Amiga.org
Amiga.org specific forums => New User Introductions => Topic started by: chiark on January 28, 2005, 03:32:48 PM
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Hi all,
It seems only polite to introduce myself to the community here :)
I was a reformed Amiga addict, but booting the A4000 for the first time in 5 years has caused me to lapse again. There's something simply wonderful about an OS that I know pretty much what every file does on it... Its simple elegance really is appealing.
Like a lot of people on here, I have History when it comes to Amigas: from the Very First on an A500 with 512KB which got expanded with 512KB memory for around £150... Then added a disk drive... Then added a Spirit HDA-506 10MB hard drive to it. I dare not think how much that cost, or the size of the thing!
Then the Amiga 2000. Added a Mega Midget Racer to it...
Then the 3000. A brilliant bit of kit, truly brilliant.
Then the 4000D, adding a Warp Engine 040 and a Piccolo SD64.
And that's where it ended :( when I graduated and was pretty much forced into the PC world. I resisted for as long as I could, but ultimately I had to move. Shame really, as nothing quite recreates the feeling of enthusiasm that the Amiga had - we made the Linux crowd look a bit apathetic ;)
I used to write for magazines to boost my student income, and wrote a few articles for CU Amiga and Amiga Computing, the most involved of which was a round up of Imagine, Real 3D and Lightwave. This all fitted nicely with my degree, as my final year project ended up being based on constructive solid geometry raytracing.
I also wrote the Amiga driver for the Tabby graphics tablet, and a fair few install disks for hardware from Diamond computers (before they went bust) or First Computer Centre (before they went bust!)
Of course, there were a few exceptionally poor demos too :)
But I've recently rediscovered the 4000, and it is a cracking piece of kit. And I've recently rediscovered the on-line community: it appears vibrant and, most of all, friendly and relaxed.
Thanks for the resource here, it's excellent!
Nick.
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Welcome, mate!
I bought a few disks from First Computer center and I also messed around with raytracing on the Amiga from 1996 to 2001 (Real 3D 1.4 then Cinema 4D).
Mine is an A4000T, and like you, I had to defect to the Dark Side and use a PC for my research. But I can't bring myself to dump the ol' girl (the Miggy). There's a history between us.
It's about nostalgia. Plenty of knowledgeable people on this board, so welcome to the right place for classic amiga users...
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Hi Nick
Welcome back.
The Amiga always draws you back doesn't it?
There is a lot of stuff happening in Amigaland at the moment. Your skills as a software developer could come in handy if you were to start programming for this platform again. OS4 could benefit from a few more drivers.
:-)
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Welcome!
any chance we coulds see those animations???
:-D
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Blimey, that was quick - thanks for the welcomes already!
X-Ray: Real3D was so different to any other 3D package I'd used... It was wonderful, if a tad unconventional because of the CSG approach. Good results though, but ultimately I loved lightwav. The whole amiga scene was fun, and if this board is all about nostalgia with a bit of an eye on the present and future, then it'll be wonderful fun :-)
Gadgetmaster: "driver" makes it sound wonderfully low-level. I wrote a commodity that read data from the serial port and moved the pointer :-) . It was written in 4 days, and netted me a lump which helped pay for a whack of student life and the 3000 :-D . I would dearly like to find out more about OS4, but information seems a tad thin on the ground - especially at amiga.com, where I'd expect it to be shouted from the rooftops! Alas, I don't really program much any more but have recently ported a Magnetic Scrolls interpreter (Pawn, Jinxter etc) to Windows CE devices...
Leirbag: I can try to resurrect them. I certainly have the articles, and probably the graphics, but to be honest I focused on static stuff rather than animation for the review because it's easier to show static in print ;-) . When I get the networking sorted out between the miggy and PC then I'll pull all that stuff off.
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There's lot's of knowledgeable people around here that moved on but just haven't left the platform. Personally I've never studied computer science but I'm learning some programming as a hobby on the Amiga and it's really cool.
Welcome back :pint:
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I would dearly like to find out more about OS4, but information seems a tad thin on the ground - especially at amiga.com, where I'd expect it to be shouted from the rooftops!
That site does leave a lot to be desired but there is a relatively obscure link to http://os.amiga.com/os4/?PHPSESSID=9755273bc3ed5d2eba1fd7653bd72309
Or Try: www.intuitionbase.com instead
/Edit
Have you seen the ARS review : http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/amiga.ars
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There is also AROS (http://www.aros.org) for your PC. You can find a distro for AROS here (http://www.aros-max.co.uk) for native, hosted, or emulated.
Dammy
TeamAROS (http://www.thenostromo.com/teamaros/)