Amiga.org
Amiga.org specific forums => New User Introductions => Topic started by: SnkBitten on March 01, 2016, 02:37:40 PM
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Hi, I'm a new user though I've been browsing/reading for a while. I'm a former Amiga owner (bought an A1000 when it launched) and have owned a number of Amiga's during it's day.
A1000 +insider 1 MB board (Sold for A3000)
A2000 + VideoToaster, (2) TBC's, SCSI controller+HD, Ethernet card
A3000 (Sold for A4000)
A4000 +Toaster4000, Emplant Mac-emu, GVP EGS 28/24 Spectrum, WarpEngine040, Ethernet card
Started playing with WinUAE and was impressed by how well it emulated the old systems and in searching Amiga topics, discovered Amithlon, a product released after I had left the Amiga scene (sold all my remaining hardware to make rent). Wanted to see what it was about, had some old PC hardware and installed.
Blown away by it's performance and have spent more time working with Amithlon than standard WinUAE emulation.
Have configured Amithlon on numerous PC's, a few laptops (using wireless NICs) and even in Virtualbox (with USB, AHI and NIC all functioning).
I've purchased 4.1 Classic and played with it in WinUAE and like what I saw, but under emulation it's a bit slow.
Hope to contribute and participate here as well as I can :)
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@SnkBitten
welcome to amiga.org! glad to have you here. :)
-- eliyahu
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Welcome SnkBitten. That 4000 sounds sweet as! Always fancied a WarpEngine040 myself, and an A4000 for that matter. I have A500/600/1200 models.
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Welcome SnkBitten. That 4000 sounds sweet as! Always fancied a WarpEngine040 myself, and an A4000 for that matter. I have A500/600/1200 models.
It was. A4000 was fully loaded with RAM and the WarpEngine had 32 MB on it if I remember correctly. I had a Single Frame VCR connected and was playing with Lightwave and rendering out 3d stuff for fun. Really didn't want to get rid of what I had...but I was working with MS PC's at work and needed to pay bills, so the fun stuff went. The A2000 just hung around to primarily power the (2) TBC's I had in it when I goofed around with the Video Toaster.
I've forgotten a ton of stuff I did/used on my Amiga's and WinUAE re-ignited the enjoyment I had of using AmigaOS and all the little utilities you could add to enhance the experience. I've got that same fever/enjoyment right now with Amithlon and trying to work around it's unique issues.
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And back into the Amiga fold with a (new to me) Amiga 4000.
Lucked out on a decently priced A4000/40 with 16 MB Fast and 2 Mb Chip ram. It was 3.0 Roms so updated those to 3.1. Installed a DVD/RW (SATA w/IDE converter) drive and a 250 GB IDE HD and started the install process when the 3.1 Install floppy that came with it failed at boot. Attached the HD to my Windows machine and used WinUAE to partition, format and install OS 3.9 and using the DblNTSC monitor. Placed it back in the A4000 and it booted just fine connected to a VGA monitor (RGB > VGA adapter). 3.7 GB boot partition, 8 GB work partition, 25 GB data and 25 GB misc partitions (with plenty more space unpartitioned). All using PFS3.
Added a Toaster4000 and Video Flyer card and a X-Surf 100 card.
Enjoying some good old fashion real Amiga interactions again :) Still heavily involved in Amithlon though...the speed differences are staggering, as well as the low-res, limited color and slow native display modes Amiga offers, compared to the Amithlon screen modes (add in the hardware accelerated modes under Amithlon and the differences become even greater).
Still, it's great to be an Amiga owner again. Funny, I would never desire my old first PC compatible PC again.
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And back into the Amiga fold with a (new to me) Amiga 4000.
Lucked out on a decently priced A4000/40 with 16 MB Fast and 2 Mb Chip ram. It was 3.0 Roms so updated those to 3.1. Installed a DVD/RW (SATA w/IDE converter) drive and a 250 GB IDE HD and started the install process when the 3.1 Install floppy that came with it failed at boot. Attached the HD to my Windows machine and used WinUAE to partition, format and install OS 3.9 and using the DblNTSC monitor. Placed it back in the A4000 and it booted just fine connected to a VGA monitor (RGB > VGA adapter). 3.7 GB boot partition, 8 GB work partition, 25 GB data and 25 GB misc partitions (with plenty more space unpartitioned). All using PFS3.
Added a Toaster4000 and Video Flyer card and a X-Surf 100 card.
Enjoying some good old fashion real Amiga interactions again :) Still heavily involved in Amithlon though...the speed differences are staggering, as well as the low-res, limited color and slow native display modes Amiga offers, compared to the Amithlon screen modes (add in the hardware accelerated modes under Amithlon and the differences become even greater).
Still, it's great to be an Amiga owner again. Funny, I would never desire my old first PC compatible PC again.
Native Amiga screen modes are sped up massively on higher cpu's by the use of FBlit:
http://m68k.aminet.net/package/util/boot/fblit
You have to use FBlitGUI first to configure it. I replied to a post about FBlit somewhere on here years ago as you need to make sure the config file is created/being used (it'll happily 'not work' without throwing up an error).
Also make sure your ROM is in in RAM for another extra boost. There's loads of tweaks to be done to improve graphics and Workbench speed, this is just scratching the surface.
Personally what makes old computers interesting to me is their limitations, and how to get the best out of them. Not just in computing either, but everything really. To me everything and everyone are defined by their limitations. Nothing is perfect.
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Native Amiga screen modes are sped up massively on higher cpu's by the use of FBlit:
http://m68k.aminet.net/package/util/boot/fblit
You have to use FBlitGUI first to configure it. I replied to a post about FBlit somewhere on here years ago as you need to make sure the config file is created/being used (it'll happily 'not work' without throwing up an error).
Also make sure your ROM is in in RAM for another extra boost. There's loads of tweaks to be done to improve graphics and Workbench speed, this is just scratching the surface.
Personally what makes old computers interesting to me is their limitations, and how to get the best out of them. Not just in computing either, but everything really. To me everything and everyone are defined by their limitations. Nothing is perfect.
My last Amiga had RTG graphics and I have forgotten a lot of native speedups. When I started playing in WinUAE I immediately configured systems similar to what I had back in the day, A4000, WarpEngine, RTG graphics.
FBlit did wonders for letting me bump the color depth up and still have a usable Workbench. Thanks.