Hall of Fame: Amiga 500, the computer that showed consoles how it's done

[SysAdmin]

Opinion piece from Stuff.tv

Quoted from the site.

"20 years since I last used an Amiga 500, the thing I still think about most is balls. Bouncing balls.

Your mate would turn up at your house after tea with a blue diskette in his blazer pocket. The label would be torn off and the legend “DEMO” scrawled across it. You’d slot the disk in and boot up. Moments (OK, several minutes) later, a cacophony of crunchy, 16-bit rave would be blasting from your speakers and, on screen, a chrome ball would be floating over a checkered board."

Read more via the link below.

http://www.stuff.tv/hall-fame-amiga-500/feature

[JimS]

One thing about the A500 that cracked me up was an animation. I saw it in a theater in one of those computer animation festival films popular at the time. Right in between the stuff rendered out on Crays or SGI workstations was this animation made by a guy with an A500 in his bedroom. Very cool.

[save2600]

Hate to sound technical, but the "rave" blasting through the speakers was 8-bits wide. If only it were 16-bit!  :lol:

[Mrs Beanbag]

8 bits out the left speaker, 8 bits out the right speaker. There, 16 bits.

[psxphill]

Right in between the stuff rendered out on Crays or SGI workstations was this animation made by a guy with an A500 in his bedroom. Very cool.

You can render on anything if you wait long enough, but an A500 isn't going to look as good as something on an SGI because the a500 is likely rendered to 320x240 64/HAM8
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yJNGwIcLtw

[JimS]

You can render on anything if you wait long enough, but an A500 isn't going to look as good as something on an SGI because the a500 is likely rendered to 320x240 64/HAM8

The Amiga animation wasn't rendered at all. It was hand drawn in Deluxe Paint. It was just a hoot to see it up on the big screen holding it's own with the "big dogs" in CGI, in terms of audience enjoyment if not ray tracing horsepower.

[save2600]

8 bits out the left speaker, 8 bits out the right speaker. There, 16 bits.

Good one!  :laughing:

[commodorejohn]

Hate to sound technical, but the "rave" blasting through the speakers was 8-bits wide. If only it were 16-bit!  :lol:

Bah, if it was 16-bit it wouldn't have had the neat crunchy sound it did. There's a reason people still swear by the old 12-bit samplers; sometimes you want that color to your sound.

[Djole]

You can render on anything if you wait long enough, but an A500 isn't going to look as good as something on an SGI because the a500 is likely rendered to 320x240 64/HAM8
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yJNGwIcLtw

A500 can render in any resolution and depth but it cant display it

[hbarcellos]

AFAIK, you can implement ray tracing algorithms in pretty much anything!
Even a MSX could render Toy Story 3 in 4k resolution.
Of course, that might take a BILLION years, but, it should be possible...

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Wow, that article is riddled with errors.  Still nice to see anything written about the Amiga, however!  

[JimS]

AFAIK, you can implement ray tracing algorithms in pretty much anything!
Even a MSX could render Toy Story 3 in 4k resolution.
Of course, that might take a BILLION years, but, it should be possible...

But then, if you came back in a Billion years, the screen would just have "42" on it. ;-)

[gertsy]

8 bits out the left speaker, 8 bits out the right speaker. There, 16 bits.

Where's that dancing banana smiley?

[psxphill]

A500 can render in any resolution and depth but it cant display it

A rendered animation that you can't display is a little pointless.
 
Moving it to another computer means you're not using an A500. Using a DCTV is arguable.

[persia]

SGI went belly up in 2009, they had long before lost the title of top graphics machines...

You can render on anything if you wait long enough, but an A500 isn't going to look as good as something on an SGI because the a500 is likely rendered to 320x240 64/HAM8
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yJNGwIcLtw