
Surprise Amiga Workbench 3.1 Update, 20 Years Later - erickhill
https://amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=136
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stinkytaco
Does anyone here still use Amiga for actual work? I ask for two reasons:

1\. I'm always interested when very old systems are still in production for
one reason or another and how you are doing it.

2\. I wonder what motivated Hyperion to release this bug fix or, indeed, how
they even managed to muster resources to do so. I can't quite figure out how
they stay running.

My story is that in a small cable access TV station, they had an Amiga for
Video Toaster and I think some automated PSA type announcements at certain
hours. Fun to see it there, though it's been some time since I visited. I
can't imagine with the shift to HD that it's running any more. I also know a
small local radio station that uses Tune Tracker on BeOS for radio automation,
which reminds me that I should check on Haiku's progress.

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jfoutz
A lot of TV stations used them, but i think you're right. They probably all
got replaced with the shift to HD.

I'm pretty sure Fatboy Slim still uses an Atari ST as part of his setup.

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simonthorntonN1
We (Norman & I) stopped using the Atari in the studio about 10 years ago (it
sits in the corner unloved). Ableton & Protools these days.

Simon.

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opsunit
I've always wondered what guys like you did for a backup strategy. Is the
"master" for Renegade Master or I'm Alive only on some shitty DD floppy
somewhere?

What about Liam Howlett? Aphex Twin?

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JonnieCache
Tracks got bounced (ie. rendered/recorded/exported) to DAT tapes.

The record wasn't just stored in the sampler and computer, it was in the state
of the whole studio, at a minimum the mixing desk the sampler was plugged into
but also likely various external effects units. Digging out the floppy
wouldn't recreate the record as it was released.

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qwertyuiop924
Amiga was a pretty cool system, and the fanbase had a devotion matched perhaps
only by the lispm people.

By the way, if you're interested in the Amiga, go watch Stuart Brown (aka
XboxAhoy)'s excellent documentary on FPS on the Amiga:
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=Tv6aJRGpz_A](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Tv6aJRGpz_A)

Actually, just go watch his whole backlog if you have any interest in computer
history whatsoever: It's all quality work (and I do mean quality: well
researched, and polished enough to go on television), and absolutely
fascinating.

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Jaruzel
If you want a good documentary on the Amiga (and also another one on 8/16 bit
gaming) you can't go wrong with From Bedrooms to Billions:

[http://www.frombedroomstobillions.com/](http://www.frombedroomstobillions.com/)

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with this, just a paying customer (totally
worth it!), but I do know the Producers.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Thanks! I can always use another good documentary.

In return, I can recommend _The KGB, The Computer, and Me_ , based on the
excellent book _The Cuckoo 's Egg_.

I can also recommend all of the documentaries done by Jason Scott ( _Get Lamp_
, _BBS: The Documentary_ , _Going Cardboard_ (although he only edited that:
He's director on the rest), and _DEFCON: The Documentary_ )

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snvzz
I love AmigaOS, so I find disgusting that they're still holding the VCS
repository of this 20yr+ code hostage, and selling pointless updates to it.

Also, I much prefer the old logo to that stupid boingball.

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egypturnash
The Boing ball is a long-standing Amiga icon; IIRC a lot of the early
promotional photos of the system sported a badge with it instead of the
rainbow checkmark.

(This is from dusty memories of being the spoilt kid who owned the third Amiga
sold in New Orleans. I no longer have any of those old issues of
Commodore/Run/Ahoy/Compute's Gazette/Amigaworld that these would have shown up
in.)

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puzzle
The rainbow checkmark was one of the rebranding initiatives after the
assimilation by Commodore. It was a nod to the five colour rainbow stripes
next to the company logo on the C64/Vic 20 case and on all peripherals,
monitors and drives included. The logo on the C64 packaging also was a full
rainbow gradient, but in the case of the Amiga it was a reminder of the 4096
colour palette.

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kyberias
What is it that makes these people hold on to the source code of AmigaOS? It's
not lucrative: probably the costs of making these updates are much higher than
any possible revenue? It must be economically practically impossible to hire
engineers to do this sort of work. It sounds like some kind of hobby for some
people.

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mobiuscog
Not everything is about money.

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kyberias
I didn't say it was about money. It most probably isn't "about money". I was
asking what is the motivation since there are some obvious costs.

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my123
Those older systems were moddable and programmable by the end user. Newer
machines have to deal with security, and complexity has increased by orders of
magnitude.

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amiga-workbench
The lack of memory protection on the Amiga is one of the things which made the
operating system so incredibly extensible and hackable.

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Annatar
Reading through the trove of documentation, I'm so confused:

if I have a Motorola 68030 accelerated Amiga, what is the latest AmigaOS which
will run on my hardware (A1200)?

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Jaruzel
Version 3.9.

You have to install 3.1 first. Then get a [legal] copy of 3.9 and install
that. On every cold boot up, it patches a newer kickstart ROM image into RAM,
and then does a soft reboot, so that the newer stuff on 3.9 works properly.

More info here ->
[http://www.vesalia.de/e_os39.htm](http://www.vesalia.de/e_os39.htm)

~~~
Annatar
Thank you for the information. How does one install it, if it's on an optical
medium? I don't have a CD-ROM or a DVD drive on my Amiga, only network and
NFS.

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muterad_murilax
Why now all of a sudden?

