Walter Glenn

Ars Technica has the first 2 parts of a multiple part story up on the history of the Amiga computer:

History of the Amiga Part 1

It’s a great read, since they go not only into the technical details, but also into the video game politics of the day. Each part is multiple pages, so it’s not a quick read, but it is fascinating. In my computing lifetime, I’ve had an Apple II, Commodore 64, original Macintosh, a bunch of PCs, and a bunch of Macs. I still remember the Amiga as one of my favorite computers I ever owned. I gave it to a friend long ago, but now I really wish I still had it.

The Amiga was so ahead of its time that even back then it was capable of some things that modern computers still can’t do. Here’s a quote from part 2:

Another new invention for the Amiga computer was the “copper” chip. This was essentially a special-purpose CPU designed specifically for direct manipulation of the display. It had only three instructions, but it could directly access any part of the other display chips at any time. What’s more, it could turn amazing tricks in the fraction of a second that it took for the monitor to refresh the display. This allowed a trick that no other computer has ever reproduced: the ability to view multiple different screens, opened at different resolutions, at the same time. These “pull-down” screens would amaze anyone who saw them. Modern computers can open different screens at different resolutions (say, for example, to open a full-screen game at a lower resolution than the desktop is displaying, in order to play the game faster or at a higher frame rate) but they can only switch between these modes, not display multiple modes at once.

Since my last article on Vista’s new Volume Mixer, I got a few comments from people saying that Vista didn’t remember their settings and just set volume for other apps somewhat randomly. But Volume Mixer does remember the settings, just not the way you might think. I thought I’d do a follow-up with a few more details about Vista Volume Mixer. Take a look at the picture below:

Remember, a new app doesn’t show up in the Volume Mixer until it actually makes a sound - not just when you open it. So play around with. You’ll see that Vista Volume Mixer does remember the settings. It doesn’t remember fixed settings for each individiual app. Instead, it rather remembers settings in relation to the master volume. And that still applies when you change your system’s master volume when Volume Mixer is not open. That’s why you’re likely to see changes in position the next time you open it.