Hi.

I do not even have a clue what the original topic was about, but here go
my findings to the current discussion in that thread:

Steve Litt - 19.10.25, 03:24:13 CEST:
> >Seems strange, but as the article says, when floppy disks only had
> >400kbyte of storage, it was a different world.
>
> A very different world. My 1984 Kaypro 2x CPM floppies had only 170K.
> Even then I missed the directories I had with MS-DOS. You could read
> a floppy's file list without going crazy, but hierarchy makes things
> better for a human. And I sort of did have a hierarchy: Turbo Pascal on
> one floppy, the OS on another floppy, my writings on yet another, etc.
> In that world, such a thing was workable.

Haha, all that MS-DOS and CP/M stuff. So limited!

It was not exactly efficient storage, but with a friend back then I worked
on a mostly text based star traveling and trading game. Say something like
Elite but without the graphics. We never finished it. But we wanted to
have it running under AmigaOS and Atari ST, cause my friend had an Atari
ST. So we wrote it in GFA-BASIC that was available for both systems.
Mostly text, cause portability regarding graphics and sounds between Amiga
and Atari ST? Yeah, right. And also we wanted to have a somewhat realistic
goal :).

I just thought, why not just one data file per star system? And so I
created a lot of files on a double density 880 KiB floppy disk with Amiga
Fast File System¹ just to find out that when trying to copy that onto a
720 KiB FAT formatted disk for the operating system of the Atari ST, which
if I recall correctly was a combination of GEM on top of TOS², it did not
work. It had to many files to copy it to the FAT filesystem. Due to a lot
of deficiencies according to German language Wikipedia it was not based on
CP/M-68k, except for the first prototypes. However the filesystem still
had a lot of limitations.

This inability to copy over those files decreased our motivation to work
on the game and we did not continue developing it. I was not even
understanding my world anymore: How could the Atari ST be so limited? I
think I do not even have the source anymore.

Back in my Amiga times I was astonished about all the limitations of most
of the other computers and operating systems I came across – mind you at
did not have access to Unix / BSD based systems at that time except for
running Minix on an Amiga 500 from floppy disk out of curiosity³.
Especially MS-DOS was outright ridiculous. I often thought WTF at the time
when I tried to mess around with one of those. Are you even kidding me?
Command completion? Nope. Even going back with the cursor? Nope. I know
there were enhancements and alternatives that would support these
features, but a stock MS-DOS system? Are you even kidding me?

I still think anyone of my generation who was interested in computers and
did not encounter the Amiga back then is missing out. A lot. I'd even
recommend get one – whether original hardware or some FGPA system or maybe
for starters even in emulation – and look for yourself[4]. On the other
hand: All the other additional limitations of MS-DOS / CP/M based systems
might have sparked additional creativity to work around them. But for my
taste these platforms where just to limited. I found it challenging to
relate to those platforms at all.

Sure thing, according to capabilities of modern hardware and modern
operating systems the Amiga platform is kind of limited as well.
Especially the lack of memory protection and multi user features is kind
of awkward these times. But also the hardware speed is awkwardly slow
compared to modern systems. But back then it was so ahead of its time in
the home computer segment that it is not even funny anymore. Especially
considering that management at Commodore ruined it.

Yet still the genius behind this system, both hardware and software, is
unparalleled. Even today. At least in some areas. Except for projects like
the Apollo Vampire FGPA system. They developed a FGPA core and put
together boards that can run it that contains greatly improved versions of
the Motorola m68k processor and the original Amiga custom chip set. Due to
FGPA limitations it does not run above 100 MHz and that only on some
systems but what it can do with 100 MHz or even less is immensely
impressive!

AmigaOS 4 or Morphos on PowerPC based systems are nice. Especially when
booting from hard disk as fast as other operating systems boot from SSD.
But it is not the same. Those PowerPC based systems are more like regular
PCs although I still prefer the CPU architecture over X86 considering its
elegance and design. However, Amiga was not only the software and not only
the hardware, but the combination of both. Add on top the community of
people it attracted back then and who were lucky enough to come across the
Amiga. There have been other approaches similar to this. Mostly in very
expensive graphics workstations of the time. With Unified Memory Access
and custom chips similar to the Amiga and even quite a bit more powerful.
However I am not aware of anything you could buy in the home computer
segment at that time, except maybe for the Acorn Archimedes with its RISC
CPU and quite advanced operating system. I think I missed out on that one
and it might be a nice idea to experience it at least in emulation.

Even regarding "regular PCs" there were so much better approaches like the
BeBox or the NeXT system. But for some reason what stuck with most was the
worst stuff that was available at that time. Windows on X86.

Maybe one day once again a platform emerges that is so beyond everything
we currently know that it is not even funny anymore. I'd love that!
Especially when it would be free software and free software to begin with.
However, it would be outright challenging to develop one of those in a
garage basically like they did with some of the computer systems of those
earlier times, including the Amiga. Especially given the economics of our
current times.

I miss that. This excellency. I miss it greatly. And I enjoy it whenever I
see someone aim for it. Even in our current times.


[1] Mind you it was not exactly fast, especially not on floppy disks :).
Creating this many files on floppy disk took ages.

[2] But I did not even care or know exactly back then. I just found it so
limited. It did not even have real multitasking like the Amiga.

[3] Compared to AmigaOS Minix from floppy disk was boring for me at that
time. Just text, no graphics, no sound. I did not really get what to do
with it. Why would I use it?

[4] Read "Little Things That Made Amiga Great" on a selection (!) of
features that made Amiga great:

https://www.datagubbe.se/ltmag/

A great blog anyway also for other topics the other tackles.

Best,
--
Martin