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Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Speewave on May 10, 2011, 04:05:44 AM
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i think i've posted a topic like this such a long time ago... but i had a few questions on choosing an amiga a freind would give me...
This being my first amiga i'm 17, and used PCs for just as long, i've seen a lot of cool stuff done with the amiga, especially for a device in the early 80s...
I'd love to play around with it, explore it.. it was (still is ) Fascinating
My Friend said he had a 500 / 600 (can't remember), 1200, 2000 *w/ Video Toaster*
i have to pick one, i think some software would be included...
Now i know the Video Toaster included is just incredible.. but i really have no need for it {i'm more used to NLE, though i have used NewTek's TriCaster @ School} + if a 500/600 is more compact or a 1200 is more powerful...
I'm really liking the 1200, but i'm not sure if it's compatable with the Amiga 500 (OCS) games {i've done a bit of research}
I would use it to make games (attempt to), Music Tracking, Play games, maybe do some art :\ (i suck at it but whatever)
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Anyway i have a few questions:
1) Compatability! If i get an Amiga with AGA or ECS would it be compatable with an amiga 500 OCS game?
2) Development: I want to do some kind of programming on the Amiga, which of these are recommended for developing software that works on a majority of Amigas, What do most Amiga Owners have (AGA/OCS/ECS)? What are some good Freeware (if any) Programming tools for C++ or whatever other language was good for programming amiga {i know assembly syntax... not familiar with 68k asm}
3) Floppies : my house is full of the PC format 1.44MB HD Floppies... will these still work {Even if 880KB are available}... * not as knowleged on the hardware aspect of floppies*
4)What would you Recommend? - Just a general Question of those choices / seeing what i'd like to do.. {thought it would be a good question for people who've been using Amiga's for a while}
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Anyway... Thanks in advance for your response to my questions... i really would love to get into the Amiga "scene", i've seen a lot of cool stuff done with this hardware, i'd love to have it just to experiment, play around with... etc, very interesting stuff...
But thanks again..
Sorry for the double post... i know i posted in some forum about the same situation a few mos. back...
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This is based on my own personal preferences but I think it would suit your requirements nicely... :)
The A1200 definitely, faster, easy enough to run both ECS & AGA games on (especially with WHDLoad) easier to expand memory, accelerator card, HD, USB etc... :)
As for coding I'd go for 68K assembler, fairly easy to learn and you'll get the best speed possible out of anything you may write... :)
Floppies (very rarely use them) but I'm pretty sure as far as I can remember that 1.44MB ones work fine... :)
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1) WHDLoad supplies compatability for AGA on most games. You just need a hard drive and some Fast RAM for them to work.
2) You can download ancient versions of GCC for an A1200 but, like WHDLoad, you'll need at least a 4 meg RAM expander to get it to work. Otherwise programming in plain C is recommended using VBCC and the Amiga Developer CD.
3) 1.44 Meg Floppies aren't recommended but if you have nothing else, you may have to make do. See the answer to the next question for more information.
4) Get an ACA030 accelerator for the A1200 from AmigaKit.com and a 4 GiB CompactFlash adapter for the internal hard drive controller port. The 68030 in the accelerator will not only make the machine faster, it will also add 32-bit addressing and 64 MiB of Fast RAM to the system. The internal 68EC020 on the A1200 only has 24-bit addressing. If you can't afford the 68030-based accelerator, look for a 4 MiB RAM expander for the trapdoor slot.
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i
I'm really liking the 1200, but i'm not sure if it's compatable with the Amiga 500 (OCS) games {i've done a bit of research}
Get a 1200 by far.
It is easy to fit a hard drive (IDE), its easy to transfer files and set up networking (PCMCIA), it has 2 megs of chip RAM already, and it has AGA. Also much much easier to find expansions for it.
1) Compatability! If i get an Amiga with AGA or ECS would it be compatable with an amiga 500 OCS game?
Most games work fine. THere's a select few that won't play nice, but there's way around that.
3) Floppies : my house is full of the PC format 1.44MB HD Floppies... will these still work {Even if 880KB are available}... * not as knowleged on the hardware aspect of floppies*
THey'll work fine, though they'll only format to 880. People say they are less reliable but I've never had a problem.
The 1200 with an 030 or similar processor expansion is a wonderful machine.
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I'll put in a good word for the 3000. While it doesn't have the AGA chipset, it's a nice machine otherwise: compact but durable, easily exandable (with the faster Z3 bus,) and not nearly as sought-after as the 4000 (which means you can get it cheaper.) I got mine a couple months ago, and I'm already loving it.
1200's probably the nicest games machine, but the downside is that, like the other keyboard Amigas, it's a lot more of a pain to expand.
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@commodorejohn
He had to pick from an A500 or 600, A1200, or an A2000 with Video Toaster. A3000 wasn't one of the choices.
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1) There's a way to get nearly, if not every single OCS game to run on a ECS or AGA machine. Many of them will just boot up without any problems, some require you to switch to OCS mode from the Early Startup Menu (by holding down both mouse buttons when you switch on or reboot the Amiga), by using a degrader disk which will set up the memory and load a 1.3 Kickstart into RAM, or the best way is simply to use the amazing WHDLoad, which allows you to install all your old favourites to your hard drive, play them and quit back to Workbench without ever needing to reboot. So don't let those old incompatibility problems scare you off, we overcome those years ago!
2) AmigaE is an excellent language to learn for the Amiga. It's easier than C and compiles faster, yet is just as powerful, and allows you to use inline Assembly for when you want to hit the hardware. The compiler is free, and if you decide on it I can help you to find documentation, and we have an IRC channel on FreeNode (#AmigaE). Of course you could still use C, Basic (Amos, Blitz, or HiSoft), or 68k Assembler if you are dedicated. I'll let other people suggest their language of choice, but after much consideration when I was deciding on a language to learn, I settled on AmigaE because it's very well suited to the Amiga OS and is capable of creating powerful and efficient, professional quality software as well as games.
If you just want to make games quickly, there are several dedicated game maker programs for various genres including Text Adventures, Shoot 'em Ups, Platformers, and Point & Click Adventures.
3) As long as those floppies aren't dirty or full of mould, they might still work, and can be formatted as 880k. If your Amiga is a later model A1200 it might have a modified PC HD drive in it, which won't read HD floppies but will require you to put tape over the extra hole on all your disks or it won't recognise them. Using HD disks formatted as DD isn't very reliable, they develop read errors pretty soon. If they're just games, written from an ADF file, usually all you need to do is write the image back to the disk and it will work again (I always write an ADF twice or three times in a row to make sure it's really stamped in there). Just don't use them for important storage.
4) I recommend an A1200 or an A600. They both have IDE and PCMCIA which is very handy, allowing you to use cheap CF/SD card adapters and network cards. Stick Kickstart 3.1 ROMs in it, a 4-8GB CF drive, and look for either a second hand RAM card or accelerator, or purchase one of the new ACA accelerators from Individual Computers.
Check out YouTube to see lots of cool stuff people are using their Amigas for, I use my A1200 every day as my main computer, and use several other Amigas and Amiga-like OSs on various hardware, and I'm going to try and upload more videos as I get the free time to make them. Here's my channel anyway: http://www.youtube.com/user/AmigaCammy#p/u
Of course there's nothing wrong with having more than one Amiga, so if you can get an A500 cheap they're still really cool retro machines, and you can use them to test the games you make for A500 compatibility (since it's a common target configuration for Amiga games developers).
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He had to pick from an A500 or 600, A1200, or an A2000 with Video Toaster. A3000 wasn't one of the choices.
Ah, my bad. In that case I'd say either the 500 or the 1200, but probably the latter. I wouldn't go for the 600 - I hear they're a real pain to upgrade. The 2000's not bad, but it's an absolute tank of a machine, especially as compared to the keyboard models.
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A600s were a pain to upgrade back in the day, but now we have brand new ChipRAM expansions, 030 accelerators, RAM cards, solid state IDE drives, flicker fixers, wireless networking, USB, sound cards, SCSI cards and more.
Still, unexpanded A1200 beats an unexpanded A600.
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My vote is for the A1200 as well. If you check Amibay or Ebay or even Vesalia or AmigaKit there are lots of expansion options. My next choice would be the 600 - ECS, but with the same expandability (there's only one good expansion for it, but its new!) in terms of clockport and PCMCIA.
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The A1200 is the most bang for buck (AGA, 2MB RAM, 68020, IDE interface).
If you want something big to expand (that means "to spend lots of money on" in Amiga terms) then get the A2000.
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I would recommend the A1200 with a cheap 2.5" drive and some sort of Fast RAM expansion (any will do). With this, you can code assembly, do music tracking, play games from WHDLoad, browse the internet, do some 3d graphics, and do word processing. I'm much the same as you; 18, new to the Amiga and interested in doing the same things. My primary system is an A1200 with 4MB Fast RAM, a PCMCIA ethernet card, and a hard drive.
An A500 would perhaps be easier to find, but it does not normally support a hard drive and is not as powerful as the A1200. Of course, it is the "classic" Amiga.
If you have the money, an A4000 is amazing. Of course, the A2000 and A3000 are good as well. The A1000 is an interesting piece of Amiga history, and when expanded to 512K/512K, it can do pretty much exactly what the A500 can.
Of course, this isn't even considering the vast amount of alternative Amiga setups/systems (MorphOS, AROS, WinUAE, MiniMig, AmigaOne, Pegasos, XAmiga, Amithlon, AmigaForever, etc).
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The 1200 is the most practical choice. Somewhat decent form factor. AGA is nice for a few games, and tons of demos. It's easily networked. BUT, the 2000's Zorro slots are a *major* bonus. A video card will more than make up for the lack of AGA if you'll be starring at text for long hours. Also, the 1200 desktop is a little messy to upgrade.
Personally I would choose the 2000. Zorro + unsurpassed (by the A1200) nostalgic value.
A2000, plus:
G-Force '030 (http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/gforce2030)
Spectrum (http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/egs28)
Indivision ECS (all your games will be automagically routed through the Spectrum)
DENEB (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=795&lcsid=0f629aaf06afa56789ff6fbc3eb3a2c7) USB controller, handles your networking among other useful things
All this isn't a whole lot more (if not less) that what it will cost to upgrade the 1200. No AGA, but you'll have a much nicer desktop experience. And everything fits cleanly, no hacking up your case or having a zillion cables visibly hanging out from the back of your computer.
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It just occured to me that it might be useful to know what sort of money you were looking to throw into this thing :)
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As for coding I'd go for 68K assembler, fairly easy to learn and you'll get the best speed possible out of anything you may write... :)
It depends on what you want to write and how much time you have. High level languages allow you to write software quicker at the expense of execution speed. However if the CPU isn't the bottlekneck or the code is executed rarely then the overhead of coding in assembly isn't worthwhile.
Choice of algorithms plays a huge part in optimising, more complex algorithms are much harder to write in assembly.
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3) As long as those floppies aren't dirty or full of mould, they might still work, and can be formatted as 880k. If your Amiga is a later model A1200 it might have a modified PC HD drive in it, which won't read HD floppies but will require you to put tape over the extra hole on all your disks or it won't recognise them. Using HD disks formatted as DD isn't very reliable, they develop read errors pretty soon. If they're just games, written from an ADF file, usually all you need to do is write the image back to the disk and it will work again (I always write an ADF twice or three times in a row to make sure it's really stamped in there). Just don't use them for important storage.
Check out YouTube to see lots of cool stuff people are using their Amigas for, I use my A1200 every day as my main computer, and use several other Amigas and Amiga-like OSs on various hardware, and I'm going to try and upload more videos as I get the free time to make them. Here's my channel anyway: http://www.youtube.com/user/AmigaCammy#p/u
Or if you have a (apparently rare) special expansion on a 1200, like on mine, you can use the HD PC floppy drive just like an HD drive is supposed to work. Read, write, and format both 1,440KB PC (with CrossDOS) and 1,760KB Amiga high density floppies, which sure makes it easier if you're wanting to read existing PC disks with data on them.
My A1200 is my main computer as well... my only working computer right now. I'm going to be setting up Amiga-like OS on a PC laptop/netbook soon. :)
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It depends on what you want to write and how much time you have. High level languages allow you to write software quicker at the expense of execution speed. However if the CPU isn't the bottlekneck or the code is executed rarely then the overhead of coding in assembly isn't worthwhile.
This is true generally, but really 68k assembly is halfway to being a high-level language already - I'd just stick with it, myself.