If you didnt have a Amiga....

[FastRobPlus]

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Also Multimedia would of lagged or maybe never existed. Most likely it would of caught up but nobody seems to care that the Amiga did in 1985 what PCs did in 1990+.
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Heck, maybe Amiga never forms a computer but the technology is used in the first wave of multimedia video and audio cards, beating EGA, VGA, AdLib, and Soundblaster, and becoming the defacto standard for all mainstream PC clones.

Then maybe NewTek would have formed and made Lightwave and the Toaster for PC a few years earlier (out of market need) and Multimedia would have become mainstream faster and we'd be FURTHER along than we are now.  

You just never know...

If there's one thing I've learned from SciFi, it's that playing with the timestream can be dangerous!  

[Waccoon]

If not for the Amiga, multimedia would not have existed until the advent of the PlayStation.  The PSX borrowed more from arcade machines and high-end CGI boards than the PC, and that really turned the industry upside down to where people were programming with standard APIs (the CGI board itself), rather than hard-coding everything with the CPU in assembly.  Most early CGI boards (like the one in Hard-Drivin'), were just standard paralleled CPUs rathter than purpose-built graphics chips.

I really think PC multimedia was more inspired by arcade machines and Nintendo than by the Amiga.  PSX is what prompted the invention of the 3D accelerator.

Then again, remember that CD-ROMs were considered "multimedia" in the PC industry.  Graphics and audio were pathetic on their own.  :-)

MMX is a good example of what went wrong with the PC.  Six years of work on multimedia MMX extenstions for the CPU died overnight when the 3DFX cards came out.  It really is sad how long it took "custom chips" to work their way into the PC, but it would have happened eventually.

[FastRobPlus]

Waccoon wrote:
If not for the Amiga, multimedia would not have existed until the advent of the PlayStation.

 :-?

[ShadesOfGrey]

Originally my response was based on "if" the Amiga had never existed.  But now that the question has opened up to alternatives to the Amiga...  I'd still say NeXT/OpenStep, but  I'd add the Amiga inspired BeOS.  I loved 4.5 and am dying to try 5.0 (it's just ashame my hardware isn't supported) , it's a shame that Palm didn't ressurect it.  I'm not too sure about Zeta, is it scam or a legitimately licensed continuitation???  I'm looking forward to Haiku though.  I must say that if I were going to use any "PC" OS as an alternative to Windows, Hiaku would be it.  Linux is just to cumbersome for my tastes.

I probably also would have checked out the Atari ST family of computers.  Unlike NeXT/OpenStep, which I've used work-a-likes of (LiteStep on Windows & WindowMaker on Linux), I have absolutely no exposure to Atari PCs.  But I supose my fascination for the Amiga would have translated well to the Atari.

[BoingBoss]

If I did not have an Amiga computer, I would have an Atari ST (the second best computer of the '80s).   :-D

[ShawnDude]

Well, I would probablly be using my Commodore 65 :evilgrin:, instead of keeping it stored away and collecting dust.

[BoingBoss]

Hi ShawnDude,

Don't you mean Commodore 64?   :roll:

[TjLaZer]

Doomy, There was a Commodore 65 computer, a prototype.  Unless he just made a typo.

I guess when you were fiddling around with Windows 3.1/95 and playing Doom, you never heard about it. LOL

It was never released, but there are prototypes floating around.

The point of all this is, if the Amiga never existed we would of ended up with some different kind of computer.   I think it most likey would of been the Commodore 65 or a varient of it.  It was the next logical step.  Without the Amiga 1000, the Atari 520ST would probably not have seen the light of day.  I am sure Atari would of came out with a 130XE varient, or maybe the ST was in the works the whole time?  Not sure, was not there.  But from what I have read, the ST was a last minute ditch effort to get a 16-bit computer with a GUI out the door to beat Commodore's buying and release of the infamous Amiga 1000.  Atari used off the shelf PC parts to throw together the ST.  That is why it was release first.  It was a great computer too.  I own several models as well.

[B00tDisk]

I went from the C128 (and thence from the 64, which was begat by the VIC-20) to the Amiga because I was a Commodore fan.  For a view of what might have been, have a look here:

http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/

[Piru]

@DoomMaster

Commodore 65

[Holley]

I dug out my C128 today, it's met with an unfortunate end and is now a little flatter than it used to be :-(

If anyone has a non-working C128 with intact case & keyboard please PM me!!


Anyway, with 512k of ram the C128 would have been entertaining if it had had all it's capabilities tapped!  Imagine running 16 colour Geos with MagicGeos installed to pretty it up, lol.

Reading up on the C65 specifics it owed alot to the A500 design for the trapdoor, so that doesn't count! :-P

[ShawnDude]

Nope, its one of the few C65's, got it back sometime in the early 90's from Grapevine Group just around the time Commodore went under.  They were selling it for about $120 then, and it they were trying to get it to work on the american power and frequency standard since they were designed as pal systems, but they couldnt get it to work so they sent me a letter telling me they would refund my money or they could send me one anyway.  I decided what the heck, might as well get one and see what I could do.  I first redesigned my A500 power supply to plug into the C65 and hooked the video output to my 1084, and it booted up nicely.  Then as with most things I have, I tore it apart to see it's innards and such, my only problem was when I put it back together I managed to pinch the keyboard cable in the casing which damaged the contacts inside it. :bigcry: The system works great, just the keyboard don't work too good, and its a little hard finding a replacement.  Some reason, my system didn't have a tag or such on it with the usual FCC warnings and model/serial numbers.  I have seen 2 of them go on ebay throughout the past 2 or so years for over $1,500 and $1,750!  Wouldn't be too bad to get that from it, but then again it would be hard to part with.