For many, the Amiga was the choice home computer of the 16-bit era. The Amiga (named after the Spanish word for girlfriend) first appeared in 1985, launched by Commodore in the form of the A1000, a desktop machine with separate keyboard and mouse. It had 256K of RAM, and a further 256K which was used to hold the operating system, which had to be loaded from a 3.5″ floppy disk every time the machine was switched on. Powered by a Motorola 68000 running at a shade over 7MHz, at the time it was one of the most capable computers you could buy, thanks to the custom chipset which supplied the graphics, audio and general control of the system. At a time when PC’s could only display four colours from a limited choice, the Amiga astounded with a palette of 4096 colours, with 32 available on screen.

The secret weapon of the Amiga chipset was the Blitter, which may seem surprising considering that all it really did was move data from one part of memory to another. The reason it was such a big deal was because it could merge together three streams of data, making sprite based games very simple to achieve, and that it was able to do all this without needing the CPU to get involved. Whilst the Blitter was busy copying data around, the CPU could get on with more important tasks.

The Amiga’s operating system AmigaDOS was also a revolution in that it was capable of proper pre-emptive multi-tasking. Whilst this is taken for granted now, at the time other computers could only run a single program at a time. Microsoft Windows was still years away, and even when it was released programs had to be coded in such a way that they allowed multi-tasking to happen. AmigaDOS was much simpler to program for, as it would automatically switch between programs to ensure each task got a slice of the processor time.

The A1000 was marketed by Commodore as a business machine, but it wasn’t until the scaled down and improved A500 was released that the machine really took off. This machine had 512K of RAM, with an additional RAM pack that slotted into a bay underneath the machine to provide a then whopping 1MB of memory. It was also reduced to being a single box with built-in keyboard, and was intended for sale into the home. The A2000 on the otherhand, launched at the same time as the A500, kept the separate desktop and keyboard configuration and was marketed for business use.

Whilst the Amiga did find itself a niche as a video processing and 3D graphics creator (thanks mainly due to Newtek with their Video Toaster hardware for the A2000 and Lightwave, still a popular 3D modelling package today) it was games which most people used their Amiga for.

The Cinemaware games, for example, were graphically rich games with strong storylines. Games such as Defender of the Crown, Rocket Ranger and It Came From The Desert plundered classic movie genres, and sold in huge quantities to gamers eager to show off the power of their computer. The Bitmap Brothers were another prolific development team, producing hits such as the much loved Speedball and Xenon shoot ‘em ups.

The Amiga suffered in the end from staying the same for too long. PC’s overtook the Amiga in graphical specification with the launch of VGA graphics cards, offering 256 colours on screen at a time. The Amiga attempted to catch up with the launch of the A1200 and A4000, boasting a new chipset capable of displaying 256 colours. Unfortunately the way the Amiga’s graphics chips worked didn’t lend themselves well to the creation of fast 3D graphics, and as more and more PC games using 3D were launched, the Amiga struggled to keep up. Processor upgrades helped, but ultimately the final nail in the coffin was when Commodore finally went out of business, taking the Amiga with it. The Amiga name continued to live on as it was bought and sold between various companies, with plans for new machines to be released which never bore fruit.

You can still sample the delights the Amiga had to offer today via the emulator UAE.

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