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Comment by stinkytaco | Hacker News Reader

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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Amiga still powering school district heating system (2015): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9707420

Commodore 64 (Amiga's daddy) still used in auto shop in Poland (2016): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12604414

Also, the top comment in the C64 thread is priceless ;-)

Depends on what you count as real work.

This was written for the Amiga Demo Comp at Revision 2016:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvKAq3tq_LE

It got first place: http://www.pouet.net/party.php?which=1550&when=2016

That's very cool (although I did spot some of their tricks --- you can hide a multitude of rendering sins behind a nice noise filter!) --- thanks.

Do you know what that was written with? i.e. was it developed on an Amiga, or cross-compiled from a PC?

Edit: I'm mainly interested in knowing in whether people are still using the Amiga as a first-class development platform, or else treating it solely as a development target. I'd also be interested to know whether Amiga emulation technology is good enough to allow this kind of thing to be developed using emulation, rather than having to refer to the hardware all the time.

(I actually have a PowerPC code generator in the window over here...

<----

...currently producing largely broken PowerPC code as I type; I'm familiar with cross development. Also, also I think my liveness calculator is broken, and I have a horrible cold, but that's not very relevant.)

I can't speak to this particular demo, but this may give you some insight:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demo_%28computer_programming%2...

I know that several Demoscene programmers work on Windows, MacOS or Linux PCs, simply for comfort, and demos often have platform independent parts, but often need to have platform specific optimizations. The Amiga has the additional advantage of coprocessors, which makes me guess this might even be in assembly.

I don't know, but you can get a download link for the code and data files here:

http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=67182

Maybe you can find hints in there? Been scrolling through it and found references to MorphOS and " @2010-2011 by Michal Wozniak"

Those who still make Amiga demos do so with an emulator like UAE, often without access to real hardware at all.

At least that was how it was mostly done ~10 years ago.

A friend of mine deployed a small FM radio station in Bethlehem ~10 years ago using a commercial radio product that was built around yellowTAB ZETA. I thought it was great, since I've always had a soft spot for the BeOS, but I did find it odd that they were building a commercial product around an OS that was basically unsupportable.

I assume it was Tune Tracker. The thing with Tune Tracker is that it was really good, really cheap ($200 as of right now, but I recall seeing it for $99 when I was managing a college station) and how often do you need to update something that's not online?

It actually runs on Haiku now, according to their website, which makes is more supportable in the long term.

That's a really fascinating niche. Seems like because it is so specialized and falls under "equipment", people will put up with what most computer users would not. It looks like they also sell a preconfigured hardware/software bundle so you don't need to mess around with installing an OS.

It's not an amiga but I know of a person still using an NTSC character generator for a public access station. They just threw an analog to digital converter in front of it and moved on to different tasks.

In 2015, someone did: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a1...

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.

If its an Atari Falcon then it could have been made by C-Lab. The Falcon had the same 56001 DSP that the NeXT hardware had but with MIDI ports.

That DSP is good enough for running Quake 2 on Falcon, no joke:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNs6Jw4V4vlvafSs0H3Ww...

there is also writeup here http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=26775

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.

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?

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.

A little sad to hear, but still! It made it to the 21st century!

This is why I love reading HN comments. On some random Amiga post, the guy that worked with some of my music heroes just pops up and drops a comment like this. Thanks for sharing!

Pretty sure dev Paradox still tours with his amiga:

https://vimeo.com/10383653

(I love that video)

Cool, never heard of him before.

https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2781

People who still use AmigaOS day to day are today more likely to either run it emulated or use AmigaOS 4.x on an AmigaOne (PPC) rather than run a "classic" M68k Amiga.

It's mostly a hobby either way, and an expensive one. The PPC AmigaOne's can mostly (all?) run Linux as well.

> 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.

While they're a company, most of their "employees" are unpaid or paid very little, and are pretty much volunteers.

Why expensive? The best Amiga, the 500+, is still very cheap on eBay.

I loved the 500+ but the A2000, A3000 and A4000 were legendary.

I got my A500+ suped up with a 68010. That'll get you 5% in a tight loop.

You say that. But then you start on the slippery slope to this:

http://obligement.free.fr/gfx/trevordickinson_amiga_collecti...

That's part of Trevor Dickinson's collecton. The guy then went on to start a company to produce new PPC Amiga(One)'s:

http://a-eon.com/

Which from all accounts is also more of an expensive hobby than a majorly profitable business, at least when factoring in his time.

(The image is from an interview: http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwdickinson_e... )

Are you sure about Hyperion employees being unpaid or paid very little?

Fairly. There has been comments about it from insiders on various forums over the years. Note that I'm suggesting that Hyperion is exploiting them in any way - I'm sure if the money had been there that they'd have taken people on full time, but the market is miniscule at this point.

I have often wondered this as well. How can they possibly be generating enough revenue to stay in business?

I think they have other revenue streams.

I find that kind of stuff interesting as well. I thought about creating an Ask:HN thread to bring the subject up but I have the feeling that most HN readers probably keep up to date on their hardware and software.

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