[HN Gopher] How the Commodore Amiga powered cable systems in the...
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How the Commodore Amiga powered cable systems in the 90s
Author : rbanffy
Score : 164 points
Date : 2021-05-31 12:01 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| tclancy wrote:
| Seeing the computer company of my youth and Prevue Tv, I was
| hoping it was going to be about that weird set top box (Preview,
| I think) my parents had for less than a year in the 80s. It and
| the Uptime C64 subscription I used to have for free as long as I
| reviewed the games seem more like dreams than reality at this
| point.
| SwimSwimHungry wrote:
| Fun fact: Ari Weinstein, the fellow mentioned in the article, is
| the guy behind the Shortcuts app baked into iOS (formerly known
| as Workflow - which I believe acquired Y Combinator funding).
| He's a world class prodigy, so seeing him tinker with Amigas
| before most of us even started Kindergarden is something to
| behold.
| technofiend wrote:
| I had a second job at a computer store in Houston, TX that sold
| Amigas. The store owner was very aware of the studio TV market
| and had plenty of software including font packs on hand at all
| times. But she took it further because we had hands on demo gear
| including genlockers, a green screen, a flatbed with overhead
| camera and a Sony screenshot printer.
|
| I just worked weekends but even then I would regularly see
| visitors from Mexico who were buying for TV stations. People were
| amazed by the Amiga's video signal quality considering the price
| but that store sold quite a few to stations on a budget.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| I worked on one of these systems in the early 90s- an Amiga-
| controlled movie preview channel that played cuts from laser
| disks. So there was a rack of laser disk players running 24/7. A
| problem was that the disks in the players at the top of the rack
| would melt and sag from the heat.
| huachimingo wrote:
| "Das ist ein Gameboy Advance"
| icedchai wrote:
| I had an Amiga in the late 80's. I remember when the local PreVue
| guide channel first got a Guru Meditation, and realized it ran on
| the same computer I had.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I'm really enjoying this read. Thanks to the OP for submission.
| the_af wrote:
| I love reading about all things Commodore, so I was thrilled to
| see this article references a long series from Ars Technica on
| the history of the Amiga: http://arstechnica.com/series/history-
| of-the-amiga/
|
| They claim it's more interesting than Gates' and Jobs' early
| computing stories, and that it's filled with dreams, intrigue and
| backstabbing. Count me in!
|
| I owned a C64, not an Amiga, but at least this bit they claim is
| true: _everyone_ who owned an Amiga became a fan of it. It 's
| like a cult, in a way like Apple's...
| sys_64738 wrote:
| The early history of computing has been rewritten by those who
| survived: Apple and Microsoft. But in reality it was driven by
| Commodore.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| There are others like Bell Labs, DEC, and Atari as well. IBM
| is sort of implied but worth mentioning.
| antiterra wrote:
| In the US there was definitely a sense of embattlement having
| something that wasn't the standard PC. I paid through the nose
| for a second disk drive and a laptop hard drive that fit under
| the keyboard. So for that effort it needed to be worth it.
|
| I do remember smugly bragging to someone about it having 4096
| colors, and he responded that his Mac Quadra had 16 million.
| the_af wrote:
| Was that 4096 simultaneous colors? If so, it would have given
| VGA a run for its money -- only 256 colors for the active
| palette (though of course many more to pick from).
| billyjobob wrote:
| In HAM mode it could do 4096 simultaneously but that was
| mostly limited to static images. For games it was 32 or 64
| colors.
|
| But this was in 1985. VGA didn't exist until 1987 and
| didn't become ubiquitous until 1990. And was much more
| expensive.
|
| If Commodore had been properly run they would have had
| their next gen chipset out by then. But they weren't, so it
| wasn't until 1992 they came out with AGA which was a only
| little better than VGA and by then it was too late anyway.
| vidarh wrote:
| A lot of games used more than 32/64 colours using the
| copper too though. E.g. things like background fades.
| Interestingly quite a few of the games with the most
| colours did _not_ use the 5 bitplane 32 colour mode or
| the 64 bitplane Extra HalfBrite mode, but a combination
| of "dirty tricks" with sprites + copper.
|
| E.g. Shadow of the Beast used 120+ colours, but used dual
| playfields, which gives only 8 colours per playfield
| without anything else. But then it overlays sprites, and
| uses the copper to change palette repeatedly:
|
| https://codetapper.com/amiga/sprite-tricks/shadow-of-the-
| bea...
| antiterra wrote:
| Yes and no, there were tricks to displaying nearly all the
| colors and each row of pixels could have its own palette,
| but in general use it was 32 colors + 32 half brights.
| vidarh wrote:
| If you really want to read about all things Commodore, pick up
| Brian Bagnall's books [1]. They're not really for those with a
| casual interest (though you have the option of the 500+ page
| single volume first version or the second version which
| ballooned to a trilogy of 500+ pages each, plus the upcoming
| Commodore: The Early Years covering Commodore's pre-computing
| history), and there's plenty of dreams, intrigue and
| backstabbing (the always fraught relationship between Jack
| Tramiel and his staff and Irving Gould features heavily
| alongside a lot of in-depth descriptions of the tech.
|
| [1] Beware, the Amazon listings are a confusing mess; the first
| edition is "The Story of Commodore: A Company on the Edge"; the
| second edition is a massively expanded three volume set,
| starting with "Commodore: A Company on the Edge" (ignore what
| Amazon says; it's not book #2), followed by "Commodore: The
| Amiga Years" and "Commodore: The Final Years". They're all 500+
| pages.
| the_af wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation! I've read enough of your
| comments to instantly pattern-match your username with "this
| person really knows about Commodore" ;)
| JeremyReimer wrote:
| I'm happy to hear that more people are discovering this article
| series. It was my (very) long-running dream to write this, and
| I'm happy that Ars Technica supported me during the entire
| journey. Plenty of Amiga people back in the day ended up having
| fascinating careers in video, television, and movies, and I'm
| in touch with (and even working with) some of them today.
| the_af wrote:
| Hey Jeremy, I just started reading it and it looks very
| promising (in fact, I'm trying hard to resist the temptation
| to read one page more instead of working). Thanks for writing
| it!
| mherdeg wrote:
| Always liked tuning in to the Prevue channel and seeing a guru
| meditation error.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2016)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Some prior discussion 5 years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11459010
| Torwald wrote:
| If you scroll down the article to the third screenshot, you'll
| see a MEmacs icon. MicroEmacs on the Amiga was what made me
| choose Emacs over Vi later on in life. A very nice good-buy gift
| from my last computer where I had to enter date and time
| manually.
| u801e wrote:
| I noticed that as well. The same screen shot shows their choice
| for the RAM disk icon (which is pretty amusing).
| Torwald wrote:
| Ah, cool! Thanks. Come to think of it, I also like the green
| as the second highlight color. It's just a slight derivation
| from the default orange but very tastefully done.
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| The Video Toaster "Revolution" video demo'ing the Toaster's
| features is beautiful, inspiring (consider the year / tech leap)
| and is full of gentle self deprecation. The voice over is by Ken
| Nordine, famed vocal jazz musician.
|
| Recommended, even for the first few minutes!
|
| https://youtu.be/OtYLx6z2eeg
| gmueckl wrote:
| It's funny that the appended video for the System 2.0 update
| contains shots that seem to be very early Babylon 5 scenes. Not
| sure if these are earlier versions of the models or
| deliberately altered ones. The copyright date on the video is a
| year earlier than the show.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| they are early models indeed, used for the pilot and for
| storyboarding with stills. J. Michael Straczynski worked
| closely with NewTek while developing the show, and
| contributed a lot of improvements and suggestions to the
| first editions of Lightwave (included with the toaster..)
|
| The exterior 3D shots were 100% Amiga generated, at least for
| the first few seasons. Though they did farm the bulk
| rendering off to Alphas using ScreamerNet (also a NewTek
| platforms controlled by Amigas) almost as soon as they became
| available.
|
| other fun Hollywood tie is that the chief engineer of the
| toaster was Brad Carvey, the brother of Dana Carvey
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| My favorite example of video toaster has got to be tribe called
| quest's (ft busta rhymes) classic 'scenario'
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6TLWqn82J4
|
| they made the entire user interface embedded in a music video
| back in the early 90s, fun stuff
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, it's really great!
| pjmlp wrote:
| I clicked expecting to find a mention to Video Toaster, and
| wasn't wrong.
| mvexel wrote:
| The YT link to the Computer Chronicles interview with Tim Jenison
| and Paul Montgomery of NewTek is dead. Here is an alternate one:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWHjfIKD6zA
|
| Enjoyed watching this. I remember seeing a Video Toaster in live
| action for the first time and it completely blew me away. It
| really drove home the power of the combination of PAL (or NTSC)
| video output with the 2^24 color HAM color mode.
| mvexel wrote:
| No, I looked it up and I got this wrong:
|
| * HAM6 (the original "OCS" HAM, A1000/500/600) supported 4096
| colors
|
| * HAM8 (AGA, A1200 / A4000) supported 2^24 colors / around 2^18
| simultaneous
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold-And-Modify
| halffullbrain wrote:
| PreVue Channel also had an ad-delivery platform which served ads
| for the upper half of the prevue channel. The system was
| completely "headless", using an A4000 that you could dial into,
| and upload new ads etc.
|
| I developed that in 1993 -- I think it was called "AdVue"
| commercially.
|
| It was able to slideshow/carrousel the uploaded IFF/ILBM files or
| JPEGs, as I recall. I somehow managed to write a dithering
| algorithm for rendering as HAM8. I don't recall how I chose the
| palette seed colors, as I didn't know proper clustering
| algorithms back then.
|
| I also somehow pieced together the "BBS" like Zmodem/Xmodem/etc.
| functionality for uploads. Long live Public Domain sources. This
| was pre GitHub ;-)
|
| I've heard that the system was used for several years in both USA
| and perhaps Central and South America.
|
| I lost contact with the company after going back home to Denmark.
| harel wrote:
| When I was very young, during the early 80s, we had the concept
| of pirate cable stations. A guy would knock on the door, sign you
| up (i.e., take a cash payment every month). They then put actual
| cables from building to building, wiring each flat directly. Then
| they simply broadcast VHS films they rent rented from the video
| store. They used a Commodore 64 to type in the film list of the
| day. Because their signal source was directly wired to all of
| our's we had to wait for them to type in the film list, watch
| them make mistakes, correct them etc. I don't think anyone
| thought twice about the dodgy legality of this. It was just a
| thing everyone did. And it was the 80s. Lots of things were
| accepted then.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| Friends of mine created a popular video game that was run on live
| TV around the world ("Hugo the TV Troll").
|
| The first version was made for the Amiga. They didn't want the
| networks to know this because it would not have been accepted as
| a tv-quality signal, so they got a big flight case on wheels, put
| the Amiga in there, put a lock and break-out panel on the back,
| saying that this was a corporate secrecy measure. Networks bought
| it :-)
| agumonkey wrote:
| Holy ... This thing was a cultural smash at the time.
| chiph wrote:
| I never saw the program, but it's a pretty cool concept, using
| a phone as a controller for live broadcast game-play.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3MSE8Kde9w
| joezydeco wrote:
| Go back a generation before that and check out TV POWWWW.
|
| Yes, this was pretty hi-tech for 1979:
|
| https://retrobitch.wordpress.com/2017/06/16/tv-poww-the-
| earl...
| unixhero wrote:
| I just want to say Hugo the TV troll was so much fun to watch
| in the early 90s as a kid. I used to always wonder why all the
| people who dialled into the talk show to play the game sucked
| so much at the game itself, but I am sure this was because of a
| massive input lag.
|
| Later I got the game for my PC and played it with my younger
| cousins and they loved it to bits as well.
|
| There was something so playable about it and the graphics were
| magical to the watch for young minds.
|
| Awesome story you have about the origins of the game :) Cheers.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| Yes, latency. I joined some of the same people later in a
| spawned-off company that created a similar concept called The
| Nelly Nut Show (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0346350/). We
| had serious issues selling to the US because there was a
| required delay of 7 seconds on live shows so that any cursing
| could be bleeped out. Silly Americans :-D
| ekianjo wrote:
| Yeah I remember that program. When I saw it it immediately felt
| like that was something that was probably running on an Amiga,
| glad to see a confirmation.
| the_af wrote:
| I remember Hugo! It was shown on TV for young kids here in
| Argentina, so I wasn't its target audience (and never really
| paid attention to it). I never would have guessed it ran on an
| Amiga!
| rasz wrote:
| There was similar concept/copycat game running on Polish TV in
| late nineties. Between 24 and 6 a premium number letting you
| call in and waste money playing some fishing? or submarine?
| game with random prizes.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| I used to watch it in the 90's on Israeli TV!
| fsloth wrote:
| I watched it in Finnish TV too! I never realized what a
| global phenomena it apparently was :D
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_(game_show)
| marcodiego wrote:
| There was also a "Clube do Hugo" in Brazil! Never would have
| guessed it ran on an Amiga, by that time PC's were already
| commonplace. Brazil is a Huge country, but I think most
| telephone lines at the time were analog, so the delay was
| likely small enough to allow it.
| Grustaf wrote:
| I remember when I first heard the rumour that Hugo was made on
| the Amiga, very cool. Looks like you're Danish, but I always
| thought it was Swedish?
| kristiandupont wrote:
| It was Danish indeed :-)
| harel wrote:
| I used to love Hugo! Always called the station as a kid hoping
| I get to play with my phone keypad.
| parksy wrote:
| Tangentially but our local small-town hospital ran its TV system
| through a C64 system for decades. It was there until the hospital
| was bulldozed and replaced around 5 years ago. I don't know
| exactly how it worked but my dad was the engineer at the hospital
| and explained it was used to provide TV services to paying
| (private insurance) patients.
|
| All I recall is that whenever a TV was switched on you'd see the
| C64 load "*" prompt for a few seconds before the picture kicked
| in. This got me wondering about the guy who set that up, and a
| bit impressed with how it kept running without issue for so long,
| since as far as dad could recall they didn't need to do any
| maintenance on it.
|
| I'm just imagining a dusty C64 forgotten in a crawlspace
| somewhere with a big "Do not turn off" label on it. I wonder what
| happened with it, I wouldn't mind seeing the code and setup.
| (edit - I've sent him an email to see if he recalls any details
| as he was there from the late 80s onward...)
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's perfectly possible, if the machine was behind a good power
| stabilized, and in an air conditioned environment, to have it
| run for a very long time. If he wrote the software into a
| cartridge, it'd last even longer (as there would be no wear of
| the 1541)
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| In the early 90s the "info channel" of my local Warner Cable
| system contained a request, written in strangely familar light
| blue 40 column text on a blue background, asking for anybody who
| knew how to format a floppy disk in an Atari 800 to call the
| local cable company office. I called and made arrangements to
| meet somebody there. I got my mother to drive me to the office at
| the appointed time. I met a man who showed us into a room with an
| Atari 800XL and a floppy drive.
|
| The man explained that they used this computer to make "data
| disks" to be taken to the "head end", where another Atari 800XL
| ran the info channel. They'd run out of working disks. The
| engineer who'd set it up left on bad terms. They didn't know how
| to format more disks, but they knew that's what they needed
| because the manual for the software advised them so.
|
| I showed the man how to format a disk. They comped a month of my
| family's cable bill (though their was some consternation when he
| found out we had the "premium" package). That may be the first
| time in my life I did "IT work" and received compensation, now
| that I think about it.
| lizknope wrote:
| We got an Atari 800 around 1982 but I believe the 810 floppy
| drive cost more than the actual computer so we never had one.
| We did get the 410 program recorder that used ordinary audio
| cassettes to save and load programs.
| vidarh wrote:
| Never used the Atari's, but for C64, the 1541 floppy
| contained a full computer not _that_ much less powerful than
| the C64 itself (less RAM, obviously no sound or graphics; but
| you could load code onto the 1541 over the serial port and
| use it as a co-processor...) in addition to the drive
| mechanics, and that was pretty normal for computers at the
| time, which explains why floppy drives were so expensive...
| Looking up the 810, it seems to be a similar-ish full
| computer.
|
| (I freaked my parents out with experiments like pulling the
| CPU and IO chips out of their sockets and swapping them to
| see what would happen; the 1541 has a 6502 CPU instead of the
| 6510 in the C64, and 6522 IO chips instead of 6526 - the CPU
| difference is lack of GPIO on the 6502; the 6522 lacks a
| real-time clock, which next to no software on the C64 uses)
| satori99 wrote:
| Yeah that is my recollection too. As a child, I could never
| afford one -- but I did learn all the peeks and pokes to make
| the 410 tape drive play regular audio from cassettes in my
| basic programs!
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| >They comped a month of my family's cable bill
|
| Gig economy ripping people off even then.
| rzzzt wrote:
| The "Famous Amiga Uses" page lists quite a few TV programmes
| where the machine was in use:
| https://wigilius.se/amiga/fau/programtv.html
|
| I was looking for (and happy to find in the list) Superball, a
| small game played on Sat1 in their morning programme
| (Fruhstuckfernsehen). People dialed in to "remote control" one of
| the hosts by shouting "left" and "right" at appropriate times.
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