All Hail the Beater Sticks!!!

[LordArt]

I just found out from this article that how my favorite computer, the Amiga, got designed in the same fashion as Omnimancy progresses in the past and today. FOAM BEATER STICKS!

http://www.arstechnica.com/articles/cul ... rt-2.ars/2

Jay Miner may have been leading the team, but the details of the new computer were hammered out at team design meetings, held in a seminar-like room that had whiteboards covering the walls. Everyone could pitch for inclusion in the machine, and the small group would have to come to a consensus about which features to include and which to leave out. Engineering is all about tradeoffs, and you can't just decide to include "the best of everything" and have it all work. Cost, speed, time to develop, and complexity are just some of the factors that must be taken into account at this crucial stage of a new computer. The way the Amiga team came to a consensus was with foam rubber baseball bats.

It isn't known who first came up with the idea, but the foam bats became an essential part of all design meetings. A person would pitch an idea, and if other engineers felt they were stupid or unnecessary, they would hit the person over the head with a bat. As Jay said, "it didn't hurt, but the humiliation of being beaten with the bat was unbearable." It was a lighthearted yet still serious approach, and it worked. Slowly the Amiga design began to take shape.

Actually the article series is quite good and interesting for those interested in computer history.

[LightLink]

Wow!

It's hard for me to find somebody who even knows what an Amiga is, let alone have it be their favourite computer. I've had an Amiga 500 since...forever. It was my first computer, and I even have pictures of 3 year old me playing games on it. I still do in fact, although the original Amiga 500, while working, doesn't work that well any more, and lots of my old programs for it have worn out (since they were all floppies and those things die after a long while). Now a days, I use an Amiga Emulator and just emulate an Amiga 500.

No wonder the Amiga was so darn awesome. They should use bats for everything. Maybe if they used more bats, the Amiga would have lived longer/not died.

[LordArt]

I'm one of the die hards. I have an AmigaOne with AmigaOS 4.0 on it, etc (800 Mhz G4 PPC). An A4000 with a Toaster/Flyer that I haven't booted up in ages.

I even have another Amiga as a server in the house.

[LightLink]

Wow. Amiga OS 4.0. That's impressive. Do you use that often? I've only seen screenshots of it. It looks rather sexy.

[LordArt]

Wow. Amiga OS 4.0. That's impressive. Do you use that often? I've only seen screenshots of it. It looks rather sexy.

I use two machines regularly, my Windows Games box, and my AmigaOne. The latter I use for email and browsing and such daily. Security through obsurity if you know what I mean. When I do chatting on IRC I'm also using my Amiga 95% of the time, as well as AIM.

I haven't done serious video/graphic work on it in a long time. When everything went DVD, there was little point left for something like a Toaster/Flyer (but that was my A4000). On OS4 these days, I mostly do practical stuff, like scripts for my IRC logs and VNC sessions to manage my linux server.

To me, it IS still fun, and it is "sexy" as you put it. Lets face it, if something goes terribly wrong, I reboot back to a workable desktop in 5 seconds. OS4 isn't as stable as 3.x, but it's MUCH MUCH faster. They are still working out the kinks, which is ok. They even brought back screens and added that you can drag them left and right, not just from top to bottom. Lots of stuff added. I won't turn this into an OS4 advertisment, but yes, it's fun.