Amiga software is computer software engineered to run on the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...

personal computer. Amiga software covers many applications, including productivity,

digital art Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process, or more specifically computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960s, various name ...

games A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (suc ...

, commercial, freeware and hobbyist products. The market was active in the late 1980s and early 1990s but then dwindled. Most Amiga products were originally created directly for the Amiga computer (most taking advantage of the platform's unique attributes and capabilities), and were not ported from other platforms. During its lifetime, thousands of applications were produced with over 10,000 utilities (collected into the

Aminet Aminet is the world's largest archive of Amiga-related software and files. Aminet was originally hosted by several universities' FTP sites, and is now available on CD-ROM and on the web. According to Aminet, as of 3 September 2022, it has 83930 pac ...

repository). However, it was perceived as a games machine from outside its community of experienced and professional users. More than 12,000 games were available. New applications for the three existing Amiga-like operating systems are generally ported from the open source (mainly from

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

) software base. Many Amiga software products or noteworthy programs during the timeline were ported to other platforms or inspired new programs, such as those aimed at 3D rendering or audio creations, e.g.

LightWave 3D LightWave 3D is a 3D computer graphics program developed by NewTek. It has been used in films, television, motion graphics, digital matte painting, visual effects, video game development, product design, architectural visualizations, virt ...

Cinema 4D Cinema 4D is a 3D software suite developed by the German company Maxon. Overview As of R21, only one version of Cinema 4D is available. It replaces all previous variants, including BodyPaint 3D, and includes all features of the past 'Studio' ...

, and

Blender A blender (sometimes called a mixer or liquidiser in British English) is a kitchen and laboratory appliance used to mix, crush, purée or emulsify food and other substances. A stationary blender consists of a blender container with a rotating me ...

(whose development started for the Amiga platform only). The first multimedia word processors for Amiga, such as TextCraft, Scribble!, Rashumon, and Wordworth, were the first on the market to implement full color

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

(with other platforms then only implementing black-and-white previews) and allowing the embedding of audio files.

History and characteristics

From the origins to 1988

1985

Amiga software started its history with the 1985

Amiga 1000 The Commodore Amiga 1000, also known as the A1000, is the first personal computer released by Commodore International in the Amiga line. It combines the 16/32-bit Motorola 68000 CPU which was powerful by 1985 standards with one of the most adv ...

Commodore International Commodore International (other names include Commodore International Limited) was an American home computer and electronics manufacturer founded by Jack Tramiel. Commodore International (CI), along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Mac ...

released the programming specifications and development computers to various software houses, prominently

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the ...

, a software house that then offered Deluxe Paint, Deluxe Music and others. Electronic Arts also developed the

Interchange File Format Interchange File Format (IFF), is a generic container file format originally introduced by Electronic Arts in 1985 (in cooperation with Commodore) in order to facilitate transfer of data between software produced by different companies. IFF f ...

(IFF) file container, to store project files realized by Deluxe Paint and Deluxe Music. IFF became the ''de facto'' standard in AmigaOS. The first to be shown were digitizer software ProPaint (in early beta). Both were used by

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

to produce a black-and-white photo of

Debbie Harry Deborah Ann Harry (born Angela Trimble; July 1, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter and actress, best known as the lead vocalist of the band Blondie. Four of her songs with the band reached on the US charts between 1979 and 1981. Born in ...

at the Launch Gala at

Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 milli ...

, New York City in July 1985. In 1985 Commodore licensed the software called

Transformer A transformer is a passive component that transfers electrical energy from one electrical circuit to another circuit, or multiple circuits. A varying current in any coil of the transformer produces a varying magnetic flux in the transformer' ...

from Simile Research and put it on the market in January 1986, bundled with an external A1020 5.25-inch

floppy drive A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

. It emulated 8086

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 ser ...

-based PC-XT hardware. It could run

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few o ...

and MS-DOS software such as

Lotus 123 Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (later part of IBM). It was the first killer application of the IBM PC, was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatible ...

WordStar WordStar is a word processor application for microcomputers. It was published by MicroPro International and originally written for the CP/M-80 operating system, and later written also for MS-DOS and other 16-bit PC OSes. Rob Barnaby was the so ...

. This provided early access to many applications, while waiting for native Amiga software to be developed. In 1985, Deluxe Paint emerged with graphic features that had been available only on dedicated graphic computers. It was dubbed the first Amiga "

Killer application In marketing terminology, a killer application (commonly shortened to killer app) is any computer program or software that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware, a video game ...

1986

In 1986 (the year of the launch of

Amiga 2000 The Amiga 2000, or A2000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in March 1987. It was introduced as a "big box" expandable variant of the Amiga 1000 but quickly redesigned to share most of its electronic components with the contemporary Ami ...

) Amiga software products contributed to the Amiga's success as a game and multimedia machine.

AmigaBasic AmigaBASIC is an interpreted BASIC programming language implementation for the Amiga, designed and written by Microsoft. AmigaBASIC shipped with AmigaOS versions 1.1 to 1.3. It succeeded MetaComCo's ABasiC, which was included in AmigaOS 1.0 ...

from

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

, VizaWrite, TextCraft (word processors), Pagesetter (Desktop Publishing), Analyze! (Spreadsheet), Superbase Personal (Database), MovieCraft (animation), Deluxe paint II, Deluxe Music, Instant Music (a composition music program for non musicians) from Electronic Arts, and GraphiCraft again from Commodore were released. GraphiCraft was used by computer artist

Jim Sachs James D. Sachs (born 1949) is a retired United States Air Force veteran, video game artist and game programmer. Sachs was the lead artist on the groundbreaking Amiga computer game ''Defender of the Crown'' from Cinemaware (first published in 198 ...

to produce Amiga software such as ''

Defender of the Crown ''Defender of the Crown'' is a strategy computer game designed by Kellyn Beck. It was Cinemaware's first game, and was originally released for the Commodore Amiga in 1986, setting a new standard for graphic quality in home computer games. In ...

'' and Centurion: Defender of Rome from

Cinemaware Cinemaware was a video game developer and publisher that released several titles in the 1980s based on various film themes. The company was resurrected in 2000, before being acquired by eGames in 2005. Cinemaware Corp. (1986–1991) The compan ...

and the Amiga porting of ''

Saucer Attack ''Saucer Attack!'' is a shoot 'em up written by James D. Sachs for the Commodore 64 and published by Sachs Enterprises in 1984. The goal is to protect Washington, D.C. from invading flying saucers. Gameplay The game presents a backdrop of Wash ...

''. Graphicraft was a predecessor of Aegis Images and

AEGIS Animator The aegis ( ; grc, αἰγίς ''aigís''), as stated in the ''Iliad'', is a device carried by Athena and Zeus, variously interpreted as an animal skin or a shield and sometimes featuring the head of a Gorgon. There may be a connection with a ...

, one of the first programs worldwide capable of creating animation videos and cartoons complete with audio stereo, featuring a

cel animation Traditional animation (or classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn animation) is an animation technique in which each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation in cinema until computer animation. Proc ...

working paradigm interface and outputting files based on delta-frame difference compression method which then were the lead for creating the

ANIM Anim or ANIM may refer to: Places *A city in the mountains of Judah, now el-Ghuwein, near Eshtemoh, about 10 miles south-west of Hebron *An alternative spelling for the biblical city of Anem, now Jenin * Anim synagogue, a synagogue in Israel ...

file type standard. Byte-by-Byte Software Inc. released Sculpt-3D. It was the first rendering tool available for the first time to a vast audience of public, and in October of the same year, Impulse released

TurboSilver TurboSilver was one of the original 3D raytracing software packages available for the Amiga and for personal computers in general. It was first revealed by its creator ''Impulse'' at the October 1986 AmiEXPO. November 1987 saw the release of ve ...

1987

In 1987 the Amiga 500 (A500) was released. The Amiga software market moved in favor of entertainment over professional software. ProWrite (word processor), Maxiplan 500 (spreadsheet), and

Aegis Sonix Aegis Sonix is a music sequencer and a score editor for the Amiga created by Aegis Development and published in 1987. The application offers a combination of a notation editor and an editor of digital sounds and is able to edit IFF music ins ...

, a music program similar to Instant Music, were produced. . In July, Wordperfect created an "Amiga/

Atari Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc. (1972–1992), Atari, Inc., ...

Division" and started selling a version of its word processor for the Commodore platform for US$400. It could load and save Wordperfect files created on any platform, such as IBM, Macintosh and Apple II. Wordperfect 4.1 for the Amiga was the first word processor in the world capable of opening an unlimited number of documents (limited by RAM), each in a separate window. In 1987,

Andrew Tanenbaum Andrew Stuart Tanenbaum (born March 16, 1944), sometimes referred to by the handle ast, is an American-Dutch computer scientist and professor emeritus of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He is the author ...

released Minix, a free version of

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

with complete source code. At

COMDEX COMDEX (an abbreviation of COMputer Dealers' EXhibition) was a computer expo trade show held in the Las Vegas Valley of Nevada, United States, each November from 1979 to 2003. It was one of the largest computer trade shows in the world, usually ...

NewTek NewTek, Inc. is a San Antonio, Texas-based hardware and software company that produces live and post-production video tools and visual imaging software for personal computers. The company was founded in 1985 in Topeka, Kansas, United States, by T ...

showed for the first time a prototype of Video Toaster and Impulse released TurboSilver 2.0.

1988

In 1988,

Photon Paint Photon Paint is a Hold-And-Modify (HAM) based bitmap graphics editor for the Amiga, first released in 1987. Photon Paint was the first bitmap graphics editor to incorporate 3D solid modeling and texture mapping as an integral part of the program ...

was released. It allowed digital painting using

HAM Ham is pork from a leg cut of pork, cut that has been food preservation, preserved by wet or dry Curing (food preservation), curing, with or without smoking (cooking), smoking."Bacon: Bacon and Ham Curing" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. Lo ...

graphics mode and the full 4096-color palette of Amiga on a single screen. Maxiplan 500 become Maxiplan 1.x, Electronic Arts showed

DeLuxe Photo Lab Deluxe may refer to: Corporations * Deluxe Corporation, check printers * De Luxe Motor Car Company, an American automobile manufacturer Media and entertainment * DeLuxe Color, a brand of color photography used in motion pictures, especially thos ...

(photo editing software), Newtek demonstrated DigiView 3.0 hardware and software image digitizing suite, and WordPerfect released the WordPerfect Library for the Amiga. At the summer

Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...

(CES), the Pro Draw graphic tablet with mouse emulation software was also announced, as well as Flash-Back and Quarterback hard drive backup software. Superbase Personal became Superbase Professional, Micro Illusions started shipping Music-X audio software for the Amiga, and

Lattice Lattice may refer to: Arts and design * Latticework, an ornamental criss-crossed framework, an arrangement of crossing laths or other thin strips of material * Lattice (music), an organized grid model of pitch ratios * Lattice (pastry), an orna ...

released its

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

preprocessor for the Amiga. Cygnus Editor ubiquitous text editor, one of the most versatile text editors and best seller on Amiga since then, was also released this year. It was one of the first Amiga programs featuring an

AREXX ARexx is an implementation of the Rexx language for the Amiga, written in 1987 by William S. Hawes, with a number of Amiga-specific features beyond standard REXX facilities. Like most REXX implementations, ARexx is an interpreted language. Program ...

port. Gold Disk released ComicSetter (comic creation) and MovieSetter (32-color cartoons with stereo sound animation software). In November, at the

World of Commodore World of Commodore is an annual computer expo dedicated to Commodore International, Commodore computers. The shows were initially organized by Commodore Canada or its sister companies, and took place at the International Centre in Mississauga, O ...

Show,

ReadySoft ReadySoft was a video game developer and video game publisher, publisher and distributor founded in 1987 by David Foster, based in Ontario, Canada. Products include various emulators as well as home computer ports of Sullivan Bluth Studios, Sulliva ...

demonstrated its Amax Macintosh emulator for the Amiga.

1989–1994

Steam locomotive animation (LightWave, Commodore Amiga)

In 1989, Rashumon was first launched. In 1990, AmigaDOS 2.0 was released. The interface of the Workbench GUI was changed to a fake 3D aspect using gray shades. For the first time, Commodore introduced a style guide for developers on AmigaOS; because of this, the majority of Amiga software developed for AmigaDOS 2.0 had a standardized GUI that improved usability. Programs such as

Imagine 3D Imagine was the name of a cutting-edge 3D modeling and ray tracing program, originally for the Amiga computer and later also for MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating s ...

Lightwave LightWave 3D is a 3D computer graphics program developed by NewTek. It has been used in films, television, motion graphics, digital matte painting, visual effects, video game development, product design, architectural visualizations, virtu ...

, ImageFX, and Scala continued using non-standard GUIs. AmigaVision was released and bundled free with any model of Amiga 3000. Directory Master, Directory Opus, TurboCalc, Photogenics, ImageFX, PC Task, Photogenics, Caligari, Final Calc, and

all belong to this period.

1994 to today

After 1994, Commodore's demise left Amiga to an uncertain future. Windows-based PCs became the standard in the home and the office. Many software houses either left the Amiga market or ran into financial troubles. In 1996,

was created. Aminet was the first centralized Internet repository of all Amiga public domain software and documents. It was the first Internet experiment of a centralized

software repository A software repository, or repo for short, is a storage location for software packages. Often a table of contents is also stored, along with metadata. A software repository is typically managed by source control or repository managers. Package ...

created and maintained by one community for the community itself. Amiga's browsers like AWeb,

IBrowse IBrowse is a Magic User Interface, MUI-based web browser for the Amiga range of computers, and was a rewritten follow-on to AMosaic, Amiga Mosaic, one of the first web browsers for the Amiga Computer. IBrowse was originally developed for a company ...

and Voyager were enhanced. Voyager was the first browser to adopt

tabbed browsing In interface design, a tab is a graphical user interface object that allows multiple documents or panels to be contained within a single window, using tabs as a navigational widget for switching between sets of documents. It is an interface s ...

. Mailers like YAM are still used. In productivity software, programs like Candy Factory for image processing were still being developed, for VFX and animation programs like

Wildfire A wildfire, forest fire, bushfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of Combustibility and flammability, combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire ...

by Andreas Maschke (ported by the author to Java later). other prominent graphic software include fxPAINT by IOSpirit, fxSCAN for OCR and scanning by IOSpirit, and SketchBlock painting program by Andy Broad for AmigaOS 4.x. Last but not least Tornado3D raytracing program by the Italian company Eyelight.

Usability

Amiga software presents a complete graphical interface, following Amiga

"desktop paradigm" and native AmigaOS interface guidelines; that is to say, the software is mouse-driven and presents also pull-down "menus" and "dialogue windows". AmigaOS maintained a text-based shell allowing software to present a text-based GUI, or a "command line".

Cataloging

The main software categories are * Productivity software (also called

application software Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...

); * Support and maintenance utilities for formatting hard disks, recover or backup data, etc.; *

Multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...

software (graphic, video, music); *

Communication software Communication software is used to provide remote access to systems and exchange files and messages in text, audio and/or video formats between different computers or users. This includes terminal emulators, file transfer programs, chat and instant ...

(including the software for dealing with

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

and any other net); *

Programming tools A programming tool or software development tool is a computer program that software developers use to create, debug, maintain, or otherwise support other programs and applications. The term usually refers to relatively simple programs, that can ...

for developing products and applications; * other utilities that enhance the ease of use in any Operating System (for example Application Launching Docks); Accessibility; Games;

Emulation Emulation may refer to: *Emulation (computing), imitation of behavior of a computer or other electronic system with the help of another type of system :*Video game console emulator, software which emulates video game consoles *Gaussian process em ...

software that allows a computer to run software written for another architecture.

Productivity software

Amiga created productivity software which covers graphics, video, design and CAD software; graphic utilities; vector graphics programs and converters; word processors; programmable text editors; database and spreadsheets; science, entertainment and special use programs: entertainment; fractals, virtual reality, artificial intelligence; route planning; personal Organizer, notebook, diary software; personal budgeting, home banking and accounting.

Support and maintenance utilities

Amiga created utilities for hard disk partitioning; diagnostic tools; VGA promoting tools for ancient Amiga software with TV resolution graphic screens; game loaders for storing and auto-loading from hard disks, auto-starting non-standard floppy disks; disk copiers; backup and recovery tools, archive and compression utilities; command line interfaces and text-based shells; graphical GUI interfaces with

WIMP Wimp, WIMP, or Wimps may refer to: Science and technology * Weakly interacting massive particle, a hypothetical particle of dark matter * WIMP (computing), the "window, icon, menu, pointer" paradigm * WIMP (software bundle), the web stack of Wind ...

paradigm; advanced graphics systems; PostScript; fonts; font design; audio system; native, external, widely common used, and third-party filesystems; MultiView; MIME types; USB stacks; Firewire stacks (IEEE 1394); printer drivers; video digitizers; graphic tablets; scanner drivers; genlocks, chroma-key, signal video inverters; infrared devices and remote controls; WiFi and Bluetooth devices; and special devices.

Music

Music software includes sound design; audio synthesis; music; audio digitizing and sampling; hard disk recording; speech synthesis; audio trackers; MOD music module filetype.

Communications software

Solutions include modem software, Direct Connect, BBS managing, Fidonet, Packet Radio; Prestel, Videotel, Videotex, Minitel; Teletext, Televideo, Viewdata; FAX, answering machine and voice mail; ISDN; networking and Ethernet protocols; World Wide Web (TCP/IP stacks, browsers, E-mail programs, newsreaders, Internet Radio, proxy server support programs, PPP, Telnet, podcasting, RSS feed, Distributed Net, Google Services, Instant Messaging and chat, FTP and FTP server, weather casting news, Webcam supporting, clock synchronization, SMS Short Messages, Web development and HTTP server, Peer2Peer, VCast (online VCR), YouTube, Flash player, monitoring webpages, Remote Desktop, SSL, SSH, et cetera); communication protocols.

Modem, Direct Connect, BBS managing, Fidonet, packet radio

* Termite, X-Term, A-Term, Baud Bandit I and II, OnLine! * Direct parallel and serial cable connect: ParNET, SerNET * Fidonet Mail: Amiga version of GNU

AWK AWK (''awk'') is a domain-specific language designed for text processing and typically used as a data extraction and reporting tool. Like sed and grep, it is a filter, and is a standard feature of most Unix-like operating systems. The AWK lang ...

, AmyBW, Q-Blue QWK and Blue Wave mail readers * BBS management: C-NET II, Zeus BBS, Hydra BBS, DLG Pro,

Amiexpress AmiExpress - also known as /X - by Synthetic Technologies was a popular BBS software application for the Commodore Amiga line of computers. AmiExpress was extremely popular among the warez scene for trading (exchanging) software. AmiExpress was cr ...

, Infinity, Tempest (software) * Packet Radio: AmiCom, AmigaTNC, and Amipac *

Amateur radio Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emergency communic ...

: Amiga Amateur Radio Group, AMIGA-FAX/SSTV, METEO/FAX/SSTV, PakRatt, Multicom, AmTOR, AmigaCALL.

BTX, Prestel, Videotel, Videotex and Minitel

In some European countries, and especially in France,

Minitel The Minitel was a videotex online service accessible through telephone lines, and was the world's most successful online service prior to the World Wide Web. It was invented in Cesson-Sévigné, near Rennes in Brittany, France. The service w ...

data transmitting services were popular before the Internet. Minitel had many consumer-level communication services, including chatting, email, railway and broadcast timetables and travel and hotel booking. Minitel used little terminals rented from telephone companies or computers with modems that accept Minitel transmission protocol speed. Amiga Minitel communication programs were written in France, Germany and Italy (Amiga Videotel). * AmigaTel ( CEPT2 standard, for Minitel) * BTX (CEPT1 standard, for the German BTX service) * MtA (CEPT2 and CEPT3 standards, for Italian

Videotex Videotex (or interactive videotex) was one of the earliest implementations of an end-user information system. From the late 1970s to early 2010s, it was used to deliver information (usually pages of text) to a user in computer-like format, typi ...

which supported both) * Ruby View (CEPT3, for UK's

Prestel Prestel (abbrev. from press telephone), the brand name for the UK Post Office Telecommunications's Viewdata technology, was an interactive videotex system developed during the late 1970s and commercially launched in 1979. It achieved a maxim ...

)

Teletext, Televideo, and Viewdata

Teletext is an information retrieval service system based on transmitting data with normal TV broadcast signals without interfering with TV programs. Standalone programs for teletext included

Amiga Teletext Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...

and the Videotex datatype.

FAX, answering machine and voice mail

* AFax, Amiga-FAX, GPFax, FaxQuik, STFax, TrapFax, AVM (software), MultiAnswer, Zyxel Voice Mail.

ISDN

ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. Wo ...

digital telephone and circuit-switched telephone network system were supported via the expansion cards ISDN Master and ISDN Master II, their drivers and related software.

Networking and Ethernet protocols

Amiga supported SANA-II and MNI drivers, Envoy protocols from IAM,

AS225 Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...

, AS225r2 TCP-IP from Commodore,

DECnet DECnet is a suite of network protocols created by Digital Equipment Corporation. Originally released in 1975 in order to connect two PDP-11 minicomputers, it evolved into one of the first peer-to-peer network architectures, thus transforming DEC ...

Novell NetWare NetWare is a discontinued computer network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, using the IPX network protocol. The original NetWare product in ...

through Amiga Client for Novell NetWare,

Quicknet Quicknet is an Ajax framework (using XMLHttpRequest in JavaScript) designed to develop web applications or websites that use passwords to identify correct users. Using this framework, no cleartext password would be sent over the network or stored ...

fast proprietary peer to peer protocol, AppleTalk through emulators. Other network protocols available were AmigaUUCP,

DNET DNIX (original spelling: D-Nix) is a discontinued Unix-like real-time operating system from the Swedish company Dataindustrier AB (DIAB). A version named ABCenix was developed for the ABC 1600 computer from Luxor. Daisy Systems also had a syste ...

, Link-It and Enlan-DFS. Amiga also supports

Samba Samba (), also known as samba urbano carioca (''urban Carioca samba'') or simply samba carioca (''Carioca samba''), is a Brazilian music genre that originated in the Afro-Brazilian communities of Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century. Havin ...

and SMBFS.

=SANA-II drivers

=MNI drivers

Internet

Programs to access the Web are mostly available for newer Amiga platforms. * Amiga TCP/IP: AmiTCP, EasyNet, Genesis, Miami and Miami Deluxe, Roadshow for

AmigaOS AmigaOS is a family of proprietary native operating systems of the Amiga and AmigaOne personal computers. It was developed first by Commodore International and introduced with the launch of the first Amiga, the Amiga 1000, in 1985. Early versions ...

, MosNet and NetStack for MorphOS (both based on AmiTCP). * Amiga AMP:

Apache The Apache () are a group of culturally related Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, which include the Chiricahua, Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Mimbreño, Ndendahe (Bedonkohe or Mogollon and Nednhi or Carrizaleño an ...

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database o ...

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offici ...

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group. ...

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

(

scripting languages A scripting language or script language is a programming language that is used to manipulate, customize, and automate the facilities of an existing system. Scripting languages are usually interpreted at runtime rather than compiled. A scripting ...

)

solution stack In computing, a solution stack or software stack is a set of software subsystems or components needed to create a complete platform such that no additional software is needed to support applications. Applications are said to "run on" or "run on t ...

br>AAMP
* Browsers: ** Old browsers or "text only" based ones: ** Amiga

Mosaic A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...

, Amiga

Lynx A lynx is a type of wild cat. Lynx may also refer to: Astronomy * Lynx (constellation) * Lynx (Chinese astronomy) * Lynx X-ray Observatory, a NASA-funded mission concept for a next-generation X-ray space observatory Places Canada * Lynx, Ontar ...

Emacs/W3 GNU Emacs is a free software text editor. It was created by GNU Project founder Richard Stallman, based on the Emacs editor developed for Unix operating systems. GNU Emacs has been a central component of the GNU project and a flagship project of ...

WWW client in GNU Emacs ** Modern browsers up to HTML 3.2 without CSS: ***

, Voyager, AWeb, and also Amaya through the

X11 The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...

Amiga compatibility graphic engine library

Cygnix Cygwin ( ) is a POSIX-compatible programming and runtime environment that runs natively on Microsoft Windows. Under Cygwin, source code designed for Unix-like operating systems may be compiled with minimal modification and executed. The Cygwin in ...

* Browsers with HTML 5 and CSS: ** OWB ( Origyn Web Browser, sometimes also referred as Odyssey Web Browser) for

and

MorphOS MorphOS is an AmigaOS-like computer operating system (OS). It is a mixed proprietary and open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC (PPC) processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amiga computers, and a series of Freescale dev ...

** NetSurf for AmigaOS and MorphOS ** Timberwolf web browser for AmigaOS 4 based on Mozilla

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current ...

4 * E-mail: Thor (software) YAM, Simplemail, Anubis (software) * Newsreaders: NewsRog, MicroDot II, NewsCoaster * Internet Radio: AmiAMP (Amiga look-alike version of

Winamp Winamp is a media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014. Sinc ...

), * Gopher: Gopherexx * Proxy server PProxy,

Privoxy Privoxy is a free non- caching web proxy with filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, manipulating cookies and modifying web page data and HTTP headers before the page is rendered by the browser. Privoxy is a "privacy enhancing proxy", fil ...

* PPP: AmiPPP, Multilink PPP * Telnet: AmTelnet * Podcasting: AmiPodder * Amiga RSS feed: AmRSS * Distributed net:

DNetC Distributed.net is a volunteer computing effort that is attempting to solve large scale problems using otherwise Idle (CPU), idle CPU or Graphics processing unit, GPU time. It is governed by Distributed Computing Technologies, Incorporated (DCTI) ...

* GPS (Global Positioning System): WxWatch * Google services: ** GoogleMaps: Supported through OWB Browser ** Google Earth: Supported through OWB Browser ** GoogleMail: Supported only in 'basic

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

' mode. ** Google Picasa: Supported through OWB Browser on all Amiga systems or directly through WAManager (MOS) dedicated software. ** GoogleBar Toolbar: Not supported by Amiga browsers * Amiga Instant Messaging and chat: AmTalk, ACUSeeMe,

AmIRC AmIRC is an MUI-based IRC client for the Amiga. First released in 1995 as a shareware, it was later open-sourced. AmIRC offers large degree of configuration with an easy to use interface. History Developed by Oliver Wagner (VaporWare) and first ...

, Amiga multi-standard Instant Messaging based on Jabber

Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP, originally named Jabber) is an Open standard, open communication protocol designed for instant messaging (IM), presence information, and contact list maintenance. Based on XML (Extensible Markup ...

, Epistula Instant Messaging, SabreMSN, MomosIRC, AmiGG, GadAmi based on popular

Gadu gadu Gadu-Gadu ( Polish for "chit-chat"; commonly known as GG or gg) is a Polish instant messaging client using a proprietary protocol. Gadu-Gadu was the most popular IM service in Poland, with over 15 million registered accounts and approximately ...

and Tlen Polish instant messaging services, WookieChat, climm,

Bitlbee BitlBee is a cross-platform IRC instant messaging gateway, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. BitlBee communicates with the user via the IRC protocol, providing a gateway to popular chat networks such as AIM and ICQ ...

* Twitter: AmiTwitter for AmigaOS Classic, AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS. * Telephony ** Messenger voice chat: Not supported ** Skype VoIP: Not supported ** H.323 VoIP protocol: Not supported ** Amiga voice calls: It has been reported that AmTalk supports voice calls between two Amigas running that program, but this feature it is unconfirmed. * FTP: ATC (Amiga Trading Centre), Amiga

wget GNU Wget (or just Wget, formerly Geturl, also written as its package name, wget) is a computer program that retrieves content from web servers. It is part of the GNU Project. Its name derives from "World Wide Web" and " ''get''." It supports do ...

, AmFTP, AmiFTP, GUI-FTP, HTTPResume, Charon, CManager, FTPMount (mounts remote FTP as standard Amiga devices), Pete's FTP (PFTP). * FTP server: Amiga RC-FTPd, AmiFTPd * Weather casting net Amiga WET, Weather Experience, Wetter. * Live webcam supporting: AmiWebView, WebVision, WebCam ** Amiga USB webcam driver: Personal Webcam, Amiga Sonix webcam driver for various models of USB webcams *

Clock synchronization Clock synchronization is a topic in computer science and engineering that aims to coordinate otherwise independent clocks. Even when initially set accurately, real clocks will differ after some amount of time due to clock drift, caused by clocks ...

: FACTS * SMS Short Messages: TaskiSMS * Web development and HTTP Server:

for Amiga, Apache PHP,

Thttpd thttpd (tiny/turbo/throttling HTTP server) is an open source software web server from ACME Laboratories, designed for simplicity, a small execution footprint and speed. Design and features thttpd is single-threaded and portable: it compil ...

, Thttpd PHP, WebMaker HTML editor, Ami.HTML Webscape. * Peer2Peer: Amiga Mule (peer-to-peer), Transmission, enqueueTorrent, BitTorrent, Bourriquet, BeeHive, CTorrent, AmiGift, EDonkey,

mlDonkey MLDonkey is an open-source, multi-protocol, peer-to-peer file sharing application that runs as a back-end server application on many platforms. It can be controlled through a user interface provided by one of many separate front-ends, including ...

* VCast, Online VCR: otrMUI for MorphOS by Thomas Igracki * YouTube: On

and

there are various clients or downloaders for YouTube all based upon scripts made by the

ARexx ARexx is an implementation of the Rexx language for the Amiga, written in 1987 by William S. Hawes, with a number of Amiga-specific features beyond standard REXX facilities. Like most REXX implementations, ARexx is an interpreted language. Program ...

language. These scripts spare some functions from existing Amiga programs like

and MPlayer and join them in a big meta-application utility able to handle YouTube animations: YouTube downloader.rexx, ib youtube.rexx loading YouTube movies into Amiga browser IBrowse, getvideo.rexx, and YouTube client TubeXX, Flayer ARexx script. * Flash player: Amiga SWFPlayer * Monitoring webpages: Seventhsense * Remote desktop: TwinVNC, VNCServer, MorphVNC * Pretty Good Privacy: 2.6.3i. * SSL, SSH: AmiSSL, Amiga OpenSSL, Amiga OpenSSH, SSHCON * Web album photo sharing services: WAManager (for MorphOS) handles Google Picasa web album service. * Other: Sniffy: The Virtual Rat, Sniffy, Net Tools (net ping, resolve, traceroute, etc.), Gallerius (generator of HTML galleries)

Communication protocols

Skypix is an Amiga communication protocol. It was one of the first interactive online graphics-and-sound protocols. It was introduced in 1987 as part of the Skyline (Atredes) bulletin board system (BBS), running on the Skyline BBS and Skyterm terminal. Years before the World Wide Web, Skypix allowed rich interactive graphics and sound, as well as mouse control, to be a part of the online experience, which was until then limited to text and ANSI graphics. Skypix allowed users to write and integrate graphical programs, and included the first "authoring program", Skypaint. Skypix created enthusiastic game and online application writers years before the World Wide Web made such features a common part of the online experience. It was quickly abandoned as more advanced markup languages for BBS became available and due to the emerging of Internet phenomenon that marginalized the BBS system of communication.

Programming

Despite the variety of programming languages and compilers, most development was done using C and C++, 680x0 assembler and various Basic dialects.

Multimedia

Drivers for multimedia devices and special input functions

* Multimedia keyboards: MMKeyboard * Hand-writing recognition: Meridian is a program that performs handwriting recognition input functions using a Stylus (computing), stylus like those equipping any Tablet computer, tablet PC, emulating the stylus by mouse. * Graphics tablets: FormAldiHyd, GTDriver, and SlateCtrl are shareware/freeware drivers for several serial-port graphics tablets. "mousev1b" is a driver to use an Apple Newton as a graphics tablet.

=Accessibility software

= * Jakeboard input software and hardware emulation keyboard and mouse was used by persons with physical limitations and/or problems of movements. Software and hardware schemes are downloadable at BlackBeltSystems Amiga Software page. * Talkboard similar to jakeboard, is a downloadable speech-generation system for persons.

Optical media

Alternative filesystems included AsimCDFS, AmiCDROM, CDVDFS, Allegro CDFS and CacheCDFS. BurnIt!, Frying Pan (software), Frying Pan, MakeCD, AmiDVD, DVDRecord, DVDAuthor could burn CDs, DVDs and/or Blu-ray media. MakeCD was the first Amiga program to support Optical disc recording modes#CD Disc-At-Once, Disk At Once (DAO). Frying Pan was the first Amiga program capable to create DVDs. Frying Pan and BurnIt! are capable to handle DVD. BlueHD from German programmer Carsten Siegner is a MorphOS program capable of authoring and burning HD-DVDs in these formats: * Normal Video-DVD (European PAL) * HD-Video-DVD HDTV (Matroska, mkv-h264/Advanced Audio Coding, AAC) (that are recognized by some Blu-ray Disc, Blu-ray players) * HD-Video-DVD HDTV (H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, MP4-h264/AVC)

=Disk images and ISO files management

= * ISO-o-Matic software is a CD image converting software and supports b5i, Disk image#.BIN, bin, CD-i, .img#.IMG, img (normal/CloneCD), Disk image, mdf (Alcohol 120%), NRG (file format), nrg (Nero Burning ROM), pdi and MagicISO, uif. * ISOMount mounts CD ISOs, PC floppy disk images and Amiga disk images. It supports: Amiga (ADF) 880 KB either OFS and FFS, MS-DOS (IMG) from 360 KB up to 2.88 MB (Fat12), Atari ST 800 KB (Fat12), MAC GS (file image of Mac has no extensions) 800 KB (MFM encoded), CD (ISO) – every size, including floppy-specific. * MountVirtual and DiskImage programs for AmigaOS and MorphOS that mount CD ISO images as standard Amiga devices. Supports CD ISO images and disk images such as ADF, DMS, IFS. MountVirtual requires DiskImage. * VirtualCD uses ISOs and CD images as virtual drives. * mkisofs and Amkisofs are ports of MaKeISOFileSystem. (A complete list of ISO managements and converters is available on Aminet.)

Utilities

''AmiDock'' creates Dock (computing), application launching docks on the desktop. It became popular in 1989–1990, due to the NeXT computer, that used the same 68030 processor as Amiga 3000) and that it also had the Acorn Archimedes RISC OS docking station utility. In Great Britain, Archimedes computers were adopted in schools. Young Amiga users (there were 1,500,000 Amigas sold in the United Kingdom) spotted docks on Archimedes at school and asked for it on Amiga also. Various launch bars or docking utilities were born as third-party hobby utilities (many examples of early docking software for Amiga like the ''ToolManager'' are still hosted in the

repository of all Amiga free software, in the "Utility" directory) and then Amidock was officially integrated in AmigaOS with version 3.9. ''Directory Opus'' was a file utility program. When this software was released, Amiga magazines proclaimed that it was the most important software ever released for the Amiga and "should be built into the operating system". Directory Opus went on to create a "replacement OS" for Workbench which overlaid itself upon the system. It started as a file manager, and then became a complete desktop replacement and an alternative to the official Workbench. The utility was later ported to Windows and remains widely used. HyperCache (written by David Plummer (programmer), Dave Plummer) was the first commercial disk caching software. Significant in that the base operating system lacked this ability, the addition of caching significantly improved the performance of both floppy and hard discs. ''SysSpeed'' was a shareware Benchmark (computing), benchmarking program for Amigas equipped with Motorola 68000 family, Motorola 68k and PowerPC CPUs. Much shareware and free software was written for the Amiga and could be obtained via the Fred Fish disk series or from the Aminet software archive. Because the custom chipset shares RAM (and therefore the memory bus) with the CPU, throughput increases measurably if the display is disabled. Some processor-intensive software, such as 3D renderers, disable the display during calculation to gain speed.

Emulation

Notable emulators included:

Commercial

Medusa (emulator), Medusa (Atari ST emulator), Fusion (emulator), Fusion (Macintosh Emulator), AMax and AMax II, (Macintosh), GO64 (first Commodore Commodore 64, C64 emulator), Transformer (emulator), Transformer and PCTask (it was an

8088 emulator, all software based, capable to emulate Intel PC based platforms ranging from PC XT 4,7 and 7 MHz on Amiga 500, up to 80486 running at 12 MHz on Amiga 4000 and other accelerated Amigas), A64 (emulator), A64 Package (C64), Amiga BBC Emulator (Acorn BBC emulator)

Freeware

Atari ST Emulator (AtariST), Hatari (Atari ST and STE), Basilisk II (Macintosh) classic, Frodo (emulator), Frodo (C64), PSXE (Sony PlayStation), Hu-Go! (PC Engine, TurboGrafx-16), FunnyMu (Creativision, Funvision, Wizzard), AmiArcadia (Arcadia 2001 and VC 4000, TVGC). VICE emulator is modular and emulates all 8-bit machines made by Commodore: C64 (a patch of VICE supports C64 Direct-to-TV, C64dtv), Commodore 128, C128, Commodore PET, PET including Commodore CBM-II, CBM II version (but excluding "non-standard" features of SuperPET 9000), Commodore Plus/4, Plus4 and Commodore VIC-20, VIC-20.

Games

Thousands of games were produced. At the time it was common for games to be produced for multiple formats. Since the Amiga hardware was the most advanced, games were usually developed on an Amiga, and the Amiga version would be the "gold standard" of the bunch.

Demos

The Amiga was a focal point for the "Demoscene, demo scene". The Amiga thrived on public domain, freeware and other not-for-profit development. The demo scene spearheaded development in multimedia programming techniques for the Amiga, such that it was ''de rigueur'' for the latest visual tricks, soundtrackers and 3D algorithms from the demo scene to end up being used in computer game development.

Piracy

Because Amiga was one of the first game-oriented computers to feature a built-in floppy disk drive, it simplified Copyright infringement of software, software piracy. Many of the arguments pertaining to software copying, intellectual property rights in software, the open-source movement by the early 1990s. It was not unusual for demo groups to be openly involved in software piracy. Anti-piracy measures included the practice of distributing software on disks that contained secret "keys" on high-numbered tracks that were officially unused. The Amiga disk drive officially supported tracks 0–79 from a double-density disk, but could actually read tracks 80 through 82. Standard disk-imaging software ignored these tracks, so that a duplicate of a boxed disk would not contain the key and the software would not work. A similar technique involved writing to normally-unused sectors of the disk. Copy software called "nibble" copiers appeared that could exactly reproduce such disks. Publishers turned to other methods. Dongle, Hardware dongles were occasionally used for high-end software. AmigaHASP protected Rashumon and was sold by HarmonySoft to Aladdin Systems. Some software manufacturers asked users to type a word from a particular page number and line number of the manual, meaning that successfully copying software included photocopying a large quantity of text. Sometimes the text was designed so that photocopiers would produce illegible copies, meaning that pirates had to manually add the text. Pirates responded with "Software cracking, cracking" software that altered the code to bypass copy protection completely. Every protection scheme was eventually broken. One near exception was the scheme on ''Dragon's Lair'', which became the "holy grail" of crackers worldwide, but it was also broken.

"Decrunching"

The Amiga's floppy disk drive allowed 880 kilobytes on a single disk, comparable to the RAM of most Amigas (512 kilobytes to 1 megabyte). To increase capacity, Amiga used data compression. The disk drive had a slow transfer rate, such that using processor-based decompression could actually reduce loading times versus loading uncompressed data. Early implementations wrote to a video display register, causing it to break into multiple segments of colorful noise, which would become finer as the decrunching continued. This effect was psychedelic art, psychedelic and very easy to implement, so it stuck; it was pioneered on the Commodore 64.

TransADF

TransADF is a program that transfers the contents of a floppy disk or a similar block device to a file. This program can compress the disk image using the popular deflate algorithm, as utilized by PKZip and gzip, amongst others.

References

Notes

Aminet treeAminet Statistics

download section reports that this program supports actually 1991 games (and it is far from creating a complete list of all Amiga games).
Lemon Amiga
(a program that adds MAMElike interface to WinUAE Amiga emulator) reports in its statistics window section 3453 known Amiga games.
Obligement France
reported in January 2009 a list of 13,528 known Amiga games, as divided in 12,416 original games, 953 games extensions or data disks for original games, 125 level editors or game editors for existing games, 34 loaders to let Amiga run some games created on other platforms.
Ars Technica
''A history of the Amiga, part 4: Enter Commodore'', By Jeremy Reimer. October 21, 2007 # Existing Amiga-like operating system are

, AROS, and

#
Transformer Emulation Software
article page at Brantford, Ontario, Brantford Personal Computer Museum online site #
Interview by Jim Sachs
in March 2009, from Amiga Polish Portal
Polskim Portalu Amigowym
#

on site of SereneScreen Aquarium screensaver program #
Review of ProWrite
on ''Compute!'' Magazine, issue 88, September 1987 #
Chronology of Amiga Computers
at pctimeline.info #
Advertising from Wordperfect
on InfoWorld Magazine, issue 30, January 21, 1987, page 34 (retrieved fro
Brief history of Wordperfect
at Cunningham & Cunningham Inc., object-oriented programming consultancy firm based in Portland, Oregon, Portland, Oregon, USA, members o
Wordperfect Universe
User Group)

External links

Aminet
the biggest repository of all public domain software for the Amiga platform
THE Amiga Software Database – ASD
lists almost all of the known commercial Amiga software, books and CD-ROMs, most of them with cover scans
TransADF on Aminet
{{DEFAULTSORT:Amiga Software Amiga software, Amiga Lists of software