Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga community support ideas => Topic started by: Mightyzorlac on November 13, 2012, 01:31:32 AM
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I was a member of an Amiga group in North London years ago, I want to start an new Amiga group for London and the UK to promote the Amiga platform , meet up for gaming on classic systems, start new Amiga hardware projects, advice, keeping the Amiga community alive for the 21st century etc .
There are only 2 other's I know who still love and play Amiga in London , so support is pretty thin on the ground. Anytime I go to PC or apple show and start talking to people about Amiga, I just get weird looks. I want to reach out to anyone interested in attending our meetings every 2 weeks or who want to help.
Who's with me in keeping the dream alive? I know this is probably not the place to post this,and it might piss some people off(I'm sorry:o) but we have to start to build up small Amiga groups up and down the country , thus build:D support and awareness of a truly great platform. And who Knows it might build and build into something much bigger?We have to start again from some where. I have thought about A-ON sponsoring us and have sent an email. How many people in the uk are members of this site? would be good to get a headcount of these cool free thinking lot.
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I was a member of an Amiga group in North London years ago, I want to start an new Amiga group for London
ANT is still going. http://www.amiganorththames.co.uk
If you can get to Enfield I'd suggest joining ANT rather than starting your own group.
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It sounds like a good idea! Of course, I've done some searches recently and only found the Amiga North Thames group with their dedicated website. I live in central London. Unfortunately, although I made plans to attend this meeting, I've always failed to make it so far. One of the reasons I didn't make it was due to the fact that I have no real idea what I'd find once I got there. This is due to the simple fact that in spite of their impressive looking website, Amiga North Thames have failed to provide any means of contacting them! Questions I wanted to ask them included "Do you stick to the meeting times listed on your website, or if I only managed to arrive an hour before the end might I find you've already left or are just finishing packing up?", as well as "Do I have to pay an admission fee or membership fee to gain entry, or not until before I decide whether or not to come back?".
I hope you'll be providing these details about your meetings in advance to anyone who would be interested in turning up.
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It sounds like a good idea! Of course, I've done some searches recently and only found the Amiga North Thames group with their dedicated website. I live in central London. Unfortunately, although I made plans to attend this meeting, I've always failed to make it so far. One of the reasons I didn't make it was due to the fact that I have no real idea what I'd find once I got there. This is due to the simple fact that in spite of their impressive looking website, Amiga North Thames have failed to provide any means of contacting them! Questions I wanted to ask them included "Do you stick to the meeting times listed on your website, or if I only managed to arrive an hour before the end might I find you've already left or are just finishing packing up?", as well as "Do I have to pay an admission fee or membership fee to gain entry, or not until before I decide whether or not to come back?".
I hope you'll be providing these details about your meetings in advance to anyone who would be interested in turning up.
ANT usually sticks to the published dates and times. If there is something special about the meeting eg demo of a new Amiga, OS etc then the extra info will be posted on a forum or more.
We usually stay to the end as some of our regulars have a habit of turning up well after 13:00.
Come along to the next meeting and see what you think. Refreshments including cakes are provided (Yum!).
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Amiga users are very welcome to Amiga North Thames - As long as you can get down to us, there is no need to worry where you are based.
Myself and one other member hail from North Cambridgeshire, Another occassionally drops in from Southampton way, couple from the far reaches of east essex, etc, so as you can see, not everyone is local. Lucky people who live in London, they can get there relatively easily, what with all that public transport and what not.
Amiga North Thames is into its 13th Year (14th in January)
Cheers all.
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ANT usually sticks to the published dates and times. If there is something special about the meeting eg demo of a new Amiga, OS etc then the extra info will be posted on a forum or more.
We usually stay to the end as some of our regulars have a habit of turning up well after 13:00.
Come along to the next meeting and see what you think. Refreshments including cakes are provided (Yum!).
OK, but you've still failed to tell me if there's an admission or membership fee which I have to pay before I decide whether or not I want to come back.
Apart from this, why are there no contact details on your website?!
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The email - contact list should have been there, it used to point to a joint email box, I will get it back up and running.
We have mentioned it before when advertising an event to the club. In essence....
1st time attendees are admitted free, there is no charge, donations to club funds are welcome however. :-)
There is no membership fee, its pay as you go -£4.00 ukp per meeting.
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1st time attendees are admitted free, there is no charge...
I can attest to that. I visited the club in 2011, and everybody was very accommodating.
Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
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OK, but you've still failed to tell me if there's an admission or membership fee which I have to pay before I decide whether or not I want to come back.
Apart from this, why are there no contact details on your website?!
Okay, now all your questions are answered, I take it we can expect you at the next meeting? :-)
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One Final note, A contact us link (Mailto) and details of how much it costs to attend has now been added to the website.
I notice from the Poll that 10 people are interested, I hope those 10 people who are interested in starting a usergroup in London will at some point attend one of our meetings. We don't bite honest!!
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I think there's one in Essex too which is quite close to East London.
It's always great to meet people into the same thing, be it Star Trek or Amiga :)
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Well, I finally went to an Amiga North Thames meeting on December 9! I actually arrived early, hung round outside for a little while, then went in 8 minutes before it was due to start. I don't own an Amiga at the moment, but have owned an A500, A600, and A1200. I think there were 10 other people who attended who all seemed to know each other already. I forgot to count all the Amigas, but they seemed to be mainly ACube Sam systems. I also saw two Amiga A1200s and one A4000. I think all but the classic Amigas were running AmigaOS 4.1. There was no sign of MorphOS or AROS. There were also a couple of laptops running MS Windows! I wondered why they weren't running Linux, because AmigaOS and Linux are both descended from UNIX. There was also a Mac Powerbook running Mac OSX, which is partly based on UNIX. I had a good look at two Amigas running AmigaOS 4.1, both running the Origyn web browser. I had a conversation with a programmer who creates utilities using PortablE, based on the earlier language Amiga E. He also edited some Javascript code to enable YouTube videos to be viewed after a recent change by YouTube. During my time at the meeting, I noticed that the machines running AmigaOS 4.1 all booted up by displaying a text screen first of all, like with a PC BIOS ROM, unlike classic Amiga Kickstart ROMs or Apple Mac ROMs. I also noticed that there was an X Windows server, as with Linux but not with Android which is based on Linux. I wonder if AmigaOS 4.1 is compatible with Linux up to a point? I found a game called Super Tux, which had been ported from Linux, but it crashed, bringing up a Guru Meditation and a Grim Reaper error. MP3 music and AVI files were played. Users could swtich between AmigaOS 4.1 and UAE, as well as DOSBox to run MS-DOS games. I certainly saw a lot during my time there and it was well worth the visit!
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I had a good look at two Amigas running AmigaOS 4.1, both running the Origyn web browser.
I will make a point of showing you NetSurf next time. :)
I had a conversation with a programmer who creates utilities using PortablE, based on the earlier language Amiga E. He also edited some Javascript code to enable YouTube videos to be viewed after a recent change by YouTube.
That was Chris H, actually he wrote PortablE. I'm the other Chris who was there btw.
During my time at the meeting, I noticed that the machines running AmigaOS 4.1 all booted up by displaying a text screen first of all, like with a PC BIOS ROM, unlike classic Amiga Kickstart ROMs or Apple Mac ROMs.
That's U-Boot. It loads Kickstart off disk which then boots as you'd expect.
I also noticed that there was an X Windows server, as with Linux but not with Android which is based on Linux. I wonder if AmigaOS 4.1 is compatible with Linux up to a point?
It has some POSIX compatbility. The X Windows server is AmiCygnix, it's quite good for making easy UNIX ports but not very integrated with the native GUI.
I certainly saw a lot during my time there and it was well worth the visit!
Glad you enjoyed yourself!
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I will make a point of showing you NetSurf next time. :)
That was Chris H, actually he wrote PortablE. I'm the other Chris who was there btw.
That's U-Boot. It loads Kickstart off disk which then boots as you'd expect.
It has some POSIX compatbility. The X Windows server is AmiCygnix, it's quite good for making easy UNIX ports but not very integrated with the native GUI.
Glad you enjoyed yourself!
I think I clicked on NetSurf, but I don't think anything happened.
Having a name for something (i.e. U-Boot) doesn't make it alright, as in "OMG, that bouncer's beating the **** out of that clubber!", "Don't worry, that's called He-Boot". I fail to see why U-Boot starts with a text screen, which harks back to the days before the original Apple Mac, that came out in 1984, as well as before its ancestor the Apple Lisa in 1983. PC BIOS ROMs were designed to be compatible with the original IBM PC, which came out in 1981 without any graphics. The classic Amigas always displayed graphic boot screens AFAIK. I recently searched for videos of an Amiga A1000 booting up, but they didn't display a text screen like this, although they had to load Kickstart from disk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O-TJENe7a4 .
It seems that there's currently a waiting list to buy any kind of AmigaOne computer and the minimum price may be €999.99. The hardware seems fairly similar to a Power Mac G4, but I get the impression that U-Boot is installed in ROM, and checks the exact hardware used to prevent AmigaOS 4.1 from running on a Mac. BTW, I have got a Power Mac G4, which I managed to pick up for nothing from http://www.freecycle.org , but I found out that it's not compatible with the much later Mac I use in a recording studio, because apart from being slower and having less RAM, it has a Power PC CPU instead of an Intel CPU. Although Apple Mac OS X can run Power PC software on an Intel x86 CPU, there's no system for running Intel x86 software on a Power PC. This means I can't bring it up to date and it's a perfect candidate to run an Amiga type Power PC OS.
BTW, after the meeting I found a post on another forum announcing that this was the Christmas ANT Meeting, so be prepared to buy some food. I can't reply to this post on that forum because my registration hasn't yet been validated. I think the announcement should have been on the ANT website, because then I'd have read it in time. Before I left for the meeting, I made sure I'd already had enough to eat, because I didn't know if there would be anything to eat there. Thanks for the pizza slice(s) and chicken strips. Just that amount was enough, as I'd already eaten.
I'm not 100% sure if or when I'll be attending an ANT group meeting again. I stopped using the Amiga when it became clear that it would take lots of expensive upgrades to get onto the Internet, although it was cheaper just to buy a PC, due to mass production by various companies instead of just one company.
There was a feature on the BBC programme Click some time ago, pointing out that nowadays computers are being used mainly as communications devices, instead of for computing, so that made me think about all the things I used to do on the Amiga, actually working things out, programming, and graphic art. It included Comms as it was then called and I visited various BBS systems, but this wasn't my main activity.
I also produced some art on the Amiga using Deluxe Paint and Photon Paint. I found that MS Windows graphics programs were quite different and I couldn't do much with them. I recently discovered a program called GrafX2 for Linux, which is a Deluxe Paint clone, so I hope this will enable me to do some more computer art.
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Having a name for something (i.e. U-Boot) doesn't make it alright, as in "OMG, that bouncer's beating the **** out of that clubber!", "Don't worry, that's called He-Boot". I fail to see why U-Boot starts with a text screen, which harks back to the days before the original Apple Mac, that came out in 1984, as well as before its ancestor the Apple Lisa in 1983. PC BIOS ROMs were designed to be compatible with the original IBM PC, which came out in 1981 without any graphics. The classic Amigas always displayed graphic boot screens AFAIK.[/url]
There's no need to qualify 68K Amigas with the term "classic", they are Amigas. The "classic" designation was created by OS4 users to try to muddy the waters and give the impression that the AmigaOne is somehow a continuation of the Amiga. The PPC hardware you saw at the meeting are AmigaOnes, a completely different computer and not related to the Commodore Amiga in any way, as you seem to have noticed.
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There's no need to qualify 68K Amigas with the term "classic", they are Amigas. The "classic" designation was created by OS4 users to try to muddy the waters and give the impression that the AmigaOne is somehow a continuation of the Amiga. The PPC hardware you saw at the meeting are AmigaOnes, a completely different computer and not related to the Commodore Amiga in any way, as you seem to have noticed.
That's your opinion, in my opinion, your opinion is wrong, but hey, its your opinion, its no more valid than mine.
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There's no need to qualify 68K Amigas with the term "classic", they are Amigas. The "classic" designation was created by OS4 users to try to muddy the waters and give the impression that the AmigaOne is somehow a continuation of the Amiga.
Actually the "classic" designation came from one of the owners of Amiga - might have been Jim Collas - and is fairly widely used as a term to refer to 68k Amigas.
@AmigaBruno
I didn't say "It's U-Boot" as an excuse, just to advise what you were seeing. It is a BIOS which initialises the hardware and boots AmigaOS via Kickstart. It actually does something very similar to what Kickstart does, and is an annoying initial step. It would be nice to get Kickstart directly into flash and avoid the U-Boot stage, but that doesn't look likely to happen.
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There's no need to qualify 68K Amigas with the term "classic", they are Amigas. The "classic" designation was created by OS4 users to try to muddy the waters and give the impression that the AmigaOne is somehow a continuation of the Amiga. The PPC hardware you saw at the meeting are AmigaOnes, a completely different computer and not related to the Commodore Amiga in any way, as you seem to have noticed.
I feel I should point out that the Apple Mac has gone through a similar transition to the Amiga, but it's actually gone further and is still produced by the same company, unlike the Amiga. There are at least two different groups of Mac enthusiasts who claim that particular classic Macs are the only true Macs. One group claims that only 68K Macs are genuine, while another group claims that Power PC Macs running OS9 are the best, and another group is fanatical about Power PC Macs running OSX. The accusations against Apple are that first they gave up their OS for the completely rewritten OSX with the look and feel of Mac OS, but based on NeXTStep, OpenStep, UNIX, and possibly some Amiga code, while later on they also gave up their hardware in favour of Intel x86 PC type hardware.
The Amiga has changed a lot in the past and had some compatibility problems possibly dating from Kickstart 1.2, definitely with Kickstart 1.3, followed by even more issues with Kickstart 2.04, 2.05, 3.0 and 3.1. Users started fitting Kickstart ROM switcher boards onto Amigas supplied with Kickstart 1.3. While Commodore was still manufacturing the Amiga I think there were plans to move to the Power PC chip, but then only third parties produced Power PC upgrade boards. They even planned to abandon Workbench/AmigaDOS for QNX. I think the AmigaOne systems I saw were a continuation of the Amiga, which can run old Amiga software, but need some help to do this. They do look and feel like a continuation of the Amiga, though.
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A reminder that the monthly Amiga North Thames meeting is this coming Sunday (13th January).
Amiga North Thames is based in Greater London UK.
Visit our website for full details http://www.amiganorththames.co.uk
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A reminder that the monthly Amiga North Thames meeting is this coming Sunday (13th January).
Amiga North Thames is based in Greater London UK.
Visit our website for full details http://www.amiganorththames.co.uk
I plan to be there again. I'm glad to read it's in Greater London, because the Post Office and the address on your website don't agree with this. I hope the date 13-01-13 doesn't bring bad luck!
Since my first visit last month, I've been bidding on various classic Amigas on eBay and bought an Amiga A500 Plus, Workbench 2.04, a copy of Deluxe Paint III, a "Hackers utility" disk, and Amiga Logo (i.e. the programming language). I've been outbid on several Amiga A1200s. I started to do some artwork on Deluxe Paint III, but then both my video leads and connectors let me down, so I can't get a display at the moment. I have got an A520 RF modulator and RF lead, and bought an Amiga RGB to SCART lead, which was faulty and took me ages to plug in, then gave a red tinted screen. The shielding and one or more pins were out of alignment and a few of the pins got bent, so I've returned it as faulty. The last time I plugged it in, it just gave a faint outline of the Kickstart boot screen. I don't expect a replacement until at least Monday. I assume from what I saw last time there will be a spare RGB lead and a spare compatible monitor I can connect to. Of course, this is nothing to do with the Internet, but like they said on BBC Click http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/ over 2 years ago it's computing, not communication. Most computers nowadays are being used for communication most of the time. There doesn't seem to be any Windows or even Linux software which works like Deluxe Paint, and I haven't done much with the software GrafX2 http://code.google.com/p/grafx2/ , which is supposed to be like DPaint, but it's not that similar from what I can see.
BTW, do you have any plans to eat lots of food at this meeting? If so, I won't have much to eat before arriving. I'll bring enough cash.
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I plan to be there again. I'm glad to read it's in Greater London, because the Post Office and the address on your website don't agree with this.
Well, it's in Enfield, which is technically Greater London, but the very northern outskirts.
BTW, do you have any plans to eat lots of food at this meeting? If so, I won't have much to eat before arriving. I'll bring enough cash.
No, that was a Christmas special. There will be the usual tea, crisps, biscuits and probably cake, which are free/included.
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Well, it's in Enfield, which is technically Greater London, but the very northern outskirts.
No, that was a Christmas special. There will be the usual tea, crisps, biscuits and probably cake, which are free/included.
I hope there will be some Cola as well. I think I'll also bring some copies of music tracks I've recorded in MP3 format and see if anyone wants to play them. I noticed some big speaker systems there last time, but not much sound coming from them.
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I hope there will be some Cola as well.
I *think* there usually is.
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I *think* there usually is.
Well, there was Coca Cola, cake, a large chocolate tart, and Pringles there and we had a good meeting. I took my A500 Plus along and connected to a 1085S monitor, but there was no sound. Both my video leads let me down a few days before this, so I hadn't used my Amiga since then. I did some artwork using Deluxe Paint and tried out my newly acquired Amiga LOGO language package, which only arrived after my video leads broke down, so that was the first time I'd used it. I saw an A4000 or A4000T having its clock battery removed, then later on, I had my A500 Plus opened up to have a look at my clock battery, but it wasn't leaking.
Apart from my Amiga A500 Plus, everyone else had an AmigaOne or similar system based around Sam boards, running AmigaOS 4.1. There were some laptops, one running MS Windows and another running Suse or OpenSuse Linux.
Unfortunately, I didn't notice anyone else at the meeting actually creating anything, only using the Internet, but I know at least one of the people there is the programmer who created PortablE. One of the AmigaOne computers got rebooted several times, probably for an update. There was a story on BBC Click over 2 years ago about classic or vintage computers, criticising the situation where they said that most computers today were being used mainly as communications devices, not for computing. If you own an Amiga, no matter which model it is, then you can use it to create graphics, music, applications, games, and utilities. You don't actually need to connect it to the Internet, because you probably have another device which you can use for that. It may also be an advantage just to sit down in front of an Amiga to create something with no distractions from the Internet.
There was some news about the VIntage Computer Festival happening later this year,and I also think there was an announcement about an event later this month, but I didn't make a note of it. I hope this news will be added to the website.
It would be nice to hear any news about the proposed new Amiga group for London, so long as their meetings don't clash with ANT, but there doesn't seem to be any news. The MightyZorlac has formed a group on this forum, but nothing seems to be happening. His group seems to be about reliving the old days of the Amiga and even writing demos. I think this sounds exciting.