Amiga

The Amiga 1000 (1985) had a custom chipset that no other personal computer of the era could approach — Denise for graphics, Paula for 4-channel sampled audio (8-bit, 28kHz), Agnus for DMA. The three chips worked in parallel without loading the 68000 CPU, an architecture that anticipated modern GPU design. The A500 became the mass-market model from 1987; the A1200 (1992) with its AGA 24-bit chipset is the most desirable unit today for backwards compatibility and raw capability. The European demoscene was born on the Amiga: groups like Cryptoburners, Phenomena and Future Crew created technical demonstrations that pushed the hardware past any documented limit. Floppy disks degrade: WHDLoad, a system that installs games to hard drive and eliminates the need for disk swaps, is now the preservation standard.