Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: ElPolloDiabl on September 27, 2010, 11:16:43 AM
-
Hi, What would you consider the most difficult thing on the Amiga from a personal perspective?
-
Hi, What would you consider the most difficult thing on the Amiga from a personal perspective?
You mean, like, watching Blue Ray discs?
-
Selling any piece of my gear - last time done it about '97.
-
Hi, What would you consider the most difficult thing on the Amiga from a personal perspective?
Modern/popular games. That horse left the barn nearly two decades ago.
-
Okay, I actually meant more like setting up the internet or programming, but I wanted to be general so I could get some personal experiences.
For me internet was a breeze so were hardware expansions, I never took the risk of buying some new fangled hardware.
I did have a lot of trouble going from ROM 1.3 to 2.04 and up it was years before I later got Relokick.
It also took me a while before I got a hard drive too, they were unbelievably expensive.
-
The flicker...
I think the flickering screen is the single biggest wrecking ball to hit the Amiga. Why? well I remember seeing the A4000 setup next to a PC and Mac display in NYC years ago. It was sad and funny to watch folks using the A4000 and saying thing's like "what the f*ck is up with this flicker" lol... 4 folks said the same thing...
How are you going to attract new users with a flickering display like that. Shows how out of touch Commodore were. Hey Let's remove the flicker fixer chip to validate to the outdated technological claims our competitors are making.
-
Agreed... the flicker of the screen in any decent resolution was a nightmare... still is btw. If the FF of the A3000 was too expensive they should have included a onboard RTG solution based on the ET4000 or something, they must have been able to hack something together.
Dave Haynie interview in which he talks on the A3000+ / A4000: http://landley.net/history/mirror/commodore/haynie.html)
-
Id say a completely easy way to partition and use large hard drives.
And networking.
-
For me it's been the disassembling of most of my original Amiga software in order to bug fix or improve upon it.
Using ReSource V6, you can with a lot of patience and time, disassemble all your Amiga software into source code. Then with even more patience and time you can study the source code make improvements,fix bugs or add new features. Then reassemble and you have a new & improved version of whatever.
Most of the software I use on a daily basis on my Amiga, eg: DirWork, SampleZ and almost all files in the C: dir have been improved upon, bug fixed or optimized in some way.
It took a long, long time to do, but it was well worth it in the end... :)
-
Well I'd go for Amiga's with old batteries, Ni/Cd.
Fixing the battery area after leaking, that is such a pain in the *** to clean and repair, if it can be done at all :furious:
If they had put button cells on them, we wouldn't have much problems with them.
-
Hi, What would you consider the most difficult thing on the Amiga from a personal perspective?
Fitting a hamster into the floppy drive! Damn things get stuck every time.
-
Okay, that was a joke, I don't shove hamsters in the drive. To answer the question properly I would have to say: The cost!
Or rather, justifying the cost. We all know this issue far too well I should think..... so 'nuff said from me.
-
Hi, What would you consider the most difficult thing on the Amiga from a personal perspective?
Longevity wise, I would point out the mouse and keyboard. Roller ball mice are notorious regardless of who made them. I prefer optical trackballs, anyway.
I love the Amiga's keyboard, the deeper finger wells to mark the F and J keys. It has all the keys I need and no extra fluff that has no function. I wish Commodore had made them as bullet proof as IBM made the original keyboard for the 5150. I have a few Keyra adapters, they work well enough I suppose.
I have no other complaints. Despite it's limitations with ever changing file and web standards (PDFs, Flash, CSS, etc) , Amiga OS is far and away my favorite OS.
-
The battery acid damage at the bottom of my A3000D is currently my most "Difficult" thing for me. Thanks for the outlet....
It mocks me with a blue color !
-
The most difficult thing.... getting everything to work :)
What I would love is some type of 'automatic update' option for AOS 3.1-3.9 (and beyond?) But with full user control. Something that would check a knowledge base to make sure libs, handlers, commands, etc. are OK and up-to-date... It's rough to set up a 'new' Amiga system.....
-
The flicker...
I think the flickering screen is the single biggest wrecking ball to hit the Amiga. Why? well I remember seeing the A4000 setup next to a PC and Mac display in NYC years ago. It was sad and funny to watch folks using the A4000 and saying thing's like "what the f*ck is up with this flicker" lol... 4 folks said the same thing...
How are you going to attract new users with a flickering display like that. Shows how out of touch Commodore were. Hey Let's remove the flicker fixer chip to validate to the outdated technological claims our competitors are making.
i have to go with the flickering to, it was the worse shit ever... had an a500 everything was fine then bought the a1200. the screen got to small needed bigger resolution but noway, flicker from hell was all you got. what was the idiots at commodore thinking??..
-
It was all part of a money making deal that Commodore had with a pharmaceutical company that manufactured epilepsy piils... :biglaugh:
-
The biggest problem of them all is to stop going for that one more upgrade goal. The Amiga totally poisons you with a feeling that you *NEED* to have a faster CPU, or more RAM, or better harddrive, or to patch everything to get it faster or buying a flicker fixer or a RTG-card...
But the next most difficult thing is to get out of this whole Amiga thing... tried it so many times....
-
Why are you talking about problems with hardware... That's not about difficulty. Sure the screen flicker was a problem but not a great issue when you had a multisync monitor and worked in certain resolutions. The battery is a fact of life for all similar types of components. But not difficult...
Difficult for me, which on the Amiga usually means challenging, was setting up my home network on the A1200 using Samba and writing smb files and finally getting the machine to be seen by all flavours of PC taking into account password challenges and the like. Sounds easy but seriously was quite a challenge and I have to thank the good people of the Samba user group for all that help. Works without fault now.
Not sure I found anything on the Amiga really difficult. Some things stretch the limitations of the hardware, but that's not the computers fault.
The fun parts mostly involved scripts for your own tools, coding buttons in DOpus to undertake applications, defining icons to do certain tasks, AMOS - wonderful AMOS and AWNpipe all of which I gotta say still are more fun than anything on the PC. The list is pretty endless. Difficult only to start with but very enjoyable to master.
As to games... MicroMachines... Dunno why. I just couldn't keep the things on the table.
-
Printing a business letter, with no kerning the letter looks like it was printed on a hasbro game machine
-
Amigas don't flicker any more than PCs do! If you put a PC through a TV then it flickers too!
Anyone saying the Amiga is worse than the PC because of screen flicker isn't giving the Amiga a fair shot. Stick the PC monitor on the Amiga and - surprise, surprise - the flicker disappears.
-
The most difficult thing to do on an Amiga? Switch it off and go to bed! I just can't bring myself to do it, there's too much to do!
-
@spirantho
I've got a Mac Mini attached to the back of my main TV, there's no flicker and I'm running 1080p video through it, so I'm not sure what you are talking about.
-
The flicker...
I think the flickering screen is the single biggest wrecking ball to hit the Amiga. Why? well I remember seeing the A4000 setup next to a PC and Mac display in NYC years ago. It was sad and funny to watch folks using the A4000 and saying thing's like "what the f*ck is up with this flicker" lol... 4 folks said the same thing...
How are you going to attract new users with a flickering display like that. Shows how out of touch Commodore were. Hey Let's remove the flicker fixer chip to validate to the outdated technological claims our competitors are making.
I remember when I was headed to see an A1200 on display at an Amiga store (probably the last or second to last one here in Orlando); from across the rather large and empty strip mall parking lot ('twas late at night; I just wanted a glimpse at whatever rolling demo it had going thru the store window) I could see that mo-fo strobe.
Bluh.
'course C= and the Amiga were dead by the time the 1200 hit anyway, so...
-
definately setting up a fully working ppc system. especially in the early days this was very hard to do. what with all the patches, cgx revisions, flash updates, warp3d and powerup vs warpup. Not to mention the problems with cooling, motherboard revisions, extra power to the motherboard, compatible memory etc etc. it was and still is a major pain..
but then, when you finally got it working........ :) :) :)
-
The most difficult thing to do on an Amiga? Switch it off and go to bed! I just can't bring myself to do it, there's too much to do!
I like this answer the most (but I have always been a "Cammy" fan). Are you going to organize the Winter Holiday Amiga Game creation competition again this year Cammy? It is a great idea and something that I wish more people would participate in and help sponsor prizes for. Anything that gets people coding for the Amiga is a great idea.
-
I like this answer the most (but I have always been a "Cammy" fan). Are you going to organize the Winter Holiday Amiga Game creation competition again this year Cammy? It is a great idea and something that I wish more people would participate in and help sponsor prizes for. Anything that gets people coding for the Amiga is a great idea.
I hope there is room for Christmas down under with an outback theme.
-
Trying to set up an Apache server was a real pain, I only managed to make it work once.
Also tried Samba but failed. I guess you must have some good knowledge about linux and networks (or at least a good book) before you try.
Coding and design of demos in Karate was also pretty hard.
Learning to code well designed HTML pages for the first time with IBrowse with a 1084 monitor took me an afternoon, then later I realised it looked crap on IE or Mozilla.
Creating my own MUI style also got me crazy with all the little options plus you don't see the result instantly, but I managed.
-
@spirantho
I've got a Mac Mini attached to the back of my main TV, there's no flicker and I'm running 1080p video through it, so I'm not sure what you are talking about.
Well.. yes... if you're running it in 1080p there won't be. But if the Amiga was flickering then it was told to output an SD signal, not an HD one, and won't have been connected to an HDTV.
The Amiga doesn't flicker - the display does. Saying the Amiga is bad because it flickers is like saying the PC is bad because it displays 16 colours. Just because it supports that doesn't mean that that is it's limitation!
If you set the Amiga to 1080p (and yes, you can do it), then it won't flicker. If you connect it to an SD TV then it will flicker because all SD TVs flicker at full resolution. And yes, if you connect your Mac Mini to the same TV that the Amiga was on, then it will flicker.
-
They could have just got a 14 inch VGA monitor, selected productivity mode and most people would have been happy...unless they wanted to play a game.
-
Or even used the monitor that Commodore recommended for the Amiga 4000, like the Commodore 1960. No flicker then!
It's no wonder the Amiga got the reputation it did of being a non-serious computer, if the people demoing them were doing crazy things like using TVs for serious work (and then blaming the Amiga for the TV's interlacing!!)!
-
Stick the PC monitor on the Amiga and - surprise, surprise - the flicker disappears.
Scratches head.... HUH? really how do you figure that... Actually what happens is you need to SET the screenmode to VGA compatibility mode, turn off the machine, connect the PC monitor...and reboot.
So now you're stuck in WB or screens that can open in VGA compatible screens if you want to use that PC montiror.
Wanna play a game? too bad...(oh that's right I have to have a TV around... WTF?) work with any mode higher then 600X200 prepare for mind numbing flicker, your logic of blaming the display is strange becuase... the AMIGA is feeding the display with a low freq flickering display.
Hence the need for buitin Flicker fixer. Hence the laugh out load reactions from anyone who had used a $800 386sx clone in 1992 and see's the Amigas flckering display.
-
Or even used the monitor that Commodore recommended for the Amiga 4000, like the Commodore 1960. No flicker then!
QUOTE]
What? So if I run NTSC mode in hires you still get flicker....actually the system I saw demo'd had an 1960 running dpaint IV aga in hires mode. Two high school kids were going through NTSC modes (casual users don't know or care about NTSC vs "productivity")
Actually everything was fine they just were totally put off by the flicker... they actually said "it cool ya know feels like its faster dan da PC but man... wassup wif dat flicka (NYC accent)"
That's when I thought... Commodore.. bunch of F'n amatuers...
Try and sell an IPAD with a flickering display and see what happens, this creates the most annoying user experience in computers or entertainment devices... I can't think of a worse way to destroy the user experience (other than slow 286 and win 3.1) You may as well ship the computer with a smelly fat guy who farts and flings boogers at you while trying to use the machine...at least you can have the fat guy run errands in exchange for candy.
-
Also commodores excuse of reducing costs by removing the flicker fixer chip is strange... So let's lock folks into expensive to make multiscan monitors that cost us tons of cash to produce and support logistcally.
Lets do this instead of selling AGA machines with FFD that can use abundant off the shelf VGA monitors and thus increasing user base due to ease of use and compatiblity with modern standards.
Explain the flicker to a principal or office manager who would have to spend 12 hours a day with the mind numbing display...
-
The interlace flicker was a strength and weakness.
Its strength was that it gave perfect timing for video work, made cheap video mixing possible with a genlock, gave unmatched- for the time- smoothness for video animations, and let you plonk the machine in front of a TV at a time when a VGA monitor was not cheap. I think all that was reasonable for the A1200 which was targeted at the home user.
The problem was that the professional AGA machine- the A4000-was crippled, in so many ways in additionto the the interlacing, which was a huge hindrance to the Amiga gaining acceptance as a serious machine. It should have come with a better CPU card and a flicker-fixer.
-
A4000 was from Commodore mostly meant as a games developer system for A1200 game developers, so called serious users had graphics cards even back then.
-
A4000 was from Commodore mostly meant as a games developer system for A1200 game developers, so called serious users had graphics cards even back then.
Whether it was Commodore's intent to have the A4000 as a games development machine I'm not sure. But the design oversights did do was take out a lot of users who put their joysticks down and wanted to do DTP, 24-bit graphics, office work, but couldn't spend the price of a new kitchen on an A4000.
-
As others have said the interlaced hires screen-modes were one of the biggest pain and made using these modes a nightmare.
Also sheer speed was missing - when the A1200 came out it was already overtaken by cheaper PCs...
-
Every PC available in 92 or 93 was 3 or 4 times as much money as a stock 1200, at least in Denmark where I grew up.
This was for a crap model with crap sound, a small hard drive and windows 3.1 :laughing:
Maybe PC's were amazingly cheaper elsewhere, though from my friends here in the US who were PC users at the time, this seems not to have been the case.
-
In 1994 I bought my A1200 with Desktop Dynamite, a couple of joysticks and various extras for less than NOK 5000,-
At the same time my parents bought a 25MHz 486SX with 4MB RAM and 170MB disk for more than NOK 20.000,-
-
As others have said the interlaced hires screen-modes were one of the biggest pain and made using these modes a nightmare.
Also sheer speed was missing - when the A1200 came out it was already overtaken by cheaper PCs...
2nd hand 286s sure. A PC was more expensive, but that include 24 bit gfx, 16 bit snd and hard drive.
-
Every PC available in 92 or 93 was 3 or 4 times as much money as a stock 1200, at least in Denmark where I grew up.
Same here, at Spain.
This was for a crap model with crap sound, a small hard drive and windows 3.1 :laughing:
A 386SX@16Mhz, with 1Mb of ram and 40Mb HD in my case. No sound, only a beeper. At least, It had a 256K VGA graphic card, 256 colours at 320x200 and 16 colours at 640x480.
-
The flicker might have been a drawback for many, but the ability that you could connect the Amiga directly to a TV set or a VCR was also one of the strong features of the Amiga.
Back then monitors was much more expensive than today, and many could not afford to buy both a computer and a monitor.
For games the display wasnt an issue, most games did not use interlaced modes anyway.
And for video usage the Amiga was a perfect starting machine for making titles and slideshows and record them directly to the VCR.
But if needed for serious apps, you could connect a VGA monitor and get better displays.
As some mentioned, the flickering was the TV's fault at the time, that was the technology that was available. Forget 1080p and such, I'm thinking about native PAL/NTSC screenmodes that was available then.
But for those who wants to connect a TV to an Amiga today, I guess that most modern TVs are 100hz or 200hz. Shouldnt that take care of the flickering, even for interlaced Amiga screenmodes?
..Back to the topic, one of the things that made me strugle was setting up AmiTCP to get dialup interneting to work. This was before the excellent MiamiDX apeared.
-
Printing with OS4 and Sam, that currently there isn't option to connect my HP LaserJet 1020 with it.
-
2nd hand 286s sure. A PC was more expensive, but that include 24 bit gfx, 16 bit snd and hard drive.
24bit gfx cards were very high end (expencive!) at the time, 256 and 16 colours was the norm and affordable 15/16bit was about to emerge. All this was running on the slowmess ISA bus, allthough some machines also had various other bus solutions, PCI had just barely been standardized. And the OS was Windows 3.0, 3.1, or 3.11 in networked office settings, and by networked I do not mean TCP/IP, but NetBIOS. If you wanted TCP/IP you had various hacks like winsock, wintrumpet, pathworks from DEC and similar crap.
-
but the ability that you could connect the Amiga directly to a TV set or a VCR was also one of the strong features of the Amiga.
Yep but a cool thing about the A3000 was that you could connect it to VGA and Amiga RGB. Would have been cool to see that carried over into the A1200 A4000, the A1200 did come with RF, composite, RGB and the *Ability* To do VGA modes. I wonder if a PC style bios setting could have enabled the option to turn on flicker free modes at all time, something where you can early startup control option to turn that VGA on or off similar to NTSC or PAL switching.
-
I agree that the flickering was and IS the biggest problem with the amiga.
I have a 1200 sitting here with an accellerator. I got amigamaniac's rgb to svideo adapter, then an svideo to vga adapter, which worked okay for awhile, but the svideo to vga adapter died.
Indievision 1200 is a great solution but no one knows when they will be sold again, so my 1200 sits here on a 1084 just playing video games with it. If I had a flicker fixer, it would see an awful lot more use. My eyes can't take the flickery screen modes on the 1084.
Are there any more off the shelf solutions to to getting a flicker fixer that actually work? I may buy an lcd tv with svideo inputs, I hear that works great with amiga maniac's rgb to svideo adapter.
I'm beginning to think just running a dedicated pc with amigaos/winuae as the windows shell is just a better way to deal with amiga. At least its easier, and certainly it is faster... AND DEFINITELY CHEAPER!
Steven
-
Indievision 1200 is a great solution but no one knows when they will be sold again, so my 1200 sits here on a 1084 just playing video games with it. If I had a flicker fixer, it would see an awful lot more use. My eyes can't take the flickery screen modes on the 1084.
off topic: The Indivision AGA for the A1200 is still in stock at Vesalia... the A4000D version OTOH :(
-
http://www.vesalia.de/r150e_amiga_hardware.htm
I only see the A4000 or ECS one listed, so yeah that sucks.
I think I may order a pcmcia cf reader, then just transfer my 2500 amiga games on this 1200 to a dedicated amiga emulation pc, running windows only as backbone, but booting straight to os3.9. This will work, so long as I can get joysticks and internet working, I'll have a much more capable computer to do more than games on.
Steven
-
You're right... either it disappeared recently or I need new glasses. Sorry m8.
-
bloody samba aghhhh l gave up on it sure whould be nice to have simple network solution
can it be that diffcult to do ?
moving files to classic amiga from pc
be cool we chould have port of tversity to os 4.1 to share media to devices (eg xbox360 psx 3 )
-
You want to hook a PC up to a TV? Fifty bucks Aussie will get you a half gig video card with HDMI out...
-
You want to hook a PC up to a TV? Fifty bucks Aussie will get you a half gig video card with HDMI out...
How much in 1992? And genlock? Interlaced flicker would be the LEAST of your worries..
-
moving files to classic amiga from pc
That's a good one. My biggest issue is not being able to get any new software on my classic Amigas as I don't have any kind of network or floppies on any PC or whatever and I don't particularly feel like sinking money into any kind of solutions yet. Seems strange when you have to order some gear to be able to get your Amiga out of isolation when it's something you just take for granted with any modern computer that you can just plug it into a network.
-
and I don't particularly feel like sinking money into any kind of solutions yet.
$10usd for Amiga Explorer
$10 usb to serial cable
$5 serial port adapter
$25 isn't much of a money sink, and works well until you spring for a nic card of some sort.
-
I suppose an HDMI card would have been a bit more expensive in 1992.
How much in 1992? And genlock? Interlaced flicker would be the LEAST of your worries..
-
I suppose an HDMI card would have been a bit more expensive in 1992.
since you'd have to travel into the future to 2003 to buy one ? Yeah, I imagine the cost would be quite high :)
-
Trying to get good (modern) video output is one of the top problems - even with a SD/FF!
Networking is another - unless you're lucky enough to have an old NIC.
Trying to use a wheel mouse should be a snap - but not on an Amiga (unless you're using an emulator on a Windows machine!).
-
Trying to get good (modern) video output is one of the top problems - even with a SD/FF!
Networking is another - unless you're lucky enough to have an old NIC.
Trying to use a wheel mouse should be a snap - but not on an Amiga (unless you're using an emulator on a Windows machine!).
I simply use the Cocolino mouse adapter, Freewheel and a cheap wireless mouse from Tescos, bobs your uncle, a scrolling mouse wheel on any Amiga... :)
-
Plugging anything into the back of an A500 or A1200 with that stupid lip in the way.
-
I suppose an HDMI card would have been a bit more expensive in 1992.
Even a simple composite out for a PC would have been
-
Fortunately it's almost 2011 and HDMI out in 1080p is cheap and clear on the TV screen. And DVI to HDMI converters can be had for a few bucks...
Amiga on the other hand can't even do a proper flicker free 576p.
Even a simple composite out for a PC would have been
-
Yes the flicker fixer was a killer, but the real thing that killed the Amiga towards the end as a games machine was:
Flight simulators were not very good on the Amiga, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe and the space game X-Wing, there was no equal on the Amiga!
The Amiga was no good at doing 3D due to the amount of writes it took to update the screen, eg 256 colour took 8 writes to update the display, yet on the PC it only took 1 write! An 8 x difference! Then the processor speeds of the PC's were outstripping the Amigas!