an introduction...

[jbuonacc]

hello all.

i'm just getting into using Amiga and Commodore 64 computers, mainly for music production. i'd been browsing ebay for a week or two looking for C64 stuff when i stumbled upon an Amiga 500 from a local seller. i ended up with it, but was unable to do anything because he hadn't supplied me with a Workbench disk or even a manual. either way, i was hooked. lost my head a bit and have now bought an Amiga 1200 and three more A500's within the past few weeks. :-o way to go, huh? i figure i can piece together a nice A500 system (or three?) and sell off whatever's left over. the A1200 i sort of stumbled upon, but i've found that it's absolutely fantastic. many, many questions to come - hope you don't get fed up with me. :-)

i'll start/continue appropriate threads in the support forum. any general advice on Amigas or midi/sampling on the A500/1200 would be useful here though. thanks, take care...

-justin.

[skurk]

You probably already know this, but the Amiga doesn't come with a sampler nor a midi interface.  For sampling, you need an external sampler which uses the parallel port.  The same goes for midi, you need an external midi interface.  IIRC, you connect the sampler to the parallel port and the midi to the serial, so you can use them both simultaneously.

I happen to have a spare midi interface for Amiga if you are interested.  I also have an 8-bit sampler, but I'm pretty sure it's broken.  Might be fixable, though.

[Ral-Clan]

If you only have an A500 then OctaMED or Dr. T's KCS is probably your best bet for using samples and MIDI together.

If you plan to use the A1200, you can probably run Bars & Pipes, one of the best MIDI sequencers ever made.

[jbuonacc]

thanks for the advice, guys. i've been searching around for Amiga samplers and midi interfaces, and would certainly be interested in what you've got there. i've got a bit of software on disk already, and would love to transfer over all the stuff i've downloaded in my searches. i'll be posting a lengthy thread in the hardware help form with all the questions i've gathered for the 500, 1200, and Amigas in general.

Bars & Pipes seems great, that's one that i'm looking forward to. still haven't made much sense of trackers yet (i'm used to things like Cubase and Ableton Live), but have a copy of Noisetracker with manual on the way so that might help. i used to have Dr. T's KCS for the Atari, but haven't found it available anywhere (to buy or even download). actually, maybe it's possible to still get it through him? i'll look around a bit more. right now i'm pretty much looking for anything music/audio-related to the A500 or A1200. plenty excited, spent a few hours tonight going through a pile of 200 old DD floppies full of junk. found some really useful utilities in there though that i'll have to take a closer look at.

[platon42]

If you were planning to use the C64 for music production you definately should give the AHX-Tracker a shot, that generates "chip music" sound rather similar to the C64 SID chip.

There are a few clockport soundcards for the A1200 you should be able to get second hand, such as the Delfina and Melody, at least the latter with excellent sound quality (separated digital/analogue PCB for ~108 dB S/N ratio). This makes a real difference to the 8-bit ~28khz samplers you can get for the parallel port.

The Amiga can read and write 720KB PC DD formatted floppy disks starting with Kick 2.0, if I remember correctly (Mount PC0) -- this should get things transferred. Other means would probably need expanding the Amiga a bit (e.g. building the A1200 into a tower and getting a network card).

[Rabbi]

Here's a couple of URLs that might be of interest to you:

(English version:)
http://www.alfred-j-faust.de/indexeng.html

-or-

(German version:)
http://www.alfred-j-faust.de/

At either site, you can d/l the latest version of Bars & Pipes, as well as other Blue Ribbon Soundworks software for free.

Check out this site.  I believe it's a MIDI/ audio sequencer:

http://www.hd-rec.de/

[jbuonacc]

platon42 wrote:

The Amiga can read and write 720KB PC DD formatted floppy disks starting with Kick 2.0, if I remember correctly (Mount PC0) -- this should get things transferred.

really? that sounds great, but i haven't been able to figure it out. i've formatted a 720kb disk on the PC, but the A1200 couldn't recognize it. i'll try again, any advice/instruction? not sure what "Mount PC0" means really (don't have a 1200 manual, and just got an A500 manual). i've also heard you can transfer through the pcmcia slot with a flash card adapter? it's easier to get them into the A1200 than the A500 though, right? and once they're in the 1200 i can make disks for the 500?

i've got an app on my hd called 'cross-DOS' and found a disk with something called 'cross-PC'. would either of these help?

thanks for the tip on the clockport audio, but it's actually the crunchy 8-bit sampling that drew me to the Amiga in the first place. i absolutely dig it, warts and all. there's something about the sound of old 8 or 12-bit samplers that can't be had elsewhere, i think it'll make a great sequencing/sampling companion for the C64 once i get some midi going for that. i have some pc software on my laptop that i use for recording and editing along with my Clavia synth.

[derringer3]

"there's something about the sound of old 8 or 12-bit samplers that can't be had elsewhere"

Yes noise, nothing else. :lol:

I tried to get find a good solution years ago for my amiga, but then only sky-priced noisy sound card was on the market, and no one for the a500. So then i switched to pc.
Today i have a mediator board, and sb128 (yeah it's a noise generator i know) but 16bit is 16 bit. I admire the people who    push Paula for its limits, but for a good sound work paula is not enough.

[lurkist]

To get that 720K disk showing on workbench, double click the PC0 file found in Devs/Dosdrivers.  (If it's not there, try looking in Storage/Dosdrivers)

[jbuonacc]

well, i guess we're thinking two different things here, not sure what ype of stuff you're into. i'm not looking for pristine sound quality out of the Amiga, i've got my MOTU UltraLite and all sorts of hi-fi for that. i actually enjoy the sound of lo-fi samplers, 'noise' being just a part of it.

got any 'noisy' samplers lying around?

 ;-)

[weirdami]

any general advice on Amigas... would be useful

A1200's with trap-door expansions need air-flow under-neathe or else  :madashell: and  :boohoo:. :-)

[amigakit]

Welcome!

[jbuonacc]

lurkist wrote:
To get that 720K disk showing on workbench, double click the PC0 file found in Devs/Dosdrivers.  (If it's not there, try looking in Storage/Dosdrivers)

wow, it worked! (is the DF0:? icon supposed to stay there as well?) i've sure got a lot to learn about the OS and file extensions though, having a hard time getting used to it. i transferred a .dms file over (which should be an application, i would think), but i'm not sure what to do with it. i double-click on it and it comes up as not executable. of course this after after i set it to 'show all' files in Workbench. i've noticed this a lot, some disks i've got don't show anything unless you do this. no idea how to work with these disks on the A500 because it won't let me 'show all' files in the older versions of Workbench. i've also noticed that a lot of the Amiga stuff (.adf files mainly) i've downloaded is about 900kb each and won't fit on the 720kb floppies. not sure what to do about that.

Skurk - any idea which models of midi interface and sampler you have?

[madsjm]

jbuonacc wrote:
i transferred a .dms file over (which should be an application, i would think), but i'm not sure what to do with it.

DMS files are compressed disk images. You need a program called DMS to unpack them (to a floppy disk):
dms write filename.dms
Then the disk image is decompressed to your floppy in df0:
Download it here: http://aminet.net/util/arc/dms111.run

of course this after after i set it to 'show all' files in Workbench. i've noticed this a lot, some disks i've got don't show anything unless you do this. no idea how to work with these disks on the A500 because it won't let me 'show all' files in the older versions of Workbench.

Icons for files and folders are called .info. If you have a file called game, it will only be shown in Workbench if you have a corresponding game.info.
It should be fairly easy to make an icon for a file. Just copy the .info from a different file and rename it.

 i've also noticed that a lot of the Amiga stuff (.adf files mainly) i've downloaded is about 900kb each and won't fit on the 720kb floppies. not sure what to do about that.

You can use a packer like dms in UAE to compress it. DMS supports splitting into two files, so it will fit on a 720KB floppy.
You could also pack the adf file with something like lha on the pc, and decompress it on the amiga.