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by Zelphyr 4094 days ago
Some of the amazing capabilities of the Amiga were influenced by one of its architects: Carl Sassenrath. He has since gone on to create the Rebol language which is even more astounding once you begin to look into it.

He's currently at Roku where I can only begin to imagine what he's working on. My only wish is that they'd replace the horrific BrightScript with Rebol.
1 comments
guru_meditation 4094 days ago
The hardware owes it all to Jay Miner and Ron Nicholson (rhn). Jay Miner passed a long time away from a long term kidney condition and is still out there doing lots of stuff:

http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/photo-cv.html

Notice how he was the guy behind the IWM (Integrated Woz Machine) for the Mac and the beautifully minimized Apple //c in addition to being one of the key persons in creating the essence of Amiga hardware magic: Denise, Copper and Blitter.

Carl Sassenrath and RJ Mical were super influential on the OS side, making a super lightweight preemptively multitasking OS with small components that messaged each other and the OS abstraction layers that the rest of the personal computing world will not see in the next 10+ years.

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Syssiphus 4093 days ago
I don't know if he is still selling them, but: http://www.frogpondmedia.com/dbv/index.html

Dave Haynie, one of Commodores hardware engineers, films the last day at the Commodore plant. And the layoff party afterwards. Hilarious, informative, and sad at the same time.

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peterfirefly 4093 days ago
I thought Wendell Sander did the IWM?

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Five_Different_Ma...

(and lots of other pages.)

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guru_meditation 4093 days ago
I consider Andy Hertzfeld's site a very accurate reference as well as a patchwork of authentic fascinating stories that just draws you in.

However, Ron Nicholson (rhn) is on the Mac case signatures, he also did major work on Apple //, so I find it strange that he is not mentioned anywhere on folklore.org . I think this is something worth researching..

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FeepingCreature 4094 days ago
> Jay Miner passed a long time away from a long term kidney condition and is still out there doing lots of stuff

Like he'd let a little thing like death stop him! :)

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guru_meditation 4093 days ago
Ha! :) Sorry, meant to write "rhn is still out there", but I dropped I replied to hastily and by the time I figured it out it was too late to edit my post..
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