Amiga.org
Amiga.org specific forums => New User Introductions => Topic started by: codenetfx on June 29, 2008, 06:53:09 PM
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Hello everyone,
Two decades ago, I wrote a lot of 68K assembler, lots of Aztec-C and Lattice-C C-code, played a lot of great games and truly enjoyed the Amiga hardware platform. It was so cool to control the electron beam on the TV with a few 68K assembler commands. I don't quite remember how I did that back then, but remember that I spent several days with my head "inside" Amiga Hardware Manual, ROM Kernel Manual and then it just happened :) I used to have quite an extensive collection of demos (and sources!) but that somehow got lost over the years.
Recently, I decided to "rebuild" my Amiga collection and now I have A500 with 1MB RAM, GVP hard drive that goes with it, A1200 with a 25GB hard drive and 5MB RAM (maybe even 6MB - I have to double-check :), A2000 with the Toaster and A2500 with 2630 accelerator card, Toaster and Genlock. Even after all these years, Amiga did not lose its appeal and I am looking forward to sharing the Amiga enthusiasm here in the forum.
Also, I am looking for some software such as Disney Animation Studio, Soundprobe (sound sequencing software), so if anyone knows where I can get those, please let me know.
Another topic I am interested in, just like everyone in this forum is the Amiga OS 4 and how to get it to work on some readily available platform. Since PPC cards are unavailable, it looks like some kind of a "hack" would be in order (Mac Mini seems promising, maybe even one of the Dual G4 machines) to get it to work. However, since hardware requirements for OS4 are somewhat unclear (graphics card, ram required, memory, things of that nature), maybe we should find that out first :)
I have a designated Amiga gmail address and if anyone wants to get in touch, feel free to contact me: amigafx.at.gmail dott.kom. - in either English or German. Other languages are also welcome, as long as I can translate them with online translators.
Best,
Sam
- Amigas, PCs, Macs, Linuxes, all under one roof :)
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Hello from Spain!
:-D
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Welcome to amiga.org!
Also, I am looking for some software such as Disney Animation Studio, Soundprobe (sound sequencing software), so if anyone knows where I can get those, please let me know.
Search at eBay. I'm sure you will find something.
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Dear Friend:
If you search 'ebay usa' today, for the keyword 'animation'
you will find they're selling disney animation studio.
I have one copy myself, which i use, it is very good, with it you can make disney style cartoon animation on amiga.
Cheers!!!
rednova
-mobilis in mobile-
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Hi:
I also reccomend you get 'moviesetter' for amiga, it is really good and you can also make nice cartoons with it, japanimation style.
Cheers!!!
rednova
-mobilis in mobile
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Welcome to the board, I'm from Raleigh, NC.
My first interaction with C was with lattice on an a1k. Good times...
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@rednova: thank you for your suggestions. I just checked ebay but cannot find the auction. I know that there was an auction which ended on Sunday but I missed that one (sigh). Then I found a demo disk for Disney Animation Studio on ebay.co.uk but that's not what I want to play with :)
This brings up an interesting question: aside from ebay, are there any good sources of software out there? I am familiar with Softhut, but wondering if there are more.
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Hello from Northern Ireland!!!
:pint: :pint: :pint: :pint: :pint:
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@koaftder: same here. First (serious) C coding experience on Amiga with Aztec-C and Lattice-C.
I continued to use C/C++ as a consultant in the early 90s on the Intel DVI platform (video codec card with i860 processor for real time video). It was fun to work with custom video overlays programmed in C and "mixed" over live video. It took Intel almost 5 years to catch up with graphics capabilities built into A500. There was no other system out there to catch up with, so I am just going to say that Intel "copied" Amiga.
In fact, I decided to revisit Amiga (from all angles) after seeing Apple's "March 6th" event when iPhone SDK was announced. My first reaction was "they copied this from Amiga". Can't wait to see the details on custom chip set they are using.
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Unfortunately I don't have any software anymore, just a 1080 monitor and an a500 PSU still lying around looking for a home. But I am in Chicago! does that count for anything?? lol
Congratulations on coming back, and welcome. :-D
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Hello from Toronto!
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Hello from Chicago!
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G'day from Michigan.... howdy, neighbor. ;-)
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Hello, from Texas.
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Too much Guiness (Tension!) and quite a few Chicagoans here. I am often in Toronto (not very often, but often). Very nice to see the span of users from Spain, Greece, Ireland and all the way to the USA and Canada - all in one day.
I feel like I have outnumbered all of my other machines with Amigas. Now I am thinking about networking them. So far, I have a clear picture (=working setup) with A1200 which has a cool PCMCIA card. Not a wireless card, but I have a bridge which came in very handy in making the leap to wireless with Amiga. Connection is there but I have not had a lot of time to move a lot of data around to see if I am going to run into some issues. Hopefully not. Part of the problem is that other Amigas are not networked .
Logical next step now is to figure out how to network the rest: A2000, A2500 and maybe even A500. Moving files around seems like essential feature of any system worth playing with.
Also, I have a crazy idea to download Firefox source code and (try) to port it for release slated in, say, 2010 (2011?) :). Maybe this has been done already, maybe not. Let me know. :)
With the A500 I got on ebay a while back (with a bunch of disks), I also got a Processor Accelerator from Creative Microsystems. I guess dude I got it from did not know what to do with it: I have two crystals (16MHz) and two MC68881 sticking in the antistatic foam (yeah!) and a little board with an almighty MC68000 and two empty sockets, one for MC68881 and one for the crystal. Now, last time I fired up the soldering iron was a while ago but I do remember that the notch (dot) on the socket/component designates Pin #1. Thankfully, no soldering will be required here.
We will see how that goes. Steady hands and good light should get this done. The biggest question is actually where to plug in this thing ("CMI REV 3" on the board) on the A500 but maybe I will figure it out when I open it. Should be easy, right?
Anyone has this mighty accelerator working? Why do I have two crystals/MC68881?
I have read that thread where Georg (from A1K) described how he rolled his own A1K motherboard. That was way, way too cool. I am going to start with easy stuff until I get going.
It would be the coolest thing if we could figure out how to roll our own PPC boards but that seems a bit far-fetched, given that *somebody* owns that non-existing product. Maybe I should ask Georg or Matthias Muench (he maintains the phase5 site which is FYI only, from what I understand).
UPDATE: I found a web site which explains how to network amigas via parallel port (which then acts as Ethernet). I will post links here shortly.
Here are the links related to networking Amigas:
http://mylinuxisp.com/~jdbaker/oldsite/SmallSys/JDBAmiga.html
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/networkfaq.html
http://www.cs.rose-hulman.edu/~gunnbr/enetAmiga.html
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/amiga/networking-faq/part1/
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/amiga/networking-faq/part2/
http://www.jeacle.ie/pub/articles/netbsd/
Best,
Sam
A500+GVP Hard drive, A1200, A2000, A2500, two video Toasters, two G4 Macs, Macintosh Classic, Macintosh SE, five IBM T40s, IBM X41, DELL Inspiron running Freespire, Windows 2003+SharePoint in a VM, MacBook Pro :)
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@ Wain: Are you saying you don't need that monitor and the PSU?
What happened to the Amiga? We can do two things here: find you an Amiga or find an Amiga for these two items to go to
Best,
Sam
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Hi Sam,
Not too far west of you, in Edgerton Wisconsin. Welcome to Amiga.org.
Fester
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Hello from Robbers Park, err, Rogers Park, Chicago!
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codenetfx wrote:
Hello everyone,
I have a designated Amiga gmail address and if anyone wants to get in touch, feel free to contact me: amigafx.at.gmail dott.kom. - in either English or German.
Dann musst du in das kaffeehaus Gehen! Du kann mit mir und Speel sprechen!
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Willkommen zur eine fantastische Amiga Gruppe: Amiga.org!
Greets from an Amiga user in Lake Station, In.,..I am 90% pure Amiga user since 1990...Tony....Kurzwellenfunkamateur: WA9YOZ..
Zivijo!
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I do not want the monitor or PSU, the amiga is long gone and I don't have the space/time to invest in another one. I just couldn't bring myself to throw the items away.
My biggest issue is that I don't want to bother shipping them anywhere otherwise I imagine unloading them would be a snap.
EDIT--
Just did some digging in my closet, looks like the PSU may be gone now too (bf might have thrown it out :roll: ) but the monitor's still there.
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I think we have a "critical mass" of Amigans in Chicagoland (and vicinity). Most of my "Amiga" time is spent configuring the machines and figuring out how to move files around, write little programs (with DevPac) and wonder what I could *do* with the Video Toaster. Anyone out there *using* the Toaster?
Of course, I play some games (on WinUAE and *real* Amiga). Some games suck because they are asking me to enter words from the manual which I do not have anymore.
For A500, I think I am going to get the ParNet cable to move files around. I have an external hard drive (GVP) and copy stuff from disks but that's extremely slow. Over time, I want to get away from disks entirely and figure out a way to keep a repository of programs for Amiga on an USB drive which would be connected to a PC, which in turn would be connected to Amiga over ParNet. I suspect that I will need some software for it. I know that Cloanto offers an Amiga Explorer which works with a null-modem cable?
Ah, the null modem cable... Anyone ever used RS232 for Guru Meditating, debugging over serial? LOL That was fun.
Did anyone use either of those two networking solutions?
Sam
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@bloodline:
Ins Kaffeehaus gehen zum Kaffeklatsch und Amiga-Plauderei!
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codenetfx wrote:
.. Of course, I play some games (on WinUAE and *real* Amiga). Some games suck because they are asking me to enter words from the manual which I do not have anymore.
Sam
hello from Toronto :-D
..you should look into trying WHDLoad for solving any gaming issues you may have...it allows you to run most games from the HD without floppies & also without a kick swicther i.e play older games that run on 1.2kick with your 1200
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@klx300r
Thank you for reminding me of WHDLOAD tool. That tool is a must for managing an ever-growing archive of ADFs.
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Hello from the UK!
I use the 3COM 3C589D PCMCIA network card with my A1200D - It works great! I use AmiTCP and SMBFS for the software, and often pull files down from the XP box in the house to the A1200 in the garage :crazy:
For A500, I think I am going to get the ParNet cable to move files around. I have an external hard drive (GVP) and copy stuff from disks but that's extremely slow. Over time, I want to get away from disks entirely and figure out a way to keep a repository of programs for Amiga on an USB drive which would be connected to a PC, which in turn would be connected to Amiga over ParNet. I suspect that I will need some software for it. I know that Cloanto offers an Amiga Explorer which works with a null-modem cable?
PS. Have you heard about the Subway and Highway hardware addons? They allow you to use USB devices on your Amiga (Though im not sure how you would get one to run on an A500, even with the accelerator...)
Hodgkinson.