first putting them in historical context. It's an entertaining and information book. Worth the $17.95 CAD I paid for the hardcover version.
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I finally got the book on my Kindle! Just an case anyone else needs to read Google books on Kindle, go get this app: http://www.indiebound.org/reader
Seems to work really well for me.
I'm just now through chapter 5 and knowing quite a bit about the internals at NewTek, I question the validity of some of the "facts" in the book. The author seems to have the impression that NewTek was anti-Amiga, which is far from true. If anything, NewTek was the last "major" Amiga company left on the platform
Commodore was a very strange company, apparently made of nothing but typical middle management types. Just having sales wasn't enough, they had to have credit for them. (more on that later)
At one point, NewTek had a very good relationship with Commodore, it was mutually beneficial. Commodore's only technical complaint was that we tended to shut down the OS to get more CPU cycles, RAM and more accurate timing. From Digi-View on, the hardware products needed it, so it was done whether they liked it or not.
We figured out early on that Amiga supply and configuration was a big problem. We had more demand for Toasters than there were Amigas to be had in the channel and they were finicky enough that some dealers and end users couldn't set them up properly, giving a bad first impression of the Toaster itself, hurting sales.
So we worked out a deal with Commodore to distribute them ourselves. For a period of time we were actually shipping more Amigas than Commodore was. Because of legalities plus distributor and sales manager egos the decision was made to brand the NewTek shipped systems with Video Toaster stickers placed over the Amiga logo. Since we were doing all the hard work, taking the financial risk of prebuying all those computers and getting little in return for moving most of the company's stock, why not get extra branding for ourselves?
The other plus for NewTek was that the computer religious wars were already in full swing. PC and Mac users would rarely buy into Amiga (then the 3rd runner) but if you covered up the logo and booted straight into an application? Suddenly it's not an Amiga and they're just fine with that. Eventually remote control software even allowed them to feel like their PC or Mac was actually useful in the production room.
You'd think selling so many computers would make you the darling of Commodore, but the sales staff eventually became envious. I believe this coincided with a major management changeover. They weren't getting the credit for our sales, so the shipments started "slipping" and the distribution contract eventually got dropped. Our dealers (and ourselves) were back to getting them only though the normal distribution channel like everyone else.
Not long after that, Commodore finally mismanaged themselves (and the rest of us) into a hole. I'm not saying that killed Amiga, but I'm sure that losing our guaranteed sales didn't help the bottom line and their going under very nearly did kill us. It's hard to sell expensive add-on's for computers that aren't made anymore. For some reason users don't feel comfortable in investing thousands of dollars when the computer company is in bankruptcy. Go figure.
This is also about the time that the Flyer was released, a huge investment risk for a company that "was ashamed of it's Amiga roots". That was sold well into the next decade when an Amiga could be found to house it, with NewTek pushing it at every major tradeshow well beyond when all the sane companies had moved on. In fact up until last year, we still did tech support and repairs on all our Amiga products.
And yes, NewTek DID try to buy Commodore. The combination of unreasonable valuation and the legal quagmire caused by the numerous creditors killed that idea. Had that deal gone through I'm sure we'd be looking at a much different situation today, as would many of the creditors.
There was even somewhat of an Amiga clone built (similar to a Draco) along with our own minimal Amiga-like OS to run it. The result wasn't significantly better than the Amiga Toaster/Flyer and the writing was on the wall that CPU based effects would be possible (the plan B, which became VT[2] many many years later) so the clone was never released.
I'm worried that this massive post won't even work, so I'll stop here. I just wanted to clear up at least some of the missing pieces.