Misplaced Pages

#510489

117-456: Samplitude is like most DAWs in that it allows the user to: Samplitude uses the term "objects" for what other DAWs call "clips" (Pro-Tools, et al.) or "items" (Reaper, et al.). In Samplitude, an "object" is a graphical representation of a piece of audio or MIDI data that appears on a Track in the Arranger window. If the object is an Audio object, it will look like a standard graphic of a Wav file. If

234-477: A GEMDOS file system which became part of Atari TOS (for "The Operating System", colloquially known as the "Tramiel Operating System"). This gave the ST a fast, hierarchical file system , essential for hard drives , and provided programmers with function calls similar to MS-DOS . The Atari ST character set is based on codepage 437 . After six months of intensive effort following Tramiel's takeover, Atari announced

351-466: A 16-bit bus, which reduces performance and cost. In another cost-reduction measure, Atari shipped the Falcon in an inexpensive case much like that of the ST and ST . Aftermarket upgrade kits allow it to be put in a desktop or rack-mount case, with the keyboard separate. Released in 1992, the Falcon was discontinued by Atari the following year. In Europe, C-Lab licensed the Falcon design from Atari and released

468-576: A 6-bit volume control per channel. The analog output is connected to a low-pass filter, which filters out high-frequency aliasing when the Amiga is using a lower sampling rate (see Nyquist frequency ). The brightness of the Amiga's power LED is used to indicate the status of the Amiga's low-pass filter. The filter is active when the LED is at normal brightness, and deactivated when dimmed (or off on older A500 Amigas). On Amiga 1000 (and first Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000 model),

585-406: A 68k (a 68040 or 68060) and a PowerPC (603 or 604) CPU, which are able to run the two CPUs at the same time and share the system memory. The PowerPC CPU on PowerUP boards is usually used as a coprocessor for heavy computations; a powerful CPU is needed to run MAME for example, but even decoding JPEG pictures and MP3 audio was considered heavy computation at the time. It is also possible to ignore

702-480: A Boolean toggle state can be left clicked whilst the menu is kept open with the right button, which allows the user – for example – to set some selected text to bold, underline and italics in one visit to the menus. The mouse plugs into one of two Atari joystick ports used for joysticks , game paddles , and graphics tablets . Although compatible with analog joysticks , Atari-style digital joysticks became standard. Unusually, two independent mice can be connected to

819-468: A PowerPC native microkernel and software. Later Amiga clones featured PowerPC processors only. The custom chipset at the core of the Amiga design appeared in three distinct generations, with a large degree of backward-compatibility. The Original Chip Set (OCS) appeared with the launch of the A1000 in 1985. OCS was eventually followed by the modestly improved Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) in 1990 and finally by

936-621: A continuous, unbroken rectangle on the Track. However, objects can also be "split", creating multiple smaller objects from a larger one, or "glued", which combines multiple smaller objects into one larger one. Samplitude Pro X2 Suite also includes a variety of high-quality built-in effects, including the AM-munition Compressor/Limiter, the AM-Suite (Analogue Modeling Suite), and Vandal (Guitar and Bass Amp simulator). Samplitude also includes

1053-495: A driver available on Aminet that allows two of the serial ports to be driven at 115,200 bits/s . The serial card used the 65CE02 CPU clocked at 3.58 MHz . This CPU was also part of the CSG 4510 CPU core that was used in the Commodore 65 computer. Amiga has three networking interface APIs: Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and

1170-404: A few months later and were included in new machines and as an upgrade for older machines. Atari originally intended to include GEM's GDOS (Graphical Device Operating System), which allows programs to send GEM VDI ( Virtual Device Interface ) commands to drivers loaded by GDOS. This allows developers to send VDI instructions to other devices simply by pointing to it. However, GDOS was not ready at

1287-551: A letter by Gilman Louie , head of Spectrum HoloByte . He stated that he had been warned by competitors that releasing a game like Falcon on the ST would fail because BBSs would widely disseminate it. Within 30 days of releasing the non- copy protected ST version, the game was available on BBSs with maps and code wheels . Because the ST market was smaller than that for the IBM PC, it was more vulnerable to piracy which, Louie said, seemed to be better organized and more widely accepted for

SECTION 10

#1733092816511

1404-716: A list price of US$ 999 (equivalent to about $ 2,800 in 2023) in the US, BYTE hailed it as the first computer to break the $ 1000 per megabyte price barrier. Compute! noted that the 1040ST is the first computer with one megabyte of RAM to sell for less than $ 2,500. A limited number of 1040STFs shipped with a single-sided floppy drive. Initial sales were strong, especially in Europe, where Atari sold 75% of its computers. West Germany became Atari's strongest market, with small business owners using them for desktop publishing and CAD. To address this growing market segment, Atari introduced

1521-446: A little under one year. Atari had intended to release the 130ST with 128 KB of RAM and the 260ST with 256 KB. However, the ST initially shipped without TOS in ROM and required booting TOS from floppy, taking 206 KB RAM away from applications. The 260ST was launched in Europe on a limited basis. Early models have six ROM sockets for easy upgrades to TOS. New ROMs were released

1638-465: A low-cost desktop publishing package. A custom blitter coprocessor improved some graphics performance, but was not included in all models. Developers wanting to use it had to detect its presence in their programs. Properly written applications using the GEM API automatically make use of the blitter. In late 1989, Atari Corporation released the 520ST and 1040ST (also written STE), enhanced version of

1755-574: A new design with an integrated hard-drive enclosure. The final model of ST computer is the Falcon030. Like the TT, it is 68030-based, at 16 MHz, but with improved video modes and an on-board Motorola 56001 audio digital signal processor . Like the Atari STE , it supports sampling frequencies above 44.1 kHz; the sampling master clock is 98340 Hz (which can be divided by a number between 2 and 16 to get

1872-415: A new game platform. Kaplan hired Miner to run the hardware side of the newly formed company, "Hi-Toro". The system was code-named "Lorraine" in keeping with Miner's policy of giving systems female names, in this case the company president's wife, Lorraine Morse. When Kaplan left the company late in 1982, Miner was promoted to head engineer and the company relaunched as Amiga Corporation. The Amiga hardware

1989-421: A new soft sampler, introduced window docking and introduced spectral editing. Samplitude Pro X2 introduced VCA faders, routing single tracks to multiple outputs, zPlane Elastique time-stretching algorithms were introduced. Pro X2 also introduced support for VST3.0 plugin format. DN-e1, an analog synthesizer was added. Samplitude Pro X3 updated Samplitude's tempo warp functionality, introduced Melodyne support via

2106-510: A predecessor to Blender . Poor marketing and the failure of later models to repeat the technological advances of the first systems resulted in Commodore quickly losing market share to the rapidly dropping prices of IBM PC compatibles (which gained 256 color graphics in 1987), as well as the fourth generation of video game consoles . Commodore ultimately went bankrupt in April 1994 after a version of

2223-497: A series of technical upgrades known as the ECS and AGA , which added higher resolution displays among many other improvements and simplifications. The Amiga line sold an estimated 4,910,000 machines over its lifetime. The machines were most popular in the UK and Germany, with about 1.5 million sold in each country, and sales in the high hundreds of thousands in other European nations. The machine

2340-443: A set of libraries . The software libraries may include software tools to adjust resolution , screen colors, pointers and screenmodes. The standard Intuition interface is limited to display depths of 8 bits , while RTG makes it possible to handle higher depths like 24-bits . The sound chip, named Paula, supports four PCM sound channels (two for the left speaker and two for the right) with 8-bit resolution for each channel and

2457-709: A single double-sided one, to avoid alienating early adopters . Some software uses formats which allow the full disk to be read by double-sided drives but still lets single-sided drives access side A of the disk. Many magazine coverdisks (such as the first 30 issues of ST Format ) were designed this way, as were a few games. The music in Carrier Command and the intro sequence in Populous are not accessible to single-sided drives, for example. STs with double-sided drives can read disks formatted by MS-DOS , but IBM PC compatibles can not read Atari disks because of differences in

SECTION 20

#1733092816511

2574-678: A single resolution of 640 × 400 at 71.25 Hz. The attached monitor determines available resolutions, so each application either supports both types of monitors or only one. Most ST games require colour with productivity software favouring the monochrome. The Philips CM8833-II was a popular color monitor for the Atari ST. Atari initially used single-sided 3.5 inch floppy disk drives that could store up to 360 KB. Later drives were double-sided and stored 720 KB. Some commercial software, particularly games, shipped by default on single-sided disks, even supplying two 360 KB floppies instead of

2691-449: Is based on CP/M-68K, a direct port of CP/M to the 68000. By 1985, CP/M was becoming increasingly outdated; it did not support subdirectories, for example. Digital Research was also in the process of building GEMDOS, a disk operating system for GEM, and debated whether a port of it could be completed in time for product delivery in June. The decision was eventually taken to port it, resulting in

2808-467: Is the first Atari with PCM audio; using a new chip, it added the ability to play back 8-bit (signed) samples at 6258 Hz, 12,517 Hz, 25,033 Hz, and even 50,066 Hz, via direct memory access (DMA). The channels are arranged as either a mono track or a track of LRLRLRLR... bytes. RAM is now much more simply upgradable via SIMMs . Two enhanced joystick ports were added (two normal joysticks can be plugged into each port with an adapter), with

2925-622: The Amiga 1000 . They were first offered for sale in August, but by October only 50 had been built, all of which were used by Commodore. Machines only began to arrive in quantity in mid-November, meaning they missed the Christmas buying rush. By the end of the year, they had sold 35,000 machines, and severe cashflow problems made the company pull out of the January 1986 CES. Bad or entirely missing marketing, forcing

3042-488: The Amiga 500 , was introduced in 1987 along with the more expandable Amiga 2000 . The Amiga 3000 was introduced in 1990, followed by the Amiga 500 Plus , and Amiga 600 in March 1992, followed by the Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000 . Estimates of Amiga sales figures vary, with several older sources presenting values between 4.85 (purely Commodore Amiga sales) and 5.29 million (including Escom sales). While early advertisements cast

3159-716: The Atari ST —released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes . Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor , the Amiga differs from its contemporaries through the inclusion of custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprites and a blitter , and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS . The Amiga 1000 was released in July 1985, but production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986. The best-selling model,

3276-527: The Atari Video Computer System 's TIA . When complete, the team began developing a much more sophisticated set of chips, CTIA , ANTIC and POKEY , that formed the basis of the Atari 8-bit computers . With the 8-bit line's launch in 1979, the team once again started looking at a next generation chipset. Nolan Bushnell had sold the company to Warner Communications in 1978, and the new management

3393-406: The C language, and the entire system became AmigaOS. The system was enclosed in a pizza box form factor case; a late change was the introduction of vertical supports on either side of the case to provide a "garage" under the main section of the system where the keyboard could be stored. The first model was announced in 1985 as simply "The Amiga from Commodore", later to be retroactively dubbed

3510-581: The Mega STE , is an STE in a grey Atari TT case that had a switchable 16 MHz, dual-bus design (16-bit external, 32-bit internal), optional Motorola 68881 FPU , built-in 1.44 MB "HD" 3 1 ⁄ 2 -inch floppy disk drive, VME expansion slot, a network port (very similar to that used by Apple's LocalTalk ) and an optional built-in 3 1 ⁄ 2 " hard drive. It also shipped with TOS 2.00 (better support for hard drives, enhanced desktop interface, memory test, 1.44 MB floppy support, bug fixes). It

3627-505: The Motorola 68000 's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals. The ST was sold with either Atari's color monitor or less expensive monochrome monitor . Color graphics modes are available only on the former while the highest-resolution mode requires the monochrome monitor. Some models can display the color modes on a TV. In Germany and some other markets, the ST gained a foothold for CAD and desktop publishing . With built-in MIDI ports, it

Magix Samplitude - Misplaced Pages Continue

3744-516: The Motorola 68000 . The Atari ST design was completed in five months in 1984, concluding with it being shown at the January 1985 Consumer Electronics Show. A custom sound processor called AMY had been in development at Atari, Inc. and was considered for the new ST computer design. The chip needed more time to complete, so AMY was dropped in favor of a commodity Yamaha YM2149F variant of the General Instrument AY-3-8910 . Soon after

3861-814: The OpalVision card was popular, although less featured and supported than the Video Toaster. Low-cost time base correctors (TBC) specifically designed to work with the Toaster quickly came to market, most of which were designed as standard Amiga bus cards. Various manufacturers started producing PCI busboards for the A1200, A3000 and A4000, allowing standard Amiga computers to use PCI cards such as graphics cards, Sound Blaster sound cards, 10/100 Ethernet cards, USB cards, and television tuner cards. Other manufacturers produced hybrid boards that contained an Intel x86 series chip, allowing

3978-675: The Red Book standard to which it conforms, included only the CD-burning features of Samplitude. The last releases still in version 5 were in June 1999 after which SEK'D sold the Samplitude line to MAGIX. Samplitude Professional 7.0 was released at the end of 2002. This version included support for ASIO drivers, VST plug-ins (including VST Instruments) with plug-in delay compensation, and hardware control surfaces. It came with complete video recording, editing and authoring software. In 2005 Version 8.0

4095-579: The central processing unit (CPU). This architecture gave the Amiga a performance edge over its competitors, particularly for graphics-intensive applications and games. The architecture uses two distinct bus subsystems: the chipset bus and the CPU bus. The chipset bus allows the coprocessors and CPU to address "Chip RAM" . The CPU bus provides addressing to conventional RAM, ROM and the Zorro II or Zorro III expansion subsystems. This enables independent operation of

4212-436: The 2000s. AmigaOS has influenced replacements, clones, and compatible software such as MorphOS and AROS . Currently Belgian company Hyperion Entertainment maintains and develops AmigaOS 4 , which is an official and direct descendant of AmigaOS 3.1 – the last system made by Commodore for the original Amiga computers. Jay Miner joined Atari, Inc. in the 1970s to develop custom integrated circuits , and led development of

4329-595: The 520ST at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 1985. InfoWorld assessed the prototypes shown at computer shows as follows: Pilot production models of the Atari machine are much slicker than the hand-built models shown at earlier computer fairs; it doesn't look like a typical Commodore 64-style, corner-cutting, low-cost Jack Tramiel product of the past. Atari unexpectedly displayed

4446-558: The 68k CPU and run Linux on the PPC via project Linux APUS, but a PowerPC-native AmigaOS promised by Amiga Technologies GmbH was not available when the PowerUP boards first appeared. 24-bit graphics cards and video cards were also available. Graphics cards were designed primarily for 2D artwork production, workstation use, and later, gaming. Video cards are designed for inputting and outputting video signals, and processing and manipulating video. In

4563-511: The A600 and A1200. They revert the system to temporarily boot in Kickstart v1.3. The keyboard on Amiga computers is similar to that found on a mid-80s IBM PC: Ten function keys, a numeric keypad, and four separate directional arrow keys. Caps Lock and Control share space to the left of A. Absent are Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys: These functions are accomplished on Amigas by pressing shift and

4680-483: The AGA chipset (A1200 and A4000) also have non-EHB 64, 128, 256, and 262144 ( HAM8 Mode ) color modes and a palette expanded from 4096 to 16.8 million colors . The Amiga chipset can genlock , which is the ability to adjust its own screen refresh timing to match an incoming NTSC or PAL video signal. When combined with setting transparency, this allows an Amiga to overlay an external video source with graphics. This ability made

4797-636: The ARA plugin format which provides deep integration in Samplitude. Samplitude Pro X4 comes bundled with Sound Forge Pro 11 as well as Izotope's Mastering and Repair Suite. Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore from 1985 until 1994, with production by others for a number of years afterwards. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 16/32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. These systems include

Magix Samplitude - Misplaced Pages Continue

4914-619: The Amiga 1000, v1.2 and v1.3 for the A500, Kickstart v2.1 on A500+, Kickstart v2.2 for A600 and dual ROMs for Kickstart v3.0 and 3.1 for A1200 and A4000. After Commodore's demise there have been new Kickstart v3.1 ROMs made available for both the A500 and A600 Computers. Amiga Software is mostly backward compatible, but v2.1 ROMs and newer differ slightly, which can cause software glitches with earlier programs. To help address this and to get earlier programs to work with later Kickstart ROMs, some tools have been produced such as RELOKIK 1.4 and MAKE IT WORK! for

5031-463: The Amiga brand to Amiga, Inc. , without having released any products. Amiga, Inc. licensed the rights to sell hardware using the AmigaOne brand to Eyetech Group and Hyperion Entertainment . In 2019, Amiga, Inc. sold its intellectual property to Amiga Corporation. The Amiga has a custom chipset consisting of several coprocessors which handle audio, video, and direct memory access independently of

5148-453: The Amiga had almost none. After Atlanta COMDEX, The New York Times reported that "more than 100 software titles will be available for the [ST], most written by small software houses that desperately need work", and contrasted the "small, little-known companies" at Las Vegas with the larger ones like Electronic Arts and Activision , which planned Amiga applications. Trip Hawkins of Electronic Arts said, "I don't think Atari understands

5265-500: The Amiga packaged as a game console, the Amiga CD32 , failed in the marketplace. Escom of Germany, who acquired Commodore properties, continued developing the Amiga line for just under two more years until it also went bankrupt. Since the demise of Commodore and Escom, various groups have marketed successors to the original Amiga line, including Eyetech , ACube Systems Srl and A-EON Technology who have produced AmigaOne computers since

5382-406: The Amiga popular for many applications, and provides the ability to do character generation and CGI effects far more cheaply than earlier systems. This ability has been frequently utilized by wedding videographers, TV stations and their weather forecasting divisions (for weather graphics and radar), advertising channels, music video production, and desktop videographers. The NewTek Video Toaster

5499-494: The Amiga to control up to eight million digitally controlled external audio, lighting, automation, relay and voltage control channels spread around a large theme park, for example. See Amiga software for more information on these applications. Other devices included the following: The Commodore A2232 board provides seven RS-232C serial ports in addition to the Amiga's built-in serial port. Each port can be driven independently at speeds of 50 to 19,200 bits/s . There is, however,

5616-451: The Amiga to emulate a PC. PowerPC upgrades with Wide SCSI controllers, PCI busboards with Ethernet, sound and 3D graphics cards, and tower cases allowed the A1200 and A4000 to survive well into the late nineties. Expansion boards were made by Richmond Sound Design that allow their show control and sound design software to communicate with their custom hardware frames either by ribbon cable or fiber optic cable for long distances, allowing

5733-480: The Atari 520ST in June 1985. In March 1987, the two companies settled the dispute out of court in a closed decision. The lead architect of the new computer project at Tramel Technology and Atari Corporation was ex-Commodore employee Shiraz Shivji , who previously worked on the Commodore 64 's development. Different CPUs were investigated, including the 32-bit National Semiconductor NS32000 , but engineers were disappointed with its performance, and they moved to

5850-403: The Atari buyout, Microsoft suggested to Tramiel that it could port Windows to the platform, but the delivery date was out by two years. Another possibility was Digital Research , which was working on a new GUI-based system then known as Crystal, soon to become GEM . Another option was to write a new operating system, but this was rejected as Atari management was unsure whether the company had

5967-564: The C-Lab Falcon Mk I, identical to Atari's Falcon except for slight modifications to the audio circuitry. The Mk II added an internal 500 MB SCSI hard disk; and the Mk X further added a desktop case. C-Lab Falcons were also imported to the US by some Atari dealers. As with the Atari 8-bit computers , software publishers attributed their reluctance to produce Atari ST products in part to—as Compute! reported in 1988—the belief in

SECTION 50

#1733092816511

6084-459: The Centronics printer port can be used for joystick input, and several games used available adaptors that used the printer socket, providing two additional 9-pin joystick ports. The ST supports a monochrome or colour monitor. The colour hardware supports two resolutions: 320 × 200 pixels, with 16 of 512 colours; and 640 × 200, with 4 of 512 colours. The monochrome monitor was less expensive and has

6201-431: The Commodore 64 in the low-end market. These new designs were released in 1987 as the Amiga 2000 and Amiga 500 , the latter of which went on to widespread success and became their best selling model. Similar high-end/low-end models would make up the Amiga line for the rest of its history; follow-on designs included the Amiga 3000 / Amiga 500 Plus / Amiga 600 , and the Amiga 4000 / Amiga 1200 . These models incorporated

6318-600: The North American market, the NewTek Video Toaster was a video effects board that turned the Amiga into an affordable video processing computer that found its way into many professional video environments. One well-known use was to create the special effects in early series of Babylon 5 . Due to its NTSC -only design, it did not find a market in countries that used the PAL standard, such as in Europe. In those countries,

6435-723: The ST at Atlanta COMDEX in May. Similarities to the original Macintosh and Tramiel's role in its development resulted in it being nicknamed Jackintosh . Atari's rapid development of the ST amazed many, but others were skeptical, citing its "cheap" appearance, Atari's uncertain financial health, and poor relations between Tramiel-led Commodore and software developers. Atari ST print advertisements stated, "America, We Built It For You", and quoted Atari president Sam Tramiel: "We promised. We delivered. With pride, determination, and good old ATARI know how". But Jack Tramiel admitted that sales of its earlier 8-bit systems were "very, very slow", Atari

6552-513: The ST or Amiga, and the majority of software companies were hesitant to support another platform beyond the IBM PC , Apple, and Commodore 64 . Philippe Kahn of Borland said, "These days, if I were a consumer, I'd stick with companies [such as Apple and IBM] I know will be around ". At Las Vegas COMDEX in November 1985, the industry was surprised by more than 30 companies exhibiting ST software while

6669-473: The ST or the Amiga. John C. Dvorak wrote that the public saw both Commodore and Atari as selling "cheap disposable" game machines, in part because of their computers' sophisticated graphics. The original 520ST case design was created by Ira Velinsky, Atari's chief Industrial Designer. It is wedge-shaped, with bold angular lines and a series of grilles cut into the rear for airflow. The keyboard has soft tactile feedback and rhomboid-shaped function keys across

6786-525: The ST with improvements to the multimedia hardware and operating system. It features an increased color palette of 4,096 colors from the ST's 512 (though the maximum displayable palette without programming tricks is still limited to 16 in the lowest 320 × 200 resolution, and even fewer in higher resolutions), genlock support, and a blitter coprocessor (stylized as "BLiTTER") which can quickly move large blocks of data (particularly, graphics data) around in RAM. The STE

6903-544: The ST. After a meeting with Atari, one analyst said, "We've seen marketing strategies changed before our eyes". Tramiel's poor reputation influenced potential software developers. One said, "Dealing with Commodore is like dealing with Attila the Hun. I don't know if Tramiel will be following his old habits ... I don't see a lot of people rushing to get software on the machine." Large business-software companies like Lotus , Ashton-Tate , and Microsoft did not promise software for either

7020-509: The ST1 at Comdex in 1986. Renamed to Mega, it includes a high-quality detached keyboard, a stronger case to support the weight of a monitor, and an internal bus expansion connector. An optional 20 MB hard drive can be placed below or above the main case. Initially equipped with 2 or 4 MB of RAM (a 1 MB version, the Mega 1, followed), the Mega machines can be combined with Atari's laser printer for

7137-571: The SubGenius ). The ST was less expensive than most contemporaries, including the Macintosh Plus , and is faster than many. Largely as a result of its price and performance factor, the ST became fairly popular, especially in Europe where foreign-exchange rates amplified prices. The company's English advertising slogan of the era was "Power Without the Price". An Atari ST and terminal emulation software

SECTION 60

#1733092816511

7254-459: The actual sampling frequencies). It can play the STE sample frequencies (up to 50066 Hz) in 8 or 16 bit, mono or stereo, all by using the same DMA interface as the STE, with a few additions. It can both play back and record samples, with 8 mono channels and 4 stereo channels, allowing musicians to use it for recording to hard drive. Although the 68030 microprocessor can use 32-bit memory, the Falcon uses

7371-513: The application. The absence of Num lock frees space for more mathematical symbols around the numeric pad. Like IBM-compatible computers, the mouse has two buttons, but in AmigaOS, pressing and holding the right button replaces the system status line at the top of the screen with a Maclike menu bar . As with Apple's Mac OS prior to Mac OS 8 , menu options are selected by releasing the button over that option, not by left clicking. Menu items that have

7488-537: The appropriate arrow key. The Amiga keyboard adds a Help key, which a function key usually acts as on PCs (usually F1). In addition to the Control and Alt modifier keys, the Amiga has 2 "Amiga" keys, rendered as "Open Amiga" and "Closed Amiga" similar to the Open/Closed Apple logo keys on Apple II keyboards. The left is used to manipulate the operating system (moving screens and the like) and the right delivers commands to

7605-706: The chip can address only 16 MB of physical memory and is implemented using a 16-bit arithmetic logic unit and has a 16-bit external data bus , so 32-bit computations are transparently handled as multiple 16-bit values at a performance cost. The later Amiga 2500 and the Amiga 3000 models use fully 32-bit, 68000-compatible processors from Motorola with improved performance and larger addressing capability. CPU upgrades were offered by both Commodore and third-party manufacturers. Most Amiga models can be upgraded either by direct CPU replacement or through expansion boards. Such boards often included faster and higher capacity memory interfaces and hard disk controllers. Towards

7722-569: The chipset. Tramiel countered by suing Amiga Corp. on August 13, 1984, seeking damages and an injunction to bar Amiga (and effectively Commodore) from producing anything with its technology. The lawsuit left the Amiga team in limbo during mid-1984. Commodore eventually moved forward, with plans to improve the chipset and develop an operating system . Commodore announced the Amiga 1000 with the Lorraine chipset in July 1985, but it wasn't available in quantity until 1986. The delay gave Atari time to deliver

7839-417: The company's operations. Among these was the long-overdue cancellation of the now outdated PET and VIC-20 lines, as well as a variety of poorly selling Commodore 64 offshoots and the Commodore 900 workstation effort. Another one of the changes was to split the Amiga into two products, a new high-end version of the Amiga aimed at the creative market, and a cost-reduced version that would take over for

7956-646: The computer as an all-purpose business machine, especially when outfitted with the Sidecar IBM PC compatibility add-on, the Amiga was most commercially successful as a home computer , with a wide range of games and creative software. It also found a niche in video production with the Video Toaster hardware and software, and Amiga's audio hardware made it a popular platform for music tracker software. The processor and memory capacity enabled 3D rendering packages, including LightWave 3D , Imagine , and Traces,

8073-522: The console and home computer departments, in July. As executives and engineers left Commodore to join Tramel Technology, Commodore responded by filing lawsuits against four former engineers for infringement of trade secrets . The Tramiels did not purchase the employee contracts with the assets of Atari, Inc. and re-hired approximately 100 of the 900 former employees. Tramel Technology soon changed its name to Atari Corporation . Amid rumors that Tramiel

8190-495: The development team to move to the east coast, notorious stability problems and other blunders limited sales in early 1986 to between 10,000 and 15,000 units a month. 120,000 units were reported as having been sold from the machine's launch up to the end of 1986. In late 1985, Thomas Rattigan was promoted to COO of Commodore, and then to CEO in February 1986. He immediately implemented an ambitious plan that covered almost all of

8307-415: The early 1990s. Commodore UK's Kelly Sumner did not see Sega or Nintendo as competitors, but instead credited their marketing campaigns which spent over £40 million or $ 60,000,000 (equivalent to $ 130,000,000 in 2023) for promoting video games as a whole and thus helping to boost Amiga sales. In spite of his successes in making the company profitable and bringing the Amiga line to market, Rattigan

8424-460: The end of Commodore's time in charge of Amiga development, there were suggestions that Commodore intended to move away from the 68000 series to higher performance RISC processors, such as the PA-RISC . Those ideas were never developed before Commodore filed for bankruptcy. Despite this, third-party manufacturers designed upgrades featuring a combination of 68000 series and PowerPC processors along with

8541-479: The entire ST computer line in 1993, shifting the company's focus to the Jaguar video game console. The Atari ST was born from the rivalry between home computer makers Atari, Inc. and Commodore International . Jay Miner , one of the designers of the custom chips in the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit computers , tried to convince Atari management to create a new chipset for a video game console and computer. When his idea

8658-557: The essentialFX Suite, which are 10 plug-ins using high quality algorithms that have low resource demands. Samplitude Pro X2 Suite also includes the Independence Sampler Workstation that includes 70GB of content (Samplitude Pro X2 only 12GB). In 1992 the first version of Samplitude, written for the Amiga platform, was completed. It was mainly a sample editor with 24-bit audio processing. One year later, Samplitude Pro II came with hard disk recording . In 1995 Samplitude

8775-440: The existence of a "higher-than-normal amount of software piracy". That year, WordPerfect threatened to discontinue the Atari ST version of its word processor because the company discovered that pirate bulletin board systems (BBSs) were distributing it, causing ST-Log to warn that "we had better put a stop to piracy now ... it can have harmful effects on the longevity and health of your computer". In 1989, magazines published

8892-547: The football for Charlie Brown , you can believe Jack Tramiel"; another said that because of its experience with Tramiel, "our interest in Atari is zero, zilch". Neither Atari nor Commodore could persuade large chains like ComputerLand or BusinessLand to sell its products. Observers criticized Atari's erratic discussion of its stated plans for the new computer, as it shifted between using mass merchandisers , specialty computer stores, and both. When asked at COMDEX, Atari executives could not name any computer stores that would carry

9009-502: The full 32-bit CPUs of the 68000 family such as the Motorola 68020 and Motorola 68030 , almost always with 32-bit memory and usually with FPUs and MMUs or the facility to add them. Later designs feature the Motorola 68040 or Motorola 68060 . Both CPUs feature integrated FPUs and MMUs. Many CPU accelerator cards also had integrated SCSI controllers. Phase5 designed the PowerUP boards ( Blizzard PPC and CyberStorm PPC ) featuring both

9126-421: The future direction of the company. A number of Commodore employees followed him to his new company, Tramel Technology. This included a number of the senior technical staff, where they began development of a 68000-based machine of their own. In June, Tramiel arranged a no-cash deal to take over Atari, reforming Tramel Technology as Atari Corporation . As many Commodore technical staff had moved to Atari, Commodore

9243-441: The joystick ports; some games, such as Lemmings , were designed to take advantage of this. The Amiga was one of the first computers for which inexpensive sound sampling and video digitization accessories were available. As a result of this and the Amiga's audio and video capabilities, the Amiga became a popular system for editing and producing both music and video. Many expansion boards were produced for Amiga computers to improve

9360-435: The keyboard. An "FM" variant includes an RF modulator allowing a television to be used instead of a monitor. The trailing "F" and "FM" were often dropped in common usage. In BYTE magazine's March 1986 cover photo of the system, the name plate reads 1040ST but in the headline and article it's simply "1040ST". The 1040ST is one of the earliest personal computers shipped with a base RAM configuration of 1 MB. With

9477-405: The layout of data on track 0. Atari upgraded the basic design in 1986 with the 1040STF, stylized as 1040ST : essentially a 520ST with twice the RAM and with the power supply and a double-sided floppy drive built-in instead of external. This adds to the size of the machine, but reduces cable clutter. The joystick and mouse ports, formerly on the right side of the machine, are in a recess underneath

9594-406: The loan to be repaid at the end of the month, otherwise Amiga would forfeit the Lorraine design to Atari. During 1983, Atari lost over $ 1 million a week due to the combined effects of the crash and the ongoing price war in the home computer market. By the end of the year, Warner was desperate to sell the company. In January 1984, Jack Tramiel resigned from Commodore due to internal battles over

9711-479: The new connectors placed in more easily accessed locations on the side of the case. The enhanced joystick ports were re-used in the Atari Jaguar console and are compatible. The STE models initially had software and hardware conflicts resulting in some applications and video games written for the ST line being unstable or even completely unusable, primarily caused by programming direct hardware calls which bypassed

9828-618: The object is a MIDI object, it will appear as a series of square dots that represent the MIDI notes contained therein. Through the Object Editor, various controls and effects (Pan, Volume, Invert Phase, Timestretch, Pitchshift, VST plugins, Magix Plugins, etc.) can be applied at the Object level as opposed to being applied at the Track level. Objects can be created in Samplitude either by importing them or by recording. Objects created by recording appear as

9945-412: The official logo of Escom subsidiary Amiga Technologies. CES attendees had trouble believing the computer being demonstrated had the power to display such a demo and searched in vain for the "real" computer behind it. A further developed version of the system was demonstrated at the June 1984 CES and shown to many companies in hopes of garnering further funding, but found little interest in a market that

10062-480: The operating system. Furthermore, even having a joystick plugged in would sometimes cause strange behavior with a few applications (such as the WYSIWYG word-processor application 1st Word Plus ). Sleepwalker was the only STE-only game from a major publisher, but there were STe enhancements in games such as Another World , Zool and The Chaos Engine , as well as exclusives from smaller companies. The last STE machine,

10179-552: The partly 32-bit Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) in 1992. Each chipset consists of several coprocessors that handle graphics acceleration , digital audio, direct memory access and communication between various peripherals (e.g., CPU, memory and floppy disks). In addition, some models featured auxiliary custom chips that performed tasks such as SCSI control and display de-interlacing. All Amiga systems can display full-screen animated planar graphics with 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 ( EHB Mode ), or 4096 colors ( HAM Mode ). Models with

10296-525: The performance and capability of the hardware, such as memory expansions, SCSI controllers, CPU boards, and graphics boards. Other upgrades include genlocks , network cards for Ethernet , modems , sound cards and samplers, video digitizers , extra serial ports , and IDE controllers. Additions after the demise of Commodore company are USB cards. The most popular upgrades were memory, SCSI controllers and CPU accelerator cards. These were sometimes combined into one device. Early CPU accelerator cards used

10413-509: The power LED had no relation to the filter's status, and a wire needed to be manually soldered between pins on the sound chip to disable the filter. Paula can read arbitrary waveforms at arbitrary rates and amplitudes directly from the system's RAM , using direct memory access (DMA), making sound playback without CPU intervention possible. Although the hardware is limited to four separate sound channels, software such as OctaMED uses software mixing to allow eight or more virtual channels, and it

10530-520: The required expertise. Digital Research was fully committed to the Intel platform, so a team from Atari was sent to the Digital Research headquarters to work with the "Monterey Team", which comprised a mixture of Atari and Digital Research engineers. Atari's Leonard Tramiel oversaw "Project Jason" (also known as The Operating System) for the ST series, named for designer and developer Jason Loveman. GEM

10647-506: The right to add a keyboard and market the complete computer, designated the 1850XLD. After leaving Commodore International in January 1984, Jack Tramiel formed Tramel (without an "i") Technology, Ltd. with his sons and other ex-Commodore employees and, in April, began planning a new computer. Interested in Atari's overseas manufacturing and worldwide distribution network, Tramiel negotiated with Warner in May and June 1984. He secured funding and bought Atari's consumer division, which included

10764-623: The software business. I'm still skeptical about its resources and its credibility." Although Michael Berlyn of Infocom promised that his company would quickly publish all of its games for the new computer, he doubted many others would soon do so. Spinnaker and Lifetree were more positive, both promising to release ST software. Spinnaker said that "Atari has a vastly improved attitude toward software developers. They are eager to give us technical support and machines". Lifetree said, "We are giving Atari high priority". Some, such as Software Publishing Corporation , were unsure of whether to develop for

10881-512: The subsidiary company Amiga Technologies. They re-released the A1200 and A4000T, and introduced a new 68060 version of the A4000T. Amiga Technologies researched and developed the Amiga Walker prototype. They presented the machine publicly at CeBit, but Escom went bankrupt in 1996. Some Amigas were still made afterwards for the North American market by QuikPak, a small Pennsylvania -based firm who

10998-437: The subsystems. The CPU bus can be much faster than the chipset bus. CPU expansion boards may provide additional custom buses. Additionally, "busboards" or "bridgeboards" may provide ISA or PCI buses. The most popular models from Commodore, including the Amiga 1000 , Amiga 500 , and Amiga 2000 , use the Motorola 68000 as the CPU. From a developer's point of view, the 68000 provides a full suite of 32-bit operations, but

11115-472: The successor to the company's 8-bit home computers . The initial model, the Atari 520ST , had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available in July. It was the first personal computer with a bitmapped color graphical user interface , using a version of Digital Research 's GEM interface / operating system from February 1985. The Atari 1040ST , released in 1986 with 1 MB of memory,

11232-588: The system hardware was being readied for production. At this time the operating system (OS) was not as ready, and led to a deal to port an OS known as TRIPOS to the platform. TRIPOS was a multitasking system that had been written in BCPL during the 1970s for the PDP-11 minicomputer , but later experimentally ported to the 68000. This early version was known as AmigaDOS and the GUI as Workbench. The BCPL parts were later rewritten in

11349-503: The time the ST started shipping and was included in software packages and with later ST machines. Later versions of GDOS support vector fonts . A limited set of GEM fonts were included in the ROMs, including the ST's standard 8x8 pixel graphical character set. It contains four characters which can be placed together in a square, forming the face of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs (the figurehead of the Church of

11466-435: The top. It is an all-in-one unit, similar to earlier home computers like the Commodore 64 , but with a larger keyboard with cursor keys and a numeric keypad. The original has an external floppy drive (SF354) and AC adapter . Starting with the 1040ST, the floppy drive and power supply are integrated into the base unit. The ports on the 520ST remained largely unchanged over its history. Because of its bi-directional design,

11583-438: Was designed by Miner, RJ Mical , and Dale Luck. A breadboard prototype for testing and development was largely completed by late 1983, and shown at the January 1984 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). At the time, the operating system was not ready, so the machine was demonstrated with the "Boing Ball" demo, a real-time animation showing a red-and-white spinning ball bouncing and casting a shadow; this bouncing ball later became

11700-545: Was developed allowing these cards to be used transparently by the OS and software. Kickstart is the firmware upon which AmigaOS is bootstrapped . Its purpose is to initialize the Amiga hardware and core components of AmigaOS and then attempt to boot from a bootable volume , such as a floppy disk or hard disk drive. Most models (excluding the Amiga 1000) come equipped with Kickstart on an embedded ROM-chip . There are various editions of Kickstart ROMs starting with Kickstart v1.1 for

11817-406: Was in the final stages of the video game crash of 1983 . In March, Atari expressed a tepid interest in Lorraine for its potential use in a games console or home computer tentatively known as the 1850XLD . The talks were progressing slowly, and Amiga was running out of money. A temporary arrangement in June led to a $ 500,000 loan from Atari to Amiga to keep the company going. The terms required

11934-480: Was left with no workable path to design their own next-generation computer. The company approached Amiga offering to fund development as a home computer system. They quickly arranged to repay the Atari loan, ending that threat. The two companies were initially arranging a $ 4 million license agreement before Commodore offered $ 24 million to purchase Amiga outright. By late 1984, the prototype breadboard chipset had successfully been turned into integrated circuits, and

12051-597: Was less popular in North America, where an estimated 700,000 were sold. In the United States, the Amiga found a niche with enthusiasts and in vertical markets for video processing and editing. In Europe, it was more broadly popular as a home computer and often used for video games . Beginning in 1988 it overlapped with the 16-bit Mega Drive , then the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in

12168-482: Was made possible by the genlock ability of the Amiga. In 1988, the release of the Amiga A2024 fixed-frequency monochrome monitor with built-in framebuffer and flicker fixer hardware provided the Amiga with a choice of high-resolution graphic modes (1024×800 for NTSC and 1024×1024 for PAL). ReTargetable Graphics is an API for device drivers mainly used by 3rd party graphics hardware to interface with AmigaOS via

12285-455: Was marketed as more affordable than a TT but more powerful than an ordinary ST. In 1990, Atari released the high-end workstation-oriented Atari TT030, based on a 32 MHz Motorola 68030 processor. The "TT" name ("Thirty-two/Thirty-two") continued the nomenclature because the 68030 chip has 32-bit buses both internally and externally. Originally planned with a 68020 CPU, the TT has improved graphics and more powerful support chips. The case has

12402-413: Was much cheaper than a Digital VT220 terminal, commonly needed by offices with central computers. By late 1985, the 520ST added an RF modulator for TV display. Computer Gaming World stated that Tramiel's poor pre-Atari reputation would likely make computer stores reluctant to deal with the company, hurting its distribution of the ST. One retailer said, "If you can believe Lucy when she holds

12519-434: Was much more interested in the existing lines than development of new products that might cut into their sales. Miner wanted to start work with the new Motorola 68000 , but management was only interested in another 6502 based system. Miner left the company, and, for a time, the industry. In 1979, Larry Kaplan left Atari and founded Activision . In 1982, Kaplan was approached by a number of investors who wanted to develop

12636-401: Was negotiating to buy Atari, Amiga Corp. entered discussions with Commodore. This led to Commodore wanting to purchase Amiga Corporation outright, which Commodore believed would cancel any outstanding contracts, including Atari's. Instead of Amiga Corp. delivering Lorraine to Atari, Commodore delivered a check of $ 500,000 on Amiga's behalf, in effect returning the funds Atari invested in Amiga for

12753-401: Was out of cash, and employees feared that he would shut the company down. In early 1985, the 520ST shipped to the press, developers, and user groups , and in early July 1985 for general retail sales. It saved the company. By November, Atari stated that more than 50,000 520STs had been sold, "with U.S. sales alone well into five figures". The machine had gone from concept to store shelves in

12870-491: Was popular for music sequencing and as a controller of musical instruments among amateur and professional musicians. The Atari ST's primary competitor was the Amiga from Commodore . The 520ST and 1040ST were followed by the Mega series, the STE, and the portable STacy . In the early 1990s, Atari released three final evolutions of the ST with significant technical differences from the original models: TT030 (1990), Mega STE (1991), and Falcon (1992). Atari discontinued

12987-683: Was possible for software to mix two hardware channels to achieve a single 14-bit resolution channel by playing with the volumes of the channels in such a way that one of the source channels contributes the most significant bits and the other the least. The quality of the Amiga's sound output, and the fact that sound hardware is part of the standard chipset and easily addressed by software, were standout features of Amiga hardware unavailable on PC platforms for years . Third-party sound cards exist that provide DSP functions , multi-track direct-to-disk recording , multiple hardware sound channels and 16-bit and beyond resolutions. A retargetable sound API called AHI

13104-431: Was rejected, he left Atari to form a small think tank called Hi-Toro in 1982 and began designing the new "Lorraine" chipset. Hi-Toro, by then renamed Amiga, ran out of capital to complete Lorraine's development, and Atari, now owned by Warner Communications , paid Amiga to continue its work. In return, Atari received exclusive use of the Lorraine design for one year as a video game console. After that time, Atari had

13221-521: Was released for Microsoft Windows 3.1. Three versions were available: In 1998 Samplitude 2496 was released, at the time owned by German audio company SEK'D (formerly Hohner Midia). It supported 24-bit recording at sample rates up to 96 kHz. Samplitude was unique at that time, being able to record audio to hard disk and RAM. Simultaneously less expensive but limited versions of Samplitude called Red Roaster and Samplitude Studio were released for Windows 95/98 and NT4. Red Roaster's name being derived from

13338-442: Was released. Some of the new features were the ability to act as a ReWire host, 5.1 surround mixing , analogue-style processors, a virtual drum machine and an Acid-style beat-mapping tool. In 2006 MAGIX presented Samplitude 9.0 with advanced dual CPU support, VSTi manager, de-esser and more ergonomic track handling. Released Summer 2011, Samplitude Pro X made the hardware dongle optional, switched to 64-bit operation, included

13455-407: Was soon forced out in a power struggle with majority shareholder, Irving Gould . This is widely regarded as the turning point, as further improvements to the Amiga were eroded by rapid improvements in other platforms. Commodore shut down the Amiga division on April 26, 1994, and filed for bankruptcy three days later. Commodore's assets were purchased by Escom , a German PC manufacturer, who created

13572-575: Was the first home computer with a cost per kilobyte of RAM under US$ 1/KB. After Jack Tramiel purchased the assets of the Atari, Inc. consumer division in 1984 to create Atari Corporation, the 520ST was designed in five months by a small team led by Shiraz Shivji . Alongside the Macintosh , Amiga , Apple IIGS and Acorn Archimedes , the ST is part of a mid-1980s generation of computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256  KB or more of RAM, and mouse -controlled graphical user interfaces. "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", referring to

13689-480: Was the manufacturer of Amigas for Escom. After a reported sale to VisCorp fell through, a U.S. Wintel PC manufacturer, Gateway 2000 , eventually purchased the Amiga branch and technology in 1997. QuickPak attempted but failed to license Amiga from Gateway and build new models. Gateway was then working on a brand new Amiga platform, likely encouraged by a desire to be independent of Microsoft and Intel . However this did not materialize and in 2000, Gateway sold

#510489