Switching to Amiga

[steve30]

When I said switching to amiga, I didn't really mean making a complete switch. I just wanted a nice machine that can do stuff like play MP3s, browse internet, etc.

I'm not actually going to be using it as a PC replacement. There's no way I can afford stuff like PPCs, 060s, GFX cards etc. I'm just trying to make the most of the equipment that I can afford.

Basically, I want to use my amiga a LOT more than I do at the moment.

I think the 030 should be fine. But when I win the lottery I will definately be upgrading to 060/PPC.

[AmigaMance]

 I can tell you from personal experience that MP3 playing is possible on a 68030 at 50mhz. You have to reduce the sound quality, the maximum frequency, increase the sound buffer and force the songs to be played at mono, not stereo. My prefered player is SongPlayer.
 Web browsing is very limited as you already know, but that applies to all Amigas, advanced or not. On an AGA Amiga browsing at 640x512 with some overscan and 128 colors is reasonable as long as you don't forget to install FBlit and FText or SystemPatch at your startup-sequence. Not in great speed, though.

[steve30]

I think I'll stick with PC for web browsing.

I really should install linux on my PC.

[Doppie1200]

hehe, well I was a bit of trying you there.

You are on the right track afterall.

An A1200 with an 030@50 added with 16MB of RAM is a great system for toying around on.

You can use it for MP3 but the quality is really bad.
Also you could use it to retrieve email if you have a nic.
Some attachments might be troublesome as the system cannot handle the size of photo's attached to email nowadays in a sufficient way. JPG's take time to load especially a 5Mpixel one.

You can use it to chat IRC and even MSN through Jabberwocky (no personal experience here).

And I can recommend whdload. Registering is just 20 euro.

All this can be done on a plain 640x256 PAL monitor. Ofcourse a scandouble/FF enlarges your screen realestate but it'll cost you quite some bread.
EDIT: The FF makes 640x512 usefull thus enlarging your realestate.

Take care and have fun!

[stefcep]

i think an A1200 030/50 with say 16 or 32 Meg run on a PAL or NTSC monitor is probably the fastest,most cost effective and most compatible way to use a "classic" amiga.  Yeah an 040 or 68060 is faster but cost alot more, and you do get software issues from time to time (especially with games).  And then you really need a graphics card to things justice.  If you stick to software that was written for the AGA chipset eg Dpaint, Brilliance, Music-X, Bars and Pipes, Scala, Sound studio, ImageFx then you'll be fine. You could output your animations to videotape or digitize it on your pc which can then convert this to an an mpeg file that you could burn to dvd or videocd with your pc, if you wanted to have fun with it. I found the least resource-intensive way to play mp3's was with mpega and a litle script i found on a covercd that opens a lister to choose your mp3 file.  Sounds ok but sounds better if you can open a dblPAL scrren if you have a multisync monitor

I have web browsed in pal overscan 64 colors with Ibrowse with dithering on and using FBlit and Ftext which shift graphics to fastmen to give speed up.  Yeah u don't get the pretty pics and flash but  alot of this is eye candy and you can set up your browser to open a HaM screen if you want to see jpegs.  I would install OS3.1, Magic Workbench(in 8 colors) Magic menu, MUI, Tool mananger, with a font like newtopaz  (this font helps to fit more text on a Pal screen and looks nice on a pal screen) and this gives you an authentic Amiga look and feel.  OS3.5+ uses glowicons which I think really need a a grphx card to look good.  The task scheduler Executive also seems to help alot for speed even burning cd's

[Oliver]

I don't remember Bars & Pipes or Music-X being written for AGA.  Are you sure about this?  I know there are versions to run on non-AGA Amiga's.  Do you have AGA versions, and do they look any different from the ECS versions?  One thing that always bugged me about those programs is that they're kind of ugly.

stefcep wrote:
I found the least resource-intensive way to play mp3's was with mpega and a litle script i found on a covercd that opens a lister to choose your mp3 file.  Sounds ok but sounds better if you can open a dblPAL scrren if you have a multisync monitor

Looks better?   :-?

[steve30]

Well, my A1200 has 128MB Fast rAM, so that's obviously alot. Everyone keeps recomending 16-32MB.

I think I'll just have to get all the accessories and start it up and see what I can do with it. :-)

[Doppie1200]

Yep that's the best way. You have your self a nice setup with a little to much ram but that doesn't hurt.

Start to tinker and search the forums.
It is all very subjective to what the best install is.
Personaly I like my 3.9 very much. And you have the hardware to run it (Lack of CDROM might pose problems).

Try them all. Experience is what makes the personal opinion.

[steve30]

I have been offered a buffered IDE interface for £10, so I will be getting an HD and a CD. My 3.1 ROMs and OS 3.9 CD should be arriving in a few days.

Look forward to getting them.

The 1230 +128MB only cost £75, which is cheaper than than the 1230 + 32MB version at AmigaKit, so I'm happy.

I've used OS3.9 in Amithlon and it was very nice.

[Tomas]

steve30 wrote:
What if the MP3 was being played via a network e.g. the MP£ is stored on another computer but played on the amiga?

The problem is the cpu power needed. The amiga ide interface will not limit you there, so it wont matter where the mp3 file is stored.

You can get a hardware based mp3 player called Mas Player that you plug into the parallel port. This little device will actually let you play mp3 files on a standard a500 without an accelrator. http://www.cdtv.org.uk/mas.html official site here"german only:\":  http://mp3.mas-player.de/

[steve30]

I rarly listen to MP3s anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem, but I do listen to them occaisionaly.

[Hyperspeed]

Tomas: I was just going to suggest a MAS player!

:-)

Plugs onto the parallel port and plays MP3 without needing an '060!

I also heard Executive mentioned, this really is good. If you load it up during sluggish moments it will instantly start making things speed up. Disable it for Quake though or it'll throttle it.

128MB may seem overkill on an '030 but it can still offer advantages - you will be able to surf most of the day by caching to Ram Disk: and you'll be able to make massive quality scans.

[steve30]

I didn't think 128MB will be too much. I couldn't really see much use for it all though.

Although I'd rather pay £75 for a 1230 +128MB than pay £89 for a 1230 +32MB.

[benJamin]

Hi!

The only reason I don't currently use my 1200 as much as I used to is I still have to fix/replace the keyboard.

However, I used to do all the things you've been talking about regularly when I was on res. at Uni. a few years ago on pretty much the same setup (I have the SCSI option on the BlizIV).

MY HINTS
========

CD Burning - set it at 1x speed and walk away.  It will build an image and burn it in one process from either SCSI or IDE (only tried a SCSI burner, though) if you set it and walk away for 72 mins (the length of a CD).  It may work at faster speeds but I've yet to make a single coaster.

Mp3 - I was playing these last night.  Use DeliTracker and the Mp3 player genie.  Go direct from drive, do not have a large buffer (1sec or less delay) and set as mono with 22050 frequency.  Fiddle with the options a bit and you'll be able to use PPaint for general drawing at the same time with not-too-sluggish effect (for example).

Web - Turn the automatic loading of images OFF.  You DON'T NEED THEM.  I even turn them off in IE at work half the time, except useless PC browsers don't have a nice 'load all images' button, and make it a pain to right-click-'load image' like iBrowse, AWeb and Voyager!  This is a pain for PCs, but use on Amiga makes browsing MUCH more efficient.  ONLY VIEW THE IMAGES YOU WANT TO SEE.  Uh-hmm, excuse my yelling.  ;-)

Screenmodes - Max Overscan may give you a little extra space, but it causes the DMA to slow down noticably.  Consider changing the screen size to be larger than the actual display in multiples of 16 (eg, 640x512, try 704x576).  Then, put icons and calculators and DeliTracker on one of two edges which generally remain off-screen during use, and size your windows to fir the entire VISIBLE display: instant icon bars!   :-D

There are so many other things you can do which make the Amiga a joy to use, even if you do need a crowbar to coerce it in the beginning.  Once you figure it out, using a PC is an annoying, misguided process.

Be well!

benJamin


"I use a PC all day at work.  Why the hell would I want one in my home?"

[steve30]

Interesting piece.

I think I will have all images load up, as I like to see images, I do agree though that if you don't want them, then it is handy to have the view all images button. But in this day and age, who has an internet connection so slow that it would take all day to download a few pics, and who uses a computer that is too slow to download all the pics? Well, a few of us have the slow computer, but I bet we all have >50kbps connections. So it is understandable not having the options to disable images, and not being able to load all of them up in one go.

Could someone please expain this 'overscan' thing to me? I've messed around with the overscan prefs and I don't get what it does.

[steve30]

Also, could someone please tell me how I can get the screenmode 'DblPAL Hires No Flicker'?

Effy told me to try this when he sent me my A1200 but I can't find the mode in the screenmode prefs in WB3.0.

I have a 1438 multiscan monitor. :-?