How to use my Sam440ep AmigaOS 4.1 machine

[eliyahu]

@blakespot

of course it depends on what you want to do with it, but i use my pegasos2 and X5K beta systems every day. here's some of the stuff i use regularly:

audio
i'm a big music buff, so i have a ton of audio files sitting on my AOS4 machines. nearly all of my CDs have been ripped into MP3s using adripper, which is a terrific tool which pulls in all of the CDDB information on each track into ID3 tags as well as encoding the audio, and i use amigaamp3 for playback. i also use the latter to listen to internet audio streams. everything is nicely organized with atunes. i also do plenty of recording, so i use audio evolution for most of my editing work, unless i'm doing stuff with MIDI, and then i use HD-rec. i also have tons of MOD files, which i play with milkytracker, hivelytracker, or schism. i keep meaning to buy digibooster pro, but haven't gotten around to it. and, lastly, i use amipodder to sync up podcasts that i either play on my 'miggies or on my blackberry when in the car. there is so much audio software that works with AOS4, but this is the stuff i use regularly.

emulation
before discovering amiga a few years ago, i had been into other retro computing platforms. luckily there are plenty of excellent emulators for software for nearly every system you can imagine. i can play mario brother 3 using amiNES, all of my mac games using basilisk2, DOS games with DOSbox, atari ST games with hatari, apple II software with KEGS, all of my C64 games -- including support for joysticks via amigainput -- with VICE, and even SNES ROMs with warpsnes. your AOS4 installation comes with E-UAE and the full set of commodore ROMs, so you can already use that for games that aren't system friendly (which would work like any other 68k app). there are plenty of others out there (like stuff for neogeo, atari lynx and jaguar consoles, etc.), some of which are exclusive to acube's game DVD -- which i would recommend anyway.

graphics
wow, there's piles of choice here. much of what i use is actually classic software, mainly arteffect 4, amifig, and drawstudio 2. for pixel work i use personal paint 7.3 and grafx2. but i also have fxpaint 2.0, imagefx 4.5, perfectpaint, and tvpaint installed on my machine, too; i just don't use them as much. one tool i've been using more and more is sketchblock and the fractals tool developed for it. it's awesome, and i use it in conjunction with a wacom tablet. i've also been playing with 3D graphics lately, and have purchased copies of aladdin 4D, cinema4d, and lightwave 3d 5.20. all of those work well, although i recommend watching mbrantley's video on setting up LW. in truth, though, blender does pretty much what i want, and it is also great for video editing. lastly i've organized my photo collection using amiphoto and use warpview for slideshows. some folks prefer fastview, and there are plenty of others. basically this is a category with tons of options, both classics like photogenics or wildfire 7, and new AOS4 titles.

internet
these days my pegasos2 does a lot of work on the 'net, so i've got a bunch of stuff to use. i use amirc for IRC, rather than wookiechat, for stability reasons (i'm on IRC constantly). my main ftp client is pftp, although some prefer amiftp. there isn't much choice for newsgroup clients; you can use the 68k ones on aminet, but i'm using newscoaster, and i recommend it. email is handled ably by simplemail -- although others like YAM. my main web browser is odyssey, although i occasionally still use OWB 3.32 or netsurf, the latter having some unique features i like. don't bother with timberwolf. for things like google chat, i use a third-party jabber server and jabberwocky as the client. let's see... i also use twinVNC for connecting with my PC, the rdesktop client for connecting to my wife's PC, and bigsister for watching webcams. one thing that i used to use before i gave my SAM to another amigan with the native AAMP stack, which included mysql, apache, and php, all with native amiga GUI admin tools. really, really handy for testing stuff out for intuitionbase.com.

office
productivity software is something i usually use on my office PC since i need powerpoint, but for home use, i've got plenty of office software that i use on my amigas. i'm quite partial to amigawriter for personal letters and other word processing needs. clean, simple, and easy-to-use. i'm in the minority on that one, with most of the other guys i know who use AOS4 preferring either finalwriter 97 or wordworth 7. i still use digita organiser, although i usually import it into aorganiser so i get pop-up reminders. spreadsheets are done either in staram plan or, if i need to import something from work, i'll fire up gnumeric and amicygnix. i also have turbocalc 5 and finalcalc installed on my machines, but i don't use them often. for keeping track of my collections i use finaldata but am in the process of developing an application around muibase for a retail business i'll be starting soon. it's an amazingly powerful database system. finally i use hollywood designer for putting together presentations (which powerpoint isn't required), and that's terrific software. worth every penny IMO. oh, and i admit to being a word geek, so i also love wordnet.

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[eliyahu]

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science
the main reason i decided to splurge on a NG amiga was actually digital universe.  i cannot begin to tell you how much i love this piece of software. for  the amateur astronomer who actually observes, it is perfect. i use it to  generate my nightly lists of objects and positions to observe in the  sky. bill eaves could charge triple what he does, and i'd gladly pay. of  course the kids like it when i use celestia because of the animations, but that's just for fun. there are some things i use when i don't have my PC, like mathx, YACAS, mathscript, and eqed,  the latter being helpful when i have some complex equation and don't  want to write it in TeX by hand. i even have the old copy of maple 5  installed to use when i want to pull up EE projects from college. i also  play with fractals, either using sketchblock or flashmandelNG. heck, i even have a resistor decoder installed, too.

video
i have terabytes of old japanese movies, BBC nature specials, the  simpsons, and loads of other video on my pegasos2 and now mirrored on my  X5K. until i got the latter, i could only play SD videos (480p), but  now can play up to 1080p just fine. you'll want mplayer (there are several versions) and the mplayer GUI. you'll have to experiment with settings, though, to get things to play well on your SAM. you might also check out dvplayer, which i use for all of my MPEG and AVI files. it's much simpler to use. for editing video i use ffshop (and ffmpeg+GUI), videoclipper, or blender, when i need to add titles and such.

utilities
ok. these things may be boring, but as you use your SAM more and more,  utilities and add-ons will probably be used more and more. first up are amiarc and cranu,  which i use for file compression purposes. you can also use ztools'  fastcompress stuff if you prefer. file browsing is something workbench  is OK at, but for many things i'll use filer or dirmeup. i was a dopus fan, but don't really use it anymore. i like to examine my system when i have problems, so devinfos, ranger, scout, and sysmon are a must in my book. let's see, what else? oh, i bought turboprint and like it very much, although it took some tweaking for my printer. and then you'll want a good text editor. i started with annotate, then tried cygnused, and finally settled on StormC5Ed.

... there's a lot more to cover, like games, but i need to stop now. i invite you (and everyone) to come to amiwest 2015  and check out my demo machine, which much, much more installed on it to  play with. there's also intuitionbase.com, which is a good resource for  software stuff.

-- eliyahu

[eliyahu]

Incredibly thoroughg response. I thank you. Inspiring.

What is your hardware?

I wonder if I would have an easier time of it if I had an X_000 modern machine... So pricey, but I understand why. My wife, on the other hand, does not.

i've had a SAM440ep-flex in the past (my first amiga NG), but these days i'm rockin' a pegasos2 and a X5000 beta system.

-- eliyahu

[eliyahu]

@Duce

i hear you on the cloud services thing. amigas don't have great tools for connectivity to this stuff. there is a box.net client under development, and we do have things like a webdav handler, but we could use some more. but while we wait... you're running a BBS on your SAM? that's pretty cool. is it dial-in only or can we connect via telnet?

-- eliyahu

[eliyahu]

@blakespot

gotta say, i am green with envy over so magnificent a working space. and i just happened upon your blog -- wow! you have a terrific setup. :cool:

-- eliyahu

[eliyahu]

@blakespot

dvplayer is commercial, and there's a new version coming, but until then, i'm not sure if you can order it anymore. try dvplayer.amistore.net and see if it will let you buy it. if not, ping matthew (@amigakit) or trevor (@TrevorD) and see if they can help. the version included as an 'extra' with the OS is really more a demo. but i used the full, paid version on my SAM back in the day, and it played 480p AVIs quite well, especially in fullscreen.

mplayer is another animal altogether. for faster NG machines, you don't really need to fiddle with it, but man, i had to on that SAM. you want to make sure framedrop is always enabled. if it's an AVI, you want cache on, if it's a MP4, you don't and you also want force indexing... see what i mean? eventually i just used my office machine to transcode all my video files into 480p AVIs using Xvid or MPEG2 as a codec, and those work great. i was so happy when i got a G4-based system. it played everything, no need to muck about. and, no, there is no VLC port -- at least that i know about.

as for what else, well, there's a bunch of stuff out there (as i mentioned earlier), and plenty of cool games, too. are there any specific things you want to do with your SAM?

-- eliyahu

[eliyahu]

@Dandy

thanks for the reminder -- the google drive handler is excellent. i still need to register, though....

-- eliyahu