[rescue] Re: Extinct OSs

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Mon, Feb 11, 2002 at 09:14:51PM -0500, Julius Sridhar wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Feb 2002, Big Endian wrote:
> 
> > >>  Well,
> > >>  > That brings back a somewhat painful memory. The monitors that used to
> > >>  > broadcast the news, weather, upcoming events, etc. all over the World
> > >>  > Trade Centter (in particular the bridge over the Highway to the
> > >>  > WorldFi) were all run by a single Amiga. I remember going over one
> > >>  > morning, and actually _recognizing_ the Guru Meditation Code.
> > >>  I just gotta say it, Long Live Amiga.
> > >>  *pets his A3000 and A1200 Tower.*
> > >
> > >Amiga owners amaze me.  I long wanted one until fairly recently.  Now, I still
> > >admire amiga owners, but I no longer want to own or operate such a machine.
> >
> > Why not?  I'm not familiar with the amiga.
> 
> It's a 68K-series based machine with a very lightweight multitasking
> GUI-based OS that excels at things like video editing and special effects.

Note, it excels not so much because of the OS, but because the native video
chips (as opposed to hacked on SVGAs) all output what is essentially NTSC or
PAL.  So, all you need is a TBC to use for video output, or a genlock to
use for overlays, and away you go.  People say the video toaster tapped into
this, but it seems to me that the video toaster only was inspired by it.  From
what I can tell, the video toaster does most of it's rendering on it's own
card, and does most framestore tasks (like for the paint program) on the card
as well.  It certainly does all video IO through the card.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd