Essential software?

[mr_a500]

OK, here are some utilities I'd say you MUST get - or at least give a try. These are the best I've found after much experimentation:

ABCdir - totally awesome (surprisingly underrated) file manager
Visual Prefs - for customizing total look of Workbench
LoadCMAP - to lock the WB palette so it doesn't stupidly change
DrivePrefs - stop that annoying drive click
ModePro - to promote & modify screens
SimpleFind 3 - the best file finder
DiskSalv 4 - the good disk salvage / undelete tool (hard to find)
Scout - the ultimate system monitor (get ver. 37.249)
Hex - old but good binary editor
ScreenShell - full screen shell (make a double height autoscroll screen with ModePro!)
MuchMore - super smooth scrolling text viewer
Fjpeg - fast jpeg viewer
Visage - nice, fast multi-format image viewer
v41sound.datatype - very nice sound datatype
NISClock - best title clock
PowerSnap - clip text anywhere (almost)
Voodoo-X & xadmaster - extract almost any archive
Zoom - nifty little magnifyer that works on any screen

... and there are lots more like TitleShadow, WindowToFront, Iconify, MFR, VersionWB, DoIcon, RunFromWB, Clip, ASLtoRT.

[mr_a500]

Quote:
"If you happen to have enough money, then get yourself a scandoubler that allows to you see the Amiga on a regular PC monitor. Trust me, games look better on a 19" than on a 14""



I think you're wrong there! I bought a scandoubler for my Amiga 500 thinking it would look better and I was horribly disappointed. Everything ends up looking chunky and dull. Scan-lines on those old 1084 monitors actually improve the look of the low-res graphics in non-interlaced modes. Also, because they are less crisp than modern monitors, colours blend together for a smoother look. There is a nice glow to pixels on the 1084 that modern monitors don't have.

[TheMaDMaN]

mr_a500 wrote:
OK, here are some utilities I'd say you MUST get - or at least give a try. These are the best I've found after much experimentation:

ABCdir - totally awesome (surprisingly underrated) file manager
Visual Prefs - for customizing total look of Workbench
LoadCMAP - to lock the WB palette so it doesn't stupidly change
DrivePrefs - stop that annoying drive click
ModePro - to promote & modify screens
SimpleFind 3 - the best file finder
DiskSalv 4 - the good disk salvage / undelete tool (hard to find)
Scout - the ultimate system monitor (get ver. 37.249)
Hex - old but good binary editor
ScreenShell - full screen shell (make a double height autoscroll screen with ModePro!)
MuchMore - super smooth scrolling text viewer
Fjpeg - fast jpeg viewer
Visage - nice, fast multi-format image viewer
v41sound.datatype - very nice sound datatype
NISClock - best title clock
PowerSnap - clip text anywhere (almost)
Voodoo-X & xadmaster - extract almost any archive
Zoom - nifty little magnifyer that works on any screen

... and there are lots more like TitleShadow, WindowToFront, Iconify, MFR, VersionWB, DoIcon, RunFromWB, Clip, ASLtoRT.

Perfect, exactly the sort of thing I ws hoping for, thanks!

I'm guessing I can get all of these from Aminet?

[PMC]

TheMaDMaN wrote:

I've got going DirOpus 4, DPaint 5, PPaint 7, Photogenics, SnoopDOS, Iconian, Shapeshifter, MagicWB, NewIcons, MUI, ClassAct, IDEFix97 & WHDLoad, are there any other programs I should get?  And what hacks, datatypes, etc would be worth getting?

If you do go down the 3.1ROM route then OS3.9 will replace NewIcons with the system friendlier GlowIcons set (which I rather like).  Also shipped with OS3.9 is an unrestricted version of Genesis, which will allow you to connect to a modem for dialup, an MP3 player and an AVI player too.  

Overall, I'm very pleased with OS3.9 and have little to criticise there.  

Other programs you might want to try are:

Visual Prefs - allows you to tailor the WB window frames / gadgets and colours.  You can get some stunning results with Visual Prefs, which doesn't seem to consume much in the way of CPU time.

Magic Menu - patches the drop down menus so that you can change their colour, appearence and add shading etc.  With a graphics card you can even make them semi-transparent.

Birdie - a controversial one this, your mileage may vary.  Birdie works by patching the window borders so that you can overlay a pattern of your choice - in jpeg, gif or iff format.  It works happily with Visual Prefs and again the results are nothing short of stunning, however it does cause some problems with opening / closing screens IMHO.

PNGIcons (I think that's what it's called) - If you've a GFX card installed this program allows use of true colour icons.  There are some examples on this site and used in conjunction with Visual Prefs, Magic Menu and Birdie you'll have a desktop which will be the envy of everyone.

There are also some 68040 specific libraries which will increase the performance significantly.  

Oh, and you might find Photofolio useful.  It's a thumbnail creator utility which is very versatile and system friendly too.

[Lemonty]

mr_a500 wrote:
Quote:

I think you're wrong there! I bought a scandoubler for my Amiga 500 thinking it would look better and I was horribly disappointed. Everything ends up looking chunky and dull. Scan-lines on those old 1084 monitors actually improve the look of the low-res graphics in non-interlaced modes. Also, because they are less crisp than modern monitors, colours blend together for a smoother look. There is a nice glow to pixels on the 1084 that modern monitors don't have.

I couldn't have said it better myself. A dedicated old-school Amiga games system benefits from a C=1084 monitor or equivalent. :-)

[PMC]

TheMaDMaN wrote:
I do want to add the machine to the network and access the internet on it (if only to download straight to the A4K) that is assuming this is possible, and if so what software will I need.

OS3.9 will allow you to get online, but for networking you'll either need to install a Zorro network card (hard to source and expensive) or you could take the plunge and add a PCI bridgeboard to your system.

A Mediator bridgeboard is cost effective and the A4K version has Zorro slots too IIRC.  You'll have the advantage of being able to fit a PCI graphics card (either an S3 ViRGE or Voodoo), plus a Soundblaster 128 and a 10/100 ethernet card.  The all up cost of sourcing a mediator plus all the PCI cards is likely to be less expensive than trying to find all the zorro equivalents.

[Chunder]

Nobody seems to have mentioned ImageFX yet... damned powerful image manipulation software - just takes a while to learn the interface.

[TheMaDMaN]

Chunder wrote:
Nobody seems to have mentioned ImageFX yet... damned powerful image manipulation software - just takes a while to learn the interface.

Oh yeah, I had totally forgot about that.  I've got an old version of that, that was released on a coverdisk years ago, I used to play with it when I first got my A1200HD, but obviously with only 2Mb of RAM (and all of it being chip) back then, I wasn't able to do all that much with it.

Hopefully I've still got those coverdisks, and they still work, if so, I'll probably install it, play around with it and most likely upgrade to the latest version...

[mr_a500]

Quote:
"Nobody seems to have mentioned ImageFX yet... damned powerful image manipulation software - just takes a while to learn the interface."


Yes, ImageFX is great! If we're talking about applications now, here are some good ones (freeware/shareware):

MiamiDX - best TCP-IP/dialer
YAM - best email
OSS & Protracker 4 - the best mod trackers (don't get OSS 2)
SongPlayer - nice multi-format sample player with playlists
DSound - nice little stereo sample player
SampleZ - great sample editor/converter (edit huge samples!)
DiamondGUI & Mpega - best MP3 for slow systems - allows buffering
EaglePlayer - multi-format music/SID player (for game music)
STfax 4.1 - best fax software
PPT - image editor/converter - not as good as ImageFX, but free
APDF - good PDF viewer (but may crash with some PDFs)
XBaze - very nice database/GUI
TotalCalc - best scientific calculator


Some utilities I forgot:

FF - FastFonts from WB1.3 - get rid of that damn topaz!
AddTools - add items to WB Tools menu
MagicMenu - nice menu enhancer (but turn non-blocking OFF!)
Env-handler - copies only necessary files to ENV (saving memory)
ColorCatch - creates executable colour palettes for screens


And some neat little programs I love:

klide - super fast line drawing demo
rainbow - put a copper rainbow on screens (I've got it on MuchMore screens, GoldED and ABCdir - neato!)


...and I'm sure I forgot lots of awesome & useful (free) programs.