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Amiga: Amiga Operating System
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Amiga is a personal computer designed especially for high-resolution, fast response graphics and multimedia applications, especially games. Its microprocessor is based on Motorola's 680x0 line of processors. It was one of the first computers to offer true color. It comes with its own operating system, AmigaOS. Since its first appearance from Commodore Business Machines in 1985, Amiga has become a synonym for fast, high-resolution graphics and best known for its quickly responsive user interface and suitability for playing action games. AmigaOS handles 32-bit instructions and uses preemptive multitasking.
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The Amiga computer has long been the subject of intense nostalgia in the hearts of anyone who owned one. Released in 1985, only a year after the original Macintosh, the Amiga featured vivid color graphics, 4-channel stereo sampled sound, and a graphical, preemptive multitasking operating system that seemed to come from years in the future. Yet the Amiga languished in obscurity, meriting barely a footnote in most books on the history of the personal computer. In the story that arose of the battle between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs for domination of the computing universe, there was seemingly no room for a third protagonist.
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The "Amiga Operating System" originally targeted the desktop computing market. It was built around tightly integrated hardware and software. The hardware was originally based on proprietary chips running the Motorola 68000 series of processors. The AmigaOS was designed from its inception as a true multi-threaded, multi-tasking, multi-media operating system. This combination of hardware and software produced a very fast, powerful and easy to use computing platform. Over 6 million Amiga computers were sold.
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The classic Amiga Operating System consisted of Kickstart (Including System API) and Workbench. In the Amiga 1000 model, Kickstart was first loaded from a floppy disk, followed by Workbench, or other bootable disc. Later models held Kickstart (and system API) on a ROM, improving start up times. Models could be upgraded by changing the ROM.
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The Amiga was originally designed by a small company called Amiga Corporation, and initially intended to be a next generation video game machine, but was later redesigned into a general purpose computer [4][5]. Before the machine was released into the market the company was purchased by Commodore. The first model, later known as the Amiga 1000, was released in 1985 as a successor to the Commodore 64 and as a rival to the Atari ST. Commodore later released several new Amiga models, both for low-end gaming use and high-end productivity use. Throughout the 1980s, the Amiga's combination of hardware and operating system software offered great value, but by the mid-nineties other platforms, most of all the PC, reduced or eliminated this advantage.
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The Amiga's unique combination of superior multimedia technology and operating system ... allowed it to become the grounds on which new forms of creativity, talent and art could express themselves. In the second half of the 1980s, on the Amiga, the demoscene flourished.
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Amiga Operating System