The Commodore Amiga? It runs NetBSD.
The story of the Amiga is perhaps one of the most tragic tales of innovation and mismanagement in the history of personal computing. Developed by a team of bona fide American geniuses, the first Amiga computer - the 1000 - made high-fidelity graphics and sound affordable in a time when most of us still ran Apple IIs and Commodore 64s. The OS implemented preemptive multitasking, the custom chipset allowed for unparalleled graphics and sound performance - it could even process raw video signals from VCRs or early digital cameras, as demonstrated here by none other than Andy Warhol. These features made the Amiga especially desirable in the video editing department - Babylon 5 rendered all of its special effects on Amiga hardware.
The line ran strong until about 1992, when the hardware finally started being eclipsed by PCs and Macs. Due to a series of business mistakes and mismanagement of the Amiga division, Commodore went bankrupt in 1994, taking down the Amiga line with itself. No new official hardware would ever be released, while the intellectual rights to the Amiga were sold off to a selection of companies, leading to a confusing situation for the userbase.
Commodore's demise didn't stop the die-hard Amiga fandom from releasing custom hardware and software well into the 21st century, bringing the little computer that could into the internet age. Although pricy, these accelerator boards and expansions allowed Amiga users to prolong the lifespan of their machines by well over a decade. There are still dedicated communities that develop new hardware and software releases, although no hope remains for another official Amiga computer.
Thankfully, the NetBSD project was in its infancy when the Amiga line was killed off. In fact, the Amiga line was one of the first targets for NetBSD! While Amiga users would wait six years for a semi-official update to AmigaOS, the NetBSD project provided modern Unix software to die-hard users.
While the NetBSD port works on any Amiga model, please keep in mind that it does require a fair bit of hardware. It is indeed possible to run NetBSD on an Amiga 500, but it will need to be upgraded with a 68020 CPU and at least 24 MB of RAM. It is also possible to run NetBSD on the UAE emulator.
I can't do enough justice to the story of the Amiga in these four paragraphs, so I would like to direct you to either this excellent video by the Nostalgia Nerd or Jimmy Maher's The Future Was Here. And, of course, please be sure to check out my favourite Amiga game.
On a more personal note, sorry for the unplanned lack of activity on this blog. We're back now. Thanks for sticking around. We're fast approaching 1,000 followers and we're going to do a special series of posts once we hit that milestone.
