I have the main unit, mouse and Philips CM8533 color monitor.
type computer
country USA
year 1987
os kickstart 1.2 workbench 1.3
cpu Motorola mc 68000
speed 7.14 MHz
ram 512 KB
rom 256 KB
graphic 320 x 256 (32) + many
colors 4096
sound 4 voice 8 bit pcm
disk 3,5″
ports centronics, rs232, mouse, joystick, rgb, composite,audio, disk
The Commodore Amiga 500 — The Boing Ball Demo
The Commodore Amiga 500, released in 1987, became the best-selling Amiga model and one of the most beloved home computers in European history. The ”Balls” designation almost certainly refers to the iconic Boing Ball demo — the bouncing red-and-white checkered ball that Amiga engineers demonstrated at the 1984 Winter Consumer Electronics Show to prove the machine’s graphics capabilities. The Boing Ball became the unofficial symbol of the Amiga platform, and recreating it remains a rite of passage for Amiga programmers. This example represents the A500 in its most celebrated cultural context — the machine that made the demoscene possible.
The Demoscene Connection
No other home computer platform produced a demoscene as technically accomplished and artistically celebrated as the Amiga. The A500’s custom chips — particularly the copper, blitter, and sprite system — allowed programmers to produce visual effects that seemed to defy the hardware’s specifications. Copper list programming, where the copper co-processor modified display registers mid-frame to produce colour cycling, gradients, and scrolling effects, became a uniquely Amiga art form. Demo groups including Phenomena, Spaceballs, Sanity, and Future Crew produced works that remain stunning even by modern standards, pushing the A500 to capabilities its designers never anticipated.
The A500’s Market Dominance
The A500’s £499 launch price made it genuinely competitive with the Atari ST and significantly cheaper than the original A1000, opening the Amiga platform to the mass home computer market. In the UK and Germany in particular, the A500 dominated the home computer market from the late 1980s through the early 1990s, outselling the Atari ST and leaving the Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64 looking increasingly dated. Its combination of gaming capability, graphics, sound, and the growing professional software library made it the aspirational home computer of its generation.
Why ”Balls”?
The Boing Ball demo, created by RJ Mical and Dale Luck for the 1984 CES demonstration, showed a smoothly animated, checkered ball bouncing around the screen with a realistically simulated shadow — something no other computer of the era could do in real-time. The audience, accustomed to the limited graphics of Apple II and PC computers, was reportedly stunned. The demo became so associated with the Amiga that ”boing ball” became shorthand for the platform’s capabilities, and the ball itself has appeared in Amiga marketing, on merchandise, and in countless tributes ever since.