Experiences of running a business on an Amiga

[dandelion]

Hi,

I've always been fascinated by people that used Amigas to help run their businesses. I'd love to hear any stories from people who either did this, or knew people that did. Especially, the software you ran, what you used them for, how reliable they were, for how many years you used Amigas and the hardware you used.

Of course, all of the above could be present tense instead of past!

[matthey]

I've always been fascinated by people that used Amigas to help run their businesses. I'd love to hear any stories from people who either did this, or knew people that did. Especially, the software you ran, what you used them for, how reliable they were, for how many years you used Amigas and the hardware you used.

I used SuperBase Professional 4 to create a POS with customer name and mailing list facilities (they didn't want inventory numbers or inventory tracking) for a bookstore probably 20 years ago. It was pretty slick requiring no mouse input but I could have created easier mailing list automation and sales tracking info instead of using the default generic database SB4 facilities. The store ended up closing before the Amiga with POS was used. They used a C= SX-64 with good but rather limited custom software as POS before wanting to move to the Amiga.

More recently, I created a web site which was used by a business for several years. They still use some of the html and images I edited on the Amiga but the look has changed a lot.

[AndyFC]

No personal experience but Paul Robinson had an Amiga 500 in his office of Lassiters Hotel in Neighbours.

A few years ago for work we used Scala on PC for an info system. I asked the technician what happened to their Amigas and they had apparently just got rid of them.

[dschallock]

I didn't use an Amiga to "run" a business, but I did use it professionally.
I was working for Digital Eclipse, and game developer around 1999-2005.  I was working as an Artist/Animator working on Game Boy Color and then Game Boy Advanced Games.  I brought my Amiga 3000 to the office and several of the the other artists and I used it for art production.  We used the a Rombo 24RT pro along with a video camera and Take2 pencil test animation software to test our animations which we will hand drew.  Then I pulled the grey scale frames into Deluxe Paint V and drew the individual sprite animations over the top.  I also used Dpaint extensively when I worked with the team porting Dragon's Lair to Game Boy Color. (not an easy feat).  I was given access to the original animation frames from Bluth Studios.  I would resize the frames using ADPro and then pull then into Deluxe paint for pallette work and clean up.  Something that was super helpful about this process in Dpaint was that I was able to isolate a single color in the pallette and frisket lock that color.  I could change a 16 color image to a 8 color image by using a dither pattern between 2 colors.... anyway... just some old tales of using the Amiga even in the new millennia to make professional products!

[Spectre660]

Accounting , Reports and Invoicing using TurboCalc.
Started with A1200, then Amithlon ,then Sam440ep-Flex now WinUAE as Sam440ep-Flex died.Postscript printout output from TurboCalc is very good using TurboPrint  .

[tonyvdb]

Used mine for at least 8 years to do wedding videos and other promotional videos (see signature). I even did a 30second commercial for TV Using the Video Toaster/flyer. The Amiga is still working today.

[agami]

From about 1992 - 1997 my brother and I ran a home-based design business mostly on a couple of expanded A1200s. We did some video titling work, some designs and prints for various media (business cards, menus, pamphlets, brochures, etc), some early web development, presentations with Scala MM. Back of office we were very fond of the Softwood products (Final Writer, Final Calc, Final Data), iBrowse and YAM for internet comms,  and we sent and received faxes with GP-Fax.

My brother continued on a PC we got in 1996 to run a vinyl-cutter, and I moved to a Mac Quadra, then later a PowerMac, and so on. We kept the A1200s for a few more years for gaming and support for opening old customer files.

Edit: I forgot to add how reliable it was; Very. These things would run for hours on end. Whether it is some complex illustration in Art Expression, some 3D image renderings in Real 3D (in some cases overnight), graphics manipulation in ImageFX, or layout and postscript printing in Pagestream. I know the OS didn't have memory protection but the programmers wrote applications that played nice.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Ha.  I was going through some old files earlier today and stumbled upon some letterhead and flyers I made for my dad's gardenscaping business in the early '90s, in DPaint and Pagestream.  Funny that, and here I didn't think I'd have anything to contribute to this thread.  A little bit of design work is a far cry from "running a business" however, LOL.  

[whabang]

Just out of curiosity. How do you guys plan ahead for hardware failure etc? Do you have spare hardware lying around?

[agami]

Just out of curiosity. How do you guys plan ahead for hardware failure etc? Do you have spare hardware lying around?

Yep, I have full double redundancy for both the A4000 and that A1200. And there are some parts and other bits like external floppy drives I'm not using.
I only have the one CD32 though. It's boxed up and stored away. I have an SX1 so I guess that's another "A1200" if I'm desperate.

[screetch]

I still work occasionally on MorphOS. I am the editor of a paper magazine about robots in France.



I work mainly Orygin Web Browser with Google Docs. But lately, the connection to Google products is more difficult and I had to buy a Linux computer to complete. I worked on Morphos exclusively until 2013.

I come exclusively for MorphOS (I'd like to) would require a more powerful computer (i have a PowerMac G4) with a faster OWB who can display more tabs.

I miss also a photo editor in the spirit of The Gimp and video editing software I turn to illustrate our website.

[TheMagicM]

Back in the late 90's, my friends dad had a small auto shop where they did oil changes, tune-ups etc.  They wanted something that prints receipts, keeps track of sales, customers, inventory, prints reports on various things etc.   So I wrote something in AmigaBASIC and "compiled it" with AC Basic (I think, dont remember if that was correct) that did just that.  They ran it on an Amiga 2000 for a few years.  I still have the source code also.. cool little piece of software.


EDIT: Changed ABasic to AC Basic..I think that was the compilers name.

[JimS]

Back in the day when I worked at an Amiga dealer, we had a number of customers doing videos on Amigas... we even did a few ourselves, including a commercial for the store than ran on local TV. Kinda crude, since it was done in Videoscape in the pre-Toaster days. ;-)  
We did have a customer who did 3 weekly newspapers - one of those mainly classified ad freebies - using Amigas. They used a couple of 3000s for designing display ads, and a 2000 to manage the classifieds. I wrote them a CanDo deck to manage the ads. All the ads went into a database and when they went to press it would print a file for each paper in some word processor format containing just it's ads. Good times. ;-)

[tonyvdb]

Just out of curiosity. How do you guys plan ahead for hardware failure etc? Do you have spare hardware lying around?

At one point I had a second 4000 with a toaster system in it as a backup but sold it a few years back. To be honest the main one I still have today has been working flawlessly for the most part and I seem to be able to find replacement parts when needed. I'm at the point now where if it dies I will then part it out and call it good but for now it's still running when I fire it up.

[Jpan1]

When I was studying Art and design at college in England, the TV studies department who were using Genlocks used with Amigas and it was affiliated with the arts department. I produced some of my final pieces with an Amiga. Technically, it was not a business and more of an educational tool which the college had invested in. Not many knew about Amigas and computer graphic capabilities and so the examiner were quite satisfied with my D-paint animation and presentation, maybe even impressed . I even showed some of the beauty therapists at college how to digitally paint on digitized photos on an Amiga and change the colour palette of make up to get an impression of how the final result might look. I was using Digi view for digitizing which was lent to me by the college to get photos digitized. As a business the college was interested in Amigas as cutting edge technology, where as the art department were more interested in creative applications of this new tech. But for me Amigas weren't for spreadsheets and organizational system control. I wanted to discover new ways to make music and do art through a digital medium, whilst playing games and getting into the demo scene at the same time