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Amiga software covers a wide range of software for the Amiga computer, both productivity and games, both commercial and hobbyist. The Amiga is a family of Personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. A video game is a Game that involves interaction with a User interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. The Amiga software market was particularly active in the late 1980s and early 1990s but has since the period 1996/1999 dwindled into almost only a hobbyist scene.

During its lifetime, the number of applications made available for the Amiga was in excess of 2,000, with over 10,000 utilities[1] (these utilities are almost all collected into Aminet major repository). Aminet is the world's largest archive of Amiga -related software and files However, it was perceived as a games machine from outside its community of experienced and professional users. In fact, there were also more than 2,000 games available for Amiga[2].

Some Amiga programs were ported to other platforms or inspired new programs still used today, such as those aimed at 3D rendering or audio creations, e. g. Lightwave and Blender, whose development started for the Amiga platform only. LightWave 3D is a high end Computer graphics program developed by NewTek. Blender is a free 3D graphics application It can be used for modeling, UV unwrapping texturing rigging, water simulations The first multimedia word processors for Amiga, such as TextCraft, Scribble!, and Wordworth, were the first on the market to allow implement full-colour WYSIWYG (with other platforms still only implementing black and white previews) and even allowing the embedding of audio files. WYSIWYG (ˈwɪziwɪg or /ˈwɪzɪwɪg/ is an Acronym for W hat Y ou S ee I s W hat Y ou G

Programs are still being developed for AmigaOS classic and AmigaOS 4. AmigaOS is the default native Operating system of the Amiga personal computer 0 and related operating systems, MorphOS and AROS. MorphOS is a computer Operating system (OS It is a mixed proprietary and Open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC (PPC-processor-based AROS Research Operating System ( AROS) is a Free software / open source implementation of the AmigaOS 3

Contents

Productivity software

Main article: Amiga productivity software

The article splitted section covers: Graphics, Video, Design and CAD Software, Graphic Utilities; Vector Graphics programs and converters; Amiga based Word Processors; some Amiga advanced Text Editors, with programming facilities and features for basic formatting of huge text files, lists of programs, advanced script programs; Amiga Database and Spreadsheets; Science, Entertainment and Special use programs: Entertainment for kids and adults; Fractals, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence; Route Planning; Personal Organizer, Notebook, Diary software; Personal Budget, Home Banking, Accounts; Software for special purposes. This article is a split of main article Amiga software and refers to any productivity software that run on Amiga line of computers

Support and Maintenance Utilities

Main article: Amiga support and maintenance software

The article splitted section covers: Commodities and Utilities; Hard Disk Partitioning; Diagnostic Tools; Vga Promoting Tools for ancient Amiga Software with TV resolution graphic screens; Game loaders for storing and autoloading from Hard Disks the original Amiga, autostarting non standard Floppy Disks; Disk Copiers; Backup and Recovery Tools, Archives and Compression Utilities; Command Line Interfaces and Text-Based Shells; Amiga graphical GUI interfaces with WIMP paradigm; Amiga Advanced Graphics Systems; PostScript; TrueType Fonts, Color Fonts and Anim Fonts; Font Designer Software; Amiga Advanced Audio System; native, external, widely common used, and third party Filesystems; Datatypes; MultiView; MIME types; USB stacks; Firewire stacks (IEEE 1394); Printer Drivers; Video digitizers; Graphic Tablets; Scanner Drivers; Genlocks, Chroma-Key, signal video inverters; InfraRed Devices and remote controls; WiFi and Bluetooth Devices; Special devices. This article is a split of main article Amiga software and refers to any support and maintenance software that run on Amiga line of computers In Human–computer interaction, WIMP stands for " window, icon, menu, Pointing device " denoting a style of interaction

Music

[Section to be developed]

Amiga Instant Music, DMCS (DeLuxe Music) 1 and 2, Music-X, TigerCub, Synthia, Dr. Instant Music is an Interactive Music Software program released by Electronic Arts in 1986. Deluxe Music Construction Set is a 1986 Music composition notation and playback program for the Amiga and Apple Macintosh T's KCS, Dr. T's Midi Recording Studio, Bars and Pipes (from Blue Ribbon Soundworks, a firm which was bought from Microsoft and it is now part of its group. Blue Ribbon Soundworks is a Digital audio editor company in the United States. Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational Computer technology Corporation, which rose to dominate the Home computer Bars and Pipes internal structure then inspired to create audio streaming data passing of DirectX libraries), AEGIS Audio Master, Pro Sound Designer, AEGIS Sonix, SoundFX (a. Microsoft DirectX is a collection of Application programming interfaces (APIs for handling tasks related to Multimedia, especially Game programming and k. a. SFX), Audio Sculpture, Audition 4 from SunRize Industries, SuperJAM!, HD-Rec, Amiga Audio Evolution, RockBEAT drum machine. For the early "drum machine" computers that used a rotating cylinder as their main memory see Drum memory A drum machine is an Amiga was worldwide famous for its . MOD files, that are for years a standard of reference for the computer music. These files started at 8bit audio quality, and are now available also at 16bit audio quality. Recent releases can deal with unlimited audio tracks. The programs that creates these files are called Trackers. Tracker is the generic term for a class of software Music sequencers which in their purest form allow the user to arrange sound samples stepwise on a timeline across We remember some: Ultimate Soundtracker, Noisetracker, ProTracker Octamed, Oktalyzer, Delitracker, Startrekker, AHX, Digibooster Pro and in the recent times Hively Tracker that is available for all Amiga platforms. Ultimate SoundTracker, or SoundTracker for short is the grandfather of all Tracker programs ProTracker is a Tracker, a program for creating music savable as MOD-files. OctaMED is a popular sound tracker for the Commodore Amiga, written by Teijo Kinnunen. Oktalyzer was a commercial Tracker for the Amiga computer by the German developer Armin Sander and distributed by Mayer Verlag in 1988. American History X is an Academy Award -nominated 1998 film directed by Tony Kaye.

Audio Digitizers Software

Together with the well known Dr. T's Midi Recording Studio, Pro Sound Designer, Sonix, SoundFX, Audition 4, HD-Rec, and Amiga Audio Evolution, there were also lots of Amiga software to pilot digitzers such as GVP DSS8 Plus 8bit audio sampler/digitizer for Amiga, Sunrize AD512 and AD516 professional 12 and 16-bit DSP sound cards for the Amiga that included Studio-16 as standard software, Soundstage professional 20-bit DSP expansion sound card for the Amiga, Aura 12-bit sound sampler which is connected to the PCMCIA port of Amiga A600 and Amiga A1200 models, and the Concierto 16-bit sound card optional module to be added to the Picasso IV graphic card, etcetera. In Computing, PC Card (originally '''PCMCIA''', or PCMCIA Card is the Form factor of a peripheral interface designed for Laptop computers

Mod music file format

Starting from 1987 with the release of a new generation of music programs like Soundtracker, Noisetracker, ProTracker and others such as Octamed and Oktalizer Amiga was enhanced with the creation of mod (module) audio file standard. Ultimate SoundTracker, or SoundTracker for short is the grandfather of all Tracker programs ProTracker is a Tracker, a program for creating music savable as MOD-files. OctaMED is a popular sound tracker for the Commodore Amiga, written by Teijo Kinnunen. Module files ( MODs have several different File formats One important format is that of the Fortran Module, which is a compiled "intermediate" The Mod audio standard is considered the audio format that started it all in the world of computer music.

In those times (and mainly in the period from 1987/88 to 1994/95) when Amiga audio was far superior than any other platform, PC compatible systems begun to be equipped with 8 bit audio cards inserted into 16 bit ISA bus slots. Soundtracker Module files were used in any PC computer and considered the only serious 8bit audio standard for creating music. The worldwide usage of these programs led to creation of the so-called MOD-scene which was considered part of the Demoscene. Tracker is the generic term for a class of software Music sequencers which in their purest form allow the user to arrange sound samples stepwise on a timeline across The demoscene is a Computer art Subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in Later the PC world eventually evolved to 16 bit audio cards, and Mod files were slowly abandoned. Various Amiga and PC games such as Worms supported Mod as their internal standard for generating music and audio effects. Worms was the first in the series of Artillery games developed by Team17 and released in.

Speech synthesis

The original Amiga was launched with speech synthesis software, developed by Softvoice, Inc. Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. [1] This could be broken into three main components: narrator. device, which could enunciate phonemes expressed as Arpabet, translator. The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU Arpabet is a Phonetic alphabet developed by ARPA as a part of their Speech Understanding Project (1971-1976 as a way to represent Phonemes library which could translate English text to American English phonemes, and the SPEAK: handler, which command-line users could redirect output to, to have it spoken.

In the original 1. x AmigaOS releases, a Say program demo was included with AmigaBASIC programming examples. AmigaBASIC was a BASIC programming language implementation for the Amiga, designed and written by Microsoft. From the 2. 05 release on, narrator. device and translator. library were no longer present in the operating system but could still be used if copied over from older disks.

The speak handler was not just a curiosity, or a gorgeous demonstration of capabilities of Amiga. In fact, the word processor ProWrite since its version 3. 2 was able to read an entire document using the speech synthesizer for the benefit of blind users.

Programming

On Amiga there were created almost any kind of languages, and compilers for these languages. The standard programming languages of Amiga were C and C++, direct programming through Assembler, and in some situations even Basic (Blitz Basic) or development languages with the same syntax of Basic such as AMOS BASIC were used to create simple games. Blitz BASIC is a Compiler for the BASIC programming language. AMOS BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC Programming language implemented on the Amiga computer

Noteworthy to mention is the high speed in compiling, because on Amiga the CPU was free to perform heavy calculations while the DMA chipset controlled data memory transfer, the peripherals, and the graphics and sound. As all those annoying tasks were left to chipset, the processor was free for serious programs, or as described here, it was free for compiling programs reaching results available only on machines with higher number of clock speed. Often advertising on Amiga newspapers invited the users to test comparing directly the Amiga compilers with those used in MS-DOS otr other platforms. For example the advertising of High-Speed Pascal which was compatible with Turbo Pascal invited the programmers to compare its compilation made on Amiga clocked at only 7 MHz with Turbo Pascal compiler on Intel 80386 machines clocked at 16 or even 25 MHz. Turbo Pascal is a complete software development system that includes a Compiler and an Integrated Development Environment (IDE for the Pascal programming language

Cross platform libraries and programming facilities

Cross platform libraries and facilities are available for Amiga also. The Amiga porting of wxWidgets is wxWidgets-AOS. SDL libraries are widely used in all modern Amiga systems such as AmigaOS 4. Simple DirectMedia Layer ( SDL) is a cross-platform Free and open source software multimedia library written in C that presents a simple interface and MorphOS. Cairo vector libraries and Anti-Grain Geometry libraries are also available on Amiga, etcetera. Cairo is a Software library used to provide a Vector graphics -based device-independent API for Software developers It is designed to provide Anti-Grain Geometry ( AGG) is a high-quality 2D rendering library written in C++. MUI and ReAction are Amiga standard Object Oriented systems for building graphical interfaces. The Magic User Interface is an object oriented system by Stefan Stuntz to generate and maintain Graphical user interfaces With the aid of a preferences ReAction GUI it is the name of the Widget toolkit engine that is used in AmigaOS 4 Object-oriented programming (OOP is a Programming paradigm that uses " objects " and their interactions to design applications and computer programs CLib2 is a portable ISO 'C' (1994) runtime library for the Amiga. ANSI C is the standard published by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI for the C programming language. In Computer programming, a runtime library is a special Program library used by a Compiler, to implement functions built into a Programming language

Amiga in all those years lacked of a complete IDE (Integrated Development Environment). In Computing, an integrated development environment ( IDE) is a Software application that provides comprehensive facilities to Computer programmers This fact changed in 2005/2006 with the creation of Cubic IDE, based on Amiga modular text editor GoldED. Cubic IDE is a modular development environment ( IDE) for AmigaOS3 and MorphOS.

Brief List of Languages available on Amiga

Amiga Basic from Microsoft, Kick-Pascal, ABasic, AC Basic Compiler, GFA Basic, ASM-One Macro Assembler, High Speed Pascal, HiSoft C++, HiSoft Basic, JForth, Amiga Logo, Aztec C, Amiga Pascal, Oberon, AMOS BASIC (derived from STOS), Blitz Basic, Devpac Assembler, DICE C, VBCC, Lattice C, SAS/C, Storm C (StormC3), Perl, Ruby, Amiga E, FALSE, Python, REBOL, ARexx, Amiga GNU C++, Amiga Installer standard program is a LISP interpreter, Free Pascal, Modula-2, etc. AmigaBASIC was a BASIC programming language implementation for the Amiga, designed and written by Microsoft. Logo is a Computer programming language used for Functional programming. Synopsis Aztec C is a C Compiler for a variety of older computing platforms including MS DOS, Apple II DOS 3 AMOS BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC Programming language implemented on the Amiga computer STOS BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC Programming language implemented on the Atari ST computer Blitz BASIC is a Compiler for the BASIC programming language. vbcc is the name of a portable and retargetable ISO / ANSI C compiler Lattice C (according to its author Lattice Incorporated) was the first C Compiler for MS-DOS on the IBM PC, in 1982 NOTES FOR EDITORS "Perl" is not an acronym (read the "Name" section below Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general purpose Object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk Amiga E, or very often simply E, is a Programming language created by Wouter van Oortmerssen on the Amiga. See False for other meanings of false FALSE is an esoteric programming language designed by Wouter van Oortmerssen in Python is a general-purpose High-level programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes programmer productivity and code readability REBOL, the Relative Expression Based Object Language (pronounced) is a proprietary Closed source data exchange and programming language ARexx is an implementation of the REXX language for the Amiga, written in 1987 by William S Lisp (or LISP) is a family of Computer Programming languages with a long history and a distinctive fully parenthesized syntax Free Pascal (or FPK Pascal or FPC is a free, portable, Open source, Pascal and Object Pascal Compiler. Modula-2 is a computer Programming language invented by Niklaus Wirth at ETH, around 1978 as a successor to his intermediate language Modula

Descriptions of some Languages

AmigaBasic (not to be confused with ABasic, which was a 3rd party Basic for the Amiga) was the only programming language (and the only tool) made by Microsoft for the Amiga computer. Its best feature was the lack of numbering lines of code, which was the first attempt in 1985/1986 to create a new kind of approach in programming. Microsoft then added this feature to all its development language tools.

Amiga Basic was released for free with any Amiga, it has its own disk, a complete manual, and a vast number of example demos.

As being released for free with any Amiga it was the most common used language on Amiga, and legions of developers learned to program with AmigaBasic.

Because Commodore wanted to save money, there was never made an AmigaBasic update, and due to AmigaBasic's vast number of known bugs and limitations (it could handle only NTSC resolution screens and not PAL screens common in Europe TV standard), for the fact it couldn't be used with profit on VGA resolution screens, and finally due to the fact it was generally badly written and caused many machine hang-ups, it was immediately discarded by professional Amiga developers in favour of other programming languages such as GFA BASIC, Aztec C, Lattice C, and then AMOS. NTSC ( National Television System Committee) is the Analog television system used in the United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is a colour -encoding system used in Broadcast television systems in large parts of the world

Devpac Assembler was a professional assembler program that became the de facto standard for assembly programming. It was also able to be used to program for any other Motorola 68k-based device, such as the Atari ST. It was common for programs to be jointly written for the Amiga and Atari using Devpac on the Amiga. However, since the Atari ST was closest to the "lowest common denominator" of the two machines, programs would be tested on and built primarily for the ST.

Application Building Tools

Some Amiga programs were not languages, but complete application tools. Among these we remember: CanDO, Amiga Vision, Shoot'Em-Up Construction Kit also known as SEUCK, 3D Construction Kit, 3D Construction Kit II and in some degree The Director (BASIC-like language aimed at multimedia, presentations and animations) and AMOS itself could be considered application building tools, more than simple programming languages (even if SEUCK was aimed at games, 3D Construction series, could handle also some sort of 3D VRML). Shoot'Em-Up Construction Kit (aka SEUCK was a "construction kit" for the Commodore 64, Amiga and Atari ST created by Sensible Software 3D Construction Kit ( US, Canada & Israel release title Virtual Reality Studio) also known as 3D Virtual 3D Construction Kit II ( US & Canada release title Virtual Reality Studio II and Virtual Reality Studio 2 The Director (ISBN 0-380-00669-3 is a Novel by United States author Henry Denker, published in 1971 VRML ( Virtual Reality Modeling Language, pronounced vermal or by its initials originally — before 1995 — known as the Virtual Reality Markup Language Other tools that can build independent applications or "self loading projects" were Scala Multimedia and actually Hollywood Designer. Scala Inc is a producer of multimedia software Founded in 1987 its headquarters are based near Philadelphia PA with additional operations in California, UK

CanDO was one the first application building tools, capable of create programs for Amiga that were totally independent (compiled or full binary). It is based on a visual interface, after the style of modern "visual programming" approach to programming which became famous with Visual C and Visual Basic from Microsoft. A Visual programming language ( VPL) is any Programming language that lets users specify programs by manipulating program Microsoft Visual C++ (often abbreviated as MSVC) is a commercial Integrated development environment (IDE product engineered by Microsoft for the Visual Basic ( VB) is the third-generation event-driven programming language and associated development environment (IDE from Although CanDO has nothing in common with Visual C and Visual Basic, it is a program mouse driven with an icon approach, and its internal programming is really like an interactive flow chart of functions, just like VISUAL programming tools from Microsoft.

Like CanDO on Amiga, there is Amiga Vision. It is a VISUAL "application building" tool made by Commodore itself in the times of the launch of Amiga A3000, and it was released for free to all those who bought an Amiga A3000.

The Vision is more than a language aimed at multimedia, all icon driven, and the flow chart of the functions was realized all graphically, on a page in which the user could arrange visually all the icons each one representing a program function. Vision saved files (projects) could not be used as pure binaries. From this point of view, the Amiga Vision "application building" tool was an interpreted language.

The AmigaBasic created by Microsoft, CanDO, and then Amiga Vision inspired Microsoft itself to an approach to Visual programming with their line of Visual programming languages, such as Visual Basic and others.

Multimedia

[Section to be developed]

Drivers for Multimedia Devices and Special Input Functions

CD Filesystem

AsimCDFS, AmiCDROM, CDVDFS, Allegro CDFS, CacheCDFS

CD and DVD Burning Programs

BurnIt!, Frying Pan, MakeCD, AmiDVD, DVDRecord, DVDAuthor

MakeCD is the first Amiga program to support DAO, (Disk At Once). In Optical disc authoring, there are multiple modes for recording including Disc-At-Once, Track-At-Once, and Session-At-Once. Frying Pan is the first Amiga program capable to create DVDs. DVD (also known as " Digital Versatile Disc " or " Digital Video Disc " - see Etymology)is Now both FryingPAN and BurnIt! are capable to handle DVD.

Disk Images and ISO files Management

ISO-o-Matic software is an Amiga CD Image converting software and supports: b5i, bin, cdi, img (normal/CloneCD), mdf (Alcohol 120%), nrg (Nero Burning ROM), pdi and uif. A disk image is a single File containing the complete contents and structure representing a data storage medium or device such as a Hard drive, CD, or CloneCD is a proprietary Optical disc authoring software that makes exact 11 copies of music and data CDs and DVDs regardless of any A disk image is a single File containing the complete contents and structure representing a data storage medium or device such as a Hard drive, CD, or Alcohol 120% is an optical disc authoring program and Disk image emulator created by Alcohol Soft A.nrg file is a proprietary CD image file format used by Nero Burning ROM, a utility suite made by Nero AG, to create and burn ISO 9660 CD images Nero Burning ROM, commonly called just Nero, is a popular optical disc authoring program for Microsoft Windows and Linux by Nero AG MagicISO (also referred to as MagicISO Maker is a CD/DVD image utility that can extract edit create and burn Disc image files

Data Streaming

Most famous used Data streaming control program into Amiga it is Reggae for MorphOS system. Reggae is a Music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s

Internet and communications

Main article: Amiga Internet and communications software

This section splitted article covers: Modem software, Direct Connect, BBS managing, Fidonet, Packet Radio; Prestel, Videotel, Videotex, Minitel; Teletext, Televideo, Viewdata; FAX, Answering Machine and Voice Mail; Networking; World Wide Web (TCP/IP Stacks, Browsers, E-mail programs, Newsreaders, Internet Radio, Proxy server support programs, PPP, Telnet, Podcasting, Amiga RSS Feed, Distributed Net, Google Services, Amiga Instant Messaging and Chat, FTP and FTP Server, Weather casting news, Webcam supporting, Clock Synchronization, SMS Short Messages, Web development & HTTP Server, Peer2Peer, VCast (Online VCR), Youtube, Flash player, Monitoring webpages, Remote Desktop, SSL, SSH, etcetera. This article is a split of main article Amiga software and refers to any communication and internet software that run on Amiga line of computers ); Communication Protocols.

Various Utilities

AmiDOCK is an Amiga utility that creates Application Launching Docks on the desktop. Amiga users begun to appreciate the Docking station at the age of the NeXT computer, and then due to Acorn Archimedes Risc OS docking station. NeXT Computer Inc (later NeXT Software Inc) was an American Computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California that The Acorn Archimedes was Acorn Computers Ltd 's first general purpose Home computer based on their own 32-bit ARM RISC RISC OS is an Operating system originally created by British manufacturer Acorn Computers for their ARM based Computers ranging Archimedes computers were popular in Great Britain because they were adopted in Schools of all grades. See also Kingdom of Great Britain Great Britain (Breatainn Mhòr Prydain Fawr Breten Veur Graet Breetain is the larger of the two main islands Young Amiga users (there were one million and 500,000 Amigas in United Kingdom) spotted docks on Archimedes at school and asked for it on Amiga also. Various docking stations were born as 3rd party hobby utilities and then officially integrated in AmigaOS classic since version 3. 9.

Directory Opus was a file utility program. Directory Opus (or "DOpus" as its users tend to call it is a popular file manager program originally written for the Amiga computer system in the early to mid 1990s When this software was released, the popular Amiga magazines proclaimed that it was the most important software ever released for the Amiga and "should be built into the operating system". Directory Opus went on to create a "replacement OS" for Workbench which overlaid itself upon the system. It started as a file manager, and then became a complete GUI replacement for AmigaOS alternative to official Workbench.

Much shareware and free software was written for the Amiga and could be obtained via the Fred Fish disk series or from the Aminet software archive. Fred Fish ( November 4 1952 &ndash April 20 2007) was a Computer programmer notable for work on the GNU Debugger and his Aminet is the world's largest archive of Amiga -related software and files

Because the custom chipset shares RAM (and therefore the memory bus) with the CPU, the CPU's throughput increases measurably if the display is disabled. Some processor-intensive software, such as 3D renderers, would disable the display during calculation in order to gain speed.

Emulation

During the years, Amiga was able to emulate, or to run directly a vast range of other Operating Systems than AmigaOS. We remember:

Medusa (Atari ST emulator), Fusion (Macintosh Emulator), AMax and AMax II, (Macintosh), GO64 (Commodore C64 emulator), Transformer and PCTask (Intel 8088 emulators all software based, capable to emulate an Intel PC XT ranging from 4,7 to 7 MHz), A64 Package (C64), Amiga BBC Emulator Acorn BBC emulator, Atari ST Emulator (AtariST), Basilisk II (Macintosh) classic, Frodo (C64), PSXE (Sony Playstation), etcetera. The Atari ST is a home / Personal computer that was commercially available from 1985 to the early 1990s Macintosh, commonly nicknamed Mac is a Brand name which covers several lines of Personal computers designed developed and marketed by Apple Inc The IBM Personal Computer XT, often shortened to the IBM XT or simply XT, was IBM's successor to the original IBM PC. A64, a Commodore 64 Emulator for the Commodore Amiga, was developed and published by the now-defunct software company Questronix, and distributed Basilisk II is an Open source Software Emulator which emulates the 680x0 -based Apple Macintosh computer on a variety of Operating The PlayStation (abbreviated PS, PSone, PS1, or informally as PSX) is a 32-bit fifth generation Video game console

VICE emulator it is modular based and capable to emulate all 8-bit machines made by Commodore: C64 (a patch of VICE it is capable to emulate also C64dtv, C128,PET including CBM II version (but excluding "non-standard" features of SuperPET 9000), Plus4,VIC-20, etcetera. The software program VICE (all caps standing for V ersat' I' le C ommodore E mulator, is an Emulator for Commodore Eight-bit CPUs normally use an 8-bit data bus and a 16-bit address bus which means that their Address space is limited to 64 KBs This is not a "natural The C64 Direct-to-TV, called C64DTV for short is a single- chip implementation of the Commodore 64 computer contained in a Joystick with 30 The Commodore 128 ( C128, CBM 128, C=128) home / Personal computer was the last 8-bit machine which was commercially The PET ( P ersonal E lectronic T ransactor) was a home -/ Personal computer produced by Commodore starting in 1977 The Commodore CBM-II series was a short-lived range of 8-bit Personal computers from Commodore Business Machines (CBM, intended as a follow-on The Commodore Plus/4 was a Home computer released by Commodore International in 1984 The VIC-20 ( Germany: VC-20; Japan: VIC-1001) is an 8-bit Home computer which was sold by Commodore Business Machines

Games

Main article: Amiga games

Games were an obvious application for the Amiga hardware, and thousands of games were produced. Amiga games are Computer games compatible with the Commodore Amiga. It was common for games to be produced for multiple formats in the days of the Amiga. For example, a game might be produced simultaneously for Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and so on. Since the Amiga hardware was the most advanced of all, the games were usually developed on an Amiga, and the Amiga version would be the "gold standard" of the bunch.

Demos

Main article: Amiga demos

The Amiga was a focal point for the "demo scene". Amiga demos are demos created for the Commodore Amiga Home computer. The demoscene is a Computer art Subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in The Amiga thrived on public domain, freeware and other not-for-profit development. The public domain is a range of abstract materials &ndash commonly referred to as Intellectual property &ndash which are not owned or controlled by anyone Freeware is computer Software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee The demo scene spearheaded development in multimedia programming techniques for the Amiga, such that it was de rigueur for the latest visual tricks, soundtrackers and 3D algorithms from the demo scene to end up being used in computer game development.

Piracy

Because the Amiga was one of the first game-oriented computers to feature a built-in floppy disk drive, which allowed for easy copying, it was also the scene of much software piracy. The Amiga is a family of Personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. The Copyright infringement of Software (also known as software piracy) refers to several practices which involve the unauthorized copying of computer Many of the arguments pertaining to software piracy, intellectual property rights in software, the open-source movement, and so on, were well-developed in the Amiga scene by the early 1990s. Intellectual property ( IP) is a legal field that refers to creations of the mind such as musical literary and artistic works inventions and symbols names Open source is a development methodology which offers practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge It was not unusual for a demo group to be openly involved in software piracy.

Several anti-piracy measures were introduced during the Amiga's reign. One was the practise of distributing software on disks that contained secret "keys" on high-numbered tracks, which were officially unused. The Amiga disk drive officially only read tracks 0-79 from a double-density disk, but in reality it could easily read tracks 80 through 82. Official disk-imaging software would ignore these tracks, so that a duplicate of a boxed disk would not contain the key and the software would not work. A similar technique involved writing to sectors of the disk that would not normally be used. However, special copy software called "nibble" copiers appeared, which could exactly reproduce any disk an Amiga could read.

Publishers therefore turned to other methods. Hardware dongles were occasionally used for high-end software. A dongle is a small piece of hardware that connects to a Computer. Some software manufacturers would force a user to type a word from a particular page number and line number of the manual, meaning that successfully pirating software included photocopying a large quantity of text. A photocopier (or copier is a machine that makes Paper copies of documents and other visual images quickly and cheaply Sometimes the text from which the key was chosen was designed so that photocopiers would produce illegible copies, meaning that pirates had to retype or handwrite the text, or else give up.

These and other schemes lead to pirates "cracking" software by altering a copy of the code bypassing the copy protection completely. Software cracking is the modification of Software to remove protection methods Copy prevention, trial/demo version serial number hardware key CD check There was not a protection scheme that was not eventually broken. One almost exception was the scheme on the Amiga version of Dragon's Lair which became the holy grail of crackers Worldwide. Dragon's Lair was one of the first Laserdisc video games released in June 1983 by Cinematronics. Eventually it was released in a modified format that circumvented the copy protection.

Piracy has been cited as a reason for the death of the Amiga, however, piracy was just as prolific on other platforms. For example many games for the ZX Spectrum could be copied using nothing more than an ordinary cassette recorder, leading to a massive culture of playground game trading - that machine however lived a long and fruitful life nonetheless. The Sinclair ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal Home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd There was a vast amount of Amiga software available in the marketplace and Commodore's mis-marketing of the machine is well documented as the reason for its own demise.

"Decrunching"

A single frame of a typical decrunching screen.
A single frame of a typical decrunching screen.

The Amiga's floppy disk drive allowed 880 kilobytes on a single disk, which was comparable to the memory of most Amigas (usually 512 kilobytes, often 1 megabyte). A floppy disk is an increasingly Obsolete data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin flexible ("floppy" Magnetic storage medium encased In order to increase the yield, the Amiga was one of the first computers to feature the widespread use of compression/decompression techniques. Also, the disk drive had a slow transfer rate, such that using processor-based decompression could actually lead to faster loading times than loading uncompressed data from disk. Early implementations of decompression code would write rapidly varying values to a video display register, causing the screen's scanlines to break into multiple segments of colourful noise, which would become finer as the decrunching neared the end. A scan line is one line or row in a Raster scanning pattern such as a video line on a Cathode ray tube (CRT display of a television or computer This effect was psychedelic, very easy to implement, so it stuck; it was pioneered on the Commodore 64. Modern psychedelia For "psychedelics" see Psychedelic drug. The use of "decrunching" became so ubiquitous that the effect was a standard. The effect was commonly seen in pirated games or demos. Amiga demos are demos created for the Commodore Amiga Home computer.

Reference notes:

  1. ^ Aminet tree, Aminet Statistics
  2. ^ Amiga WHDload site download section reports that this program supports actually 1937 games (and it is far from creating a complete list of all Amiga games).

External links

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