The Beauty and the Beast of Amiga hardware

[Caius]

What is the most good looking Amiga hardware you know of? And what is the ugliest? Functionality is not an issue here. I'm talking about how it looks.

My votes:

Beauty:
A500 HD8+ (GVP)
The way in blends in naturally with the A500 is simply astounding! It's a feast upon the eyes.

Beast:
X-Surf
This is a very useful card, but just look at it! It's an ISA card bolted onto a Zorro board. It's plain ugly!

[DigitalQ]

My vote for the ugliest is the A2090 card.  I ought to scan mine in.  It had various components haphazardly placed, clearly without much forethought.  It was also ugly to use.

The most good-looking piece of Amiga hardware are the Amiga computers themselves.  In particular, the Amiga 1000, the A500, the A2000, and the Amiga 3000.  My favourite is the Amiga 2000, because it allows you to hide an awful lot of ugliness inside.  Can't say I'm too keen on how the other Amigas (A600/1200/4000/4000T) turned out.

[KThunder]

Beauty: A1000
Ugly:   A2000
Beauty: A3000
Ugly:   A3000t
Beauty: A4000
Ugly:   they broke the mold the 4000t is a beauty

All the wedge miggies are beauties but all the wires and hardware hanging off the sides and back are a bit rough on the eyes.

edit: the walker i forgot the walker i think everyone has a different opinion on this. i think its cool but not a beauty.

[ami_junki]

I think that the A1200 is still a real machine of beauty, small footprint but packs so much power ... it looks like it is saying, "touch me! you know you want to!"

[KThunder]

Put a cf drive in and a nicad battery pack and hook an lcd monitor off the back with a wireless mouse and i would completely agree.

actually i think the a500 is better looking. the 1200 is like they said "hey people are calling these things wedge computers lets make the wedgiest wedge we can make"

so they did.

[Colani1200]

beauty: A600 (perfect form-follows-function design in a nice, small case)

ugly: G-Rex PCI (mainboard -> accelerator -> logic board -> bus board... what an ugly and chaotic chain of stuff. And that DMA-enabling wire hack, running all across the board: yuck!)

[KThunder]

wouldnt the 600 be function-follows-form since they chopped off the numeric section of the keyboard (which is needed by many programs) to make it so small.

that aside i agree it is a nice comp. there should have been an a600laptop from commodore.

[McVenco]

I've always found the Merlin graphics card one of the prettiest pieces of Amigakit around. Simply because of the word "Merlin" written in silkscreen on the card and the memory modules.
I've got one of these cards myself - it's broken beyond repair but I've put it on a shelf just to look at it :-)

The ugliest pieces of hardware are any kind that are sitting in some inspirationless plastic box like this or this.
Imagine having a few of these things (sampler, MIDI interface, genlock) sitting on your desk, totally not matching eachother. That's just plain horror. :egad:

Other than that, I don't like the looks of the CybervisionPPC. I mean, what kind of shape is THAT for an expansion card?

[Colani1200]

KThunder wrote:
wouldnt the 600 be function-follows-form since they chopped off the numeric section of the keyboard (which is needed by many programs)

Such as?

EDIT: And wouldn't you rather call these programs misdesigned instead?

[madsjm]

Colani1200 wrote:

KThunder wrote:
wouldnt the 600 be function-follows-form since they chopped off the numeric section of the keyboard (which is needed by many programs)

Such as?

Deluxe Paint?

[KThunder]

there were a few others that were easier with the numeric keyboard as well as any spreadsheets etc software that has alot of numerical input.

my point wasnt that there were progs that used it but that part of the functionality was removed so i would say that functionality-followed-form with the a600 not that that is a really bad thing though since the c64 and numerous other computers never had numeric keyboards.
the 600 was mainly released as a games machine. i just wish it was possible to get an ntsc one in good condition for a reasonable price.

[Colani1200]

I get your point. Still a beauty though...  :-P

[kingkleks]

@ McVenco:

Merlin: not to mention it has "Topless" memory modules :-P

[spihunter]

I always thought that the Delfina Lite was one of the ugliest cards ever!

What was up with the shape of that?. It looks like it would break off when you tried to get it out of the slot?

[Matt_H]

spihunter wrote:
I always thought that the Delfina Lite was one of the ugliest cards ever!

What was up with the shape of that?. It looks like it would break off when you tried to get it out of the slot?

I've actually found the Delfina Lite to be one of the easiest cards to remove from a slot. There's no mechanical resistance holding it in place, so a pretty simple pull from the connector end of the board will get it loose. It's also small enough to be able to fit a hand underneath to lift from below.