Warhol's Amiga & Camoflage

Two Interesting pieces of obscure computer history came to light via the BBC today, one of which I'm amazed to see I'd already watched and contacted people about.

This video...

About the history of the development of the Amiga, I'd watched about a year ago, and I contacted R J Mical about whether he had any more of his talks video's and could upload them.  He even contacted me back asking about USB connectivity from video recorders - sorry R J I'm in the UK and was unable to help.

But then this article appeared today on the BBC, quite obviously they're talking about the Amiga Launch video which is tacked onto the end of the Amiga History video I had watched, in the above video skip to the 58th minute.

Warhol's Amiga on the BBC

It's interesting to see the PIC format described as un-readable, I can read it on my Atari ST's... If they'd have asked, I could have opened the format, converted it to 256bit BMP and re-saved it in about 15 minutes...

The other computing Gem was this article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-26820227

Specifically the reference to Chris having created the  first every Computer Promo for a Music single, which has been uploaded to YouTube for a few years now, but which did have me very interested:

I'm surprised with it appearing on the BBC it still only has around 10,000 views though.

RIP - Jack Tramiel

In my opinion the passing of Jack Tramiel yesterday is more a watershed moment than the passing of Steve Jobs, yet there has been neary a squeek about Jack crashing into the ether of eternity... The father of 8bit computing in the US - with in roads into the UK - where we think of Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry as presenting the UK with affordable 8bit computing, it was Tramiel and his companies (Commodore and Atari) which brought 16bit computing to the UK and world, at affordable prices.

The father, in some ways, of the C64, C16, VIC-20, Atari ST, TT, MegaST, Falcon and all those miriad of Amiga models, the man has a story to rival and even eclipse many other "industry titans", from Auschwitz to California his rise was meteoric, not accidental.

So, I for one say thanks to Jack for his machines, for his life and thanks for all the memories:

Jack Tramiel - 1928 - 2012