After a year of development, development duo h0ffman & Akira are getting ready to unleash a new live remixing application, PT-1210, for the Commodore Amiga.
Yes – the twenty plus year old Commordore Amiga, including the A500s, A500 Plus, A3000s, A600s – any Amiga with an ECS chipset or newer!
The Amiga was years ahead of its time. PC World calls it one of the greatest personal computers of all time. It was the first multimedia, multitasking personal computer.
The new app, written in machine language for speed, unleashes untapped power in these 20-year old computers.
Features include:
- Channel mute
- Extensive loop options
- ‘Reloop FX’ – setting loop points inside the pattern
- Slip mode – playhead continues even as the music loops
- Pitch bend
- Time stretching
- Forward/rewind advance through pattern
Here’s PT-1210 in retro-acid action, with a dual-Amiga setup:
PT-1210 is schedule for release in March of 2014 at the Revision 2014 demoparty.
Check out the demo video and let us know what you think! Is it time to start checking Craigslist for an old Amiga?
I sold my Amiga 500+ 6 months ago for 150 €.
Props to them! Shows how much you can do with limited resources and good programming skills. I wish I still had my Amiga 1200 so I could try this out for myself
i still have my Amiga in a box someplace. i got it new in 1988. it still works!
If its a 500+ with a leaky battery inside it might be toast.
Very cool! This is what is possible with direct access to a computer’s hardware and not having to rely on layers upon layers of “hardware abstractions”, while useless services clog the background processes. There’s still companies that manufacture new Amiga compatible computers, forgot the website, but just google it!
I believe it’s called a MiniMig. They’re FPGA-based clones, so not 100% compatible, but not far off.
If this will work on the A 2000 I am in. My website features my original Amiga animations. http://www.media-blitz.net feel free to check it out.
Kickstart 2.04+ models have the ECS chipset, others don’t.
its cool but id much rather have a modern pattern based synth/sequencer app.. hell even a renoise type update to a standard tracker would do
people complain so much about android latency
but 20-year old amigas have no latency issues ??
it is not the tool that is the problem…
it is often the user …
brilliant technical analysis there, but have you considered the issues that result when the user is a tool?
just a bit of guru meditation for ya
LOL sadly that is often the case
guru meditation error, indeed! 🙂
i own a AMIGA — guru meditation error — become the tool you are –
Old school computers tend to have lower latency and tighter MIDI.
It’s not the user’s or programmer’s fault, though. It’s because old OS designs weren’t doing fifty things in the background, constantly.
Androids a different matter. It’s got to be a jack of trades and work on any hardware. So you end up with some great hardware, but also a lot of systems where cheap was the #1 goal, not performance.
…you can’t really do assembly programming for android since there’s no way to know what processor it’s going to be running on!
not true, although technically similar to Linux and should be able to compile for any processor, Android was programmed to run on ARM. There are about 6 different chips sets, but all are ARM based kernels.
It is weird that Android performance can be so sketchy, when ARM is a brilliant processor with it’s roots in Acorn Archimedes.
Main issue with modern OS is that direct chip access is much more difficult, without breaking the OS…. remember, many Amiga games literally bypassed the OS and drivers completely, that’s not possible on Android without destroying the user experience and potentially killing their tablet!
not just the user but the the guys coding apps are often pretty suspect. how many mobile devs are using machine languages? anyway I use to rock an amiga, it was cool. I could edit videos with it which was the big thing to me then.
good to see some computers and software almost lasting as long as dedicated hardware…
Hey there, thanks for posting this! I am Akira a.k.a. 8GB who is half of the force behind this app and the one who submitted it to CDM.
I wanted to write to you, the news poster, regarding the article as it needs two corrections, but I found no way to do so, so here goes, I hope you see it and that you don’t mind.
– The software is not released by kikencorp. That’s my “design brand” so to speak. The app is made by h0ffman from Unstable Label (http://unstablelabel.co.uk/) who is in charge of the code and me, Akira of 3WDG/Kikencorp, in charge of UI design and testing. The concept for the app was by h0ffman and me.
Not sure under which “label” we’ll release it, but it won’t be that! 😀
– Regarding hardware requirements, this software actually runs on any Amiga with an ECS chipset or newer. This means even late model A500s, A500 Plus, A3000s, A600s and more. The A1200, with its faster processor and a whooping 2MB of RAM (opposed to the more standard 1MB), is quite a high spec machine to run it actually! 😀
Hopefully you can amend the article with this correct info.
Thanks to everyone showing interest in the app! Hopefully you are encouraged to grab a couple of old Amigas and get mixing in a near future.
Thanks for the feedback – I updated the post to clarify both of these things!
Thanks a lot man!! I’ll keep you updated with more news about it as we have it, feel free to send me an email so I keep your contact details handy.
As an old-skool Atari ST user, my instinct is to talk smack about the Amiga (there was some Atari/Commodore rivalry back in the day). But this is seriously cool; I’ve got nothing but love for this kind of insanity.
Well said, bro – my sentiments exactly.
/Stupid amoeba owners and their stinky massively-superior audio capabilities/ *grumble* *moan* 🙂
(Heck, I’m astonished someone hadn’t done it already)
You see? We can all just get along.
So pleased to see this app featured on the front page of Synthtopia.
The Amiga was one of the last of the breed of machines where you could learn to do more than put a CD in a drive and play a game, and was more responsible for what is now the game industry than anything else.
In terms of musical capability, it was ahead of its game (no pun intended), bringing music production abilities to the masses of teenagers who couldn’t afford expensive Akai samples, who are now at the forefront of electronic music production.
There’s free programming languages still available for Windows machines, though. And QBasic for DOS came bundled right into the Win95 era…
“bringing music production abilities to the masses of teenagers who couldn’t afford expensive”
well, not only for them…
in the UK the rave, jungle/dnb secenes benefited tremendously of the amiga – its price, its sound and software! tons of jungle anthems born on the amiga with the help of OctaMED and other trackers. the UK charts were quite literally filled with tracker music in the 1st half of the 90’s! (also the Mayday raves:)
just check out some amiga jungle sets on youtube to find out that some of your fav dnb track was actually tracked on one (or two) Amigas!
supa sharp shooter, anyone:D
now imagine that your favorite songs were available in their original, individual master tracks (drums, horns, percs, vocals, etc…) seperately for you to play with them as you like – fe. remixing them live w/ a DJ app…
all thanks to the best digital music distribution format ever created – the module.
wonder what would be like if we still using modules to ditribute music – even instead of mp3, wav or any “rendered” form.
good that quite a few still does.
What does this application use in ECS that isn’t present in OCS?
Oh I sent you a message on Youtube.
It uses ECS blits, and OCS support isn’t on top of our priorities list. I wouldn’t hold my breath for it, then again, ECS+ is a huge amount of machines.
I still have my 600 with 40gb HD… Turned yellow…time to find a midi interface…
You don’t need any MIDI interface to run this. This is a turntable software, any syncing is to be done by your dexterity 😉
*skips thru* … that’s pretty sick. I might have to rip that out onto a CDR for the car. Shame we don’t get to see what’s happening on-screen 😉
Amigas only had 4 mono audio tracks didn’t they? Brilliant through the 90’s but they’re too old now to be taken seriously. But seeing this has made me slightly miss my a600 running octamed. Good times.
I love my Amiga.
i love my Atari
They can’t kill it. They tried and failed. I’m all smiles.
However, I still can’t listen to stuff like this for more than a few minutes before my brain starts to go numb. Must cue up some Mozart or Dvorak.
Very cool and useful program. Been lurking on eab forums for years. Really looking forward to load this in A1200 which still takes center spot in my studio. Daisy chained trough all three monotrons for instant filter, delay madness. 🙂 They fit very well on heat openings on top, since whole machine runs of cf cards and heat isn’t a problem. Hoping PT-1210 will read octamed format.
Anyway, great job guys!
It’s out!
http://pt1210.kikencorp.com/