Amiga

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/photos/commodore_amiga-500.jpg

The Commodore Amiga 500 was the low-end successor of the Amiga 1000 and the predecessor of the Amiga 1200. It was the main competitor of the Atari 520 STf (there was a great "war" between the owners of these two computers).

It used a special system for its RAM configuration: 512 KB of Chip RAM which could be accessed by the Paula and Denise custom chips (sound & I/O and video, respectively) and Fast RAM which could be accessed only by the CPU.

The 68000 bus had two connectors, an external and an internal one. An extension card could be added through the internal connector on bottom of case and offered 512 KB of additional RAM and a battery-backed clock.

The Amiga 500 was followed by the Amiga 500+. The Amiga 500+ had the same characteristics as the Amiga 500 except it had 1MB of Chip RAM and used the AmigaOS 2.04, this version of Amiga OS needed 512 KB of ROM. The Amiga A500+ was the shortest lived Amiga, lasting only 6 months before being replaced by the A600. Ironic that a machine designed to be cheaper and sold 'below' the 500+ should replace it and be sold for the same price(!)

Both versions could be connected to a TV set or to a video monitor with a better resolution. Two Amigas could be networked using a null modem cable.

This computer was, and is still used a lot in the "demoscene" to create cool videoclips with breaking graphics and sounds!


 * http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=65
 * http://www.amiga.com/
 * http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/amiga500/
 * Aminet
 * Amiga Web Directory