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Your school district's A/C is run by ... an Amiga? :D
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Your school district's A/C is run by ... an Amiga? :D ... or If it ain't broke, don't fix it! I just saw an article from Digital Trends about 19 schools in Grand Rapids, Michigan who have their heating and cooling systems managed by... a late 1980s Commodore Amiga 500.  The image from the website shows this nearly 30-year old computer, still running an un-upgraded Kickstart and Workbench 1, probably version 1.2 or 1.3. The system, including 9-pin bus mouse (that's the same plug used by the Atari 2600 joysticks, BTW), monitor, printer, hard drive, 1200-baud modem (that's 1.2 kilobits per second) and external second DS/DD floppy drive (to compliment the A500's built-in drive) cost about $2,000 and was paid for by an energy bond to replace a controller that was as large as a refrigerator. It is the hub of a radio-controlled network that monitors each school's systems and adjusts them accordingly. And they call in the local resident who designed the control program for any needed system maintenance. I wonder if they use it to play classic games like Lemmings? lol  Vendors want to charge the school district $2,000,000 for a system to replace it, one no doubt vulnerable to all the spyware control hacks. That's 1,000 times what they paid initially!  Durable, built-to-last -- can't say that about much these days. I'll wager a good number of you who watched TV in the '80s and '90s saw on-screen graphics or cartoons (like Animaniacs) that were produced or processed on Amiga systems.And the Amiga OS has only had 4 major versions to date. Apple has had at least five different versions of OS X, and Windows is now on its ninth major iteration -- Windows 10 skipped a whole number, boy those Microsoft guys should pull out their old Commodore PETs and learn how to count again! lol --------------- And on a slightly related note, two Italian entreprenuers have purchased the rights to the Commodore name, and released an Android smart phone called the "Commodore PET", named after the iconic late-1970s computer that first introduced many to the world of 8-bit computers, green monochrome screens, and CBM BASIC -- created by a then-unknown startup called Microsoft. This phone includes, preinstalled, the VICE C64 and Uae4AII2-SDL Amiga emulators to play classic Commodore 64 and Amiga games. They didn't say if there's an adaptor to plug in the requisite Atari 2600 joystick for controlling games never designed for a touch-screen... lol |
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That's OK, Sandy. Many people are. You are not alone.  The Amiga line of computers was way ahead of its time in graphics and sound capabilities. It was the foundation for NewTek's Video Toaster hardware and software video rendering system used by many cable companies and channels to generate on-screen graphics displays and tickers, as well as rendering animation for many companies, including Amblin (Spielberg's company). Disney used an Amiga to control lighting displays at WDW. And some famous musicians used Amiga systems in their early digital MIDI work. Microsoft snatched up the premier Amiga add-on company for sound processing, Blue Ribbon SoundWorks, in 1994 to solve audio issues and plug-and-play card configuration with the then-forthcoming Windows 95. With Commodore in bankruptcy, nobody fought their stealing Amiga's AutoConfig technology. Bottom line is that Amiga systems were more than amazing game machines, although Lemmings and the Carmen San Diego games did become mega-hits ported to other platforms, and the Amiga version of Tetris was regarded by many as the best of all the platforms it was available on at the time, complete with beautiful color graphics and terrific music.
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