History of Amiga

Ars Technica has the beginning of what looks to be a great series on the history of the Amiga computer.
The Amiga 500 (example shown above) is probably my favorite computer of all that I’ve owned, built, or re-built. I lusted after it during high school, purchased one just before heading off to college, and used it for so many things while in my first few years of university. I was amazed at the multi-tasking, and I learned a lot about ray tracing just goofing around with some of the programs that came available during that time. While at the University of Washington, I started up an Amiga user’s club, which was great fun. In the middle of my time at university, I took the machine apart and hacked on the internals a bit. I wanted to modify the machine to have a small, separate keyboard kind of like the IBM PC-AT. The project involved oak, stained plexiglass, solder, and… let’s just say it didn’t completely work out. It worked, but – what a damn mess. 🙂
I’ve met a few of the people involved with the Amiga development over the years and I always feel like such a fan boy when I meet them. It’s an amazing thing about our industry that our “legends” are still around. Be sure to meet them and thank them if you used their computers of played their games! 🙂 (Speaking of which, isn’t California Extreme coming up?)