The Amiga before the Amiga: The Amiga Development System

An article, with a video, that takes a look at a Amiga Development System. According to the article,

Commodore sent these computers to companies around the world in the hopes they would decide to support the new platform in the form of creating software and tools.

https://amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1031

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Very nice! There’s a link in the comments to one of the other surviving examples, serial number D-564

http://scacom.bplaced.net/Collection/velvet/velveten.php

(I suppose the Amiga, later called the Amiga 1000, must be the canonical Amiga, but for me the all-in-keyboard A500 is always what I think of when I think of Amiga. Because that’s what I had!)

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My first Amiga was the 1000, which I later traded in for a 2000 (a deal that Commodore sponsored at the time, through various dealers). I still have my 2000 - or rather, my son has it, and it still works! Sadly, it doesn’t get turned on much anymore. One thing I always wanted to get, but never invested in, was an Ethernet interface of some kind. The only ones I ever found were frighteningly expensive.

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Somewhat related, about Ron Nicholson, who got his signature into the cases of two classic systems:
The Man Inside the Macintosh and Amiga 1000

Here’s a presentation by Joe Decuir & Ron Nicholson about the Amiga’s origin and technical architecture:

(Some related videos here)

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I never owned an Amiga personally, until 2002 were I was given one in exchange for a couple of PC expansion cards. It was an 1200. Then I got an 600 in 2003, in exchange for an old mid-90’s cell/mobile-phone. Yet…

I did play a lot on other people’s Amiga’s, from around 1988 and onwards. And I clearly remember how taken I was by the Amiga500. It was the defacto late 80’s teenage boy’s wet dream. That and uhmmm… Posters of Samantha Fox and the usual poster of an Lamborghini Countach. Hehe.

People who say that the Amiga was always too expensive… Well… Aprox 1000 US Dollars for an 500 with Ram expansion and a real monitor and aprox 2500 to 3000 US Dollars for an x86 MS-Dos compatible PC with monitor. And that is around 1988. At that time, you got: Colour, Multitasking, GUI, “Soundcard” and so on on the Amiga as a default. What did the x86 hold above the Amiga? Well… Not much actually… :smiley:

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For a Cheap inexpensive adapter, there is PlipBox - its not blisteringly fast, but it does work. You can also build one…

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Amiga-Plipbox-Deluxe-Ethernet-Internet-Network-Adapter-/132884359170

To make one…