Retrocomputing
In my adolescenzaci have 2 computers that have marked the relationship with the computer: the Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga. Today they are remembered mainly for the entertainment aspect, but in reality are 2 computers that have marked the history and evolution of a science negl'anni 80.
The Commodore 64 was one of the first personal computer to enter homes and small offices, expandable up to four disk drives, floppy disks with 5 "and 1 / 4, used to manage archives with the client records, and for the word processing.
The Commodore Amiga had a rather different role: it's definitely been an earthquake in the computing landscape of the time when most PCs were based on the 8088 XT, 8-bit machines that could see up to 4 colors (remember the EGA ), it had run the MS-DOS (version 2.x or 3.x at the time). Here was to get a computer with a processor with 16-bit internal architecture already at 32, backed by a number of dedicated chips for audio and graphics, can get to 4096 colors, with an operating system already thought object-oriented, multitasking and graphics totally!
Unfortunately, Commodore chose the easy way out, ie to push the game, instead of proposing heavily the Amiga as a computer professional: a deep breath of relief from all the major x86 players in the world! Despite this, the Amiga was able to carve out a significant share of the business market, especially for video applications and still today, after more than 20 years, there are some regional private television stations that use the Amiga as a titler with genlock efficient solutions and economic. Many developers are dedicated to producing software, often freeware or shareware, so that for the Amiga in 1992, Urban Dominik Müller created and put online the first ftp server (operated by an Amiga 3000UX) dedicated to the collection of these programs was born Aminet , a collection of free software that surpassed the 30,000 files in 1996 becoming the largest collection of freely distributable software available online.
If I could pass on a bit of excitement in speaking of the Amiga, maybe you will be interested in reading the account of the history of computers in a somewhat 'most comprehensive site amiga.it .
Until 1999 I was a decent activist in the Amiga world: I have collaborated on the development of software for Fidonet networks (the Internet when it was not so popular ones), I attended an association founded online translation software for the Amiga ( ATO ) and I started to collect information on compatible hardware for a project called Amiga Amiga Hardware Gallery . I kept the link to this project, even if you have not updated for several more years, as well as my old site is still online, but not updated.
For those wishing to experiment with the Amiga, you can download an emulator rather complete, made by Italian software house, Cloanto , the product is called AmigaForever and can be downloaded from the homonymous site .
