From Vultures to Vampires Volume Three by David John Pleasance and Trevor Dickinson - Book Review

It has arrived. Finally. The culmination of a Kickstarter project that successfully closed on the 19th of July 2020, From Vultures to Vampires Volume Three is not the book that backers originally pledged for. Nope, that particular tome was delivered back in October 2021. The second volume arrived in July this year, and now, after a chase up email prompted by another backer sharing a message from David Pleasance on the original Kickstarter's comments page, here we are. Was it worth the wait?

Short answer is "mostly." For the £33 paid (including delivery), this 326 page book brings us the Amiga (and wider Commodore story, cos you've got to fill that page count somehow) story from 2010 up to 2023, completing the saga begun in those dark days of 1994. It very much follows the pattern set by the first two entries, and you still get some adverts at the back. 

As you can see from the seven chapters, it's a pretty comprehensive coverage of the various initiatives, hardware, and developments that have featured the Amiga (whatever that name actually means now). It's well written for the most part and once again has plenty of imagery. Individuals are evenly handled (as far as I can tell), and whatever your position on the legal fights within the Amiga community, sides are not chosen either way. Basically, if you've got the first two books, the third will be an essential addition and it's an enjoyable read in its own right. But it's not flawless. And neither is the trilogy as a whole.

There is padding, and a fair bit of it. Over the trilogy, there's a ton of imagery, the inclusion of which is questionable. Three pictures of an individual when most just get one (and pictures of some who get literally a one sentence mention). David with a C64 Mini. A Philips CDi. And the focus on side products (C64 Mini, the MEGA65 and general FPGA devices) means that, since the authors announced volume two (and later the third one), it feels like a serious effort has been made to bulk things up a bit. Let us not forget the adverts at the back either. 

And that really is the crux of this review. This book works, but I really do question the need for a trilogy. Yeah, they started the Kickstarter saying that they were planning one book, but to over shoot the expected page count by two and a half times is quite the feat. If you cut out the ads, extra pictures (as noted above, and the tangents to the story - do we need to know about Penti Kouri's son, or the City of Kent Arena that wasn't even built until way after Amiga's involvement?), then I can see a way that this could, with proper planning, have been a two book set. And yes, gentle reader, this does sour my opinion of the trilogy and the authors slightly. 

My original Kickstarter pledge was for £30 plus £6 p&p, which ended up totalling £93.50. If I'd known that the total price would nearly triple over three years, I probably wouldn't have pledged. But once caught up in it, I went along with the ride, and thus became one of the many enablers of the odyssey. Oh, I have three in-depth and informative books, it's just that if I'm going to pay for something, I'd really like to know upfront the total price. Maybe this was an experiment for Books As A Service? No-one tell John Riccitiello!

But seriously, after a couple of years of drip fed updates, requests for extra cash outside of the initial funding process, and some downright weird behaviour (asking backers to complete a spreadsheet via Facebook was a new one for me), all three books are here, even if there had to be a final chase up at the end. Pointer for future projects David: wherever you announce updates, use the original platform too and don't rely on backers to share your communications. 

Anyway, a rant or two ago, I said that if you had the first two volumes, then this is an essential addition. But what if you're coming to this without any prior buy in? Should you? Well, that's up to you, but since each volume retails for £35 plus p&p on top (£6 per book for UK buyers, more for outside the UK), putting aside the above rants, then no, I wouldn't recommend them. £35 is at the upper end of niche, and if you choose all three, then £105 plus £18 p&p is a huge chunk of change. You could comfort yourself with the cheaper ebook option (which I know required work to design but carry zero on-going physical costs) which come in at £15 a piece. I'm sorry, but that's robbery. I mean, hey, your book gents, you sell it for what you want, but £45 for three ebooks frankly smells of profiteering, especially considering that their design costs for book one were covered by the Kickstarter, and the follow on books were at the very least partially funded externally of Kickstarter utilising the existing backers. Oh, and at some point, the ebooks will be the only buying option.

It took a long time, but they got there in the end, and this well-produced tome will sit next to its compatriots ready for future reference. If you're interested in getting this volume (or the whole set), David Pleasance has his own website for you to hand money over. But before you do, one final note:

There was going to be a follow up post about the Kickstarter and how things escalated over the last three years, but you know what, David J Pleasance and Trevor Dickinson have finally delivered on the original premise - just over a much longer period and at much greater cost to the backers. I don't agree as to how they've done it, and I am as culpable as any other backer for feeding the money machine, but the books are here. It's been a learning experience to say the least, and I'd be very wary about any future projects the authors wish to crowdfund, as without doubt, out of over thirty or so successful campaigns I have backed over the last three and a half years, this has been the most poorly organised of the lot. 

From Vultures to Vampires Volume Two by David John Pleasance and Trevor Dickinson - Book Review

Three years since the original Kickstarter for a singular book under the name of From Vultures to Vampires was successfully funded to the tune of £42,813 from 1005 backers (number 317 myself) on 19th July 2020, and two and half years since the need for a second book was announced, volume two has finally started to arrive in the hands of backers of the extended project. After such a long period of time, it was a relief to finally get this book, as well as have hopes raised about the third volume. When that one arrives, there will be a review and a "Notes on a Kickstarter" piece with thoughts and comments about the project as a whole. That one is going to be... interesting... In the meantime, was this one worth the wait?

A 24x16x2-ish cm hardback, first impressions are positive, and there is a quality feel to the cover and paper stock within. Total page count is 288, but there is some filler in there too. 

Following on from volume one's coverage of the post Commodore years of 1995 to 2004, we kick off straight away with 2005, each of the following chapters taking the journey on a year at a time until the conclusion in June 2010 and the Vintage Computer Fair at Bletchley. A final section provides an explanation of what happened to the Commodore name, as well as the C64/A500 Mini projects. 

It's mostly well written, with only a couple of occasions where another light editing pass might have removed the odd instance of repetition. The narrative does, however, take a tangent at times - the page and a bit used to talk about the son of Pentti Kouri (with a photo of him) has nothing to do with the actual story and shouldn't have been included at all. 

There are plenty of photographs too, and I think too many, considering this volume was described as necessary due to sheer amount of content (as was the upcoming third volume when it was announced). Do we really need a mugshot of every almost every person mentioned in the text, especially when they're a one line mention? Do we really need a picture of a CDi? Or Trevor's multiple (and in one case, Frankenstein-like) computer collection? And the logos? They're also on the back cover!

This building is of only passing interest, and we really don't need a picture of it.

It feels like padding, what with 275 pages of actual content, and that's down from the 360 total/336 actual content split of volume one. It'll be interesting to see where volume three comes in at, but the inclusion of the ads at the back of this one, including two pages for the ill-fated Amiga Global Alliance project, adds to the impression that, with better planning, two volumes could have been more than enough. 

Anyway, for the price I paid - £17.50 plus £7 p&p (with actual postage only costing £2.99 so a raised eyebrow there too (I didn't realise I was paying e-Bay postage prices...) - I'm reasonably happy with what I received. Not with the timescale (that's for the later post), but they got copies out there in the end. Here's hoping for volume 3.

Not really need in this book - no slight to CDi fans either

David Pleasance has a website where you can buy both the first and second volumes. Not wanting to appear too waspish (moi, darling?), but the actual front page hasn't been updated since mid-2022, as he only talks about two volumes and a possible July 2022 shipping date for the book I'm looking at here. Click on volume 2 in the shop and it has an estimated July 2021 availability(!). As of KS update #42 (12th May 2023), David would happily take your money via Paypal Friends and Family (it's the fee, you know), for a direct order. Uh-huh... Both currently available volumes are priced at £35 for the physical copies, £15 for the e-books. It is up to you, gentle reader, to decide if that represents good value. If I were approaching as an interested potential buyer now, I'd baulk at the idea of dropping £42 per physical copy (including postage). As for £15 per e-book, not for me, and there is a whole cannery to open when it comes to e-book pricing anyway. 

So, a good read? Mostly. Would I recommend? If you can get a copy cheap enough, maybe. The travails of the campaign have soured more than a few backers (as evidenced in the comments section on Kickstarter), and my thoughts on the project will follow after reviewing volume three. For now, it's a qualified recommendation at best. You will learn stuff, it compliments the first volume very well, and they have delivered a decent read. How they have delivered that, dear hearts, is a question for another time. 

The Story of the Commodore Amiga in Pixels by Chris Wilkins and Roger M Kean - Book Review

After enjoying Florin's Haul and being on Fusion Retro Book's mailing list, it was quite a nice surprise to find out that there was a one day sale on the this book. Why not, I thought, and an order was quickly placed. A few short days later, a well packaged and rather tasty looking hardback arrived in the post. Was it worth the £12.50? Read on!

At roughly 19x20x2cm, this is not a small book by any means, and as soon as you pick it up, you know you've got a decent quality tome in your hands. It's in full colour and the dusk jacket displays the famous King Tut image that defined the Amiga to prospective users (or at least those that remember Deluxe Paint II). There are about 290 pages and very nicely laid out, with plenty of screenshots, photographs and the like. 

It begins with a forward by David Pleasance, whose name may be familiar to those who've been reading this blog for a while - I've reviewed two of his books here and here). The proper start of the book is a history of the Amiga stretching to 54 pages and interspaced with two page spreads of specific machines. This is a bit of a potted history, but respectable, and if this were your only book on the Amiga, you'd be pretty well served. I do have two minor niggles though. The C64GS was never high-tech. NEVER! And I question Windows 95's affect in the Amiga market. Anyhoo...

The next section is all about creativity and graphics, being divided into four main areas: PD (Public Domain) and Shareware, Anarchy and the Demoscene, Scoopex and the Demoscene, and AGA - too little too late. Each of these was, for me, extremely enlightening, as I never knew much about either the PD or demo scene apart from what I read in magazines at the time. The 28 pages dedicated to these subjects are an eye opener and give you a real feel as to how wild and passionate coders were, and where it could go wrong. Some of the demo's created were breathtaking at the time and still, to this day, are bloody impressive. The last ten pages, on the subject of the AGA chipset, is another useful section. I was surprised as to how few genuine AGA titles actually existed - I had always presumed there were more. 

The following 90 pages are dedicated to games from throughout the Amiga's history. Each gets two pages, pictures of their artwork and some screenshots. You get a brief write up and sometimes a piece of trivia. What is particularly nice is that it's not just the usual suspects, though they do make up the majority of the titles covered. Sure, you get Lemmings, Populous, Xenon 2 and the like, but you also get the likes of Wings of Death, Airball and Lionheart. 

The last section is the largest, at just under one hundred pages, and this covers the memories. I'll put a picture below of the contents page, but as you can see, there are some familiar and maybe not-so familiar names here. What it does mean is that you get a lovely range of stories about the Amiga from a period of home computer development that is long gone. Truly, every single entry has its worth and I would say that this section makes the book worth the cover price alone. 

The Story of the Amiga in Pixels is a lovingly produced look at, what was for many people, the pinnacle of home computers. Alongside the Atari ST and, to a degree, the Acorn range, this was the golden era of relatively powerful and productive machines before the PC and Mac took over Yes, I have said this book has niggles (still not letting go of that C64GS description...) but these are teensy compared to the stories and wealth of knowledge contained within. The physical quality shows off the artwork and screenshots brilliantly and, to be honest, I would have happily paid full price. 

You can buy your own copy of The Story of the Commodore Amiga in Pixels directly from Fusion Retro Books here, and I would recommend signing up for their email service in case they do have flash sales on their other titles. It is also worth noting that there is a Kickstarter ongoing for their latest title: The Commodore 64 Collector's Guide to Mastertronic. This is another title by Chris Wilkins and I have already pledged for my copy. There's only a week or so left and it looks to be another corker. 

From Vultures to Vampires: Volume One 1995 - 2004 - Book Review

Some readers may remember that I reviewed David Pleasance's worthy tome about his time at Commodore way back in June 2020. Shortly after that, he launched a Kickstarter campaign to follow up the Amiga story after the demise of Commodore in 1994. Co-written with Trevor Dickinson of A-Eon fame, this would be a definitive history of what happened next. However, it became clear that there was too much content for a single volume and an additional request was made to backers to fund a second volume. After some unexpected delays caused by the global pandemic, the first volume arrived on my door step a couple of weeks ago. 

Covering the period 1995 to 2004, what Pleasance and Dickinson have achieved is to make sense of the often convoluted tale of just how screwed up the Amiga scene became after Commodore's almost inevitable implosion. Indeed, gentle reader, never has such a telling of the complete shit show that was the post-Commodore Amiga ownership been published, and we still have volume two to look forward to. Now, to be fair, the nine years covered here contain the worst of the story, or so you would think. They are the most active years, but anyone familiar with the Amiga over the last decade will know that the course of the OS and hardware has not exactly been smooth. From "white knight" investment from Escom, to the frankly desperate tale of the Gateway period and whatever the fuck the Amiga Inc thing thought it was, every nook and cranny of the Amiga's journey post Big-C to 2004 is covered here. 

Reading this book brought back a lot of memories from the period. I was an avid A500 user and, by 1994, was trying to figure out how to afford an A1200. The demise of Commodore put that idea on hold and even when Escom achieved the no-mean feat of restarting the production of the A1200, the new, higher price of £399 was too much for me to afford, even if they were readily available in the new Escom shop in Stanley. Sadly, I was also too late to pick up a fire-sale machine when the company went bust. 

The reason for this bon-mot is to emphasise that even in 1995/6, there was still a market for a machine like the A1200. Sure, it was dated tech and, compared to PC's of the period, vastly underpowered, but machines could still be sold. What happened after Escom demonstrated the strengths of the Amiga platform and the many, many weaknesses of those who tried to control it. Basically, the idea of a relatively cheap home computer disappeared as an almost steady stream of corporate purchasers tried to monetise the powerful and useful operating system without understanding or supporting the original user base. The same user base that, even as the years passed, maintained faith in the platform although it started to decline as the lack of direction took its toll. Look at the circulation of Amiga Format (as reported by the ABC in the UK) over the 1990's: Jan-June '92 - 161,256 copies per month. July-December '93 - 142,326 copies. July-December '95 - 60,008. Those are pretty decent numbers considering Commodore was long gone by then.

However, by the time we enter the Gateway/Amiga Inc period, circulation was down to 22,175 (July-Dec 97) and by the last issue in May 2000 (for July-Dec '99), they were selling only 11,146 copies per month. This (admittedly unscientific) observation provides evidence of the market decline even as each new owner of the Amiga fucked about with their various half-baked and under-funded plans. Talk about wasting an opportunity.

Of course, by the mid-1990's, the home computer market was transitioning to the more powerful (and expensive, although becoming more affordable) PC, and video gaming had seen the introduction of the revolutionary PlayStation and Saturn. Unless a company had really deep pockets, there was little scope for a repeat of the Amiga's early success. Hell, at that point, even Apple was struggling to survive, having had some truly bizarre and disastrous business decisions foisted upon them by execs who clearly didn't understand why their particular machine was popular. As with the Amiga and ST, the then executive management never really saw past the idea of the computers being a commodity and that led to poor choices and alienation of the users.

Anyhoo, after that diversion...

The tome itself is of high quality and the paper stock shows off the contemporary photographs, illustrations and screenshots well. As for research, the two author's have tried to speak to as many of the people involved in this period as they could. Some declined to comment but overall, there is a sense of fairness about the coverage and nobody has been subject to a "hit-job", at least as far as I can tell. 

The book takes a chronological view of the period but, as is unavoidable with such a twisted and winding story, there are sections that repeat information, just to give context to the next stage. This makes sense and is really only limited to the odd paragraph here and there. Other than that, I found no issues with either the style or tone of the prose. Given that it only takes the story up to 2004, I am really looking forward to the second volume when it is released and I highly recommend this first volume. If there is only one take away from this story, it's that executive management really did not have a clue about users. That outlook did for Atari, it did for Commodore (and every successor company covered in this tome) and nearly did for Apple. Anyway, there you have From Vultures to Vampires Volume One, a well written and comprehensive history of the first nine years of the Amiga post-Commodore. 

You can order a copy of volume one directly from David Pleasance here, as well as pre-order volume two. Copies can also be ordered from Amazon and, in the UK, WH Smith.

Magazine Menagerie Redux

The latest issues of two Amiga mags landed on my doorstep last week and both are worthy of comment.

Amiga Addict issue 5 continues the great work of previous editions and provides an informative and entertaining read for Amiga fans past and present. The highlight of this month was the focus on UFO: Enemy Unknown, a sci-fi strategy title that was released in 1994. Also called X-COM: UFO Defense in America, this became an instant classic upon release and still has a major following today. A recent crowd-funding drive by author David L Craddock for a "making of" book was extremely successful and it was great to see a bit more coverage in Amiga Addict. 

The piece on Vista Pro was also a great read. A 3D terrain generator, it was most famously known in the early 1990's for creating the Mars-scapes for Arthur C Clark's The Snows of Olympus. Not a package I could afford back then, nor the Amiga capable of getting the best out of it, Vista Pro disappeared a few years later. However, modern day users can get hold of Terragen 4 by Planetside Software. Whilst the full package costs $299 for a perpetual licence, you can pay a subscription fee (ranging from $12 p/m, $33 per quarter and $120 per annum for the Creative version) or download a free version with limited features but enough to get you into the package and maybe spend some cash. That's something I shall be looking at soon.

The greatest thing, however, about this issue was the cover disk! Yes, they have had a disk lineout on the front cover since issue 1 but this time, there is actually a demo cover disk image to go with it! No, not a physical disk, after all, not sure how many people would be able to use that, but a quick download of a three-disk set of ADF files and you get a demo of Bean verses The Animator. A fun shooter with a great soundtrack, the full game is due for release in July. It also supports lightguns to really take you back to the 90's! Hopefully, the publishers will be able to include more "cover disks" in future issues. 

The other magazine that landed was issue 150 of Amiga Future, which was also the first issue of my subscription. I bit the bullet and subbed for a year because I enjoyed the copy of issue 149 that I'd bought as a one off and they are having a drive to increase the page count of the magazine. To do that, they need additional subscribers. At present, they are 13 new subscribers away from adding four additional pages per month. 

Published bi-monthly, the latest issue had some cracking articles in it, including a good review of the Raspberry Pi 400, Amiga Forever 9 (you can read my thoughts about that here) and Apollo OS. There was, of course, the regular column by Trevor Dickinson and the usual high number of news articles. A good range of games reviews were also included and the overall package is very much worth the €7 cover price. There is also a cover CD available if you wish to pay more (the cover price per issue goes up to €9.90) and this caters for the multiple OS options Amiga currently supports - AmigaOS4, AROS, MorphOS and Classic. 

Amiga Addict and Amiga Future offer different takes on the existing Amiga market and that is a good thing for both them and the market in general. Much like the Amiga magazine scene of the early 1990's, where there were multiple titles appealing to a wide range of users, these two magazines compliment each other and should, in my humble opinion, be subscription options for every fan of the Amiga. As it stands at the moment, I would not hesitate to renew these subscriptions when the current ones run out. 

You can find out more about Amiga Addict here, and Amiga Future here.

Amiga Forever 9 - the budget way of experiencing a home computing classic

Regular readers may have noted my opinion on the limited availability of hardware when it comes to retro computing. Spoiled possibly by the widespread use of Raspberry Pi's when it comes to RISC OS, trying to experience something like the Amiga takes a bit more cash. True, there are emulation options that run on the Pi, and there are several YouTube videos of the Raspberry Pi400 acting as a very capable desktop emulation Amiga if you so require. However, if even the relatively low cost Pi400 is out of reach or you just want to use your existing PC, there is another option: Amiga Forever 9.

Released by Cloanto, who hold the licence for the Classic Amiga OS, Amiga Forever 9 is a complete emulation solution using a combination of Win UAE and Fellow alongside official ROMS of Amiga's past. There are three versions of AF9: Value (€9.99), Plus (€29.99) and Premium (€49.99), and what you get varies with each package. The cheapest version will get you a download code for AF9 which includes the 1.3 ROM and some games (25+) and demos (25+). The Plus package includes additional ROMS (3.x), cross-platform support, the Amiga Explorer software, galleries and double the number of games/quadruple the number of demos. The Premium package adds a host of Amiga related videos and documentaries as well as a physical copy of the software on three DVD's. I selected the Premium pack and shortly after purchase, received an email with a download link and activation key. The physical disks took about a week to arrive.

A variety of systems are supplied, others can be downloaded.

Installation was pretty straight forward and quite quickly I was able to peruse the list of games and demos included in the package. You can, of course, add your own disc images if you have them, and you can convert these to the preferred RP9 format using the Toolbox feature in the package but the usual ADF files are no problem at all.

The list of included games and demos is quite the collection.

If you do get stuck then there is a ton of help documentation on the Amiga Forever website which covers pretty much everything you might need to know, and lots of things you'll probably never need to ask about but it's there anyway. 

Kick Off 2 in action.

The included games are a mixed bunch but did include a couple of strategy titles that I hankered after back in the day but could never find/afford when the opportunities arose. You also get Kick Off 2 which, if you are of a certain vintage, was the football (soccer) game to play back in the day. Well, before Sensi Soccer anyway... The demos are also a mixed bag, some are quite fun and they do show what the Amiga could do in the hands of talented coders. 

This was a cutting edge desktop in the late 1980's

With the available ROMS and software options, AF9 is a very good package indeed and, if you only want to dip back into say the Amiga 500 of 1990 vintage, then the Value package cannot be beaten. The Plus pack gives you ROMS galore, even for oddities like the never-released Walker concept machine, though that particular one is an additional download. This is probably the best all-round way of experiencing Amiga Forever 9, though if you want to see the Amiga-related videos and have a penchant for physical media, then the Premium is the only way forward. 

It improved by the late 1990's

What was interesting was loading up software and experiencing again the clicky, grinding disk noise. It's only for show but the sound alone took me back to the early 90's. It also made me realise that sometimes those rose tinted memories are just that! Was disk access always that bloody slow???

All told, whichever SKU you go for, you'll not be disappointed with Amiga Forever 9. It's relatively easy to navigate around and it is certainly feature packed. For the low sum of €9.99, this is an inexpensive emulator to try out and it's pretty straightforward to upgrade later. I'm certainly happy with the Premium package and it definitely ticks all of those retro boxes. You can check out Amiga Forever 9 here.

Magazine Menagerie - Part Three - Amiga Addict

The third and final part of the Magazine Menagerie and we come to a review that I had said I wouldn't do. When reviewing the second issue of Amiga Addict, I'd said I wouldn't post another review of the magazine unless there was something to say. With my post on the latest issue of Amiga Future here, I decided that it would be worth adding a few comments about the latest Amiga Addict. If you're expecting a face off between the two, sorry, you're not going to get that. Spoiler alert: if you can afford to get both English print Amiga magazines, do it. They have different approaches and styles and, as I said yesterday, are great companion pieces.

The overview - another great issue. The new Across the Pond column was intriguing and should offer some good tales in future episodes. The Amiga Ireland 2021 report was interesting and gave rise to thoughts of attending next year (maybe, who knows, what with costs, travel and COVID). The first part of a series on the legacy of Commodore promises much and I hope it delivers in future instalments. There's an amusing tale of attending the World of Amiga show in 1994 and believe me, war games shows can be kinda similar, especially the Sunday ones after say 1.30pm... though we never leave kit behind. The second part of the Memories of Dave Needle was suitably funny and poignant, and the multi-page feature on the Amiga and the Jungle music scene was both eye opening and bewildering - it's not my favourite music genre by any means but it was an interesting read. Two pages are dedicated to AOZ Studio may be of interest from a developer's point of view, though I would check out the subscription costs before deciding anything - the free version contains adverts, the monthly sub is €9 and a two year license is €89 - not extravagant by any means but something to be wary of. The games reviews were varied (I remember playing Transarctica and, from vague recollections, think the review is spot on), and I particularly liked the review of Flink, a CD32 title that had previously escaped my attention. The interview with the designer/graphics artist was icing on the cake. Naturally, the regular sections were also worth reading.

I did get a huge dose of nostalgia reading about Games-X. Although short lived, it was a regular pick up from the post office/newsagents my mates and I passed on the way to school. After all, what else was dinner money for??? The magazine, as I recall, was a fun read and more akin to a comic than a traditional games magazine in its price and paper quality, though it was 30 years ago, so I could very well be wrong here. A good magazine at the time, and one that should be remembered for doing something a bit different. 

The highlight of this issue for me was the long awaited Unamiga review. After unforeseen postal delays, here was a take on a piece of hardware that I had no idea existed back when I did my Alternative Computing, but at what cost post a few months back. Basically, an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) recreation board, the Unamiga can be one of several computers depending upon the "core" selected. From an Amiga point of view, it is equivalent to a Motorola 68020 with 2MB of Chip RAM and 20MB of Fast RAM - a pimped out A500/A2000 is you like. Other "cores" can include the Spectrum NEXT, the original Spectrum, the C64 and the MSX amongst others. This, for the princely sum of €152 (about £131) for the A500/Checkmate 1500 case compatible board. Sounds great, doesn't it? The review is gushing, which it has every right to be - I have seen enough on the Unamiga elsewhere to consider it a lovely piece of kit, though if you're not in possession of an A500 case or suitable peripherals (keyboard, monitor, case, power supply etc) then you're going to spend a tad more than €152. Still, cheaper than a Vampire and anything available or promised by A-Eon. Sadly, getting hold of one is likely to be be a probable as a lottery win, as these are produced in small batches on an as and when basis. After all, a hobbyist group in a niche market. Such is the way of things. 

Anyway, cracking work and more of the same for next issue please! You can order a copy (or subscribe) at the Amiga Addict website. As for me and my ideas of running the Amiga Classic OS, there's always Amiga Forever.

Magazine Menagerie - Part Two - Amiga Future

Welcome to the second of the trio of recently received publications. In today's post, I'll be looking at an Amiga magazine that's been going for absolutely yonks. Yes, now up to issue 149, this is the March/April 2021 edition of Amiga Future.

Published in both German and English editions, it is the latter that I paid about £7.90 (€7.00 for the magazine, €2.20 for postage, exchange rates decide the actual amount in GBP) for and it arrived bang on the date the pre-order email said it would. 

The magazine is in the A4 format and of high quality. It is 56-pages in length and in full colour. For an extra €2.90, you can also get a cover mounted CD that includes games, demos and utilities for the various flavours of operating systems classed as Amiga - AmigaOS 4, AROS, Classic and MorphOS. 

The layout is clean and straightforward, and there are plenty of advertisers - ten in fact, spread over 15 pages. The most stylish of these has to be the Vampire Accelerator add in the centre-fold. Images are sharp and, overall, I have no negatives to say about the physical quality of the magazine. 

As you can see from the contents page, there's quite a bit in here, with a news section, a couple of well thought out and interesting interviews, numerous reviews (including a piece on the latest update to AmigaOS 4 and two articles on hardware, one of which (the MiSTer) has been on my "would like/can't justify" list for a while now. There is also a two page piece from Trevor Dickinson which is a nice way to get updates from the main source of commercial hardware in the OS 4 market. 

There is a good mix of content here, and that makes this an accessible read for anyone new to the Amiga. Yes, you might get a bit tied up in some of the technical stuff but, on the whole, my passing familiarity with the current market was more than enough to get a lot out of this issue. Complete beginners shouldn't have much of a problem finding their feet either. In that sense, Amiga Future is very similar to Amiga Addict.

My personal favourites were the MiSTer review and attached interview, the comparison between the adventure game Dune and it's board game equivalent and Trevor's Soap Box. I did, however, read this issue from cover to cover and have had a bit of a gander at some of the advertisers websites, just to see what they offered. 

I enjoyed reading Amiga Future and if you can, give it a try. There is much to recommend here. Will I be subscribing? Possibly. There are six issues a year and a subscription for that works out at just over £46 including postage (excluding the cover disc) for the year. In the meantime, it is easy to decide whether or not to buy on a per issue basis as the publishers post details of every new issue on Amigaworld.net and on their website, so it makes it very easy to check if there is something of interest before you buy an issue. Indeed, Amiga Future is a great companion publication to Amiga Addict and I hope both continue to be successful. You can buy Amiga Future from this website here. 

Amiga Addict - Issue Two Review

The latest issue of Amiga Addict landed through the letter box at the beginning of the week and it was something I'd really been looking forward to. When it was announced this issue was for sale, I took the opportunity to subscribe for 12 issues, which not only gets me a physical copy in the post but also a pdf copy on the day of publication. Although I downloaded that copy, I resisted the temptation to read it as the whole point of subscribing to enjoy the physical mag itself. Still, it's nice to have an electronic copy I can transfer to a tablet for future reference. So was issue 2 worth waiting for? Oh, yes!

But before we get into that, a quick note. This will be the last "review" of Amiga Addict from me. By that, I mean I won't be putting up identikit posts every month as that will just get a tad monotonous. However, when there is something to talk about, maybe an article that has caught my attention, or something I have followed up on after reading about it in the magazine, then I'll put out a post that references the mag. As it stands, my final comments at the bottom of page should be taken as writ until such time as I tell you otherwise. You'll also note, by the way, that I've only put one picture in this post, and that's of the cover. If you want to see more, go visit the Amiga Addict website and buy a copy. 

For the magazine itself, it begins with the usual regular sections (News, Keyboard Warriors, Back in the Day and Demoscene), which are entertaining and informative as before. However, the bulk of the magazine is made up of articles that definitely made me think subscribing was a good idea and these are divided into four sections: Amiga Focus, Amiga Insight, On Screen and Testbench.

The Amiga Focus section is comprised of five pieces: a photo montage of Amiga Addict in the hands of the public, the Amiga on the high street, UK user groups and meets, memoirs of an Amiga gamer and  Amiga magazines. I particularly liked the one on UK user groups, though sadly there isn't one in the north-east of England.

Amiga Insight contains the meat of the magazine, the four pages making up the first part of Memories of Dave Needle being both funny and poignant, with part two following next month. The six pages on DMA Design brought new insights of the famous software developer, whilst A day in the life of Amiga Action was a lovely little nostalgia trip to the 1990's. Finally, we have a two page article on Demoparties containing an interview with organiser Ruairi Fullam. Each of the articles is well written, no fluff, no filler, and all very interesting.

On Screen gives us games, from opinion piece Six of the Best, to a game guide for Moonstone and reviews of The Addams Family, Jim Power in 'Mutant Planet' (never heard of it but I do want to play it now after reading the review), No Second Prize and Super Sprint DRS. I quite like the retro reviews, especially as it brings titles that I knew nothing about to my notice. That's part of the reasoning behind my slowly growing collection of 3DO reviews for Retrovideogamer.co.uk, to bring attention to a format and its games that might have passed gamers by at the time and may be unknown to younger folk today. Just don't keep track of the average review score for these though, this was not a system blessed with classics...

Back to the magazine and we have a piece on the CD32, a machine I really wanted to get hold of back in the day but one that I never found the money for. Maybe one day, if the price is right... I hope this series continues for many issues to come and I thoroughly enjoyed the reviews of CD32 titles Bubba and Stix, and Cannon Fodder.

Testbench gives us news on the latest OS4.1 update, a review of Amiga Power, a soundtrack album that I think may be making it's way onto a wish list soon and a brilliant two-pager on the CDTV, another seemingly forgotten and vastly underappreciated Commodore product, and one that, if my student loan hadn't been hammered by an N64, I should have picked up from a second-hand shop in Kingston-upon-Thames way back in 1997, but didn't. What can I say, I was young and foolish... How to adapt a light gun for your Amiga and the piece on DJ-ing with the PT-1210 software both get two pages a piece and add a bit of variety - not my cup of tea but well worth reading out of interest anyway. The best article, for me, was the Amiga Tech tree, an easy to understand single page guide to what hardware/software options you have if you want to enjoy the Amiga. Hopefully, there will be some more in-depth pieces in future focusing on this topic. The editorial notes there was a planned review of the UnAmiga board but the hardware remained stuck in postal hell at the time of publication so maybe next month...

It's nice to see a couple more advertisers this month as well, both from a consumer point of view and a revenue one for the magazine, and the announcement on Discord that over 1000 copies of the first issue were sold bodes well for the future.

There we have it then, the second issue of Amiga Addict and one that continues the quality, in both writing and production, of the first. A brilliant issue and I'm more than happy with the decision to have subscribed. You can check out the magazine website here, and purchase either a single issue to give it a try or start a subscription from the currently available issue. 

Amiga Addict - Issue One Review

Amiga Addict is a new monthly magazine aimed at the Amiga market. Now, stop laughing at the back, such a thing still exists and, given a quick check online, keeps more than a few companies in business, as well as quite a few lawyers but that's way out of scope for this post. As a former Amiga user and someone who still has a passing interest in the format, when I saw this magazine mentioned on Twitter, I thought I would give it a go.

What we have then is a 56 page glossy A4 format magazine in full colour. Nominally priced at £4.99, you'll need to factor in P&P which, for the UK consumer, means one issue will set you back £6.49 whilst overseas customers will pay £9.28. There are subscription options available, UK prices for 6 and 12 month subs are £37.99 and £73.99 respectively. Overseas subs are £52.00 and £101.00 for the same periods, whilst a 12 month online only sub will set you back £51.30. 

First impressions are good. A high quality cover which is glossy and sturdy, and a cheeky coverdisk message as well! Inside, similarly high quality paper is used for the pages and it is clear that nothing has been skimped on the physical side of the magazine.

As for the contents, the production team have done a good job here too. The first issue is divided into five sections, as you can see from the screenshot below.

What is good to see is the mix of topics - you have interviews, articles, reviews and productivity pieces, with the ratio about right in my opinion and there is a great balance here. Everything is well written and informative - the efforts of combat piracy on the Amiga especially so given how blatantly rampant it was just from what I remember when I was at school. Every article is of interest too, the interviews well thought out and the reviews fun to read. Even the adverts are interesting, with a good range of advertisers covering hardware, software, merchandise and repair services. Nothing on a par with Silica Systems but those were the days, my friend...

I also applaud the production team on the layout of the magazine. It has been a thing for quite a while now (especially in wargaming publications but they are not the only ones) for magazines to have a lot of white space (doesn't have to be white but a lot of empty space nonetheless). Personally, I hate that. Fortunately here, the layout is really good - well-spaced text and suitable illustrations, but no honking great white spaces that do nothing to add to the content. 

It's great to see a new print magazine for the Amiga, one that the publishers themselves see as complimenting existing magazines. Much like Archive and Drag 'n' Drop magazines for RISC OS, it's comforting to see that the market for publications still exists in hobbyist computing circles and with such high production values.

As first issues go, this is a brilliant start and I shall definitely be subscribing when issue 2 is announced in January. If you're an Amiga fan or just someone interested in the format, I heartily recommend it. You can find out more about the magazine here.

Alternative Computing, but at what cost?

You may have noticed that I have posted several pieces about using operating systems other than Windows over the last couple of years. Since then, I've had a few queries about how much it would cost to purchase hardware capable of running these alternative OS's. For your enlightenment, but possibly not your entertainment, here is my rough, ready and not entirely comprehensive guide to how much it would cost to buy into an OS that isn't Windows. Disclaimer here: this isn't a buying guide as such, with no recommendations about which OS to chose. That decision is up to you. I'm just giving you prices as of October 2020 and a personal comment on those prices where I think necessary. These comments are my own opinion, right or wrong as they may be. All prices are UK GBP unless stated and any conversion to other currencies is the value given by Google on 08/10/2020. These conversion prices do not include shipping, import duty and any other taxes, so watch out for that 20% VAT differential when comparing $ to £. Also, if I've missed something out, please let me know in the comments.

So, first up, we have the other two "mainstream" operating systems: Mac OS and Chrome OS. Neither should need much introduction so I'll just summarise the key points. 

Mac OS is restricted to Apple hardware, the cheapest of which is the Mac Mini starting at £799. You'll need a keyboard, mouse and display to use that but if you've already got those then you're set. If you don't, then you'll either need to factor in the cost of these or chose the next model up, the iMac, which starts at £1,099. Laptops start with the MacBook Air at £999, progressing to the 13-inch Macbook Pro starting at £1,299 and the 16-inch Macbook Pro, whose lowest price model will set you back £2,399. As you can see, these are not small sums of money and if Mac OS is your thing, consider these two caveats. One, Apple is transitioning their range from Intel processors to Apple Silicon (ARM-based) processors. Whilst there is no issue about legacy support (they've been good in previous transitions), there are rumours that the new machines may be slightly cheaper - but that's just a rumour. Also it will take time for Apple Silicon native software to be released, though their translation layer, Rosetta 2, seems to be good enough to run Intel native software in the mean time. The other caveat is that whilst the starting prices might not seem that high (relatively speaking), getting a spec that you want may take the price of the machine to eye-watering levels. For example, that £1,099 iMac - want a Retina 4K display instead of 1080p? £1,299. Want the 27 inch display instead of 21.5 inch? £1,799! And that's before you upgrade the memory or storage as I feel that no machine costing way north of a grand should have less than 16GB of memory these days. Oh, and if you want a Mac Pro, they start at £5,499. The wheels cost another £400 and let's not forget the monitor stand for £949. What about the monitor? Apple's Pro Display XDR will set you back ££4,599. Of course, you can easily buy second-user kit but that's not overly cheap as Apple gear holds its value very well.

Cost of entry: £799 and it only gets higher. 

Chrome OS from Google is available from a ton of manufacturers, such as Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Dell, HP and Google themselves. The issue here is that the budget machines (which can, at times, be had for well under £200, model depending) tend to suffer from budget issues (screen quality, lack of memory, small displays, poor keyboards etc) whereas the pricier machines (e.g. the Google Pixelbook Go) are, well, quite pricey - £629 for the base model. Want a faster processor and more storage? Step up the £829, £949 and £1,349 models! And therein lies the rub. Chrome OS is not that flexible an operating system. True, it does 80% or so of what you want to do but for similar prices to the Pixelbook Go, a Windows (or Mac OS) machine will give you more functionality. 

Cost of entry: Less than £200 though that can be pushed beyond the £1,000 barrier if you feel the need.

Now we get to the trio of operating systems that are less mainstream from a general consumer point of view (that's my Linux defence in place). As a reminder - this is my opinion on the cost of entry for these operating systems. I'm not taking into account what you may or may not want to use them for. Only you can do that and I already know how I do/would use each of the following operating systems.

Amiga OS

I'll be brutally honest, this is a hobbyist OS at best these days. But just like buses, when you want to talk about Amiga operating systems, there are three alternatives to consider. There is v3.1.4 (and the earlier 3.9 - it's briefly explained here) for Classic Amiga hardware, so anything running a Motorola 68k series processor as well as the Vampire boards, Amiga OS 4.1 and Morph OS. This makes things a tad complicated but from a personal point of view, OS 4.1 would be my preference if shopping for an Amiga OS computer. The problem here is that you need to have money to burn. The singular new build Amiga OS 4.1 desktop available now costs £1,799! Yes, I am aware of the Tabor/A1222 board but that's been on the cards for years now and you still can't buy the damn thing, never mind a complete desktop system. That and even though the board should be available for around four hundred euros (£365), a full system would be much more than that. For Amiga OS v3.1.4, you have older hardware that's now at frankly silly prices (and 25 plus years old) or the Vampire accelerator boards, the standalone version costing 579 euros (£530). With Morph OS, that requires either long-unsupported Amiga hardware or a G3/G4 powered Mac, and Apple finished the switch away from those processors in 2007, so good luck sourcing the hardware (or paying a reasonable price when you do find one for sale). As you can see, hobbyist OS with hobbyist pricing. It's do-able, certainly, but it'll cost you.

Cost of entry: Without existing kit, you'll face a steep second-hand market or costly, limited-run hardware. With existing kit, just the costly, limited-run hardware.

Linux

Linux and yes, before the pedants comment, I know Chrome OS is Linux-based but for the sake of this post, I am treating them separately, and that's before we get into the Google discussion. As you can see from my post here, if you have an older Win 7 machine then Zorin Lite will work really well on it. The other versions will suit more powerful hardware, as will pretty much every other Linux distro out there. The choice is yours and as long as you have the hardware, the actual OS tends to be free or very low in price. If you don't have the hardware but you don't want to buy brand new kit, check out places such as Morgan Computers and Tier1 (there are many others) for refurbished machines that can very easily handle Linux. But what if you want to buy new hardware with Linux pre-installed? Just how much would you need to spend to emulate the straight forward process of buying a Windows/Mac OS/Chrome OS device? The answer is, with a couple of exceptions, quite a bit!

The Zorin desktop.

Star Labs advertise two laptops, an 11 inch model for £399 and a 13.3 inch model for £699. For the spec of each machine, 8GB of memory and 240GB of storage for the lower price machine, 16GB and 240GB respectively for the higher price, is pretty good, and you have a choice of Linux distros too: Zorin, Manjaro, Ubuntu, elementary OS, MX Linux and Mint. The reviews seem pretty decent and if I were to buy a new build laptop with Linux pre-installed, UK-based Star Labs would be my first port of call.

Another decently priced vendor is Slimbook, where their Essential range of laptops start at 499 euros (£455). They offer numerous installs and dual-booting with Windows if you so wish. 

Juno Computers offer Linux laptops from £599 at the time of writing, which is a tad pricier but their range is much larger, as are the subsequent price tags. They only seem to offer Ubuntu as a default install though you can buy without an OS.

Prices get a bit sillier when we get to System 76. Their desktops start from $899 (£700) and the laptops from $1,099 (£850). Admittedly, this is a high-end manufacturer and even offer their own distro, Pop! OS alongside Ubuntu. Like Apple, the higher the spec, the more astronomical the price. 

The key thing to remember with Linux is that you are no further away than a free download in order to try it out. Zorin (as well as Puppy Linux, Peppermint OS, MX Linux among others) offers a boot from USB option to give you a taste, and you can always partition your main machine to offer a dual boot into Linux and Windows. 

Cost of entry: Without existing kit, not bad as starting at £400 brand new, less if buying second user hardware. With existing kit, free. Can't say fairer than that!

RISC OS

Finally, we have my favourite alternative OS, RISC OS. This OS could also be described as hobbyist. In fact, until a few years back, it was in a more unenviable position than Amiga OS, but that all changed with the release of the Raspberry Pi single-board computer. In fact, it's a Rasp Pi 3B+ that powers my RISCOSbits desktop that's been in steady use since August last year. That was just over £200 for the spec but, for now, let's start off at the lower end of the price range.

If you don't have a Rasp Pi to hand then this, gentle reader, is the cheapest way of experiencing RISC OS. This memory stick contains an emulator for RISC OS for Windows and Mac, plus the full source code for Linux users. At £14 all in, it's a neat way of having a go without spending too much money. I know this because the stick in the picture below is mine and I wanted to see how it compared to the Pi-based machine. The answer, well, not bad, though it is emulation and I prefer to use native hardware. Highly recommended though as a taster.

An entirely unexciting picture of a USB stick - the backing is colourful though.

If you want native hardware then your cheapest option is buying a Raspberry Pi 3B+ (NOT the Pi 4 as they're still porting the OS to the newer architecture though that is progressing well). You can either buy one yourself then download an image of RISC OS to an SD card or buy a ready made kit (as I did) from the likes of RISCOSbits, CJE Micros, and R-Comp. You're not just limited to the Pi, either. There's other ARM-powered boards that form the basis of RISC OS machines, but they can to cost a bit more - for example a Ti-Machine will set you back £899 which is at the top end of the market but still half the price of an Amiga X5000. 

If you want a laptop, then you're currently limited to variations of the PiTop or the Armbook, the latter of which I am slowly coming off the fence to purchase.

That's not all. There is still a healthy looking market for RISC OS machines and that is aided by the RISCOS Cloverleaf project. This is an effort to use crowd-funding to not only get new hardware out there but also fund development of the OS itself to bring it up to date. As time goes by, more information is released and they have posted the prices they'll be asking for when the crowd-funding begins for each of the five machines they want to release (two desktops, two laptops and an all-in-one design). These are 299 (£275) and 599 (£550) euros for the desktops (each figure contains 100 euros to support RISC OS development), 399 (£365) and 599 (£550) euros for the laptops (50 and 100 euros respectively for OS development) and 899 euros (£820) for the all in one (100 euros for development). Doing a straight euro to pound conversion reveals these prices to be reasonable, especially when you factor in the donation to the software side, but I'll have a dedicated post about this up in the next couple of days.

Cost of entry: Without dedicated ARM hardware, £14. With hardware, can be free. 

So there you have it, my (incomplete) price guide to some alternative operating systems to Windows. Lots of options to pretty much suit every wallet, if not every OS, but I hope you've found it informative.

Computing from the past??? The Amiga

Having a rootle around an upstairs cupboard led me to two diskette boxes full of 3.5 inch floppy disks. I had forgotten I had these, they made the move a couple of years ago, been dumped and that was it. Until now...

The dust says it all...

I started having a look through them and soon realised they were the sum total of my Commodore Amiga software collection, some of which dates back twenty seven years! I mentioned this to people at work the next day and had to explain to a couple under the tender age of 25 what a floppy disk was, despite them seeing one everyday when they click save in MS Office. And come to that, why is the floppy disk icon still used when most PC's haven't had one as standard for years?

Anyhoo, amongst the disks were the three pack in games that came with the A500 I bought so long ago: F29 Retaliator (initially the bugged version where the aircraft exploded directly after take off, soon replaced by a working copy), Rainbow Islands (a decent port of a coin-op) and Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters (a glorious 50's sci-fi pastiche of a shooter). My favourite at the time was F29 and the developer, DID, went on to make several more impressive flight sims through the years.

Some other gems in the boxes included 688 Attack Sub and Silent Service 2 - both early attempts at submarine simulations. The former placed you in command of a Los Angeles class nuclear attack sub and did a great job too, it's one title I really enjoyed and would happily play again. As a fan of the book and the film, "The Hunt for Red October", this game captured a lot of the atmosphere that the actual THFRO game did not. The manual that came with the game was also quite informative too. Game manuals back in the day used to be, these days, you're more likely to get a one sheet with an advert(!). Silent Service 2 was a WW2 sub simulator that was equally good at the lower tech end, especially when you were caught on the surface by a couple of enemy destroyers charging towards you!

When games manuals were games manuals...

Finally, there were the classic point and click adventures The Secret of Monkey Island (1 and 2) and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. The latter came on ten disks and as a teenager, I stared longingly at the adverts for a GVP 20Mb hard drive that I think cost as much as the computer itself. That didn't matter though, it meant no more swapping!!! Sadly, it was never to be.

There were also a load of cover disks, this being back in the day when computer magazines put demo disks on their front covers. One magazine (Amiga Power as memory serves but I could be wrong), started offering full games but that was frowned upon by the industry and the practice soon stopped. Demo diskettes eventually gave way to demo CD's when the 32-bit console era arrived, whilst PC magazines continued until the late naughties when downloading became the norm.

They look ok, but whether they still work is a different matter

The Amiga cover disks varied between giving utilities, game demos and tech demos, the latter highlighting the best of amateur coders and what they could achieve on the hardware at the time. I remember some seriously impressive stuff for the time.

Naturally, I don't have any hardware to try these disks out on, but it did get me thinking about the Amiga as a platform and what form it exists in today. With a vague plan, it was off to Google...

A couple of quick searches led my to Hyperion Entertainment  (the rights holder to the modern day Amiga OS) and A-EON, the only supplier of hardware currently supported by the modern day OS. There is also an Italian outfit, Armiga Project, who are offering Amiga 500 compatible boxes for a couple of hundred euros which look quite interesting and might be worth a look if you fancy re-living the Amiga during its heyday.

So, modern hardware for Amiga systems is pretty much limited to either the aforementioned A-EON X5000 (Ars Technica ran a review a few months back) or the Vampire accelerator cards that emulate the original hardware at almost current day speeds. The main downside to these is cost: The X5000 costs £1750 as a full system and the Vampire boards are currently just add-ons to existing hardware though that may change in future. Niche stuff indeed.

Having said that, let's put this in context. Commodore went bust back in 1994, so to have any market in 2017 is pretty amazing and a sure sign of a passionate community. It also means there is at least some money in it. The amounts may not be high, buy it has to be worthwhile for business to run.

I do have the option of buying an original (if slightly yellowed) Amiga, with all of the pitfalls that entails. There are issues with leaking motherboard batteries and twenty five years of wear and tear (or neglect) means that is not really a practical option, especially with some of the prices that e-bayers are asking. There are one or two places selling original refurbished Amiga kit, such as Amigakit, but as with the Armiga, you can go through a couple of hundred pounds easily and that is a lot just to have a trip down memory lane.

However, there are two cheaper options. Amiga Forever is the officially licensed emulator, with various versions ranging from £10 to £50. This allows you to easily re-live the software that made the Amiga the computer it was. This is the cheapest and easiest way to experience the Amiga. If you want dedicated hardware, then the way to go is with the Raspberry Pi. You can get emulators that will happily run on the Pi and give you near flawless performance. The Pi is cheap, a starter kit will cost about £60-£70 and gives you the flexibility to run other operating systems as well.

Would I buy a modern day Amiga? Well, no, not at the current cost of the X5000. Hell, £1750 would get me a kick-ass gaming PC so niche versus mainstream means niche loses. There is the up and coming A1222 board, but that is still expected to be several hundred just for the main board when it is finally released, so cost will still be a barrier to experiencing the modern day OS4. That does leave the emulation route which seems the most likely way I will go.

Rose tinted spectacles aside, the Amiga was a cracking computer for its time. That some enthusiasts have kept the spirit and hardware alive for nearly twenty five years after Commodore died is a testament to its enduring popularity. I cherished by A500 for several years before space and utility dictated that it had to go. It was one of the two personal computers of the era that I enjoyed using. The other, another format that still lives on to this day, and the Acorn Archimedes and the Risc-OS family.